Humanist celebrants take Humanist Association of Ireland to court
The Irish Times reported yesterday that Humanist celebrants have secured a temporary High Court injunction against the Humanist Association of Ireland.
The injunction is to stop the Humanist Association from taking fitness-to-practice proceedings against the Humanist celebrants because the celebrants won’t hand over information on the humanist weddings that the celebrants perform.
The Humanist celebrants claim that it is a GDPR issue and they cannot legally hand over the information.
The dispute in the Humanist Association over Humanist marriages has been going on since 2012 and the introduction of the Civil Registration Amendment Act 2012. This is a discriminatory act, introduced by a Labour and Fine Gael government to enable the HAI to legally solemnise marriages.
Under the Civil Registration Act 2012 the HAI must be a registered charity in order to solemnise marriages. Under the Act the HAI are forbidden from promoting a political cause. The result of this is that the HAI gave up political campaigning in order to legally solemnise marriages.
Their reasoning at the time was that solemnising marriages would enable humanism to reach more people and thus their objectives to promote humanism and achieve equality would be achieved indirectly.
At the time many of us who were members of Atheist Ireland and also the Humanist Association disagreed with this approach. Since 2012 there has been difficulties that has resulted in disputes within the HAI.
Atheist Ireland is on good terms with the HAI but we do not work together anymore. This is because nearly everything Atheist Ireland does is political and the HAI cannot promote a political cause. We are disappointed with this of course and obviously feel that the HAI should give up solemnising marriages and return to campaigning politically on the issues that both organisations feel very strongly about.
We do not know what the legal outcome of this legal case will be; however, the article in the Times does not give the full picture of what the issues are in the background of the dispute.
Here are some legal issues that impact on the case.
Charities Act
The Humanist Association of Ireland is a registered charity. It comes under the category of ‘education’. Its charitable object is to promote education about Humanism. One of the ways it does this is to perform Humanist marriages. All this information is widely available on the Charities regulators website.
Under the Charities Act all monies that come into the HAI must be used for its charitable purpose. The HAI must account for all monies. Under the Charities Act they must perform their formal duties and be seen to perform them.
Part of those duties is to account for any income. They must show where any monies came from and the reason for it.
Civil Registration Act 2012
Under the Civil Registration Act 2012 a secular, humanist body can now solemnise marriages. This Act put the HAI in what is effectively a monopoly position in relation to non-religious marriage ceremonies.
Of course that had huge financial implications as it put the HAI is a position where most non religious couples wanted a ceremony where the celebrant could also legally solemnise their marriage.
There are only two bodies officially registered to solemnise secular marriages in Ireland. One of those is the HAI. The other body is Aisling Árann Teoranta, which is only one person.
Other groups or celebrants who perform non religious marriage ceremonies are not registered charities and therefore cannot comply with this legal requirement or the other rules for becoming legal secular marriage solemnisers.
Some marriage celebrants claim that they will do a non-religious ceremony for couples and will also legally solemnise your marriage. These groups are unethical because they don’t disclose the fact that they are on the register for religious solemnisers, not on the secular register.
Your marriage is officially recorded as a religious marriage when you have been told that it is non-religious. This of course will also impact on the official number of religious and secular marriages in the country.
The HAI nominate the Humanist celebrants and they are then put on the Register of secular Solemnisers. At one stage there were conditions attached to nominating a solemniser for input on the register. In the past Atheist Ireland got this Application Form under FOI. Some of the conditions were as follows. It says the following:
- The person being nominated must be a member of the HAI
- The HAI must nominate the person as a fit and proper person to solemnise marriages
- The HAI must confirm that the person being nominated is selected, trained and accredited by them.
If this is still in place it looks like the HAI have some control over Humanist celebrants.
Humanist Celebrants
The relationship between Humanist Celebrants and the HAI is of significance in this dispute.
Before the introduction of the Civil Registration Amendment Act 2012, Humanist celebrants performed marriages and did not legally solemnise them. The couple had a civil wedding but then had a Humanist Ceremony with all their friends and family.
The Humanist celebrant charged for this service. Out of the money received they gave the HAI 50 euro. It was like this for years but that all changed in 2012 after the introduction of the Civil Registration Amendment Act 2012.
After 2012 being a Humanist Celebrant became very lucrative. Celebrants could charge approx €400/450 and give the HAI €50. The Humanist celebrants claim that this fee is what it costs them to perform these ceremonies.
However, since 2012 the numbers of people seeking to become Humanist Celebrants has increased significantly and that became another issue for the HAI to administer.
After 2012 the number of Humanist marriages increased significantly because couples only wanted one ceremony. Any funds handed over by the couples went straight into the bank accounts of the Humanist Celebrants. It still does.
