GAZE, Ireland’s largest LGTB film festival captured responses to last Saturday’s historic Marriage Equality Referendum result. Intimate, immediate and spontaneous footage shows the unfolding story.
Produced and directed by IFTA nominated director, Anna Rodgers the unique film, an as it happens account of the reactions to the result.
It’s not that I felt excluded from marriage, I just never actually thought about it deeply. I accepted what I felt to be the ‘way it was’, and that marriage was just not an option for me.
I accepted it in the way one accepts all the stuff you are told growing up, the stuff that is reinforced by society, by the people around you, until something happens to shake you up and make you question your own assumptions and then in turn challenge the perceived ‘status quo”.
It has been a long road. I never knew we were on it, or even that we were remotely interested in the journey we have taken together over the past twenty-two years. It’s only in the past month that I’ve come to understand the significance of that journey, and the distance we have travelled together.
This Friday, May 22nd you will be asked to decide whether the following new wording should be added to the Constitution:
‘Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex’.
In this referendum, you can make a positive difference to the lives of thousands of people across Ireland. We are your mothers and fathers, your sisters and brothers, your daughters and sons. We are your friends and family, your neighbours and colleagues. You can make a difference to the lives of people you love. You can make a difference to the lives of people you don’t even know. You can make a difference to my life.
The marriage equality referendum on 22 May is purely about equality. Nothing else.
It is interesting looking at the Irish nation through the lens of the upcoming marriage equality referendum. It is a snapshot of the big ‘Us’. Exactly where we are at in terms of our vision and aspirations for ourselves, for our country and our place in the world.
The mother and father whose family has been used in a poster for the ‘No’ side of the upcoming referendum on marriage equality have asked Amnesty International Ireland to release the following statement on their behalf.
I’ve been wearing a wedding ring for three happy years. We’ll be celebrating our fourth anniversary in September. More recently I’ve been celebrating my support of marriage for all couples by wearing a Yes Equality badge, sometimes in English, sometimes in Irish.
Last Wednesday on College Green a lady of sorts asked me if I spoke Irish. “Tá roinnt agam ach ní bíonn mórán seans agam í a úsáid”, my brain answered, a plan stymied by the fact my mouth was full.
It has been far too often that we in One Family have had to reassure and comfort upset parents in response to the latest negative portrayals of children in one-parent families in the media.
Reassuringly the gaps between these onslaughts have become longer and each time I think that perhaps they have ended and that perhaps people now realise that positioning one type of family as better than others is finally unacceptable. But the past few weeks of the referendum campaign has shown us that the No side don’t have qualms about (mis)using children.
On 22 May Irish citizens are being asked to vote on the issue of marriage equality. On paper, this referendum has nothing to do with children. Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald assures us that the legal rights of children in LGBT families are being dealt with separately. In actuality however, marriage equality will impact the lives of some children. It will make it possible that children of LGBT families could grow up with married parents. Now, and in the future, these children will exist. So, why not use this referendum to have a meaningful conversation about LGBT families? Avoidance of this same conversation will not progress undecided voters any closer to a YES vote. In fact, avoidance may allow unnecessary fears about children in LGBT families to grow.