I’m surprised not to see a thread about this as I know we have a few Irish types here, although I suppose UK Dopers who might also have chimed in will have been occupied by the OTHER recent election.
Anyway, this is happening next Friday: Ireland prepares for historic vote on gay marriage. For context it’s worth noting that it was only 20 years ago that Ireland had a referendum on allowing divorce which passed quite narrowly, so it will be interesting to see how it all plays out next week and how far Ireland has changed in the last few decades.
From the buzz I’ve seen it’s looking very divisiveand emotional as these things often are. The youth vote is overwhelming in favour of SSM but are less likely to turn out than the older groups, making the result difficult to predict. The “No” campaign has been hitting the “think of the children!” button pretty much non-stop (“A child deserves a mother and a father”, that sort of thing), celebs of all ilks are coming out (sometimes literally) for one side or the other, and both sides are accusing each other of using fear and intimidation tactics.
Seems unlikely it won’t be a Yes. All the political parties, major businesses, and most people in public life support the Yes campaign. There’s been much talk and fretting over the quiet No contingent but it still feels like it will pass and pass comfortably at that. I haven’t seen one coherent argument against it that isn’t based upon homophobia.
There’s another referendum the same day, about lowering the age of eligibility to be president to 21. This is far less likely to succeed than the SSM referendum
The C of I has historically been overrepresented among professionals, business owners and the upper middle class though, so it’s influence is probably a bit more than sheer demographics would indicate.
The Church of Ireland is interestingly enough also (I think) the only Anglican church in the developed world which is growing in numbers. Unlike the Church of England or Episcopal Church.
I think it is more recent migrants from Nigeria etc. joining COI congregations. It’s not unheard of to convert from Catholic to COI but not many people do it. Ireland, in general, is just becoming more secular, more in line with Western European mainstream.
If the vote goes in favour of SSM, it will be interesting - not to say amusing - to see the diehard Presbyterian Unionists of Northern Ireland left opposed - after all those years of saying the Republic was enmired in priest-ridden Catholic obscurantism interfering in people’s private lives…
I does look like the Yes side will win through but the amount of lies put forward from the No side has been sickening. The vast majority of their campaigning has been crap about children, surrogacy and adoption. All issues that have basically already been address by legislation. This ref is amount recognizing same sex relationships as marriages and not civil partnerships. It’s about civil rights.
I’ll be very proud to put a cross in the Yes box on Fri and hopefully help Ireland become the first country to vote SSM in by popular vote.
There hasn’t been a lot to be proud of my little Island over the last 10 years or so and I so hope that fear and ignorance doesn’t win out.
Yes, I’ve already run into a few people on the interwebs repeating the “COMMODIFICATION OF CHILDREN!” mantra nonstop. Such folk are impervious to reason.
The theologist (a Dominican, and very much one of God’s Mastiffs from the rest of the article) is Catholic, though. One of his arguments is the same reasoning I’ve succesfully used before many times, which basically amounts to “separation of Church and State”.