MarriagEquality Fundraiser

Just got this in this morning's email from Moinne. MarriagEquality has replaced the KAL initiative from February of this year by the looks of it and they are going to be fundraising. For those of you who do not know what the KAL initiative is or what the case is about, it concerns two women-Katherine Zappone & Anne-Louise Gilligan-who were married in Canada and have taken a challenge against the Revenue Commissioners to the High Court, which they lost and is now appealed to the Supreme Court, with a date for sometime in the Fall of 2008. For those of you who have the time and can contribute to this event or to the Campaign in General, I'm sure all donations great and small would be appreciated.

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Dear Friends

MarriagEquality is having a fundraising lunch on the 6 th of March 2008, at FIRE Restaurant in the Mansion House, Dublin and we need everyone to sell as many tickets as they can so that this year is as big a success as the last two lunches.

MarriagEquality will be launched formally on the 18 th of February 2008 in the Mansion House. As you know, we are aiming to build an active coalition seeking equality for gay and lesbian people and their families. We will organise our own informative and awareness raising events, support other LGBT and Human Rights organisations, work to influence politicians, support couples, families and friends to meet and influence their public representatives and publicise widely the discrimination suffered by gay and lesbian people and their families in Ireland because they are denied access to civil marriage. To do all this however, we need to raise funds.

Please pass this on to everyone you know and please revert and let me know how many tickets you are willing to take on to sell and if you or your organisation can buy a table. Tickets are €150 each, so a table of ten is €1,500.

We also need items for our auction and prize draw so please revert if you or someone you know can donate something.

If you require any further details please feel free to contact me at the below number. I look forward to hearing from you as early as possible in response to this advance notice.


Best Wishes
--
Moninne Griffith
MarriagEquality
087-9321329

LGBT Noise & Gay Civil Marriage

So today I took part in a protest with the new group 'LGBT Noise' on Sth King st. (I think, yas should know how shocking my geography is.lol). Anyways I arrived at 12ish, and firstly because it was bleeding freezing out, despite my heavy jacket & scarf, I needed a fantastic White hot chocolate from Butlers on Grafton st.(Stephen's Green end). I did eventually warm up and was beginning to feel my feet again but not until after the Carols had begun. Anyway I was amazed at the range of people who showed up today; maybe it is because I have always been involved in events in Limerick so I knew who everybody was or half-knew who everybody was. However I was genuinely amazed at firstly seeing Sen. David Norris, a man whom I have the greatest of admiration and respect for but then to see Katherine Zappone and Anne-Louise Gilligan as well, well needless to say I was very impressed. I do sometimes find it quiet hard to speak with people I don't know. Mainly because I don't know what to say, but when it is people whom you admire, for a whole host of reasons, then the walls just build and build.

The reasoning behind this protest/Carol Service was to give some momentum behind a push for civil marriage in Ireland. As the website states:

"The purpose of this event is to create an awareness of the need for FULL equality for gay people and to let the public know that Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgendered (LGBT) people no longer wish to remain second-class citizens under Irish law. The current government is promising to publish the heads of a bill for same-sex civil partnership in Spring 2008: Bullet points for discussion, not commitments to equal rights. This bill promises to demote rather than promote equality and is an insult to all who believe in human, civil and equal rights"

Doing the Masters that I am doing, has this year given me a whole new lease of life. I have begun to see things in a completely different light and also a recognition that while change is hard as hell, change is always necessary when inherent inequalities persist. While this was a view I had in the past, I think i have finally realized how hard it is to fight for something continuously when you know you should have it from the beginning.

I am Irish. I am a Constitutional Republican. I am a citizen of my wonderful Ireland. Yet my wonderful Ireland, in all her Constitutional Republican virtues, refuses to bestow all the rights and privileges which she gives to those who are married to me or any of us who identify as Lesbian or Gay. Instead, my wonderful Ireland will next year bring forward a piece of legislation which will apparently bring "equality" within my community. Well I say that this Civil Partnership/Civil Union is not equality. Equality which has restrictions is not equality. It is another institutional bloc which exists to prevent people from participating fully and openly in Irish society.

There is only one way to have equality between those who are gay and lesbian and those who are straight and that is the complete equalization of relationships in the State institution of Civil marriage. Those who argue that Gay marriage is not constitutional should examine their Government's own report on this, which says that the only way for full equality is for Gay Civil Marriage. It is also of note to point out that marriage has never been defined as one man and one women in the Irish constitution. The only piece of legislation which was brought in on this was the Social Welfare Miscellaneous Act in 2003, which specifically defined marriage as one man and one women, in order to further stigmatize and institutionalize homophobia within the Irish state.

I yet again call on those who read this blog to voice their opinions to all in their power. Make representations to your local T.D.s, get involved in a campaign, Support a Campaign, but ultimately get out and make some noise because be dammed sure that nobody else is going to do it for you. You are the only person who knows your story well enough that you can recount it. As the cliché goes "Be the change you want to be yourself". However as much as a cliché as that is, it was Mahatma Ghandi who said it.