Even Senator (just me or still weird? ) Eoghan Harris spoke movingly about his gay neighbours and how they should not be deprived of a status equal to smug (heterosexual) marrieds. His Seanad colleague David Norris, quelle surprise, still found a way to feel victimised by anyone who fails to surrender entirely to his agenda. When John Hanafin invoked Sir Thomas More to make the point that the state could no more redefine marriage to include same-sex partnerships than it could decree that the sky be a colour other than blue, Norris nagged that when Hanafin bothers to speak it's to blackguard "people like me".

The Seanad is becoming Ireland's best sitcom. Norris and Hanafin already sound like a long-married couple.

It's revealing. No one who matters will openly oppose recognising same-sex partnerships. Opposition will be in the closet. Carried out by stealth, delay and parliamentary skulduggery . . . something Norris is right to warn against and the Green pointman, Ciaran Cuffe, had better be willing to resign to prevent.

Cuffe, who offered a reasonable defence of the Green Party's necessary volte-face on Labour's bill, effectively made the point that a decent liberal state cannot exclude same-sex couples from rights equal to married couples, and that the government's planned bill is the best first step in that direction. This means inheritance rights, protection of the family home, pensions, health benefits, power of attorney, the right to adopt children, be extended through civil partnerships.

In a politically adroit move, Cuffe also expanded the constituency for civil partnerships beyond the particularly vocal minority whose boudoir activities John Hanafin would prefer not to think about. Ireland woke up in 2007 to the fact it is now a thoroughly modern European state where co-habiting is becoming as common as marriage. The EU reported in 2006 that 31.4% of all children born in Ireland are born outside of marriage, just 0.2% below the European average. So the traditional man-woman-marriage-family-unit is no longer dominant.

Cuffe's message . . . it's not about gays. It's about everybody. The argument runs like this. The state has no business in what goes on inside a private household and cannot restrict sexual activities between consenting adults.

It follows that domestic arrangements arising primarily to provide a socially constructed way to control sex, i. e. marriage, should also be beyond the state's control.

In the Dail debate last week, Dr Martin Mansergh, a guy whose IQ is as distant from many of his party colleagues' as theirs is to a carrot, made the key distinction. As reported in the Irish Times: "In the case of civil partnership, said Dr Mansergh, there should be no necessity for there to be a physical relationship, though of course the public might tend to draw its own conclusions." So sex is no more needed for civil partnerships than marriage is for sex. That insight means civil partnerships can't just be about samesex couples. Or about co-habiting heteros. To be just and logically consistent, civil partnerships, with all their attendant privileges in property rights and tax benefits, should be available to whatever domestic arrangements seem appropriate to consenting adults. The public might tend to draw its own conclusions about the presence or absence of a physical relationship, but the state must be blind in such matters. If cohabitees and same-sex couples, why not polyamorous relationships of three, four or five adults of mixed genders?

Why not an elderly mother and divorced son? Why not four women just out of university sharing a house?

And marriage? My more libertarian friends say abolish it entirely. I say let the state get out of the business of sanctifying relationships but let the church (any church) . . . or whatever private organisation you please . . . sanctify as it sees fit. Because the law can recognise whatever domestic arrangements you like. But you can't force everybody to call it marriage.