Today is St. Patrick's Day and it is noteworthy how Ireland has transformed itself from a bastion of Catholicism to a nation likely to approve same sex marriage despite the efforts of the Roman Catholic Church to maintain a 13th century understanding of human sexuality. Obviously, the Church's sex abuse scandal and horrific disclosures of what went on at the Church's Magdalene laundries helped the Irish to belatedly conclude that the Church leadership is utter bankrupt on moral issues. But the change is nonetheless stunning. An article in The Daily Beast looks at the transformation. Here are highlights:
At the very back of New York City’s St Patrick’s Day parade this year, a small gay group will join the official festivities for the first time ever.
The organizers of the parade have showed extraordinary hostility to homosexuals for more than 40 years, fighting tooth and nail to keep gay groups out of the annual celebration of Irishness. This year’s small gesture of inclusion—of gay NBC employees—was only made after Mayor Bill de Blasio boycotted the parade last year (he has done so again this year) and a number of sponsors also withdrew from the 253-year-old celebration to protest its openly exclusionary attitude.
So it is fitting that a gay group will march in New York this year as, back home, a decision of tremendous significance is about to be made by the Irish people regarding gay rights.
A proposal to alter the constitution to allow same-sex marriage in Ireland looks set to sail through when a referendum on the issue takes place May 22.
While there are senior bishops who continue to equate homosexuality to “Down syndrome or spina bifida,” the truth is that Ireland, especially if one is talking about the big cities of Dublin, Cork and Galway, is largely a tolerant, progressive, and inclusive place these days.
Civil partnerships, for example, were introduced in Ireland in 2010 and have swiftly become an uncontroversial part of everyday life, a remarkable turnaround given that it is only 22 years since homosexuality itself was decriminalized, in 1993.
The latest polls show a resounding 71 percent in favor of changing the law.
It is unimaginable that the Irish public might ever have even considered voting in favor of same-sex marriage in such large numbers had the Catholic Church—which strenuously opposes the move—not been so utterly disgraced by the sex-abuse scandals that have been exposed by a welter of inquiries over the last decade. The 2005 Ferns report and the 2009 Murphy and Ryan Reports documented a shocking catalog of abuse by Catholic clergy and lay church workers on an unimaginable scale. Even now, barely a month goes by without some horrific new case of clerical abuse being exposed by the media or judiciary.
Casting gay marriage as an attack on the family (the section of the constitution that is to be changed is titled “The Family”) has formed the core of the No camp’s argument.
However remarks by Bishop Kevin Doran, a conservative Catholic leader, on Irish radio station Newstalk this week were interpreted by many as a truer, less polished version of anti-gay marriage orthodoxy. Bishop Doran compared homosexuality to a disease.
As the Irish social historian and equal-rights campaigner Diarmaid Ferriter commented, “the more the bishops have to say about marriage, the better for the Yes side.”
“Now it’s really all about making sure young people— students and young families—get out and vote. It is about being seen as equal in the eyes of the law and the state and peers. We just want to live our lives in society the same as anyone else.
If there is any "disease" involved in the issue, the disease is ignorance embracing religious belief. I hope the "Yes" faction wins and that the Church finds itself pushed further into the political and social wilderness.
No comments:
Post a Comment