Northern Ireland’s assembly voted narrowly in favour of legalising same-sex marriage – but the largest political party in government has vetoed any change in the law.
The vote was passed with 53 votes in favour of same sex marriage – just one vote ahead of the main unionist parties who opposed the reform.
But the motion was vetoed after the DUP used a “petition of concern” to argue that legalising same-sex couples to marry in Northern Ireland didn’t have a cross-community support.
The “petition of concern” can be used by either the Protestant or Catholic community if either political party feel one community may feel ostracised by a new law. The act was put into order following the 1998 Belfast agreement.
According to The Guardian, Jim Allister, leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice, said same-sex couples getting married was a “perverse definition” of marriage, and that the gay marriage equality campaign was a “worked-up phoney demand for rights”.
Arguing in favour of same-sex marriage, Sinn Féin’s Daithí McKay advised the assembly that three Ulster counties in the Republic of Ireland “all said yes to marriage equality”, while recent opinion polls in Northern Ireland saw 68% of people were in favour of a change to the law.
The move means that Northern Ireland is now the only part of the UK and Ireland where gay couples cannot legally marry.
