Lesbian couple wed in Canada launch landmark lawsuit seeking marriage rights in Ireland
Pastor Dale Morgan
Lesbian couple wed in Canada launch landmark lawsuit seeking marriage
rights in Ireland*
03.10.2006
Source: pravda.ru
A lesbian couple who were legally married in Canada launched a landmark
lawsuit Tuesday seeking to win the same legal rights and financial
benefits as married heterosexuals in Ireland.
Ann Louise Gilligan [a former Catholic nun] and Katherine Zappone who
were married in Vancouver, British Columbia, in September 2003 within
months of the legalization of same-sex marriage there are the first gay
couple in Ireland to go to court to seek state recognition of a foreign
marriage.
It is also the first such lawsuit filed in Europe. Belgium and the
Netherlands already recognize same-sex marriages and several other
nations grant homosexual couples tax, inheritance and child-rearing
rights similar to those for married heterosexuals.
The Irish government has indicated it may eventually extend
marriage-style rights to homosexual couples but is defending the action,
citing the 1937 constitution's requirement "to guard with special care
the institution of marriage, on which the family is founded, and to
protect it against attack." Homosexuality was illegal in Ireland until 1993.
The lawsuit in the High Court, the second-highest court in Ireland, is
expected to last about three weeks and involve about a dozen witnesses
testifying on behalf of the women. Whatever the outcome, legal experts
expect the losing side to appeal to the Supreme Court, the ultimate
arbiter of constitutional law.
Gilligan, a Dublin college lecturer in philosophy, is Irish and a former
Catholic nun. Zappone, a member of Ireland's government-appointed Human
Rights Commission, is an American from Seattle, Washington. They have
been a couple since the mid-1980s when both were finishing their
doctoral degrees at Boston College in the United States. They moved
together to Ireland two decades ago and have worked together on a string
of research projects dealing with urban poverty and feminist rights.
They also own two properties together an issue driving their demand to
have their foreign union recognized for tax purposes here.
Their legal battle began in 2004 when they challenged the Irish tax
authorities' refusal to recognize the existence of their Canadian
marriage. This meant they had to file tax separately, a more expensive
option, and were unable to claim their full deductions for their
properties, reports AP.
In the longer term, when one of them dies, the other could face a
struggle to exercise inheritance rights and, under current law, would
face much higher tax burden than a heterosexual widow or widower.
The case, if successful, would have major implications for Ireland's
unmarried couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, in this
predominantly Catholic country of 4.2 million. The 2001 census
identified 77,600 households involving unmarried partners among them
1,300 homosexual couples who must pay higher rates of income and
inheritance taxes than married couples.