Ireland Approves Same Sex Marriage by Wide Margin

Friday's vote on same sex marriage in Ireland saw more than 60% of voters voting "Yes" to approve same sex marriage.  Less than 38% voted "No" and the opponents appear to have had a majority in only one county.  The results of the referendum are a sharp rebuke to the Roman Catholic Church which seemingly is in a death spiral in terms of its influence and ability to control public opinion.  There are many factors to the Church's decline and the shift in public opinion, but the aftermath of the sex abuse scandal and complicity of the Church hierarchy in it and a populace which is becoming far more educated with independent access to information.  Education and easy access to information and knowledge are religion's true worse enemies.  

I do not believe that the rights of any minority should be put to public referendum, as a piece in The Economist correctly notes:

The idea that the majority can legitimise the right of a minority is fundamentally flawed. In the words of Ayn Rand, the Russian-American novelist, “individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities.”

There are plenty of examples on how popular votes could have catastrophic impacts in societies if they were to be sought on minority matters. The obvious example is the issue of marriage between white and non-white people in the US.

That said, the vote does have that attraction of making it difficult for lying blowhards like Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage to claim that "redefining marriage" was forced upon the public.  Moreover, if Ireland, a one time bastion of Catholicism, can move to support marriage equality, other nations may be more inclined to follow suit.  The New York Times summarized the outcome well:

The opposition, aided by some Catholic bishops who campaigned for No votes, peddled the hollow arguments that have same-sex marriage opponents around the world on a losing streak. They warned that legalizing same-sex marriage would undermine unions between a man and a woman and argued that marriage has an inherently reproductive purpose.

In a statement conceding defeat, the Iona Institute, the main opposition group, said it would continue to affirm “the importance of biological ties and of motherhood and fatherhood.” The absurdity of that statement speaks for itself.

As soon as the referendum is ratified by Parliament, Ireland will join 19 nations that have legalized same-sex marriage — an honor roll that does not include the United States.

Here are highlights from BuzzFeed on the potential wider implications of the historic vote:

When historians write about the global LGBT rights movement, they will probably divide their timeline into “Before Ireland” and “After Ireland.”

Not only did the vote held Friday make Ireland the first country in the world to enact marriage equality by popular vote, but the Yes side crushed the No side by a margin of 25 points. The Yes campaign won with a message that was about far more than the rights of gays and lesbians, asking voters to cast their ballot for “a fairer Ireland” and “because marriage matters.” They succeeded in making it a referendum on what kind of country voters — the vast majority of whom are straight — wanted to live in, and they resoundingly chose one where gay and lesbian couples are part of Irish families just like straight couples are.

“Ireland can be the game changer,” said Mauricio Albarracín, head of the Colombian LGBT rights group Colombia Diversa and a lawyer who has worked on marriage equality litigation scheduled to soon be argued before Colombia’s Constitutional Court. The vote, he said in a phone interview with BuzzFeed News, shows that “the historic tendency is support of marriage equality.”

What’s more, conservative activists agree at least in part, telling BuzzFeed News that this vote shows that their strongest arguments against marriage equality have lost their impact in key parts of the world.

“We’re losing the marriage battles — that’s the truth, especially in Western Europe,” said Ignacio Arsuaga, a Spanish activist who founded a global online campaign platform called CitizenGo. (Its board includes Brian Brown of the United States’s National Organization for Marriage.) “Our arguments are not reaching the majority of society. The majority of society just think in the terms that were promoted by the gay lobby: ‘This is a question of rights …and marriage is a human right.”

The vote was a “powerful clarion call” to decision makers around the world, said Evan Wolfson of the U.S. organization Freedom To Marry, which has been advising marriage equality efforts in several other countries. “The resounding affirmation of the freedom to marry across every demographic [in Ireland] … adds to the global momentum we have all created.”

This may have a special significance in countries like Italy. Now that Ireland has marriage equality, Italy is the only Western European country without any partnership rights for same-sex couples despite multiple court orders calling on parliament to create them.

The fact that Ireland is “considered one of the most Catholic countries in the region, makes this [vote] a very meaningful and historic step for Ireland itself and for the region,” he said. “In the past, when a pop vote was called on the rights of a minority, the minority lost,” he said. “The majority decided the minority’s rights had to be granted, and that was a huge step.”

