(Update Monday 22/08/16: (I’ve just finished watching “The Queen Of Ireland”. I know it took me way too long, to get around to it. I was very impressed by Rory O’ Neill’s eloquence. Its been well over a year and the sky still hasn’t fallen down.
I was at a fair in Hollywood yesterday. In a three way conversation going on casually above my head, I overheard the woman at the stand, remarking how her own daughter was marrying the daughter of another local family. This is the way, it should have always been!)
(Update 12/05/15: How prophetic my old post was! The scaremongering was in full force last night.”What about the children,” I expected someone to stand up and scream. The maddening notion that if you we are not all born to the seemingly unique male and female combination, that society will be on a fast track downhill, was peddled with gusto.
Hopefully these notions will backfire intensely. I was especially sad to see a gay man urging a vote no and in deep conversation with a no voting Fine Fail member, who I am sure thoroughly disapproves of his deviant choices and lifestyle. Did he not realise that he was /is playing obediently into “their” hands?
So, marriage is not for him. Fine! There will not be a huge rush to get married by the majority of gay people, I am sure.
For me it is a redefinition of what marriage entails, but ultimately a long overdue one.My big concern is that come the 22nd, a lot of “yes” people are going to be complacent.
Whereas the “no”supporters will see it as their moral duty, to inflict their old and nasty beliefs on an Irish society, which is still entangled in a constitution drawn up in a very forgettable era, where comely maidens danced at the cross roads.)
Originally posted 20/1/15
I saw on Claire Byrne live yesterday, the debate about gay marriages. With the referendum 4 months away, undoubtedly this topic is going to become a pivotal subject. We’ll soon see just how much life is left in the old conservative dog in Ireland.
What annoyed me, were the very hollow and disguised compliments paid to the “beautiful” gay male couple.Their beauty diminishes somewhat, now they intend to move into the mainstream. The audacity of them, for wanting their unions and/or children to be treated the same as everyone else in the eyes of the law and society.
One of the audience members said that marriage should not be tampered with. It has been around for hundreds of years and as far as he was concerned it was installed by “god”.
It was surprising to me tha this person was black. Surely, he would have been more sensitive to the fact that just because the tradition (of marriage between a man and a woman) has been around for a long time, does not give them any inherent value.
If this was the case, he would not even have been a member of the audience based on the colour of his skin. I know we’ve never (officially) had apartheid in this country, but I’m sure many people remember the tradition elsewhere of “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish”.
We have to right the wrongs of the past. The face of the Irish family has changed, and is changing. The law needs to catch up to this new reality!
A lot was said about the children who would grow up without a mother and father team. it made me think about Fiona Doyle who was also on the news yesterday, after she successfully appealed the unduly lenient sentence of her 75 year old dad who raped her weekly when her mother was out at bingo.
Perhaps she would have been better off, without this particular male influence!
As are the children of male alcoholics,control freaks,misogynists, wife beaters etc. The same goes when the roles are reversed, and its the mother who is the dodgy character.
It has to be the loving atmosphere in the home, that is infinitely more important than the physical makeup of the parents.
I heard laughable echoes of Maud Flanders with her hands up to her face exclaiming “What about the Children”. Only this time, she was voiced by a member of the conservative Iona institute.
We are not going to enter an age, where people will have no identities because we will all be born to two mums or dads, and won’t know where we came from. Look at the countries where gay marriage has been around for a long time, like the Netherlands or Canada. They are not drowning in an anonymous population.
These are extreme scare tactics and I hope they will be seen as such.
Honestly, are children the only reason people get married? Increasingly men and women get married, only when their children are old enough to participate in the ceremony.
What is so sacred about a man and a woman getting married anyway, getting married like Kim Kardashian and then getting a separation 72 days later.
As far as I am concerned, it is a redefinition of the family, but a much needed one. As May approaches, I hope there is a resounding Yes vote. A concluding quote from Martin Luther King is apt, “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”.