A small but forceful group called ‘First Families First’ launched their campaign this morning in Buswells Hotel, for a No vote in the upcoming same sex marriage referendum on May 22nd.
Spearheaded by well known journalist, John Waters, the panel consisted of activist Kathy Synott and Gerry Fahey.
At a busy press conference, the shocking reality of what this legislation may mean was made evident.
First Families First explained in some detail that in the event of a marriage breaking down and one of the heterosexual parties becoming and subsequently becoming homosexual and marrying another homosexual, that new homosexual partner will have more rights to a child than its own biological parent. In the event of the biological parent who became homosexual dying, the new partner would have custody rights over the child that the living biological parent would not have.
Waters claims the referendum is “Constitutional vandalism”.
They believe that if the public understood precisely what this referendum entails, almost everyone would vote No.
First Families First are standing up for the first families, eg families where the children are first born into, and are predicting that if this referendum passes, we will be seeing even more nightmarish stories in the family courts than we’re seeing today.
They believe that this is the critical legal problem with voting Yes in this referendum.
The Liberal posed a number of questions to the panel.
“What are your thoughts on Enda Kenny emphatically stating he won’t debate anyone on the No side?”
Waters claimed democracy was under threat and that he feels Kenny should debate the issue. He said that the Taoiseach is using the fact that the other main political parties are campaigning for a Yes vote as an excuse to not make it a political issue.
The question was then asked, “What do you think of the overwhelmingly obvious media bias pushing for a Yes vote and as a result people are afraid to publicly state they’re voting No?”
Again, the panel pushed on the democracy issue and said that trolls on Twitter and Facebook are threatening democracy by using pseudonyms and castigating people who don’t confirm to what’s seen as politically correct.
“I know people who are openly saying they’re voting Yes but are actually voting No, purely because of the backlash they’re afraid they’d receive”, said Synott.
Asked what they thought about ‘One Family’ claiming it’s disingenuous to bring single parent families into the debate, Waters said: “Well I’m a single father longer than One Family exists and I know as does Kathy and indeed Gerry just how hard it is to be a single parent. The facts we have stated today, the fact single parents’ rights are endangered are a very big part of this referendum”.