DiscussMormonism.com

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/23/europe/ireland-referendum-same-sex-marriage/

Last week during the campaign related to this latest Constitutional Referendum, I happened to be in Ireland (Co Limerick). The outcome was somewhat of a surprise, to say the least.

Not a single individual with whom I spoke expressed support for the change in the constitution to allow same sex marriage. However, there was an interesting dynamic in play that was discussed on several of the broadcast debates on the issue.

It was speculated that many voters would be unwilling to speak out in public for the change (because doing so would be to speak against the Catholic Church). However, when actually voting, the majority (mostly younger voters, it seems) felt less pressure to conform, and voted their conscience. The result was a solid majority for the change in the Irish Constitution to allow marriage equality.

It was all very civil. The NO vote side quickly conceded defeat, and the Catholic Church admitted that it was time for a "reality check".

Gotta love the Irish.

I studied abroad in Ireland, but most of my interactions there were with students and musicians, and an admittedly-liberal bunch. I'm glad to know that they are not the exception in their attitudes.

One has to wonder about the possible effects in the US of this constitutional change to support marriage equality in a predominantly Catholic country like Ireland, especially given that six of the nine Supreme Court Justices are Catholic.

Ireland is a staunch (if not particularly strong) European ally of the US, and the country from which more than 12% of Americans originated. (There are seven times more Irish Americans in the US than there are Irish in Ireland.)

Considering that six of the nine Supreme Court Justices (Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Sonia Sotomayor) are Catholic, one would think that the Irish vote outcome (over 61% for marriage equality with a solid 60% voter turnout) might have at least some effect on the decision of the US Supreme Court in this matter.

As it turns out, all of the other Supreme Court Justices (Kagan, Breyer and Ginsburg) are Jewish (and there is little doubt how they will vote on the issue). Strangely enough, there are currently no Protestants on the Supreme Court bench, which is sort of unexpected in a historically Protestant-dominated country.

Looks as though the fundamentalist Evangelicals, Mormons and JWs, as well as homophobic Protestants (such as there are), may not have a single friend in court when the marriage equality issue is decided later this year.

Aoife wrote:I studied abroad in Ireland, but most of my interactions there were with students and musicians, and an admittedly-liberal bunch. I'm glad to know that they are not the exception in their attitudes.

Given your avatar, this bit of personal information is hardly surprising.

Kidding aside, I find the Republic of Ireland to be a friendly country with a beautiful countryside and warm, friendly (if sometime strongly opinionated) people.

Wish I could say the same for Northern Ireland. Last time I was in Belfast, I was arrested and detained by the British Army for simply taking pictures. They released me (after confiscating all my film) when I was finally able to convince them that my wife and infant child were stuck in our VW van with no food and little water. (It was illegal at the time to leave a car unoccupied along the streets near the downtown area - which area was barricaded off and guarded by British Troops.) Northern Ireland is still a social and economic wreck compared to the Republic.

DrW wrote: ... Northern Ireland is still a social and economic wreck compared to the Republic.

Northern Ireland is still a country where religious allegiance makes a major difference to people's social and political attitudes, and has been a source of bitter conflict for centuries.

The majority Protestant population, who are largely the descendants of Scottish Presbyterians who immigrated in the 17th century, have historically seen themselves as embattled defenders of the true faith, whereas the Catholic population has seen them as invaders who dispossessed their ancestors. In discussing all this in a US context, we have to remember that the protestants have been in place in Ireland for longer than the overwhelming majority of the US population has been in possession of the lands that formerly belonged to the native American population. They are not going anywhere fast.

(I am trying to imagine a parallel with the Mormon occupation of Utah: but that would only work if there had been a majority non-Mormon European population there before Mormon colonization, who were then dispossessed by the new arrivals. Doesn't really work, though.)

The Good Friday agreement of 1998 largely marked the end of open sectarian conflict. It was approved by referenda across the whole island of Ireland. Unfortunately, the power-sharing government that controls local affairs (including social policy) in Northern Ireland has a protestant component currently dominated by the Democratic Unionist Party, who are deeply opposed to same-sex marriage on religious grounds. There is a special provision called a 'Petition of Concern' that allows any party to veto legislation if they can argue the law would not have sufficient cross-community/Protestant-Catholic support. So currently that is where things are stuck.

DrW wrote:One has to wonder about the possible effects in the US of this constitutional change to support marriage equality in a predominantly Catholic country like Ireland, especially given that six of the nine Supreme Court Justices are Catholic.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out and affects the broader church. IMHO, really it's just a matter of when and how at this point, rather than if.

DrW wrote:Kidding aside, I find the Republic of Ireland to be a friendly country with a beautiful countryside and warm, friendly (if sometime strongly opinionated) people.

I have found the same and really enjoy the "strongly opinionated" part. There is a lot about my upbringing and family culture that is very Irish (I have a grandpa to thank for that), but I never really saw it as such until I lived in Ireland and realized that it was definitely Irish-ness. I just saw it as Grandpa-ness before that.

DrW wrote:Wish I could say the same for Northern Ireland. Last time I was in Belfast, I was arrested and detained by the British Army for simply taking pictures. They released me (after confiscating all my film) when I was finally able to convince them that my wife and infant child were stuck in our VW van with no food and little water. (It was illegal at the time to leave a car unoccupied along the streets near the downtown area - which area was barricaded off and guarded by British Troops.) Northern Ireland is still a social and economic wreck compared to the Republic.

