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Home Parish Bulletin
Sunday, 01 August 2010
Iona Institute PDF Print E-mail
Civil Partnership Bill and freedom of conscience


The upcoming Civil Partnership Bill will give almost all of the rights of married couples to same-sex couples. Apart from its effects on family policy, it will have grave consequences for freedom of conscience and religion.

The Bill will amend the Equal Status Act and the Employment Equality Act so that even those who believe that they cannot, in conscience, facilitate a same-sex civil union will be guilty of ‘discrimination’.

This means that belief in traditional sexual morality and traditional marriage will be treated as a form of prejudice to be punishable by law under certain circumstances.

This is a very dramatic step. It will treat a belief held for millennia by countless numbers of reasonable people all over the world, of any religion and none, as equivalent to racism, as something that has no rational basis.

http://www.ionainstitute.ie/