From top: Dublin Castle after the marriage referendum result last year; Sarah Clancy

Writer Sarah Clancy, from Galway, campaigned for a Yes vote in the marriage equality referendum last year.

She’s since received an invite to a photocall in Dublin Castle this Sunday – with Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald – to mark the first anniversary of the marriage referendum.

GLEN, Marriage Equality and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties extended the invite.

But Sarah is not going.

She explained this to the organisers in the following letter:

Thanks for this invitation. I wonder though could you pass my concerns on to your fellow members of Glen and the other organisations for me.

I do not think that there is any need for Yes Equality or the other organisations involved to continue inviting members of government to celebrate what was in fact a decades long campaign for justice that was mostly instigated by members of the LGTB community.

Frances Fitzgerald, in particular in her Justice brief in the last Government, presided over extremely regressive and dangerous legislation that affects asylum seekers in the International Protection Act and she failed to honor commitments made to the Magdelene women in the Redress for Women Resident in Certain Institutions Act.

She also failed to legislate for the Victims Directive to be enacted in Ireland despite talking about it at length and being commended for it in public, and all that is on top of participating in a government that imposed severe cuts on the most vulnerable in society.

I admire the work Glen and others have done on Marriage Equality but please do not be co-opted into providing a continuing patina of equality for a government that has increased inequality to the extent that we have a spiraling crisis of homelessness.

Equality is for everyone or it is worth nothing.

It is perfectly possible and would be preferable I think to most people involved if the successful result of the referendum was celebrated by remembering and thanking those whose lives were affected by discrimination in the past and the many, many people who put their own most private selves on the line by canvassing and going public all around the country.

Many thanks.

FIGHT!

Thanks Sarah Clancy

Rollingnews