Brian O’Driscoll lines up with Gay Byrne to support same-sex marriage in Ireland

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/25/brian-o-driscoll-gay-byrne-same-sex-marriage-ireland

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They were singing Motown soul classics, reciting rap-style poems and reading passages of prose in honour of Roddy Doyle’s The Barrytown Trilogy in the new €40m Dun Laoghaire library on Thursday night.

A gathering of younger poets and novelists, described as “an apocalyptic amount of Dublin accents”, also read out chunks of expletive-flecked dialogue from Doyle’s characters to mark the Irish capital’s One City, One Book event, which this year is dedicated to the author of The Snapper, The Van and the Booker prizewinning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

The genius of Doyle was not the only subject under discussion in the room. Next month, Ireland votes on whether to allow same-sex marriage, and many in the audience who had come to praise Doyle had earlier taken part in the launch of Dun Laoghaire’s yes campaign. They had been part of a band of gay rights activists, trade unionists, secularists and even the odd local politician trying to convince voters in this prosperous, liberal seaside area of southern Co Dublin to vote yes on 22 May.

Among those on stage, reading in rap/hip-hop rhythms about drug addiction, crime, gangland killings and unemployment, was 36-year-old Karl Parkinson, a performance poet who grew up in the tough O’Devaney Gardens flats complex in inner-city Dublin.

Parkinson brings his brand of street-edge poetry into schools in some of the most deprived districts of Dublin. Tall, rake-thin and bald, with a goatee beard, Parkinson said he had noticed something interesting in the way the teenage boys he teaches were treating the upcoming poll. “On the one hand, the 15- and 16-year-old lads I come across will use the word ‘gay’ pejoratively. Everything that they don’t like – a certain video game, Man United, a TV programme, whatever – they will describe or label as ‘gay’, which is not right or acceptable, I tell them.

“Yet when you challenge them about the referendum, these kids get it. They will tell you they have gay members of their families, gay friends, and that they don’t see a problem in two gay people getting married here in Ireland.”

The author of a poetry collection entitled Litany in the City as well as a new novel, The Blocks, on growing up in the heroin-ravaged north inner city, Parkinson said such youthful tolerance extends far beyond Dublin: “I perform and recite in schools down in Co Offaly and the kids there have exactly the same attitude. They are puzzled if anyone says gay people can’t get married.”

When Doyle burst on to the literary scene in the mid- to late-1980s, Ireland was a radically different republic compared with today. The Catholic church could still strike fear into politicians’ hearts prior to the multiple paedophile priest scandals. Divorce was illegal, condoms could only be obtained with permission from your local GP, and gay sex was a criminal offence up to 1993. Small wonder that Doyle’s authentic accounts of north Dublin life, with its swearing, drinking, drug taking, casual sex and babies born out of wedlock, caused so much outrage among an older, conservative section of the population back then.

No one inside the Dun Laoghaire library believed those same conservative forces can press the rewind button and on 22 May send Ireland back to the age of social deference towards cardinals, bishops and the Vatican.

Dave Lourdan, from Clonakilty in rural Co Cork, said he was confident there would be a yes vote next month, even when it came to his parents’ generation. “My dad told me he was voting yes and he comes from that part of the population which is supposed to be uber-conservative. There are plenty like him who will vote for equality,” he said.

On the same day as the readings took place in Dun Laoghaire, the official yes campaign published a list of Irish celebrities who support gay marriage equality. They range from Irish rugby legend Brian O’Driscoll to Hollywood actor Colin Farrell. Even the rank and file of the Irish police, the Garda Síochána, have come out in favour of a yes. Ireland’s version of the police federation – the Garda Representative Association – published an editorial last week in its in-house magazine, the Garda Review, supporting same-sex marriage. The intervention was historic – the first time Ireland’s police force has taken a partisan position on a major political controversy to be put to the nation in a referendum. The no campaigners reacted with fury, accusing the GRA of breaking a tradition of political neutrality.

The no campaign has concentrated its fire on the implications of gay marriage for adopted children

From Dun Laoghaire library, beyond which mini-flotillas of yachts and small boats bobbed in the water, close to the piers where thousands of Irish citizens emigrated in search of work in Britain, it was hard to imagine that the no camp could turn the tide.

But the gap between the yes and no camps is narrowing, according to the last Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI opinion poll. While, overall, the yes side polled more than 70% before Easter, there are key differences among separate age groups. In the 65-plus age bracket, 43% said they would vote no, while 37% would support a yes vote. This is crucial, given that the over-65s have the strongest record for turning out to vote in Ireland, whether in elections or previous referendums.

The no campaign is comprised in the main of non-clerical, traditional Catholic intellectuals, writers and journalists who have concentrated their fire on the implications of gay marriage for adopted children. They claims a yes vote would lead to children being adopted by gay parents against the will of their wider family circle.

Mother of five and the no campaign spokeswoman Kate Bopp has claimed research shows that boys growing up without a father are prone to anger, while daughters without a father sometimes gravitate towards abusive relationships. Bopp and others like her voice concerns that gay marriage would shatter the traditional mother-father parental relationship. The claims are having some impact, particularly on the older generation.

Back inside the theatre, one audience member wearing a yes vote badge issued a warning. Eileen O’Mara, who lives in Dun Laoghaire, said she returned to her native north Tipperary in deepest rural Ireland a fortnight ago and found plenty of people opposed to gay marriage equality. “I took my mum to mass and heard the parish priest of our village denounce gay marriage as wrong. He didn’t explicitly tell the congregation to vote no on 22 May, but he couldn’t have been clearer,” said O’Mara.

“There are members of my family who will either vote no or are considering voting no next month. So this battle is far from over, and it’s up to us to convince the rural, older voter not to be scared into voting no.”

Then she produced a glossy leaflet from her handbag with the photograph of a grey-haired, suave-looking older man in profile. The face is as famous in the republic as U2’s Bono or Doyle. It is of Gay Byrne, the veteran TV presenter who first introduced the Beatles on screen for Granada Television and was for 32 years presenter of The Late Late Show, a Friday-night programme that discussed social taboos such as homosexuality and, later on, clerical abuse.

The straight television presenter’s decision to promote a yes vote has delighted O’Mara. “So many people of a certain age trust Gay Byrne,” she said.