Some Good News from Ireland By Richard Miller (London)
The results of Ireland's dual referendum are now in and the woke changes that were proposed to change the meaning of "family'" and to the references to a "woman's duty" in the home, the "care" question, have been rejected with 67 per cent voting "No" in the "family" referendum and 74 per cent voting "No" in the "care" referendum. This is a sound rejection of the basics of the gender agenda. The less-than-hidden objective was to continue the attack upon the traditional conception of the family, but the Irish people were not fooled. The Irish prime minister argued prior to the referendum that all was involved was a change of "sexist" language, which was his way of referring to the traditional family and gender relations.
However, rather than see this defeat as showing that their Leftist agenda is fundamentally flawed, they are blaming the wording of the referendum as being too complex for the people to understand, showing that they regard the people as dumb. But they vote, and voted.
"The Irish people have just delivered a stunning rebuke to the political establishment. In Friday's dual referendum, voters overwhelmingly rejected the government's attempts to change the meaning of 'family' and the references to women in Ireland's constitution. Sixty-seven per cent voted 'No' in the 'family' referendum and 74 per cent voted similarly in the 'care' referendum.
In the family referendum, the government wanted to change the meaning of 'family', as defined in the 1937 constitution, so that it extended beyond marriage to include households based on 'durable relationships'. In the care referendum, it proposed replacing language surrounding a 'woman's duties' in the home with a clause recognising the role of 'family members' in the provision of care.
The vagueness of the formulations is no accident. Its authors' wanted to obscure their objective – namely, to devalue the moral authority of the traditional marital family unit. Since an explicit attack on the status of marriage was likely to provoke a backlash, the government tried to hide its motives behind meaningless platitudes about 'durable relationships'.
Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the government simply wanted to change the 'very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women' in the constitution. For the likes of Varadkar, the term 'old-fashioned' serves as a pejorative way of saying 'traditional'. As far as these woke technocrats are concerned, anything that smacks of tradition is bad.
The Yes campaigners claimed that the traditional idea of the family no longer reflects the contemporary reality of Ireland where, according to Politico, 'two-fifths of children are born out of wedlock and most women work outside the home'. Yet it seems that the majority of Irish people prefer 'old-fashioned' ideals to those promoted by their cultural and political elites.
Irish voters have not simply rejected the Irish government here – they have also rejected the entire political establishment. After all, Varadkar's proposals were supported by all of Ireland's major political parties, as well as by most NGOs, academics and cultural elites. The overwhelming defeat of these proposals shows how out of touch the political establishment is. So many politicians, academics and pundits have no real idea how ordinary people feel about family life. Yes, a growing number of children are born out of wedlock in Ireland. But the majority of Irish people still see the institution of marriage as the foundation of society.
Predictably, Ireland's political elites are blaming everything other than themselves for this defeat. In particular, they claim that the wording of the constitutional amendments was far too difficult for ordinary people to understand."
Comments