Family Day 2013 a huge success

21 May 2013

Last Sunday (Sunday, May 19^th), Marriage Equality supporters, lesbian and gay parents and their children from all over Ireland enjoyed the sunshine and celebrations in Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens at One Family’s Family Day. 

Family Day celebrates the diversity of families and family life in Ireland, and featured activities, games and fun for every family. 

Marriage Equality, the first Irish member organisation of NELFA (the Network of European LGBT Families Association) invited all its supporters to the Family Day event as part of the International Family Equality celebrations that took place on and around May 5^th this year. Our amazing volunteers provided face painting, purple Marriage Equality balloons, delicious cupcakes, the ever popular Marriage Equality stickers and lots of information to everyone who stopped by our tent to say ‘Hi’. We also signed up lots new supporters for the campaign. 

Making our families visible is incredibly important – now more than ever.  LGBT families do not have the same rights as other families, and children with LGBT parents are being discriminated against simply because of the sexuality of their parents. Civil Partnership does not protect the rights of a child to his or her non-biological parent, and this has real consequences for families living in Ireland. 

Following the recent overwhelming support for the introduction of marriage equality at the Constitutional Convention (79%), we wanted to put faces to the families affected by the lack of marriage equality and raise awareness about why we need to change the law to respect and protect LGBT families. 

All children deserve the right to emergency care, access to both of their parents and inheritance. All families benefit from the intangible reassurance that comes from knowing that your family is recognised as a family and is safe and protected.  All parents want the same for their children, to be happy and feel loved and secure.  

We know our work at the weekend will have raised awareness about the need for marriage equality and we will continue to urge the Government to hold a referendum on the issue without delay, so that all families can be protected and cherished equally under the law. 

Thank you to One Family for an amazing day, to all our wonderful volunteers who baked cupcakes and helped out for the day and thanks also to Lush on Henry Street for the goodies!! 

To see how you can get involved visit our website at: http://www.marriagequality.ie/getinvolved/