Ireland No Longer Swayed By Virtue Signalling Elites
Is the game up for the peddlers of insane ideology.
I was proud of our country today when we rejected both referendums by massive majorities. An overwhelming victory for critical thinking. Extraordinary when you consider there was no real No campaign and all government parties, with the exception of Aontu, alongside The National Women's Council, the publicly funded, queen of quangos were to varying degrees of fervour advocating a Yes vote.
Having led the electorate along a path of radical legislative change since the marriage referendum of 2015, the forces of social progress believed the time was ripe to set about ripping both marriage and motherhood from the Constitution. To sell the ticket they cynically inserted what Aontu's leader, Peadar Toibin called 'the hollow husk' of token recognition for family carers. The shameful ploy has served to divide the disability sector, perhaps one of the most egregious consequences of this costly exercise in virtue signalling.
As the Referendum date approached, a number of high profile, liberal voices from the legal sphere began to challenge the ingratiating rhetoric of inclusion the Government and its agents were peddling. Without this wake up call, the country may well have drifted along with the righteous, siren voices of progress. McDowell's intervention was a game changer. I think we can say that, after a long distinguished career in public life, this was his finest hour. He has done his country a service which will define his reputation.
He confidently predicted a No/No result. People just needed to be alerted to the full implications of what he would later describe as 'dud' amendments. I was afraid to hope that Ireland might be heading for its own 'Voice' moment though I entertained the thought. I refer to the recent referendum in Australia which proposed giving a voice in parliament to unelected representatives of native ethnic groups. Despite the guilt-tripping rhetoric, a solid majority of Australians, including many of the native ethnic community itself, rejected the government's patronising virtue signalling.
I dared not hope that our country too might see beyond the specious rhetoric despite the tangle of unresolved concerns and legal uncertainty. I feared we would succumb yet again to shallow pleas for inclusion to advance a socially corrosive agenda.
The government and its agents were unable to convincingly address the questions raised by McDowell and some others. What we got was waffle, evasion, moral grandstanding and ad hominem attacks. We began to see what the emperor was not wearing.
Finding themselves somewhat on the back foot, the old scaremongering charge made a reappearance. Tanaiste, Micheal Martin, under pressure from the brilliant Maria Steen, in a Prime Time debate, reached for this rather overplayed card, a gotcha effort that richoteted back on him with a bound.
In 2015, 'No' campaigners were told repeatedly that surrogacy had nothing to do with changing the definition of marriage. Eight years on, we see how surrogacy has been normalised. We see the government, despite a ban on commercial surrogacy in Ireland, are nevertheless drawing up legislation to register commissioning couples, or even individuals, as parents of babies born through surrogate mothers in poor countries. This is a direct consequence of allowing people to marry and 'found a family', 'irrespective of gender'. During the Abortion Referendum, the scaremongering charge centered on claims that abortion numbers would rise if the referendum was passed when the government insisted that they would decrease because of safeguards, including the three day waiting period. Well we know now what such pledges were worth. Over the five years since that referendum abortions have escalated exponentially year on year. The 'scaremongers' were right.
Scaremongering' charges in the recent referendums will be harder to raise since it was prominent legal personalities who pointed out the pitfalls. The lack of definition of 'durable relationships' and how successive or even contemporaneous 'durable relationships' could be equal under the law to marital unions were just two of the many conundrums thrown up by Michael McDowell.
Bizarrely, those who told us in 2015 that marriage conferred a unique dignity and status, culturally as well as legally, on a relationship are the same people who campaigned to reduce marriage to parity with every other relationship that passes the undefined 'durability' test. Had the referendum succeeded, there would very soon be nothing left of the institution of marriage constitutionally, civilly, and over time, culturally. We would have reached the final stage of the great socio-iconoclastic project that began with the levelling of gender and parenthood before it advanced on marriage and motherhood.
The influence of opinion forming elites on the electorate were formidable and extended to the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Justice Maria Baker. who despite knowing, better than most, that new constitutional amendments have implications for existing and forthcoming new laws dismissed all concerns put to her about the strong possibility of unintended consequences. Polygamy was not going to be an issue she disingenuously assured RTE listeners because polygamy was a crime in Ireland. The Interviewer failed to push back by pointing out that Irish law does not forbid polygamous or polyamous non marital relationships which could well pass the 'durable' test should the referendum succeed. She was never pressed to explain how marriage could still have special protection under the Constitution if it wadeclared equal in status to non-marital 'durable' relationships. Such glib, unprobed reassurances simply did not fly on this occasion thanks largely to Michael McDowell.
It is more likely we will hear politicians and mainstream media gaslighting the electorate's intentions in order to mitigate their defeat rather than bringing up the old scaremongering chestnut. With such a thumping majority for the constitutional status quo, no easy assumptions can be made about motives. However, it is clear to see how our society continues to unravel as liberalising, distinction obliterating legislation, 'unwise social experimentation' in the words of Michae McDowell, rolls over our notions of what men, women, parenthood, marriage and family are.
This levelling ideological juggernaut came to a shuddering stop today. The government and its satellite of quangos, in particular the poisonous and parasitic National Women's Council who wanted to take mothers and women out of the Constitution on Mothers' Day, and make it harder for them to be supported when they chose to look after their own children at home now realise that we are not the Yes men and Yes women they took us for.