The votes are still being counted, but opponents have conceded defeat and people are already celebrating.
It’s Happy Dance Time!!! Irish jig, naturally.
Not only that: we’re the first country ever to bring in marriage equality by referendum, rather than by legislation. So there’s no way for anyone to claim that this was forced on us by the liberal elite (we don’t actually have much of a liberal elite, but you know what I mean) and that really the decent people of Ireland want good old-fashioned discrimination. We as a nation want marriage equality, and we went out and voted for it.
I am SO FUCKING DELIGHTED and SO FUCKING PROUD. The campaign got nasty. The No brigade - who got a lot of funding from conservative US groups - tried to convince everyone that this was all about surrogacy and adoption, when actually this referendum will make zero difference to the family structure of any child in Ireland, except that more of them will have to remember to buy their parents a wedding anniversary card.
But the groundswell of support was amazing. A huge wave of people got that this isn’t only about gay rights - this is about moving towards being a country where all citizens really are equal, where the Proclamation of the Republic is taken seriously when it speaks about ‘cherishing all the children of the nation equally’. Tens of thousands of people volunteered to canvass, or just made sure to talk about the referendum to their granny who’s not sure about all this gay stuff, and their boss who doesn’t think it’s his problem since he’s straight, and their eighteen-year-old sister who hadn’t made sure she was registered to vote. People came home from all over the world to vote. People cut short their honeymoons so they’d be home in time for this.
This is a country where, barely more than twenty years ago, homosexuality was illegal. I know one of the national pastimes of Ireland is bitching about Ireland, but today I would like to say, from the heart: fair play to us.
Welcome to the club, and damn but don’t you know how to make an entrance. 
Don’t get alarmed by the next sentence, read it to the end.
I’m a practicing Catholic (Latin Rite), and like many Catholics (including my priest), we believe the Bishops should stay out of the secular issue of same sex marriage.
There’s a difference between a religious marriage that is a holy sacrament, and a secular marriage that is governed by the state. When some of the Protestant main-line churches were okay with same-sex marriage, did the Bishops get all huffy? They did not. Nor should they if the state decides to establish rules to allow it.
What people don’t seem to understand is that in the US, the presiding minister of a church wedding is simultaneously conducting a religious ceremony that has a secular impact In some countries these are separate ceremonies. If you are religious you have a church wedding,and then a separate secular ceremony. If the Church in the US adopted this stance, it might help clear up this issue for those who don’t realize that a church sacrament and a state activity are separate.
At a church wedding in Ireland after the religious part the couple, priest and witnesses go to a small room off the alter and sign a registry. This only takes a few minutes but is the actual legal part of the ceremony.
A great and very moving day.
Thankyouverymuch. It’s very, very nice to be here.
I had a secular wedding on a golf course officiated by a Mormon bishop who was acting in his official capacity as a federal judge. 
I thought Ireland already legalized SSM? I recall hearing a news bit on NPR some months back mentioning that their law was written in Irish in such a way as to legalize SSM but inadvertently disallow hetero marriage? (“If a man and a man or a woman and a woman wish to marry the state shall allow them…” or something with no mention of a man and woman wishing to marry and being allowed to)
There was civil partnerships. These were recognised by legislation and so could have been over turned if the political need arose by politicians alone. Now it’s marriage and officially recognised in The Constitution which can only be changed by a referendum.
Great sentiment, but what about all of the County Clerk dipshits across the South who refused to process the paperwork for secular SSM’s, even when it was legal, because
“it offended them”. And, they had the backing of the governor, so there was no arresting or firing these guys for dereliction of duty.
Those county clerks really grind my gears. If they want to marry people according to their religious beliefs then they should become ministers. The governors want to play to the crowd so they back the clerks. At some point the continuity of governance breaks down when people have the ‘authority of a state position’ but treat it like a personal fiefdom. What those clerks did is no different than denying someone the vote because of their color. The law is the law. We’ll see how things work out over the long run. The wheels of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.
There was an Irish religious leader (maybe a bishop) interviewed on CBC this morning. He said that this was a reality check–they are losing the young people. Well, I have an idea where he should look.
Stuart Maclean, a kind of Canadian Keillor, wrote a book 25 years ago about 7 small towns he visited and spent a few weeks in each interviewing and just talking to people. One of his criteria for choosing the towns was that, as of 1990, they didn’t have an ATM. He then revisited the seven towns in 2000 to see what had changed (all but one had an ATM). The biggest change was in an essentially Irish town on the coast of Newfoundland. Great changes, two in particular stood out. One was caused by the collapse of the cod fishery. But the other is the relevant one for this post. The people had mostly fallen away from the church and it was mainly because their pedophilic priest, undisciplined by the local bishop, had destroyed the church’s credibility on moral questions!
As far as I can tell, the Vatican is still trying to paper over the question, instead of getting rid of all the priests who were guilty but mainly the bishops who covered it up. And this will continue to sap their moral authority. Yes, it was a wake-up call, but they are still asleep.
The bit you heard was about the Irish-language version of the textthat the referendum put into the Constitution. The original Irish-language version said, basically, ‘A couple, whether they are men or women, may make a contract to marry.’ Which could have been taken to mean that, if a couple was made up of one man and one woman, they weren’t covered. They changed it before the referendum.
We also recently inadvertently legalised all hard drugs for a day or two.
So the New Yorker published a piece to the effect that the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, has broken off trade with Ireland because of same sex marriage.
Turns out it was satire. Not labeled as far as I can see, except for a come-on at the bottom revealing that “The Borowitz Report” is “news satire.”
This showed up in my Facebook feed, and I bought it for a few minutes, until I tried to find corroboration via Google. Then the penny dropped. Boy did I feel foolish. I hate that.
Here is a fantastic video capturing the feel of the day.
I sat down on the couch at 10am to see early figures and stayed watching till 6pm. A amazing day.
I know satire isn’t always meant to be funny but that Borowitz Report is the biggest pile of unfunny crap on the New Yorker website.
Is County Roscommon important? Because according to figures I’ve seen, it’s the only county in Ireland that didn’t have over 50% of the vote in favor of the referendum. I hope they aren’t the home of any whisky I like!
[quote]
Quoth yojimbo:
Here is a fantastic video capturing the feel of the day.
I sat down on the couch at 10am to see early figures and stayed watching till 6pm. A amazing day.
[/quote]Great video, but I would like to have seen some heterosexual couples celebrating, too. It’s a victory for us as well: Equality is for everyone.
Roscommon is small, population-wise, and very rural (the biggest town in the whole county is like 5000 people) - and rural people are more likely to be practising Catholics and so more likely to vote No. Roscommon’s lost a lot of twenty- and thirty-somethings to emigration in the last few years’ recession, so the population is skewed towards older people - who were also more likely to vote No. It’s actually really impressive that they came so close to an overall Yes vote.
Nobody complains about South Leitrim.