Yesterday, Ireland became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage via an overwhelming popular vote.
Yup, Ireland. The same country that only decriminalized homosexuality in the early 90s, and saw its staunch traditional Catholicism reel from recent waves of child sex-abuse scandals among clergy and affiliated lay groups. Where the infamous ‘Magdalene Houses’ still operated (with their institutional slavery of young women and cesspit ‘graves’ of illegitimate infants) until the mid 90s. And where incredibly restrictive abortion laws still effectively deny women the medically-critical abortions needed to save their own lives.
That Ireland is demographically the old, rural, and conservative religious portion* of the electorate. New Ireland flexed its younger, activist, cosmopolitan, and tolerant Millennial side yesterday.
It’s good to see. I’m hopeful that this summer’s US Supreme Court deliberations will lead the way to similar referendums here.
*Note: I’m actually wrong here, which makes me even happier. A significant portion of the ‘Yes’ vote came from older, conservative, and/or rural voters. So, ‘family’ won yesterday – but not the ‘family’ the right-winger were counting on.