Ireland votes for equality
Ireland has made history. The South on 22 May voted resoundingly for marriage equality.
The people voted 62 percent to 38 percent to amend the constitution of the southern state to read: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”
Some polling booths in working class areas of Dublin recorded yes votes of 80 percent and more. Of the 43 constituencies in the south of Ireland, only one (Roscommon/South Leitrim) recorded a no majority.
Sea-change in popular views
The result illustrates how much has changed in the south of Ireland over the past generation. In particular, liberal attitudes around sex and sexuality are now ascendant, while the Catholic Church hierarchy is on the defensive.
A 23 April Irish Voice editorial noted: “In the old days a belt of the bishop’s crozier was enough to silence even the most liberal of politicians. Now they could be belted all day but it would have nothing like the same impact”.
Support for a yes vote came from an incredibly wide range of people and social groups. Individuals like rugby icon Brian O'Driscoll and Irish soccer team captain Robbie Keane called publicly for a yes vote, as did dozens of Gaelic Athletic Association players. Ireland's most popular singing star, Daniel O'Donnell, did likewise, as did broadcasting icon Gay Byrne. Of 220 members of the lower and upper houses of parliament, fewer than a dozen came out publicly in support of a no vote.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions and some of its main affiliates involved themselves in the yes campaign. However, so did the business establishment. The views of business interests in Ireland were summed up by IDA head Martin Shanahan. (The IDA is the main state agency charged with encouraging business development and multinational investment in Ireland.)
“In my view a yes vote will say that Ireland is open, inclusive and welcomes diversity and that would be a very positive message to be sending internationally and I think it is what, internationally, people believe”, he told the Irish Times on the eve of the vote.
The victory seems a world away from the 1980s, when the religious right managed to easily defeat a referendum to allow divorce, and achieved a constitutional ban on abortion.
Things began to shift in the 1990s, however. The right lost a referendum on removing the danger of suicide from situations in which abortion could be allowed. It also lost two referenda on the right to travel to another country for a termination and the right to information about abortion. In 1996, the right to divorce was very narrowly won.
Weakening of the Catholic hierarchy
During the 1990s and since, the Catholic Church was hit by a series of sexual and other abuse scandals, which undermined its moral authority. The fact that priests and nuns were exposed as abusers, rather than being protected, also reflected the fact that southern Irish society was modernising and secular forces were growing.
The reality was that more and more young people were having sex before marriage, and teenage pregnancies were rife; marriages were breaking up and people were forming new relationships and having children in them; and people were having sex with members of the same gender. Even priests were having sex with other men, including one who collapsed and died in a gay sauna. (He was given last rites because there were three other priests in the sauna at the same time.)
When homosexuality was decriminalised in 1993, the Church maintained a rather uncharacteristic silence.
Today, when the Catholic reactionaries bang on about children in same sex unions not having a "normal" upbringing, it just sounds increasingly odd in a state where divorce and single mothers are now common and most people have at least one gay person in their family or social circle.
As one campaigner noted at the end of the referendum, “Gays and lesbians are a minority but together with our families, our friends, our workmates and our neighbours, we are a majority”.
Not only do crozier-wielding bishops have much less authority these days, but also their lay shock troops have neither the numbers nor influence they once did. They simply lacked the numbers on the ground to push their message.
One of the major signs of the erosion of the power of the Catholic hierarchy is falling church attendance. Well into the 1970s, around 90 percent of people in the south attended mass once a week. By 2012, a survey by the Association of Catholic Priests suggested it might have fallen to just 35 percent.
Wider political perspective
Part of the shift in the south is that there is now a new liberal establishment – progressive on social issues but, if anything, more viciously anti-working class than the old Catholic-aligned establishment.
Moreover, as vicious capitalist austerity has been imposed by Fianna Fail, the Greens, Fine Gael and Labour in government in the south, embracing equal marriage rights has been politically useful for them. As one person noted in the comments section of the Guardian news site: “The parties needed something to legitimise them and this has helped”. Buoyed by public approval for their position on gay marriage, they can now carry on with austerity.
This new liberal ruling elite may prove a harder opponent for the left than the old clerical reactionaries. In the meantime, the victory for equal marriage rights opens up the way for a concerted challenge to the state's restrictive abortion laws and also for the complete separation of church and state in the south.
By linking these fights with struggles against austerity and for the removal of the British state from the north of Ireland, the anti-capitalist left can undermine the new liberal-right attempts to win political legitimacy through progressive social stances and open up a broad challenge to the ruling class across the whole island.
