Any day now someone will call for the Civil Partnership Bill to be gender proofed. Because surely as it stands by not recognising families and family responsibilities one group is being favoured over others?

Even Glen (did you see the lowercase on the len bit?- I’m taking the lead from the paper of record) are saying there’s a gender problem with the bill’s failure to recognise couples who are parenting children or children who seek to have legal ties to parents.

Eoin Collins from Glen writes in today’s Irish Times.

A major area of concern for Glen, however, is the lack of progress made in providing legal recognition for the large number of same sex couples, especially women, who are co-parenting children. For example, dissolution of a civil partnership can be obtained without the legal requirement to make any specific provisions for the children being parented by the couple.

Nor will a child being parented by a same-sex couple – unlike a child being parented by an opposite-sex couple – be able to claim maintenance from a partner who is not their biological parent. This will seriously disadvantage children living in these situations, and we strongly urge the Government to address these gaps as the legislation is progressed.

I’m looking forward to the opinion pieces in the Irish Times from Marriage Equality, LGBT Noise, OPEN, LINC, One Family and indeed and other individual or ‘expert’ on the matter. None of them represent anyone any more than Glen do and actually may represent women a whole better!) so they’ll surely get equal space to debate the matters. ( By the way you can leave comments on the Opinion piece. )

Can anyone tell me if the Government (and I include the Greens) have proposed in any recent statement what is actually going to happen to children’s rights and policy on same sex family matters if it’s not going to be in the Civil Partnership Bill? Are we just going to watch people wring the hands in fake agony until the debates are done and dusted?