19 Jun 2008
Ireland backs gay marriage
Just in time for Pride, there were two online polls this week – on ireland.com and rte.ie – that asked if Ireland should allow gay marriage and/or civil unions for same-sex couples. If you take the results on face value, it seems we're a terrifically liberal little European country these days. Quite significant majorities on both were in favour of gay marriage and/or civil unions. Of course, the old 'lies, damn lies and statistics' (or whatever the phrase is) rule applies and I guess we should take the result with a large grain of salt. Only a few thousand people answered, but more importantly as a measure of what the population really thinks, they were likely to be unrepresentative. Firstly, they were Irish Times readers and RTÉ online users - likely to be young liberal types. Secondly, I heard about the polls before I saw them, from people who wanted me to help them skew the answer to 'yes'. But despite that, it's still a little bit heartwarming that such things aren't overwhelmed by deniers thundering on about sodomites and the delicate sanctity of the current model of marriage. It's worth recalling that way back in 1993, polls were overwhelmingly against the decriminalisation of homosexuality, but thankfully, we elect governments that tend to ignore democratic opinion!