Same Sex Marriage
Ireland and Mark McCormick’s struggle
The recent success of the Marriage Equality campaign in the Republic of Ireland has highlighted the underdeveloped historiography of the Irish LGBT movement something Mark feels strongly about.
When Mark McCormick returned to Dublin to study for a master’s. As a gay man in his twenties, moving back to the Irish capital was also an excuse “to be gay again”, which had been more of a “theoretical condition than a practical one” living in rural Ireland.
It was while studying international relations that his next unexpected career move came about, from a chance conversation with a politician’s aide about upcoming legislative action on civil partnerships.
He soon became the policy director for Ireland’s Gay and Lesbian Equality Network just as it began to lobby for same-sex couples to enter into civil partnerships.
By pursuing civil partnerships they “were attacked heavily by NGO-land”, who believed that only marriage was true equality – and that nothing else would be sufficient.