Breda O'BrienThere was much to learn from the ‘gruelling campaign’, writes Breda O’Brien
After an exhausting campaign with a disappointing outcome, it is important to remember that people voted ‘yes’ for good and compassionate reasons, to affirm their gay relatives and friends. (The referendum should never have been framed in that way, but the motives of many ‘yes’ voters remain good, nonetheless).
Secondly, given that Atlantic Philanthropies had been bankrolling and providing expertise to the LGBT community for over a decade, and investing tens of millions in the drive to secure gay marriage, we did not do too badly.
Atlantic Philanthropies explained it thus: “GLEN had extensive lobbying and public policy experience but their multi-year grant from Atlantic enabled them to ramp up their work into a full-time highly professionalised lobbying machine. It works ‘inside’ the machinery of government where it uses a ‘principled pragmatist’ model in which it consolidates support, wins over the doubtful and pacifies those who are opposed. GLEN leaders believed that the most viable way to embed long-lasting social change was to legislate incrementally, waiting to advocate for civil marriage until the population was acculturated to the ordinariness of same-sex unions.”
There is a doctoral thesis in that paragraph alone. “A highly professionalised lobbying machine” working “inside the machinery of government” worked on pacifying “those who are opposed”.
And how easy they were to pacify.
The ‘Yes Equality’ group alone received $17million. Every single children’s rights group that advocated a ‘yes’ received funding. Tusla, the Child and Family Agency arm of the Government, received $8 million just recently.
Just imagine for a minute that groups advocating a ‘no’ had received millions of dollars over a decade. Imagine the screams of outrage from the media. Not a flicker of interest resulted when it was money invested in a cause with which they agreed.
Given the degree of consensus and groupthink it is wonderful that 734,000 people managed to vote ‘no’, due in no small part to the tireless volunteers who put everything into this campaign.
When you read Noel Whelan’s account of 30 people working night and day on the ‘yes’ campaign, of their effortless access to the political parties, the only wonder is that we did not lose 90%/10%.
Would the Government have made Dublin Castle available to the ‘no’ side if they had won? Would anyone have dared to make use of it if the ‘no’ side had won?
Sure, there were unpleasant people on both sides, but the degree of intolerance from the ‘yes’ side was unbelievable.
David Quinn conceded very graciously early on. His Twitter feed was full of venomous abuse within minutes, mostly comments that are unfit to print in a newspaper.
About 50% of the response was abuse, 25% was civil and 25% was not abusive, but simply triumphalist.
In contrast, of the first 500 tweets received by Colm O’Gorman after his first post-referendum tweet, only one was abusive.
However, we have learned a lot from the gruelling campaign. We cannot rely on mainstream media to get our message out. With notable exceptions, radio and television current affairs were balanced during the three weeks of the campaign. Articles in newspapers ran three to one in favour of a ‘yes’, according an independent study by MKC Communications.
{{It must be a priority to produce materials for Catholic schools which tackle homophobia”
However, for months leading up to the vote, and even during the campaign, every possible media outlet produced soft focus profiles on gay relationships and unquestioning pieces about children conceived through assisted human reproduction, while assiduously refusing to interview contrary voices. (There were a few honourable exceptions.)
The same-sex marriage referendum had scarcely passed before Labour was demonstrating that equality only applies very selectively, and certainly not to babies in the womb. Social media will be vital in the battle against the introduction of abortion for children with life-limiting conditions.
Those of us who are Catholic, and a significant number of ‘no’ voters were not, also need to look at the fact that our young people are being formed by the cultural consensus, not by Catholic values.
If it were not for groups like Youth 2000, there would be few Catholic peer groups. We need to re-group, re-think and reform.
Homophobia, which is profoundly wrong, is being used as a Trojan horse to bring an agenda into Catholic schools which undermines the characteristic spirit of such schools.
It must be a priority to produce materials for Catholic schools which tackle homophobia, and which show that homophobia will not be tolerated, but which also uphold Catholic teaching.
Catholic schools will need to become places of witness and dialogue.
A lot of bitter lessons have been learned. Let us now implement the hard won wisdom.