Opinion

Unionists on the wrong side of the equal marriage debate

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson visiting Belfast this week for the annual Belfast Pride lecture. Picture by Justin Kernoghan
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson visiting Belfast this week for the annual Belfast Pride lecture. Picture by Justin Kernoghan Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson visiting Belfast this week for the annual Belfast Pride lecture. Picture by Justin Kernoghan

WHEN the DUP find themselves on the wrong side of the equal marriage debate with the leader of the Scottish Conservative party they surely have to engage in some internal reflection.

Ruth Davidson was in Belfast this week for the annual Belfast Pride lecture and said she believes that reform in Northern Ireland is inevitable, despite political objections from unionists.

Ms Davidson, who is engaged to her partner Jen Wilson, an Irish Catholic and one of the campaigners during the Republic's same sex marriage referendum, is a practising Christian and said she would like to get married in her local church.

It is this religious aspect of the same sex marriage debate that has in the past caused the most controversy.

While many unionists objected to civil partnerships before they were introduced in 2005, similarly senior Church figures have now joined the debate in relation to equal marriage.

Before the assembly elections earlier this year the Catholic bishops put out a statement urging their flock to question politicians at the door in relation to their stance on social issues such as abortion legislation reform and same sex marriage.

And yet despite this in southern Ireland with its largely Catholic majority, a place where 20 years ago you would have struggled to place a hair between Church and state, they managed to overcome those concerns during the referendum.

As a member of the Conservative party and a practising Christian, Ms Davidson has had to overcome many prejudices to be an openly gay woman involved in right wing, conservative politics - something that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

The Tory leader told her Belfast audience on Tuesday that she looked to her parents' marriage for inspiration.

The fact that loving, committed gay couples are denied this right and those with children denied future security remains one of the great failures of the last assembly.

The abuse of the petition of concern by the DUP to block reform exposed the very real flaw with legislation.

The debate leading up to the referendum in the Republic was a personal journey for many people, it was a reminder that far from being on the fringes of society the LGBT community are brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. They're grandchildren, your children's teacher, nurses, doctors, social workers and best friends.

Social media in the run up to the referendum was filled with short clips of elderly parents and grandparents who grew up in a religiously conservative Ireland saying how they were voting yes for a member of their family who deserved to be treated the same as everyone else.

It was that personalisation of the debate that encouraged a yes vote and made history in a part of this island, leaving us in the north holding the unenviable title as the only part of these islands still discriminating against the LGBT community.

And so while I may agree with few of Ruth Davidson's political policies, it is important people like her to speak up in defence of gay men and women who still are denied the right to marry their partner.

More so for political members of the unionist community who still struggle with their faith and reconciling that with the growing public demand for change.

I have no doubt there are unionists still struggling to come to terms with their sexuality. And that self enforced denial is incredibly damaging mentally.

Ruth Davidson's powerful and emotional speech in Belfast this week will, I hope, go some way to easing the hurt and confusion of many people who struggle to reconcile being gay with being Christian.

I hope her intervention on this matter will allow many unionists to reflect about their views on equal marriage and adjust how they would vote in any future assembly as a result.

Equal marriage has been introduced in democratic countries around the world and still the sun rises and sets.

Yet here we have continuing migration of our young, talented workforce to other places where they feel they can live life as their whole self without being judged for their sexuality.

No person whether they be a shop worker or elected member of the Northern Ireland assembly should have to live a lie because of the attitudes of others.

It's not too often I quote a Tory to prove my argument, but in Ruth Davidson's own words: "Marriage loses meaning not when it is offered to all, but when it is denied to some."