[Fintan O’Toole at the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association (ISME) Annual Conference in the RDS last November]
It’s good that most of those who oppose gay marriage love and respect and cherish individual gay people, though they should hardly expect a pat on the back for not hating their fellow citizens. But they need to recognise that that’s not enough.
The whole point of the law is that it’s not about giving people equal status because you like them. It’s about freeing people from subjection to the arbitrariness of other people’s benevolence. Gay men and lesbians shouldn’t have to care one way or the other whether the members of the Iona Institute love them or not. Just as the rest of us shouldn’t measure the rights of our fellow citizens by what they get up to in bed.
Full equality often has to wait while mainstream opinion catches up (Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times)
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Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland
