Well said Rhian, and I agree absolutely.

Is Mise, I don't need to ask my husband about Catholics, because I grew up in a strict Catholic household and suburb, and all my schooling was given by nuns and priests. We had the alcoholic Father Brown to tea every Friday!

All the people I grew up with, and all the ones my husband knows in Ireland, used to believe in everything the priest or his elders said...no questions asked.

This is obviously true of many Catholics, as evidenced by the years of silence re the multitude of kids sexually abused by clergy all over the world.

Have you heard the disgusting evidence currently being given by that old paedophile priest Ridsdale to the Royal Commission?
Many Senior clergy knew about his crimes since the early 1960's.

No one believed the few kids who did report him over the years because no one thought priests could do anything wrong!

Suse,

I'm glad that you don't have to ask any guidance about Catholicism; your continued blunders on that subject will be amusing.

Of course all of the Irish did what the Church told them, that's probably why there were no Catholics in the IRA after about 1918/19 when the Church threatened excommunication for any Catholic that was a member; thereafter it wan an exclusively Protestant and Atheist organization.

I prefer to accept as fact what I learned in biological science and physical reality that only the union of a man and a woman could produce a child. That marriage was ordained by the State to raise and protect those offspring. This I see from the birds and animals that surround me every day. Two hens do not produce chicks, it takes a rooster to compete reproduction. Two mares do not produce a foal, or two bulls a calf, or two bitches do not produce a pup.

The only purpose of the State is to record population growth, protection of children and demise of population; any other record is merely entering the bedrooms of lovers, which serves no statistical purpose other than to check on welfare cheats, which may catch two single mothers on welfare living together with children.

//Two hens do not produce chicks, it takes a rooster to compete reproduction. Two mares do not produce a foal, or two bulls a calf, or two bitches do not produce a pup.//

Awww, isn't that nice? Jopsephus has discovered the birds and the bees. Or the birds, at least. Bee sex is a bit nastier: one domineering female with a harem of drones to service her sexual needs. Mind you, bird reproduction isn't that simple either. I wonder what Josephus makes of a cuckoo's commitment to have their young raised by their biological parents.

I also wonder what he makes of the common garden snail, one of the many species of simultaneous hemaphrodites out there. They don't have any distinctions between male and female: two snails make another snail. Kinky or what?

Hmmm Is Mise, who to believe?
My Irish husband, and all his family who still live in Ireland....or you......?

I guess your shock and horror that a predominantly Catholic country like Ireland could vote in the dreaded gay marriage has clouded your judgement.

Josephus, what are you on about?
How many times have others mentioned on this site that there are also many people who get married who either don't want, or can't have, children?
Are you saying that only fertile young people should get married?

Marriage should be about love between two adult people who want to formalize their union with marriage, and that is the basic requirement, regardless of gender, or their ability or choice to have children or not.

Suse,

"Hmmm Is Mise, who to believe?
My Irish husband, and all his family who still live in Ireland....or you......?"

Me, 'cause I paid attention to my lessons and I know that Catholics are taught that infallibility is only granted to the Pope and then only when a decree is on Faith and Morals and is binding on the whole Church.
Isn't that what you were taught?

"....I guess your shock and horror that a predominantly Catholic country like Ireland could vote in the dreaded gay marriage has clouded your judgement...."

You guess wrong, actually I couldn't care less, except that I see it as seeds for future trouble.