Stephen Gately's funeral yesterday was a highly personal and poignant celebration of the Boyzone singer's life, so tragically cut short by a cardiac arrest. Singer, showman, band member, children's writer, musical star – but above all husband, son, brother, uncle. He was remembered with love and happiness, which to most people is an achievement in itself.

But his death prompts a re-examination of the single most important issue that dominated his short life – and the one that if we were a truly equal society would be irrelevant – his sexuality.

The funeral was in a church whose religion explicitly requests those who are homosexual not to express their love or sexuality in a physical way.

Yet as a young Dubliner reared and educated within the Catholic church, Stephen Gately himself never gave up on his faith and in his last interview spoke of how much it meant to him. A triumph of the individual over the institution.

The funeral was attended by a man who Stephen Gately was proud to call his husband, Andrew Cowles, with whom he had a happy long-term relationship and with whom he shared a desire to have a family. Yet the couple had to go to America to bind that relationship legally with a marriage ceremony that was – and still is – unavailable here.

A triumph of the loving couple over the failure of the state to legislate for all its people.

Gately and Cowles were introduced by their mutual friend Elton John. The superstar and his husband David Furnish are probably the most famous gay couple in the world, married under legislation passed in Britain which allows civil unions between people of the same sex.

Yet only last September, as our own less-than-ideal civil partnership legislation was the subject of debate, the country's leading churchman, Cardinal Sean Brady, warned against legalising same-sex unions: "Any society which diminishes the value of the family based on marriage between a man and a women diminishes the very foundation of society itself." Sadly, a triumph of doctrine over real understanding.

As Louise O'Donovan, a proud mother of a gay son whose partner "belongs to our family", wrote in response to the cardinal. "Society does the diminishing itself very nicely already, with child abuse, abusive partners, infidelity, abandonment of children, interfamilial murder etc."

Also among the mourners at yesterday's funeral were members of the record industry who, in the early days, worked hard to keep Stephen Gately's sexuality a secret. The pressure not to be open about his friendships because they feared an admission that he was gay might affect record sales meant the singer, at an impressionable and vulnerable young age, had to be economical with the truth in interviews, secretive with colleagues and with his wider acquaintanceships and fans, leading to a double life that left him unhappy and confused – like so many gay teenagers and young men still are today. A triumph of commercial self-interest over the personal welfare of a young man. Within the congregation also were members of the media who, back in 1999 when Gately was just 23, threatened to "out" him by publishing an interview with an ex boyfriend.

Gately decided to come out so that he could talk about his sexuality in his own words. In later years, he was to reflect it was the best thing he had ever done. A triumph of truth and personal honour over seedy blackmail.

Stephen Gately's life was a personal victory over adversity. He grew up in one of the capital's most impoverished areas and by dint of sheer hard work, ambition and a personality that endeared him to fans, the band, and the industry around him, he succeeded. But it was in spite of all the obstacles and prejudices rather than because he experienced a life of open doors and sexual tolerance.

Ironically it was in 1993, the same year that Boyzone was formed, that homosexuality was finally decriminalised in this country. It is only this year, after his death, that civil partnership legislation will finally become law.

It is a start but it does not go far enough. It is welcome in as far as it goes in terms of granting much-needed succession and property rights, pension rights and equal treatment under the tax code, as well as 'next of kin' rights in ill health and separation rights should the relationship break up. But it does not go far enough, particularly in protecting the children in gay marriages. Gay men and women may foster together, but they can only adopt as individuals, leaving children of gay partnerships vulnerable and unprotected should one partner die.

It is reassuring that in Stephen Gately's lifetime as an adult gay man, so much prejudice and intolerance has evaporated. It was the young fans who confidently asserted their pop idol's right to be gay and proud of it. Their acceptance is certainly not shared by the church, or by the many institutions and laws of his country which have paid lip service to equality, but in reality reinforced the discrimination that regulated most of his adult life.

Things are changing. Today's teenagers show a far greater acceptance of gay and lesbian peers than any generation before them. The new Department of Education guidelines for schools on homophobic bullying, introduced just last Monday, give welcome urgency to the need to address schoolyard ignorance against gays from the earliest age possible.

Much changed for the better in Stephen Gately's short lifetime, but his claiming of rights that heterosexuals take for granted was hard won. It shouldn't take another lifetime before true equality for all four million of us in this wonderfully diverse, contentedly conventional and happily unconventional, fantastically multi-faceted country is enshrined both constitutionally and legally.