Picture by Lilyem Jewelry
No less a person than gio has asked me to blog on the south’s referendum today, so naturally, even though I’m pressed for time for reasons too boring to elaborate on, I must obey.
To put it in a nutshell, I think the referendum isn’t a total waste of time and resources, but it is a waste of time and resources. I say that not because I think we should discriminate against people falling into the 21-35 age bracket, but because there are so many more things more urgent that could do with addressing in the southern state than the age of potential presidential candidates.
Likewise regarding gay marriage. If two people of the same sex (oh, all right, gender, if you don’t like ‘sex’ – or even if you don’t like sex…) want to get married, I’ve no difficulty of any kind with that. I know there are people who sincerely believe that this will somehow damage the concept of marriage as being a union between a man and a woman. Maybe it will. I don’t see how that could be. Likewise I don’t see gay marriages damaging children, except you believe that being brought up by gay people is by definition bad. I personally don’t think so: it seems to me possible that two gay parents could be just as loving and supportive of a child growing up as could a man and a woman. They also could be more loving and supportive, and they also could be less loving and supportive. The key element for me would be the quality of the parents, regardless of se…oops, I mean gender.
But while not being able to marry at present may discriminate against gays, I don’t think the cost in their lives is such that it needs to be addressed before a lot of other pressing social issues/problems. The state of poverty to which the present southern government has reduced so many people; the collusion with the US in putting Shannon airport at their service to take people to Guantanamo Bay to be tortured; the repossession of houses throughout the south; the injustice of the general public paying huge debts they had no part in incurring. All of these I’d put ahead of addressing the discrimination against gays by not allowing them to marry.
Finally, I don’t like this referendum because I think it’s a big red herring. The government who mounted it are keen to take the electorate’s eye off the ball, which is the wreckage they have created in people’s lives over the past four years or so. In fact, the nearer they come to election, the more strenuously they will beat the undergrowth (to change the metaphor) in the hope of raising distracting hares.
So do I think the referendum is a good idea? No. Not given the clusterfuck of problems that press in on so many people’s everyday life in the southern state. And before anybody says it, no, I’m not homophobic and I’ve no objection if gays want to enjoy wedded bliss. Although – irony of ironies – while gays batter on the door of matrimony and demand entrance, heterosexual couples are either by-passing the house of matrimony or moving out of it almost as often as they enter it.
That’s a very fair blog Jude credit were credit is due
Thank you, neill…
Oh Jude, I couldn’t disagree with you more. This referendum is about equal rights for citizens and, as such, it is a simple reaffirmation of the principles enshrined in the 1916 Proclamation. There is no need to weigh up the relative importance of basic civil rights and other socio/political/economic rights. If nothing else, it has enthused the young people of this jurisdiction and engaged many in political discourse for the first time. In all of my 40 years as a voter, I have never seen the like of it and I am very hopeful that there will be a resounding Yes. This will send a clear message that the social/religious conservatism and the bigotry that blighted so many Irish lives in the 20th century will not dictate how we live in the 21st. Tiocfaidh ar ngrá!
Thank you, Jude. I am a happily married heterosexual. I feel very strongly that a gay persons love is as vital as my own ( which may not be awfully vital) and therefore I believe that they must be afforded the same rights and privileges that I enjoy. The more that we as a society force ourselves to dilute beliefs that we ourselves hold dear, so as to elevate the views and beliefs of others we would see as different, is I believe a small way in which we can improve the world in which we all get by from day to day.
I hadn’t given the potentially opportunistic political calculation in the same sex marriage referendum any consideration. But if it is part of the picture so be it. Under pressure because of its austerity agenda and the ramifications of the 2008 financial crisis, the government has shaken the tree and out of it has fallen this progressive and globally notable development in Ireland’s social affairs. The world anticipates a Yes vote. Take it and be proud.
Hey there Jude
I usually enjoy your blogs….and I understand your take on the marriage equality referendum. However I think you have it wrong!
The referendum is about equality…it happens in this case to be about ‘marriage’ equality. Personally I’m opposed to all marriage…but if that’s what people want, so be it. But for me, and I think the LGBT population, the referendum is largely about equality….If the YES vote wins/succeeds then I think people may be even more willing to challenge all the other inequalities and horrors that you correctly mentioned. And to have young people voting in numbers bigger, at this stage, than for every other voting possibility, (and travelling from many different countries to exercise their franchise), is a real positive consequence. Hopefully, those who have voted for the first time will understand the potential power of their vote and use it to try and address all the other horrors you listed in order to affect change.
