Adoption rights for rainbow families

On 6 April 2015, President Michael D. Higgins signed the Children and Family Relationships Act. For Ireland, it was a quiet but momentous step. For the first time, a law provided that same-sex couples could also adopt a child together.

The law was a mammoth undertaking. It reorganised guardianship, custody and access, created a donor register for assisted reproduction and was meant to describe family as it had long been lived in Ireland. More than one hundred and twenty amendments were tabled in the Senate. In the end, only two senators voted against, and the chamber gave a standing ovation.

The timing was no coincidence. A few weeks later, the people were to vote on marriage equality. The government wanted to settle the adoption question beforehand so that opponents could not make it the main argument of their campaign. The calculation worked: in May, Ireland became the first country in the world to say yes to same-sex marriage by popular vote.

But a signature is not yet a right that is lived. Many provisions only took effect years later, because three ministries had to issue their own regulations. Lesbian mothers had to wait particularly long. Only in May 2020 could female couples who had had their child with the help of a fertility clinic both be registered as parents on the birth certificate.

That too was only a partial victory. Families with two fathers, children born through surrogacy and couples who conceived without a clinic were still left out. LGBT Ireland warned that these families were in legal limbo, for example in medical decisions, with passports or with inheritance.

Nevertheless, 6 April 2015 marks a turning point. A country that had only decriminalised homosexuality in 1993 thus officially recognised that family does not depend on the sex of the parents.