Religion and politics: Gay marriage

By a 62% majority, gay marriage won in the Republic today--the world's first popular vote on the issue. I've been moved to tears by the joy expressed by so many people in the twitter sphere. You might think the traditionally Catholic south would be more conservative on this issue than the Protestant north. You would be wrong.

I don't have the analytical chops to fully flesh this out but here's my shorthand. The Catholic church was so powerful for so long in the south that it is getting its comeuppance. In the north, the opposite has happened. Religion was a bedrock part of the identity of each tribe during the troubles and has become more recalcitrant with time. While the judge ruled against Asher's in the gay cake case, the bakers had plenty of support--a rally to support them attracted thousands. The following is stolen from a fascinating article by a political science professor at Queen's. He dissects the legacy of the troubles, finding that it has "brutalised" society. Full article.

Some dislike the principle of equality because they see it as a concession to Republicans imposed by a duplicitous British government that wants rid of Unionists. Thus, upholding anti-discrimination principles is looked on differently when these principles are perceived to be essentially anti-Unionist.

There is a second legacy of the conflict at play in that Conservative forms of Christianity still dominate in Northern Ireland, whether in terms of conservative Catholicism or evangelicalism. The violence inhibited secularisation and liberalisation and by default created defensive religions, resistant to change, where religious practices were conserved as part of protecting sectarian identities that seemed under threat.

More significantly, the Troubles brutalised everyday life, turning it not only inward and conservative but violent and aggressive. This is still evident in the rise of race hate crime, where one occurs every three hours in Belfast according to police figures, as well as in the polarisation of community relations, the continued reproduction of sectarian identity politics, and high levels of suicide, substance abuse and use of antidepressants.

But religion, too, was brutalised, as shown in the emphasis in Northern Irish Christianity on the hectoring, judgemental, fire-and-brimstone God of the Old Testament rather than the empathetic, loving, merciful, forgiving Jesus.

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