Ireland Civil Partnerships Go Into Effect

Hugh Walsh (l) and Barry Dignam are Ireland's first same-sex couple
to be registered after the country's registered partnership measure went into effect Monday April 4th.

 Ireland has joined other European Union countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Slovenia and the United Kingdom) in allowing same-sex couples to register their civil partnerships with the state, obtaining almost all the rights and responsibilities of married couples. The equivalent legal context in the United States to a European "civil or registered partnership" is a civil union or comprehensive domestic partnership.

The first couple to be registered is Hugh Walsh and Barry Dignam, as the Irish Times reports:

Yet today, 17 years after they started going out, they will become the public face of civil partnership in Ireland as one of the first couples to be joined under legislation which came into effect on January 1st. 

[...] 

Mr Dignam admitted that when the couple originally found out that they were to be the first gay couple who were to avail of the new regime without first seeking an exemption to do so, they did consider postponing the ceremony given the media attention that would inevitably follow. 

“We did have an opportunity to move the date but we felt that we would have been cheating [gay] people who had been through an awful lot of hardship – those who had been ridiculed and even jailed in the past,” he said. 

Although both Mr Dignam and Mr Walsh are in favour of full gay marriage rights, they hope that this too may happen in time. 

“This change is a pretty sizeable change although it is a pity it’s not full marriage,” he said, adding that there are those in the gay community who believe strongly that civil partnership does not go far enough. 

“They are right as well. Anything which is not equality is not equal,” he said, but added that he does not believe, like some, that civil partnership should be boycotted and would see himself as an incrementalist.

Congratulations to Hugh and Barry!