Hollywood actor Colin Farrell has
suggested that gay and lesbian couples make better parents than their
heterosexual counterparts.
Farrell appeared via satellite from Los
Angeles on RTE's Claire Byrne Live to discuss an upcoming
referendum on marriage equality in his home country of Ireland.
The 38-year-old actor spoke of the
bullying his brother Eamon faced growing up in Ireland and his
“incredibly successful” marriage.
“He went to Vancouver and they got
married and they've been happily married for six years, maybe seven
years. They have an incredibly successful marriage,” Farrell said.
“And to think they had to leave their own country to do that is
sad and disappointing and just grossly unfair, I feel.”
When host Claire Byrne noted that
opponents claim that allowing gay couples to marry hurts children,
Farrell said it was the other way around, that the children of gay
couples suffer when their parents cannot legally marry.
“Without same-sex marriage being
legalized … it's the children that are going to be left in the
dark, if there's a separation. It's the children who won't have the
equal rights as the children of straight couples who are married.
So, the children are actually going to suffer.”
“Guess what? There's a hell of a lot
of unsuccessful marriages between men and women. There's a hell of a
lot of children who have to experience day to day the arguments, the
bickering, the domestic violence between their parents.”
“This is a demographic of society –
gay, lesbian, transgender – who have been pilloried and who have
been ostracized, who have been polarized, excluded for so long that
when they get the chance to experience marriage or … parenthood, it
has been kept [from] them for so long, and it is a God-given human
right, and it's too easy for heterosexuals to be parents, if you want
the truth.”
“There are too many of us who find it
too easy to have a kid that we don't put the care and attention into
planning what the implications of that might be and the
responsibilities that that might hold. And too many parents around
the world don't parent their kids because it was a five-minute thing
and a thing and there it is,” the single father of two added. (The
video is embedded on this page. Visit
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Ireland's marriage referendum will take
place in May.
(Related: 90
percent of Irish adults under 24 support gay marriage.)