Northern Ireland had retained a Victorian-era ban on same sex marriage because of misused powers of veto known as the Petition of Concern, created by the Good Friday Agreement to maintain peace.
Effectively the petition means that, provided enough MLAs from a given community agree, that community (or a sufficiently large party in that community) can exercise a veto over the Assembly's decisions.
This power has been completely misused by the DUP to stop same-sex marriage even though in November 2015 MLAs as a whole voted in favour of a law change.
The Conservative government, who are currently reliant on DUP votes in Westminster, declined to intervene, saying that the legalisation of same-sex marriage as well as the
legalisation on abortion were both issues for devolved government. However a
dispute between the DUP and Sinn Féin
toppled the power-sharing assembly and executive at Stormont in January 2017.
In July, the Labour MP Conor McGinn tabled an amendment to an otherwise technical government bill connected to the defunct assembly. MPs voted overwhelmingly to allow
same-sex marriage if Stormont didn't sit by midnight on Monday 21 October 2019. At the same time, a similar amendment brought forward by Labour MP Stella Creasy, put a
moratorium on criminal prosecutions for abortion and halted police investigations into abortion cases. Abortion will as a result be legalised in Nothern Ireland on 31 March next year.
Monday was the last chance for opponents of change to restore Stormont and avert both pieces of legislation from becoming law.
Some 31 members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) signed a petition to force a recall of Stormont so they could discuss a motion to put abortion rights back in the hands of local politicians, and
continue the ban on same-sex marriage.
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