Irish Referendum on same sex marriage

I'm informed by my pals in Dublin that the City is partying madly as they celebrate a landslide YES vote for same sex marriage. The voter turn out has been up in the 70%s in many constituencies, never before seen in a referendum, and It looks as if 40 of the 43 constituencies will vote yes. I believe it's the first time in the World same sex marriage has been put to the popular vote and passed. As an Irish person I'm particularly pleased at the result. It's certainly a better Ireland now than the one I grew up IMO. Any comments?

Hi Celeste, they have a second home and several children!

Thank you Celeste.

Well Celeste, we didn't like to say anything but....

Hi Celeste our old neighbours in the Cotswolds, Sophie and Mark Craddock have a house in your village.
Sophie runs a French restaurant in Minchinhampton.
Do you know them?

Very good.

No non-residents, no EU citizens in UK and no 16-17 year olds whose future it is more than ours but Irish (fine) and Commonwealth (what for?) citizens residents in the UK can. The wrong post to discuss this but a dog's dinner. The Irish have just shown how to run a referendum the UK is demonstrating to quote Oliver Hardy how to make 'another fine mess'.

It looks very much like those who are prevented by the 15 year rule from voting in UK elections will not be allowed to vote in the Referendum. The BBC was saying that the platform for voting will be much as it was in the last election.

This is despite Cameron promising to end the 15 year rule.

Good video. It has made my blood boil for years that organisations in Ireland, particularly the rightwing Catholic Iona Institute, can pretend to be caring and loving while fighting tooth and nail to keep gay people and women "in their" place as perceived by Catholic teachings.

We shouldn't forget Celeste that 30-40% voted no. The work isn't finished yet.

Unfortunately, Celeste, he won't be the first or the last. In a past life I was a youth worker and ran a support group for LGBT young people. The group made a short video highlighting some of the issues and situations they faced. If anyone is interested, you can watch it here: https://vimeo.com/13763108

The names are made up but the situations are all based on personal experiences. It was made about 4 years ago.

Overheard in Dublin Castle last Saturday when wee Jorry appeared on stage with Panti Bliss - "Jaysus, not bad, he meets a prince and a queen in the one week".

Michelle, last paragraph written. Y you, I think that’s terrible, I would never do or say that to Nyone, regardless of race, creed, colour or anything else, and yes in my book that is definite discrimination. Sadly I lost the end of my previous post when trying to edit it and to finish by saying that I had found many of the reasons/arguments written in answer to my questions had done a good job of convincing me that my beliefs did need good scrutiny, many like Brian M, others and Celeste in particular showed me to my satisfaction,by her reasoned perspective, that my viewpoint when expressed was rather narrow minded, given the circumstances of the teachings it was founded on. I dont question why any one is gay. I am and have been aware for a long long time, many situations are not a life choice! we are what we are and handle things as best we can, especially Italy as children. Mutual respect and tolerance for others views without imposing your own as being of more importance,in a given situation(I am saying that generally, not referring to you and I specifically) is something I would like to see happening all the time.

On that note I wish you and your partner a long and happy married life.
Congratulations to John, Sheila et al from Ireland on getting your Yes vote.

I'm always in favour of levity Bruce :-) just that "reformed" bearded ....... gets my goat.

Shirley, I don't see you as a homophobe. I said I found some of the views you expressed homophobic. I am not hostile towards you at all. I apologise if my comments came across as "vicious". It is sometimes hard to get the right tone when writing on a forum rather than discussing face to face.

As you say, you had asked for reasons why same-sex couples would want to be married and I was trying to answer that for you, to tell you why I want to be married to my partner. I haven't succeeded in convincing you that I should be allowed to access this institution but you are entitled to your beliefs as I am entitled to mine. We all have to obey laws though. I think in one of your earlier posts you questioned the need for laws. They are required so that one person's beliefs can't be allowed to entitle them to discriminate against anyone, whether that be on the grounds of sexuality, race, colour, gender, disability or whatever - all the things one cannot choose to be or not be.

