Constitutional Convention insults secular citizens with 2% vote on Church & State
The Irish Constitutional Convention has responded insultingly to the many citizens who asked it to discuss Separation of Church and State. Only 2% of Convention members have voted to discuss the topic, despite it receiving more support than any other topic in the Convention’s public feedback process, and it will therefore not be on the Convention's agenda.
Before the vote, the Convention had asked for public opinion on what to discuss, through written submissions published on its website and at public meetings held around the country. In both of these areas of feedback, Separation of Church and State received more public support than any other single topic.
Yet when voting after receiving this feedback, it finished a distant last with just 2% of the vote. To make things worse, that was not even a vote on whether to separate Church and State – it was just a vote on whether to discuss it. Not discussing the topic is harmful enough in itself, but a 2% vote is shocking.
We accept that different people have different priorities, and we did not expect to automatically have our priorities on the agenda. We understand why people would see Political and Institutional Reform to be central to the Constitution, and we are part of the network that supports ESC Rights.
But the derisory 2% vote for Church and State remains an insult to the many Irish citizens who responded to the Convention’s request for feedback, who told the Convention of the direct religious discrimination that breaches our human rights, and which the Convention has so overwhelmingly chosen not to discuss.
if the Constitution had discriminated in the same way on the ground of race rather than religion, would only 2% of the Convention members have voted to discuss it? Probably not. But even overt religious discrimination seems to be either invisible or acceptable in Ireland, in a way that other forms of discrimination are not.
The way that they have voted on different issues shows how deeply ingrained religious discrimination has become in Ireland, when even people who support sexual and gender equality do not want to address the direct religious discrimination that breaches the human rights of their fellow citizens.
They voted by 79% to support same-sex marriage, and by 62% to support an explicit provision on gender equality. Yet 38% of the same people want to keep unchanged the blasphemy ban from the 1937 Constitution, and 49% of them want there to be a law against blasphemy in a modern Republic.
This is how the Convention members have now voted on what two topics to discuss as the final item on their agenda:
49% – Political and Institutional Reform
18% – Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
14% – Environment
11% – Family and Issues of Morality
6% – Bill of Rights
2% – Separation of Church and State
Removing the religious discrimination from the Constitution would not harm anybody’s rights. The discrimination has no real value to the Constitution as a legal document. Without it we could have a fair and inclusive Republic based on freedom of conscience, freedom from discrimination, and equality before the law.
Atheist Ireland will continue to lobby the Convention to consider the religious elements of the two topics they have voted to discuss – Political and Institutional Reform and Economic, and Social and Cultural Rights. We have religious oaths for political offices, and existing ESC rights in employment, health and education are tainted by religious discrimination.
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