The virulent opposition to same-sex marriage, when one strips away all of the extraneous religious ideology, is, at its core, a battle to protect the last bastion of legitimised discrimination.
In Ireland, the contentious issue is set to return to the headlines over the coming months as Senator Katherine Zappone and Dr Ann Louise Gilligan take their fight to have their Canadian marriage recognised in this country to the Supreme Court in June.
Their task is an onerous one as the High Court, in 2006, dismissed their case ruling that, even though marriage is not defined in the constitution as being between a man and a woman, it is commonly understood to mean just that and it was not willing to expand its meaning, Colette Browne writes in the Irish Examiner.