As far as we are aware the reason the fee that the Humanist Celebrants handed over to the HAI became an issue is that the Humanist celebrants did not want to pay tax on the money they gave to the HAI. Some of the Humanist Celebrants were earning so much that VAT became an issue as well.
This dispute rumbled on for years. The HAI increased the amount to be handed over to 70 euro and an agreement was reached with the Humanist Celebrants that the couples getting married would pay an administration fee upfront and then book the Humanist celebrant.
The Irish Times now quotes an unnamed celebrant as saying about the HAI that “They are charging you an administrative fee so that you can get married which is not the way it should be.” This seems an extraordinary statement by a celebrant who charges a fee five times that amount to conduct a wedding ceremony.
Remember the Charitable purpose of Humanist weddings is to promote education about humanism. The relationship between the HAI and the celebrants is not one whereby the HAI hire the celebrant to perform Humanist marriages for them. The Humanist Celebrants must be members of the HAI, a charitable organisation. They perform a ceremony on behalf of that charitable organisation, and the charitable purpose behind that ceremony is to promote education about humanism.
One other issue of significant is that the Humanist celebrants or the HAI cannot charge for the official legal solemnising part of the ceremony. Under the Civil Registration Act you cannot make any profit or gain from solemnising marriages.
GDPR
According to the Irish Times a Humanist Celebrant has informed them that the issue is a GDPR one and they stated that:
“As a data holder, we have an obligation to protect the information, and the humanist association think they have a right to that information. So, as a result of that, they removed a number of us from their website and they are threatening to take us to a fitness-to-practise committee, which is an inappropriate thing to do”
We are not sure what the basis of the GDPR element is here. Weddings are public affairs, and the public is entitled to know they are taking place. If a priest carried out a marriage ceremony and then refused to give the names to the Catholic Church because of GDRP concerns everyone would think that had no basis. Is this the same issue?
Members of an organisation (a Charity) are refusing to give other members of the same charity information in relation to the origin of funding. We are presuming that the HAI need this information for their accounting obligations, and anyway why should the HAI not know the name of those people that have a Humanist wedding when one of the purposes behind the ceremony is to promote humanism.
The HAI have obligations under GDPR and must be well aware of these legal obligations for any of their ceremonies. They must also make all celebrants aware of GDPR obligations because they all belong to the same charity.
Conclusion
It will be interesting to see what the High Court determines on this issue. We hope that the outcome helps the HAI to realise that there is a conflict of interest between focusing on marriage solemnising, which has regulatory consequences and financial complications, and politically promoting the separation of church and state as the HAI did before this issue developed.
3 Comments
The real issue here is that there is nothing charitable about these operations, whether they be running a Church, putting bums on seats with money on plates (sometimes as an obligation), or fees, however ill- expressed for services, including copies of certificates. This goes for who or whatever body does the business. We also have, in Ireland, a Constitution which precludes the State from enriching [the correct translation of the Irish, Dinneen] religion. Tax exemptions for what are mainly Church-provided services (and white but not coloured, candles) seem on the face of it, unfair, illegal enrichment of religion. I recall, when in the late 1980s, I was researching these issues, a Trade Unionist rep of tax inspectors in the State Revenue service told me they were instructed never to examine the tas affairs of parish priests.. Isn’t that telling?
Always felt these Humanist Celebrants were self promoting chancers. I suppose to give them some credit they were only obligating the law and supply and demand; there was suddenly a massive demand for non-religious celebrants and this gap in the market, so to speak, was filed very quickly by HAI registered ‘Celebrants”.
Surely, the problem arises because Ireland is not a secular state, if it were were, as happens in mainland European countries, marriage registration lies with the municipal authorities and the wedding ceremony, whether religious or Humanist, is separate. This is what happened when I was a Humanist celebrant conducting weddings in Britain and elsewhere. They should all be treated as civil partnerships.
But as ever, trying to adapt existing law and practice, leads to such contradictions. As feminists often say we are forced to squeeze into a man’s world. Likewise marriage laws and registrations in Britain and Ireland where framed in the privileged religious ethos of their respective countries whereby religious leaders were given the privilege of registering marriages in their place of worship at the same time as carrying out their religious ritual. This why Humanist celebrants in England and Wales are still not recognised as registrars for weddings but 535 denominations including Scientologists are
The Catholic Church is an evangelical and prosletying organisation promoting the religion and therefore is not an organisation with a charitable purpose for carrying out weddings but in Ireland it is unconstitutionally and illegally doing so.
Atheist Ireland should therefore be challenging the right of the churches and humanists celebrants to be registrars/solemnisers of weddings and civil partnerships and therefore requiring a complete overhaul of marriage/civil partnership laws with the conclusion that the registration of sexual unions should all be civil partnership registrations undertaken by civil servants and completely separate from ceremonies.