David QuinnWill Enda Kenny treat traditional-minded voters with respect in next year’s marriage referendum or will he heap more contempt on them?
One of the biggest events of next year will be the referendum to change the definition of marriage to permit two people of the same sex to marry one another. Most of the pressure to hold the referendum has come from the Labour party, but lots of it has also come from the media and various well-funded organisations. Precious little of the pressure has come from the general public who are much more concerned about the economy.
We can expect a speech next year from Enda Kenny in which he will tell us that his thinking on the issue has ‘evolved’. He was once opposed to same-sex marriage, but he will say that having thought about it, he now supports ‘equal love’.
Other politicians will have similar things to say.
The campaign in favour of same-sex marriage will be huge. The pro-side will likely outspend the no-side by between five and 10 to one. The country will be blanketed with posters telling us to vote for ‘equal love’ and for ‘marriage equality’.
You won’t be able to wander onto a website without coming across an ad telling you to vote ‘yes’.
Every other celebrity in Ireland will also tell you to vote ‘yes’.
Airwaves
The entirety of the media will also be on the ‘yes’ side and during the referendum itself, when both sides are supposed to be allowed equal access to the airwaves (this is one kind of equality ‘marriage equality’ campaigners don’t like), many presenters will save their toughest questions for the No side.
At present opinion polls show around 65% support for same-sex marriage. That has been the case for a few years now.
This is no surprise. The Irish public have been subjected to relentless propaganda in favour of same-sex marriage for a long, long time. Many presenters don’t even try to hide their bias and have been called out by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) over it.
The presenters don’t like this one bit. They want to be as unregulated as the bankers. It’s a pity, in fact, that the BAI doesn’t have more teeth. That might ensure more fair play on the airwaves.
For years now, talk shows have featured very soft interviews with same-sex couples. Soap operas regularly feature pro-gay plotlines and characters.
We also have pro-gay comedies like Will and Grace, the New Normal and Modern Family.
Imagine if a similar effort was made to promote tolerance of, say, Muslims? Perhaps there should be such an effort but presumably we would not be told that we have to accept Islam itself in order to show tolerance to Muslims.
On the other hand, we are constantly told that the only way to be tolerant and accepting towards gay people is to accept lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) ideology in itself entirety. If you do not, you stand condemned.
Thus you can’t say that you believe gay people have a right to be treated equally and at the same time say you don’t believe in gay adoption because you think a child ought to have a mother and a father. It’s all or nothing.
This kind of totalist thinking has led to a Christian baker in the North having a case brought against him because a gay rights activists wanted him to bake a cake with pro-gay marriage slogan on it. He didn’t want to do that any more than a Catholic baker would want to bake a cake saying ‘No Popery’ on it. But conscience rights don’t count for much in a developing legal regime that equates opposition to same-sex marriage with racism.
So you can expect a campaign next year that is at once charming in that it will invite us to be ‘tolerant’, but that could easily slip into bullying if we refuse to be ‘tolerant’.
Can the referendum be defeated? The answer is yes. There have been something like 36 referendums on this subject so far. 34 of these have taken place in various American states and two in Europe.
In 32 referendums out of 36, those who believe marriage is by definition between a man and a woman have won the day, even in liberal California.
The two referendums in Europe were held in Croatia a year ago and Slovenia almost three years ago.
In Croatia the traditional marriage side carried the day by almost two-to-one.
In Slovenia, where Mass attendance is only 10% or so, the pro-same-sex marriage side started out with an enormous lead, just like here. With a week to go, they still led by 20 points, but on the day itself they lost by 10 points.
Perhaps this is why former editor of The Irish Times, Geraldine Kennedy, herself a supporter of same-sex marriage, believes the referendum could well lose.
She cited other referendums where the official position, so to speak, that is the one favoured by the Government, started out with a big lead but then lost.
The referendum to abolish the Seanad started out with a strong lead but lost. The referendum to give more powers to Oireachtas inquiries started out with a big lead but lost.
Undecided
The children’s rights referendum started out with 74% support versus 4% against, with the rest undecided. That is, it began with a 70 point lead. The Yes side spent €2.5 million versus the No side’s expenditure of €18,000. The Yes side had the support of the entire media and only a handful of voices, chiefly John Waters and Kathy Sinnott, expressed their opposition to what was being proposed.
The No side lost but managed to increase their support by a factor of 10 and a half to one, from 4% to 42%.
