Ireland: a resounding 'Yes'
Ireland has voted in favour of legalising same-sex marriage in a historic referendum, where more than 62% of the people voted for changing the Constitution and allowing homosexual couples to marry. This makes Ireland the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage through a popular vote.
And this has happened just a couple of decades after the epoch when homosexual relations were discriminated against by law in Ireland. More than 1.2 million people voted 'Yes', and 0.7 million 'No'. The Yes vote won in all Irish regions except Roscommon-South. The exact wording of the question was, "Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex".
The Catholic archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin has said that if the referendum confirms the position of the young population, then "the church has a huge task to get its message across to young people. (It) needs to do a reality check". He also generously said, "I appreciate how gay and lesbian men and women feel on this day. ... They feel this is something enriching the way they live. It's a social revolution.". Which is encouraging.
Of course, this step did not just come out of the blue. In 2010, the Irish government adopted a law that legalised civil unions, which practically gave recognition to same-sex couples. But there are some important distinctions between a civil union and a marriage, the most important one being that marriage is protected by the Constitution, while civil unions are not. Now the outcome of this referendum erases the legal discrepancy between same-sex couples and married heterosexual couples.
It is notable that the Yes campaign was supported by all major parties, the big employers, and a number of Irish celebrities. Meanwhile, the Church, which has officially maintained the position that homosexuality is a sin, has confined its campaign for the No camp only to the pulpit, perhaps sensing that remaining at the wrong side of history would put them in a very unfavourable position - and this, in quite an uncomfortable time for them (given all the scandals that have rattled the Catholic Church lately). Other aspects of the issue beyond the "sin" question were much more widely discussed - like the right of homosexuals to become parents, or to use the surrogate mother option. Those are of course issues that need to be discussed openly and rationally, and I hope the Irish society will move on to those aspects of the issue, now that the biggest obstacle has been removed.
Whatever happens, myself being half-Irish, I am proud with what the country of my mother has done. This is a monumental change, and the Irish society has indeed shown that it is a modern, open society. And hopefully it will be used as an example for other countries to look up to.