I spent a few weeks in Derry and it was an exercise in mostly keeping my mouth shut. Just asking the wrong questions makes people really uncomfortable. Things are still tense there, but it is the norm and just one part of everyday living, so it seems like residents don't feel the tension so much as you do as a dumb American student/visitor who is unaccustomed to it. I attended a program at the Magee campus of Ulster University about the history of the conflict and after the first day of sobering lectures and videos one of my classmates asked "Are we even safe here?" and the instructor laughed and said "of course". But then as we got to know the city, we walked past the fallout of a (then) recently-failed plot to bomb the police station, and we were part of several city blocks that were evacuated in the middle of the night over a bomb scare. But it was just normal to everyone there. Life goes on. It's incredible how people adjust.

I laughed a little at your detainment story, although it's not 'ha ha' funny, because my BFF and I got detained in the Republic once for taking pictures in the Shannon airport, while US troops were moving through. It was not a good time with the gardai and airport police. We found out soon after that it's a matter of some local outrage that Ireland is routinely facilitating US troop movements, and I definitely got the impression that the detainment wasn't so much about keeping troop movements secret from enemies as it was about not having the Irish people know enough about the particulars to make a fuss. We got detained on our way out of the country too. I'm still not sure what made us seem like trouble aside from smelling like hash-- maybe we give off an activist vibe. Good times.

This is a really interesting blog post about some of the reasons for the change in Irish attitudes:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-peron/the-seismic-shift-in-iris_b_7430026.html

Ireland had joined the EU, giving it access to markets much larger than previously when its trade had been predominantly with Britain. That, combined with an influx of foreign investment, transformed Ireland from one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the wealthiest. Its economy grew so powerfully in the 1990s that Ireland became known as the Celtic tiger.
With that affluence, and an increased engagement with Europe, came a shift in social attitudes. Emigration, so long a potent norm in Irish society, fell away. Brighter and more enlightened Irish talent no longer looked abroad but remained at home and fostered change. The Economist named Ireland the best place to live in the world. "Rising material wealth seems to have expanded minds as well as wallets," as one Irish commentator put it. Secularism became linked in the public imagination with the benefits of urban modernity and religion was relegated to an association with the poverty of the rural past.

Quasimodo wrote:This is a really interesting blog post about some of the reasons for the change in Irish attitudes:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-peron/the-seismic-shift-in-iris_b_7430026.html

Ireland had joined the EU, giving it access to markets much larger than previously when its trade had been predominantly with Britain. That, combined with an influx of foreign investment, transformed Ireland from one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the wealthiest. Its economy grew so powerfully in the 1990s that Ireland became known as the Celtic tiger.
With that affluence, and an increased engagement with Europe, came a shift in social attitudes. Emigration, so long a potent norm in Irish society, fell away. Brighter and more enlightened Irish talent no longer looked abroad but remained at home and fostered change. The Economist named Ireland the best place to live in the world. "Rising material wealth seems to have expanded minds as well as wallets," as one Irish commentator put it. Secularism became linked in the public imagination with the benefits of urban modernity and religion was relegated to an association with the poverty of the rural past.

Regrettably, the Celtic tiger turned out to be largely powered by over-extended banks and a property bubble, and the economy suffered a severe collapse in 2008. Emigration went back up again - though it did fall somewhat in 2014, so hopefully the worst may be over. If only the Republic could become durably prosperous, that might do a lot to undermine the wish of the Northern Irish protestants to stay clear of the Catholic-dominated state to the south.

It is notable that the final clauses of a well-known protestant toast in honor of King William III refer to the poverty thought to be associated with Catholicism:

http://www.finnegansweb.com/wiki/index.php/Orange_Toast

The Orange Toast was the traditional toast which loyal Irish Protestants raised to the memory of William III (King Billy), champion of the Protestant cause in the Jacobite (or Williamite) War and victor at the Battle of the Boyne. There a various forms of the toast, each slightly different than the others:

Here's to the glorious, pious and immortal memory of the great and good King William III, Prince of Orange, who saved us from rogues and roguery, slaves and slavery, knaves and knavery, Popes and Popery, brass money and wooden shoes. ...

Ho well. The future may be better, and many opinions die with the people that hold them. It is unlikely that the young in the north will be anything like as sectarian as their grandparents, whether protestant or catholic.

The Catholic Church was against this overturn of same sex prohibition law. This was the Irish people exercising an extension of democracy regardless of Church wishes preventing them from doing the right thing.

Chap wrote:

The Orange Toast was the traditional toast which loyal Irish Protestants raised to the memory of William III (King Billy), champion of the Protestant cause in the Jacobite (or Williamite) War and victor at the Battle of the Boyne. There a various forms of the toast, each slightly different than the others:

Here's to the glorious, pious and immortal memory of the great and good King William III, Prince of Orange, who saved us from rogues and roguery, slaves and slavery, knaves and knavery, Popes and Popery, brass money and wooden shoes. ...

Ho well. The future may be better, and many opinions die with the people that hold them. It is unlikely that the young in the north will be anything like as sectarian as their grandparents, whether protestant or catholic.

My mother was born in Ireland (Nenagh) and moved with her family to England when she was little. My father was born in Wales (Mostyn) and moved to England as a child, as well. I was born in Hull (more correctly, Kingston-upon-Hull).

In the center of Hull is a statue of William III, oddly standing above public restrooms. The locals call it King Billy. Occasionally, on St. Patrick's eve, unknown persons will spray paint it green.

Appologies for the derail.