Hey Daisy – thanks for your thoughts – appreciated. I take what you say, although as I indicated I’d put the other stuff at the front of the queue. Your point about young people voting has been made by others as well – I hope you’re right but to be honest I’d be more pessimistic. I think it’d be great to see young people in their droves involved in politics (and the middle-aged and, um, mature) but I suspect this is a one-off for them. If I’m wrong I’ll happily admit it – after I’ve finished cheering to the skies….
When I wrote my comments I hadn’t been able to see the other comments!..Brian said everything I think too!
I think you’re right Jude this referendum means nothing to the goverement,it’s just a distraction for the folks who’s lives revolve around british soaps and reality tv.
they will likely ‘win’ this referendum,they keep banging on about all the jobs they are creating, no mention of the mass emigration of our most talented young people this last 6 or 7 years.
I hear rumblings of an Autumn election,they might pull the trigger after a giveaway budget,
I can see Labour getting destroyed, looking forward to that election at least, we need a radical shake up in this state, Votail Sinn Fein.
Some interesting points Jude, ones I’d not really considered before re the relative priorities of legislation. However, I think most reform happens in an uneven and patchy way. Political change is an unwieldy beast and sometimes you have to go with the existing momentum. In this case the momentum for gay marriage has an international dimension as it becomes more accepted in western culture and legislated for in increasing numbers of jurisdictions around the world.
Personally I would like to see all potential yes voters in the North banging on about being discriminated against by not being able to vote. A point bangordub only recently made.
Splendid point Derek – or should I thank bangordub? Now why the hell didn’t I think of that?….
I think that people have not thought out the full consequences of the radical legislative redefinition of such a fundamental institution as marriage. If the Yes side of the argument wins, it means in essence that a mother and father are optional as the genderless, Orwellian nomenclature of Parent A and Parent B kicks in to overwrite this natural order of things. This is really a kind of “Alice Through The Looking Glass” attempt to create an unreality. Also children on the adoption books will suffer the loss of a mother or father if they are adopted by a same-sex couple. Studies have consistently shown that children flourish best when they are raised by their biological parents in contrast to other arrangements e.g. cohabitation or a second marriage after a divorce settlement. Equality does best when it respects healthy, genuine differences( as in gender differentiation) without being shoehorned into a “one size fits all” scenario and this should be the case with regards to marriage.
The impetus for the referendum didn’t come from the government, Jude, it came from the LGBT community, many of whom have been long time campaigners also against poverty, against Shannon, and many other social issues of injustice in the country. They know oppression, not just discrimination, first hand. and are also, to my mind at the forefront of building social solidarity in Irish society. Your blog implies tolerance, not acceptance. This referendum is about identity and status as Irish citizens – a waste of time and resources? I don’t think so.
And the potential no voters in the north too,they deserve a say too, it would be a funny alliance, the Dup and the Catholic bishops LOL.
Your reference to a Big Red Herring, Esteemed Blogmeister, is one one applauds, erm, shoal-heartedly.
And not just because it is keeping with the recent piscatorial drift of your daily bulletins.
Not least the one to do with visitors and the whiff of sniffy Drumcliffe, scaly dragonfish, collared carpetsharks, orangestriped triggerfish, greenspotted puffers, snubnose parasite eels,antenna codlets, razorback suckers, electric kippers, walleye pollocks, queen parrotfish, longnose whiptail lancetfish, yellowmargin triggerfish, freshwater hatchet fish, righteye flounders,spotted climbing perch, piranha.
And,not forgetting the inevitable humuhumunukunukuapua’a. Which, of course is Hawaiian for ‘a triggerfish with a snout like a pig’.
The latter translation from one of the new minority languages of the FSS is a not insignificant consequence of the brandnew breakwinds of tolerance and sensitivity which are thankfully sweeping the stateen-of-the-art all inclusive acres south of the Black Sow’s Dyke.
For, in depositing the Big Red Herring iinto the dustbin of hysteria where it belongs, it paves the way for the dumping of the even Bigger Green Herring to a new, enlarged, family-sized bosca bruscair of backstory.
This thought struck Perkie with a resounding OUCH ! while listening recently to that repository of revelations, Morning Ireland. When a teary-voiced Sir Ronnie Flanagan- look-alike reduced even The Woodman himself to a sodden three-hankie specimen of empathy. Even as he sob-talked him through his harrowing experiences in the Free Southern Stateen as a ‘mere’ Bachelor of Arts.
