Michael G. Cronin takes a nuanced look at what was won in the marriage referendum campaign.
To think rigorously about the politics of same-sex marriage is to be confronted with impediments to such thinking, and the referendum victory on 22nd May crystallised these for us.
Firstly, it reminds us sharply that politics is never just ‘political’ – the exercise of rational choice by autonomous individuals – but is traversed and determined by emotions, desires and affects.
Thus, those of us keen to articulate a leftist, gay affirmative and anti-homophobic critique of the same-sex marriage campaign found ourselves opposing an idea in which so many people whom we admired, respected and loved were deeply and passionately invested. If this was an uncomfortable position in the years leading up to the referendum campaign, once that campaign began it became entirely untenable. The structure of public discourse precluded the possibility of any such gay-affirmative critique. You simply had to take a stand against homophobia, bigotry and prejudice (not to mention stupidity) and commit wholeheartedly to a political objective about which you had deep reservations. More alarming still was the uneasy realisation that some part of you actually shared that anxious longing for recognition by respectable society that was evidently as strong as the demand for social justice in the campaign.
The second impediment to rigorous thought is that same-sex marriage is a political issue that requires us to think dialectically. In short, we must realise that the achievement of the right to marriage for lesbian and gay couples in this country is simultaneously a progressive and a conservative development. An inclusive, pluralist and just vision of our society prevailed over a vision that was rigid, narrow and intolerant.
But we must also confront the reality that this vote solidified the institution of marriage as the lynchpin of a patriarchal and property-owning society. Why did politicians across the spectrum support the Yes campaign? To be sure, this was a sign that enlightened, progressive and liberal values are taking firmer root in our political culture. But as a political objective same-sex marriage was also entirely conducive to the prevailing neo-liberal ideology and its diminished conception of citizenship.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Yes campaign was the rhetorical use of a narrowly defined, formalist and contractual conception of equality. This rhetoric conjured a neo-liberal vision of lesbian and gay households ‘equally’ free to compete as privatised units of consumption and striving to successfully manage their resources; securing their property rights, managing their pensions and healthcare, funding their children’s education. It is worth reiterating, now that victory is secured, that the conception of equality employed by the Yes campaign bears little relation to that emancipatory vision of justice and equality offered by socialism. It would be great to think that the Left’s opponents in next year’s elections will be the Catholic Right so decisively routed on May 22; alas, the really significant opponents will actually be those liberal allies (including some in the LGBT political movement) with whom this referendum was fought.
The campaign pitched two versions of the family against each other. The exclusive, fetishised abstraction projected by the No side, and the complex, humane reality of family life as we live it. One reason for the decisive defeat of the No side was that their fetish was not only offensive to lesbian and gay people, but equally so to most straight people who saw little reflection of their own diverse families in the No rhetoric. This is one significant reason for the high Yes vote in working class areas.
But, and this is the most difficult impediment to thinking rigorously about this issue, the campaign also resembled a disturbing hall of mirrors. The fantasy image of a stable, happy ‘traditional’ family so dear to the Catholic Right – a ‘traditional’ family which, of course, never existed – was reflected in that equally fantastic image of an imaginary stable, happy ‘non-traditional’ family projected by the Yes side. The uncomfortable, possibility here is that beneath their obvious political differences both the liberal and conservative sides of this debate shared the same investment in the hyper-familialism so characteristic of our neo-liberal times. Rather than confront the structural causes of injustice and inequality in our globalised economy, liberals and conservatives seek refuge in the place that in our secular times falsely promises to be “the heart of a heartless world.”
Michael G. Cronin is a lecturer in English in Maynooth University.
