Letter to an Irish newspaper. [View All]

[Jackeens]

Madam, – I have been in a committed relationship for 17 years. Because the person I fell in love with and have chosen to share my life with is a woman, the civil right of marriage – open in principle to all heterosexual Irish people – has never been available to me as a citizen of this State.

A lot of our married friends have asked us when we’re going to get married too – as if maybe we’re just being a bit slow off the mark or need a bit of encouragement – and we have to remind them that we can’t. They simply assume the right on our behalf because it seems so natural to them and they forget that we don’t have it. But then they have known us for a very long time, and so they see two human beings who – like them – have been faithfully together through every experience that 17 years of life can bring to a couple.

To have the relationship of my life characterised as “a lifestyle arrangement” by Tim Jackson (July 3rd) is deeply painful, but then mr jackson does not know me, so he is speaking not about me but about some abstract entity that he calls “the gay lobby”.

Well, the lobby is full of people like me, the lobby exists because of people like me, and amid the great joy of celebrating the marriages of our straight friends and our siblings there is always for those of us in the lobby the increasing heartbreak of knowing that because of our sexual orientation – and that alone – the State does not permit us equal recognition and status for our own relationships. – Yours, etc,

MARGARET LONERGAN,

Stoneybatter,

Dublin 7.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2009/0710/1224250386496.html