One is referring, respectfully and respectively, to Colm Toibin and Cathal Mac Coille (mar is iad ata ann ! / for it is they !).
For, in the news bulletin which immediately preceded their t-jerking gamechanger of an interview came the following buried item at slot number five, sandwiched in between two other items which, oddly enough, also featured the number five.
Item four concerned the birth of a five-legged Friesian calf in County Tipperary while item six featured a five year old boy who has just become the youngest ever Irish person to have been sadly diagnosed with Mensa.
A shaken member of the Mensa Support Group was heard to whisper, in a quivering voice, that the young boy, who had to remain anonymous out of sensitivity to his devastated parents, was found to possess a hitherto unmeasurable IQ in excess of (gasp) 200.
(Perkie’s inner Empathy of Ice Cream found this latter item of a particular poignancy. For he has, has he not, as a long-time card-carrying sufferer from Densa been also measured in excess of minus 200 on the internationally recognised Emotional Intelligence calculator)
But, to return to the Fifth Item in q.in that preceding news bulletin: to wit, the report that (gasp) no less that 2 (TWO) out of the 31 county and city councils in the Free Southern Stateen had been (gulp) compliant with the Dictatorial Directive to provide services through the medium of (aaaah !) leprechaun.
And to make matters worse and to rub Saxa into the open wound, as it were, those two guilty counties were the very c’s which ought to have known better: Fort of the Foreigner and the Queen’s County. (Sometimes referred to,by those of a fanatical disposition as Donegal and Laois).
This is blatantly intolerable: now that the number of actual speakers of the hopelessly anti-empathetic lingua franca of the leprechaun has been thankfully reduced to the number two digit, to wit, the dictatorial Darby O’Gill and his harridan of a bean a’ ti, Dilly O’Gill the time to end this tyranny is NOW.
Now that this daemonic pair – their combined ages total four millennia, at least – have progressed beyond the age of reproduction and even surrogacy itself.
While the Referendum de dum to cum-and-just-gone tackled the tyranny of Article 40 something, and will imminently be seen to have suck seeded, oops succeeded, let the next Referendum de dum to come up itself a notch or thirty and tackle the Big Green Herring itself.
That is Article 8, the big fat lady sheself, which states in language unequivocal that Leprechaun is the First Official Language of the Free Southern Stateen. The ultimate Stick the beat the lovable, the generous of tongue, with.
If if wasn’t so funny, it would be, as Polonius Warbeck, the Lord of Balonius himself, once remarked in a somewhat different context: tragical-historical, pastoral, pastoral-comical,historical-pastoral, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral.
One can think of no better leaders/ taoisigh of the new campaign to lick the last tyranny na tire from an already rocking Bunreacht /Constitution than that pair of pear-shaped same-gender mind-benders of Bunreacht rockers: Colm Toibin and Cathal Mac Coille.
Who will launch the Feachtas/ Campaign by going the Full Monty on a special no-warning edition of Monring Ireland.
When, in a dramatic gesture of tolerance, compassion, equality, empathy, love and generosity, will simultaneously divest themselves of their cumbersome, compulsorily acquired names in a display of Bun-shaking Bravado !
In a simulaneous broadcast An Bord Bainne will announce itself to be auto-reinventing itself as The Milk of Irish Kindness while the htiherto forbdding figure of Ms. Plawmaws, CEO of the national carrier, Aer Lingus will come out of the linguistic cofra as…..Connie O’Lickspittle !
Ta an la linn, agus is ag an B.A. ata na hadharca is faide.
Jude
Thanks for that. I choose to believe it was truly in response to my request!
It looks likely to be a ‘Yes’ which is good news as it seems to me a fairly straightforward matter of equality.
I’m not a big fan of government by referendum, but as others have pointed out this issue does seem to have engaged people and there has been a fair buzz about it even up here in the cold North.
not a fan of the southern government but think they where correct to do this by referendum. Walking around dublin the last few days seeing something as innocent as two men kissing or holding hands, would not be a common sight a month ago or a year ago, but in the last few days have seen it a bit. Thats confidence, not sure if the same confidence would be there if gay marriage passed as legislation in the dail, it needed people on the street to step up and say this isn’t a problem.
There are some people down here cynical over the use of the word equality that what about economic inequality which this city has a lot of, they are right and they are wrong it that, we still have poor and super rich people god help us but i hope we don’ have that fear for gay people to hold the hand of another human being in public and live their life true to themselves.