Maman Poulet

A nation once again?

You know the way the Brits suddenly adopt Irish sportsmen (particularly those with granny passports) in times of triumph? Today Lucy Clouting ‘profiles the most inspiring, creative, dynamic women in Britain’ in The Guardian.

With her inclusion of Dr.’s Zappone and Gilligan she seems to forget that Ireland became a republic in 1948 or had its own constitution as Eire in 1937 or infact that it’s the Irish State that the couple are suing.

Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan
Lesbian couple fighting for their marriage to be recognised in Ireland

So far: Zappone and Gilligan met while graduate students at Boston College in the US in the early 1980s and subsequently got married in Canada. When they moved to Ireland (Gilligan had grown up there and they are both Irish nationals now), they wanted to secure parity with heterosexual married couples and for the authorities to recognise their entitlements to "privacy and family life" as enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. Gilligan says "the case is the evolution of a whole life of social activism". Together with Zappone, she founded a community-based education project in 1986, which is now known as An Cosán: "We wanted to address the endemic poverty in west Dublin and to empower people through education."

Zappone is a philosopher and member of the Irish Human Rights Commission. Gilligan lectures at St Patrick's Teacher Training College in Dublin and is Chair of the National Educational Welfare Board in Ireland.

What's next? "We're looking for justice for ourselves as well as those who share our sexual identity." The case will reach the High Court in October.

Source | The Guardian | Lucy Clouting profiles the most inspiring, creative, dynamic women in Britain

posted by Maman Poulet @ 8/21/2006 07:21:00 p.m.