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DUBLIN, Ireland - Ireland should legalize civil partnerships between unmarried couples, including homosexuals, but not pursue full-fledged ''gay marriage,'' Justice Minister Michael McDowell said Saturday in his first major policy speech on the matter.
Ireland has become one of Europe's most prominent legal battlegrounds on the matter after a lesbian couple launched a lawsuit this month against the country's tax collection agency for refusing to recognize their 2003 marriage in Canada. Married couples can claim a special income tax credit.
McDowell declared that the government today was ''unequivocally in favor of treating gay people as fully equal citizens in our society.'' But he said the current heavy public focus on whether to extend full marriage rights and responsibilities to gay couples ''is too narrow.''
''There are many cohabiting heterosexual couples. There may be brothers sharing a farm. There may be an elderly parent being supported by a child. These may be people living together who share an economic interdependence without having any sexual aspect to their relationship at all,'' he said.
But McDowell said the question of whether nonmarried couples should enjoy the full range of financial rights and responsibilities as married couples involved ''detailed and often technical questions not capable of being easily answered.''
Ireland's 2001 census identified nearly 70,000 households in the nation involving nonmarried couples, including 1,300 gay couples, in this country of 3.9 million.
He did recommend that the surviving partner of a nonmarried couple should pay no capital gains tax on an inherited property, a major current complaint of discrimination.
McDowell said that seeking to grant gay couples full marriage rights would require a national referendum to Ireland's 1937 constitution. He predicted that an electoral battle would polarize society and run a strong risk of voter rejection, which would delay for years the introduction of civil-partnership rights.
He also noted that in Ireland - where divorce was legalized only in 1997 after a razor-thin referendum victory - cohabiting couples would be wise to avoid the legal downsides of marriage.
Ireland's divorce law requires married couples to be separated for a minimum of four years before they can file for divorce, an often grueling process that can require two separate court battles - the first to reach a separation agreement, and the second a divorce.