This is why opinion polls can be so misleading. They are really only a read of public opinion when public opinion has heard only one side of the argument.
An opponent going on a programme here or there is nothing compared with the relentless propaganda in favour of same-sex marriage. I know from experience that some people are instinctively opposed to same-sex marriage and not aware of the arguments against, but when they hear them, the effect is both liberating and galvanising.
Arguments
I’ve addressed the arguments against many times before in this newspaper so won’t go into them again in much detail here. (There will be plenty more opportunities to do that between now and the referendum.)
Suffice it to say for now that Bishop Kevin Doran is correct when he says that the debate about marriage isn’t a debate about homosexuality but is rather about what marriage itself is.
We are told that the referendum is about ‘equality’. But equality means treating similar situations in the same way. It is no breach of equality to treat different situations differently. In fact, it makes perfect sense to do so.
It is simply the case that the unions of men and women are different from those of two men or two women.
Likewise, it is the case that the unions of men and women are different from friendship. Friendship is a form of companionship (Brian Sheehan of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network describes marriage as “profound companionship”.) Friendship can be profound, but is it not the same as marriage and no-one suggests that two friends should be allowed to marry.
So marriage isn’t only a form of “profound companionship”, it is something more than that. It is also a sexual union. This is why marriages that have not been consummated can be annulled.
Marriage is a social institution in a way friendship is not. It is the fact that a marriage is also a sexual union that gives it an added and very important dimension.
But can’t two men or two women form a sexual union as well? Of course they can. (Although, interestingly, neither France nor Britain which both have same-sex marriage have a definition of what consummates the union of two men or two women).
However, the sexual union of two men or two women is very obviously different in kind from that of a man and a woman.
Only the sexual union of a man and a woman can give rise to a child, only the sexual union of a man and a woman is procreative by its nature, even if some men and women can’t have children.
Many people object that if marriage is all about children, then why do we let infertile couples marry?
Marriage, of course, is not all about children, but the marriage of an infertile man and woman remains the sexual union of a man and a woman.
Their marriage does not change the nature of marriage and has no implications for the rights of children.
But the marriage of two men or two women does change the nature of marriage and has very far reaching implications for the rights of children.
You cannot redefine marriage and pretend it has no knock on effects other than for the gay people who choose to marry because, when you change our view of marriage in this way, you change our view of the family and the rights of children.
Rights
With ‘equal marriage’ comes an equal ‘right’ to have children and, once you give two men or two women an equal right to have children, the child’s right to a mother and a father goes out the window automatically.
When you let an infertile man and woman marry, a child’s right to a mother and a father does not go out the window.
What will the Church do during and in the run-up to the referendum?
Well, following the December meeting of the bishops’ conference, it issued a leaflet called The Meaning of Marriage that is to be distributed to all parishes.
If the Church launched a campaign to persuade the general public to vote against same-sex marriage that would probably backfire because of the abuse scandals and also because the referendum would then be presented as a battle between the Catholic Church and ‘Modern Ireland’. There would only be one winner out of that and it would not be the Church.
It would be better for the Church to restrict its educational campaign to Mass-goers.
The Church, and all religious believers for that matter, will also be told that there is no proposal to change religious marriage and that civil marriage is none of their business.
But if an atheist is allowed to have an opinion about the nature of civil marriage, then so must a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim. Anything else is an undemocratic attempt to place religious believers in a sealed box.
Our politicians will get involved in the campaign to varying degrees.
All of the main parties favour same-sex marriage and few politicians are actively opposed to it.
But a fair few politicians will be reluctant to canvass for it strongly, especially in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil because they are going to need every vote they can get come the next general election.
Even if the ‘establishment’ wins next spring’s marriage referendum handily, this will still be seen by a significant number of voters as another swingeing attack on ‘traditional values’.
The Government has already introduced the country’s first abortion law.
Embassy
Enda Kenny presided over the temporary closing down of our embassy to the Vatican and launched the strongest attack ever by any Taoiseach on the Church.
That went down very well in some circles but not all, including among some staunch Fine Gael supporters.
Ever since it came to power this Government has treated traditional-minded voters with the utmost contempt.
Enda Kenny should treat those voters with due respect in next year’s referendum or face permanently alienating more voters with a general election due at latest in spring 2016.
Those voters might be in the minority, but when every vote counts and when a few transfers here and there are the difference between winning a seat and losing one, Enda should take care not to lose any more voters than is necessary.