@icyfroth wrote:
It became clear in the final weeks of the referendum campaign that it was no longer really about gay marriage. The political chatter became less about equality, and more about Ireland's global moral reputation.
The implication is that Ireland had hitherto been a bit of a knuckle-dragger, and it was only through saying Yes to gay marriage that it could propel itself into upright, opposable-thumbs modernity. To be against gay marriage is to linger in the doldrums of half-formed humanity; to favour gay marriage is to be decent, civilised, "evolved".
So how new is this New Ireland, really? Sure, those who felt more comfortable in Old Ireland - country people, older people, priests - have been given a thorough thrashing by the Yes lobby. But that lobby has used the same demonology and censoriousness that was rampant in Old Ireland, only to different ends.
Ireland has emerged, not into a new era of tolerance, but into the age of illiberal liberalism, where, in a profound irony, those who don't like the so-called "liberal outlook" find themselves vilified and silenced.
With gay marriage turned into a litmus test of one's moral worth, those on the No side found themselves demonised, treated in the same way Old Ireland might have treated teen fornicators or godless boozers: pariahs, with no place among the decent. Where Old Ireland damned certain ideas as heresy, the Yessers of the New Ireland write off opposition to gay marriage as a kind of disorder.
What's the same here, in Australia?
And what makes you think that story has it right? It's just as likely that those hurt by the old ways over the years have had enough and have now demanded change.
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