You might think I chose to be gay. Please let me assure you I didn't. Believe you me, it would be a lot easier to fit in with the "norm". Things are easier these days but prejudice does still survive. My partner and I have been reasonably lucky in the people we have met throughout our lives but we have still faced the estate agent who refused to let us view a house when she found out we were a couple and the husband and wife who made a cruise holiday very uncomfortable for us with homophobic insults, jibes and open hostility to name just a couple of incidents. This is why I believe in the laws that promote equality because they show the world what a society believes in and what it will and will not tolerate.

I know that, John...I was just trying to get a bit of levity as it seemed to be getting a bit heavy. Sorry.

Jane, that has been said but goes back far further. It was part of the so-called witchcraft equation. An Elizabethan text tells of two women tried for witchcraft including being condamned for tendernesse in their bed' and the last of those accused of witchcraft including any reference to a woman in a same sex relationship to go to the stake was in the 1760s or thereabouts, although it was the 'magick' and 'enchantments' in all cases that were tried. Queen Victoria was referring to the continuing old beliefs but there have never been specific laws in England and Wales acknowledging a physical relationship between women.

Brian,in the UK it was Queen Victoria who refused to believe that women could get up to such things that meant that they were omitted fom persecution.

Michelle, that is headline writing. I worked in Germany part of each year as a social scientist whose work took in descriptive words like that as part of my every day. That position ended 2 years ago, even back then we never used the word 'Schwarz' in that sense, it was not tolerated. In those days it was also derogatory to call gay people 'schwul', they adopted it FOR themselves and then possessed it entirely. That is the kind of rhetorical revenge we agree on. Indeed, a friend who is very showy, effeminate adopted the name Pansy instead a Graham because he had been called one for years on end. He is now nearly 70 and has been that for over 40 years, when he first did that it was so close after the 1967 Sexual Offences Act that he was reported to the police regularly and taken in a fair few times for questioning about 'boys' until the age of consent went down to 18 in the 1990s. Nowadays, nobody refers to him as anything but Pansy, the derogatory connotations is rarely heard anyway. His equally flamboyant partner is know as Fred, his real name, but when he was picked up he used to tell the police his name was Fred Poofdah before one of them called him one.

I picked up on the inversion from the two of them whereas with other prejudiced against groups, for instance people of African origin, although used occasionally from the mid 19 century on it was not until the Black Power movement of the 1960s that it was broadly adopted and used by them. Stokely Carmichael's Black Power speech at UC Berkeley in 1966 and Tommie Smith and John Carlos making the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City woke students (I was one) up particularly, thus putting the matter high on the protest agenda. Yet other groups, such as those then known as 'spastics' which condemned them to a status of pity and mainly distaste, killed off the derogatory terms without adopting them. Nowadays it is derogatory.

My point is, it is often perception that makes usage seem as it is, in analysis it is a language form used by those who tend to disagree or dislike something or some people because that is doctrinaire, what they have learned but do not actually know enough about to have a real own opinion and expression. The logic behind religious doctrine and who may marry whom mainly carries over the stigma of people either remembering that male homosexuality was illegal in most of the world, indeed still carries a death sentence in some countries because it is 'wrong' (get them to explain why actually, not just god said...). Yet women have never had that stigma in most places, either been dismissed as strange or more or less ignored. Church teaching usually kept clear until modern gay feminists entered the fray and I well remember how incompetently the churches reacted in the 1970s because they had to accept the proposition and also see women whose radical separatist views challenged them the support gay men's cause.

The same kind of confusion is clearly happening in the hierarchy of various religions with regard to contemporary challenges to their authority in areas such as abortion and divorce and I hope that what has just happened in Ireland is followed by other countries so that the present handful grows to a majority on nations, so that those who have their faiths will be relieved of that stigma too as their churches see the writing on the wall. Now to follow through with the rest of what they need to do. Some of my contemporaries have discussed these things for as long as I remember, no doubt people have far longer, but for some of them a kind of absolution by seeing these things gone. Beliefs and prejudices have as much, perhaps even more, to answer for because of intolerance and ignorance over the centuries, time for them gone.

Interesting. I know my mother came from Yorkshire, which was a surprise to a Lancashire lass.
I believe that my father was Australian, so no Irish descendants at all.