Irish Brother and Sister Plan Wedding

The Irish Mail (Daily Mail) has given an update on a woman and her half brother. I blogged about them before.

And even though the couple – known as ‘James’ and ‘Maura’ – realise it is illegal for them to marry, they say they are still determined to spend the rest of their lives together and will break the law to do so.

Why would anyone else care to stop people who are in love from marrying?

James said: ‘We have applied to get married and there are no mistakes in the paperwork so we will be able to wed at the end of this month.

‘We were aiming for Christmas but we have decided to do it sooner. Maura has got her wedding dress, we’ve ordered identical suits for myself and our son. We’ve also ordered a cake and we plan to go on a honeymoon a few weeks after the wedding.

‘It will be a very small wedding. We have two witnesses who we know very well and they know about our situation. I don’t know whether our father will come or whether any of our parents will be there.

I can understand that parents may have a hard time when their children find love this way, just as it is hard to accept when their child comes out as gay or lesbian. But I urge parents to honor the love that their children have and support the freedom to marry. Don't let insitutionalized prejudice hurt the relationship you have with your children.

So strong was their mutual attraction that just one week after meeting, they both felt they had known each other for a lifetime.

Two years later, Maura became pregnant and the couple moved in together. Later that year their son, Mark, was born.

This sounds like so many other relationships. That’s because really, it is like so many other relationships.

Here’s a recap of how this happened…

Since Christmas, with the help of DNA tests and gentle questioning, James and Maura have discovered the following: On a night out in the Eighties, Carmel, then aged 19, met Tom, and the pair dated for four or five weeks before going their separate ways.

However, after discovering she was pregnant with James, Carmel opted not to tell Tom she was expecting his child.

By the time James was born, she was in a relationship with Vincent, and it was he who she named as James’s father on the baby’s birth certificate. It was not until about four years later that Tom discovered Carmel had had a child.

Keen to find out whether he was the boy’s father, he made contact. Many of the details about what happened next are sketchy. However, what is clear is that even though Tom was by now married and the father of a daughter, he was determined to be a part of his son’s life and embarked on a legal battle to win access.

However, it was the Eighties and court cases like this were few and far between. But Tom was undeterred and, when the case was heard behind closed doors, Carmel admitted that Tom was indeed James’s biological father.

However, the court ruled that James should not be told who his real father was, and that Tom should not be given access to the young boy.

The couple points out that the same legal system that denied James access to his biological father shouldn’t be respected when it says he should not be allowed to marry the woman he loves, the mother of his child.

princess_pow in London had a good comment on the article…

They're in a difficult and painful position, but there doesn't seem to be anything even slightly abusive about this relationship. If their child (which they had before they knew the situation) is healthy, then nobody is being hurt by this - quite the opposite, at least the child will grow up with parents who love him and one another, and I wish them luck and hope their secret identities remain secret.

They shouldn’t have to hide to have a good life. Shame on those who keep laws in place that encourage a stigma.