Friday's vote was historic for many reasons.  The message to the Catholic Church and other anti-gay churches is that the times are changing and either they drop their 13th century "natural law" arguments and embrace modern knowledge and science or run the risk of either becoming extinct themselves or, in the case of the Catholic Church, becoming a black, Africa based church.  Part of me hopes these denominations opt for eventual extinction.

California AG Asks Court to Invalidate "Kill the Gays" Referendum

This blog previously noted how a referendum issue had been initiated in California that seeks to have a statewide referendum on whether gays should be executed.  The measure - "The Sodomite Suppression Act," - was submitted by extreme right wing fanatic Matthew Gregory McLaughlin, an Orange County lawyer, on February 26, 2015.  California Attorney General Kamala Harris (pictured above) indicated today that she will be seeking a court order suppressing the measure and barring it from proceeding to the petition signature gathering stage.  While the proposal was submitted by a single individual, there are many voices among the Christofascists who would happily see gays murdered by the state.  It is little wonder that more and more Americans are walking away from religion.  Here are highlights from Talking Points Memo:

California Attorney General Kamala Harris said on Wednesday that she would try to scuttle a proposed ballot initiative mandating the execution of gay people.

"The Sodomite Suppression Act," submitted by Orange County lawyer Matthew Gregory McLaughlin on Feb. 26, would legalize the killing of homosexuals via "a bullet to the head."

While normal protocol would require Harris to review and summarize the potential ballot measure within 30 days, said she would be seeking authority from the Supreme Court to abort the measure.

"This proposal not only threatens public safety, it is patently unconstitutional, utterly reprehensible, and has no place in a civil society," she said. "Today, I am filing an action for declaratory relief with the Court seeking judicial authorization for relief from the duty to prepare and issue the title and summary for the 'Sodomite Suppression Act.'"

"If the Court does not grant this relief, my office will be forced to issue a title and summary for a proposal that seeks to legalize discrimination and vigilantism.”

In order for it to appear on a ballot, however, McLaughlin would have to collect more than 365,000 signatures from Californian citizens. Even then, experts said the State Supreme Court would most likely quash the self-evidently unconstitutional measure.

Ireland’s Big Gay Turnaround

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. 

Ireland to Hold Referendum on Gay Marriage

Next May, Ireland will hold a referendum on gay marriage.  Not surprisingly, the criminal conspirators in the Irish Catholic Church hierarchy that aided and abetted predator priests has come out in opposition to marriage equality for same sex couples.  The good news is that at this point in time the Catholic Church is so discredited and reviled by so many in Ireland (a one time bastion of Catholicism) that its opposition may boost the vote of those in favor of same sex marriage.  Here are excerpts from coverage in The Guardian:

A referendum on legalising gay marriage in Ireland will be held in May, the Republic’s deputy prime minister announced on Tuesday evening.

Tánaiste and Irish Labour leader Joan Burton confirmed that the cabinet in Dublin had agreed to hold the vote then.

“The fact that this referendum is now to take place is a mark of the progress that has taken place in this country in recent years and decades, and indicates the extent to which attitudes to lesbian and gay people have changed,” Burton said in Government Buildings.

A gay Christian group was among the first to welcome the announcement. Dr Richard O’Leary, chair of the Church of Ireland group Changing Attitude Ireland, said: “In the forthcoming referendum on marriage Christians will be campaigning on both sides.”

He added: “Although Catholic bishops have expressed opposition, Christians can still use their freedom of conscience to vote yes to civil marriage equality, like they did 20 years ago in favour of the availability of civil divorce.”

The latest opinion poll in the Irish Times found that 71% of the Republic’s electorate would vote yes and allow for legal gay marriages in the state.

A yes vote would mark another defeat for the temporal power of the Catholic church in a country it once dominated.

Jerry Buttimer, who presents Cork South Central in the Irish parliament said: “As a gay man and member of Fine Gael, I am immensely proud that this referendum has been brought forward by this Fine Gael/ Labour Government. However the hard work is only starting now.

“We must be fully committed to this campaign and leave no stone unturned in explaining the importance of a yes vote. I truly believe the referendum will be passed and that Ireland will be lauded across the world as a leader in social justice and equality.”

I for one hope the yes vote passes by a huge margin and that it sends a strong message to the bitter old men in dresses in the Vatican and bishoprics that they days of power and control of people's lives is waning.