When Dorine Rohan's book Marriage: Irish Style was published in 1969, the foreword warned: "Having read it you will be infinitely wiser and less smug than you were before." Rohan's slim volume caused quite a stir for a simple reason: it broke a significant taboo. She had persuaded people to talk honestly about what went on in their marriages. They were happy to do so because "they rarely had a chance to talk to anyone at length".
Public discourse about marriage was scant and Rohan’s book uncovered a range of negative experiences, including inhibition, ignorance, resignation, lethargy and, most strikingly, sexual dysfunction: “I encountered in many cases a positive revulsion to the sex act. This revulsion I found not only in women, but some men I spoke with told me of their inhibitions which they felt would never be overcome.”
If there was an overriding theme running through Rohan’s book it was that marriage was seen by so many as negative. Her book was not the work of a professional sociologist but it was valuable in highlighting the gulf between the rhetoric that idealised marriage and the reality for many.
She also underlined something that would go on to have a powerful impact on attitudes to other historically taboo subjects in Ireland – the power of personal testimony. If the referendum on marriage equality is won on May 22nd, it will underline, among other things, the potency and relevance of such testimony in changing attitudes and minds about what constitutes, not just marriage, but human happiness and diversity.
Individual
testimony What has marked this referendum campaign
is the space afforded to individual stories: testimony from gay men and women, young and old, and their siblings, friends, parents and grandparents. There is something cathartic about this and the testimony stands in stark contrast to the way individuals profoundly affected by decisions in previous referendum votes were too often invisible or regarded as abstract during the campaigns.
As Rohan revealed more than 45 years ago, there was a lot of pain behind the facade of the Irish marriage. Undoubtedly there still is but at least there is a lot more honesty and discourse about it. Guaranteeing same-sex couples the right to marry will not make the institution of marriage a new paradise or get rid of dysfunctional relationships but it will certainly do something that, according to their posters and their many media appearances, will cause dismay to the No side: it will redefine marriage.
As I see it, such redefinition is not in any way threatening or negative: it is profoundly affirmative.
Redefining Irish marriage is as old as Irish marriage itself. Wearing my historian’s hat, I am bemused rather than annoyed at the posters I see from the No side about the dangers of redefinition.
In 1983, UCD historian Art Cosgrove edited another slim book, Marriage in Ireland, which contained essays from a number of prominent historians. The book underlined how, over the centuries, many factors influenced many varied attitudes towards marriage. This is how the book was introduced: "Family pressures, property considerations, the views of the community as reflected in law or custom as well as individual choice have all helped to shape marriage patterns . . . In the seventh and eighth centuries the influence of the Christian church on marriage practice was considerable, but secular concepts of marriage and its function remained and ran contrary to the canonical regulations laid down in the 12th and 13th centuries." Cosgrove concluded: "Doubtless, the long evolution of marriage will continue."
Guilt and shame
It has also been suggested that voters should not be driven to vote Yes by feelings of guilt or shame about how gay people have been treated historically in this country. Why not? What is wrong with that being a consideration or a motivating factor? There is every reason to feel shame about how Irish society subjected gay people to harrowing and hurtful discrimination for far too long, and one way of acknowledging that is to vote Yes. When historic or ongoing discrimination against other minorities has been exposed there have been, quite rightly, demands for frankness, redress, commitments to equality and ensuring such treatment is not possible again.
A Yes vote offers a chance to express solidarity in a very meaningful way, advance human rights and contribute positively to evolving the definition of marriage. It would also be a powerful antidote to a dishonest definition of “the common good”, wrapped up in declarations of the importance of “tradition” and “stability” that have too frequently undermined truth and humanity.