Same-sex marriage is now legal in at least 17 nations, but few of those countries have introduced it with the anything like the attention-getting fanfare that Ireland managed at the weekend. Asked in a referendum question whether Article 41 of the constitution should be amended to state that being of the same sex is no longer an impediment to marriage, 1,201,607 people voted in favour of while 734,300 voted against. Out of 43 constituencies in the country, only the largely rural Roscommon-South Leitrim had a majority of "no" votes, and the turnout was 60.5 per cent. Ireland thus became the first country in the world to legalise gay marriage through a popular vote.
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The vote marks a seismic shift in Ireland's social and religious mindset: in another referendum in 1987, voters rejected the legalisation of divorce, and four years before that, in 1983, a referendum outlawing abortion except in cases where a mother's life was at risk was passed by a vote of two to one. Indeed, homosexuality was only decriminalised in Ireland in 1993.
Ireland's transformation from near theocracy to bastion of social liberalism has been the much discussed backstory to Friday's referendum. Many commentators argue, probably correctly, that the catalyst for change was the flood of revelations, beginning in the 1990s, of widespread abuse by Catholic clergy of children, single mother and "fallen women" over many decades – crimes which the church hierarchy had sought to cover up by any means. The church's authority and influence is now but a shadow of its former self. Ireland's accession to the European Union in 1973 has also been cited as a factor in the country's changed mores, with rising material wealth, immigration, and greater travel opportunities said to have broadened the nation's outlook.
But there were other factors which enabled the yes vote. All of Ireland's political parties and most politicians including Enda Kenny, the country's Taoiseach or prime minister, backed constitutional change. The church more or less kept out of the contest, with Dublin's archbishop, Diarmuid Martin, reiterating his opposition to same-sex marriage but declining active involvement in the no campaign. That the yes campaign was better organised (and funded) than its opponents, and generally more resolute seems clear. Indeed, once it assumed the dimensions of an anti-discrimination measure (with the sanctity of marriage rendered a secondary issue), the referendum was probably as good as won.
The Fine Gael government must bring in a new law to give effect to the constitutional amendment, so the first actual marriages are unlikely to take place until September. Whether homosexual couples will be permitted to solemnise their marriage in the Catholic church remains unresolved, however.
The reverberations of Friday's vote have been particularly noticeable in Australia, with widespread public conjecture as to why, when governments keep ducking the issue, a marriage equality referendum cannot be called. As Tony Abbott has noted, this issue is the sole preserve of Parliament. However, with politicians continuing to kick this can down the road, ad infinitum, voters are entitled to ask it cannot be put to direct popular vote in the form of a plebiscite.
