How American money is changing politics in another country
In the past 18 months, two topical social issues have become big news in Ireland, and money from conservative American groups is trying to divide public opinion.
Ireland can be described as a country that missed the boat. In the 1960s and 1970s, while the rest of the Western World was experiencing the sexual revolution, Ireland was more repressed than ever. While supreme courts in other places were ruling in favour of legalised abortions and the legalisation of homosexuality, Ireland’s judges and politicians towed the line of socially conservative and ideologically anti-cosmopolitan talking heads. Ireland had only been independent at this point for about 40 years and the legacy of the 1916 Easter Rising and The War of Independence still hung over Irish life. Many of Ireland’s top politicians had actually been involved in the fighting and their sometimes extreme anti-British voices were often the loudest in the room.
“Anti-British” didn’t just mean a hatred of British values and the Empire, it meant that Ireland had to do the exact opposite to what Britain did on nearly every issue, and so extreme Catholicism took hold —because what could be seen as less English than being a Catholic? The Catholic Church became the most important instutition in the State. It ran 90% of public schools, it governed reform schools where young offenders were housed and it was at the centre of Irish life and informed all public policy. Condoms, for example, only became legal in Ireland in the late 1980s because of the Church’s influence.
Ireland’s conservatism in the past meant that even after the country reformed itself in the 1980s and 1990s and attitudes liberalised dramatically, there was still a hangover from the bad old days. While it would have been easy to push through abortion legislation in the 1970s while everybody else was doing it, Ireland’s wait means that it is now the sole Western Country that does not guarantee full abortion rights for women. You see, because Ireland was last to liberalise, an unbelievable amount of money from international conservative groups, that are attempting to hold Ireland up as the last bastion of decency and family values, floded into the country. This is despite public opinion broadly supporting abortion rights and full civil marriage for gay couples. As a result, the Irish government now has a disproportionate amount of campaigning to do in order to pass popular social bills. Take gay marriage for example. Support for full marriage rights in Ireland is stronger than in any American State. Opinion poll after opinion poll shows that upward of 83% of the public support it. Every elected party in the Irish Parliament supports it. To put it bluntly, there is no real domestic opposition. So why has the Irish government put the issue of marriage on the long finger until a referundum in 2015?
Well firstly, the government has been losing or coming close to losing quite a few referenda recently. Even a popular child protection bill saw relatively slim margins in the vote. Another bill to abolish the Irish Senate -an issue that polled well- lost by quite a large margin and was seen by some as a power grab. Secondly, the parties of the coalition government are made up of a liberal, city party called Labour (the junior coalition partner) and a more traditional centre-right party called Fine Gael (the senior partner). Historically, Fine Gael governments don’t like to rock the boat. They poll well in the countryside and in rich suburbs and rely on fiscally conservative voters for their support base. Their base isn’t necessarily very conservative socially like the Conservatives in The UK, for example, but they are older and wealthier and don’t generally appreciate people changing the values of the State. For Fine Gael, which gets the brunt of the attacks from conservative groups, another social debate is just too soon. So under pressure from labour and a Constitutional Convention which saw 78% vote in favour of holding a referendum on marriage, Fine Gael has promised to hold one in 2015, rather than 2014.
This one year difference mightn’t seem important, after all they are commited to allowing a referendum, right? -Well yes, but the year delay has given conservative groups such as the shadily funded “Iona Institute” a head start on campaigning and a chance to start dividing Irish society again. Where there was once consensus in Ireland, the country is now very much divided into the opinion groups of the poor countryside and the rich capital, Dublin, and it is because of international money and campaigning.
There is no doubt in my mind that the marriage referendum will pass by a large majority but how we get to that point really worries me. Ireland is not traditionally aligned along left and right like other countries. Most parties are not very ideological and will change their issue statements in line with public opinion. The influx of American money that started with the abortion debate last year and continues now with the issue of gay marriage is splitting society down the middle and beginning a culture of hating your opposition that hasn’t ever been seen in Ireland before. During the abortion debate, a group whose funding is nigh impossible to trace called “Youth Defence” parked vans with pictures of dead foetuses on city streets, invaded online forums and comment sections to spread lies about the government’s agenda, alledgedly took on young volunteers and encouraged them to publicly question other young people about their thoughts on abortion and generally caused a huge hubub over a bill that had widespread support (85% in some polls). Groups like these forced Irish people to divide themselves along the lines of quiet pro and loud anti abortion views and managed to cause some government backbenchers to split from the party.
The same is going to happen again with gay marriage. On a television show on the state broadcaster, RTÉ, two Saturdays ago, a drag performer who runs a popular gay club in Dublin called out a conservative Catholic journalist as a homophobe. RTÉ, claiming to have no other option because of Ireland’s defamation laws, gave the journalist a reported €85,000 settlement. RTÉ offered to pay the money to a neutral charity but the journalist, alledgedly backed by the Iona Institute, refused and insisted on a cash settlement. Rightly, this has caused outrage in Ireland. 2000 people turned up to protest the decision last weekend and social media has been scathing of RTÉ. These conservative groups love this kind of reaction, however. They love to get the majority riled up because they know it will make the minority conservative voters react with anger too and get them to raise their voices for the first time in this debate. No doubt over the coming months, just like with the abortion debate, the right will be stirred by these groups and will start loudly protesting this change to the constitution.
In 2009 when the previous government passed a civil unions bill only about 9 or 10 protestors showed up outside parliament. It is my view that this was because the bill attracted little or no international attention and no international money. The 2015 bill has and will. We will see louder protests and a continuing of the divide in society along left and right, not because the majority or even a large minority of Irish people have a problem with gay marriage, but because advertising campaigns funded with money from Catholic Americans and even evangelical groups in America will plant seeds in older voters’ heads that gay people are a threat to their grandchildren and that gay adoption will inevitably cause children to turn gay. The sad fact is that there won’t be any defamation law that shuts down these lies and the divide in our society will grow bigger.
The debate has drawn international attention and many celebrities and public figures are, rightly, lining up to support gay rights in Ireland. Without this influx of international money and attention, however, they wouldn’t need to. The bill would easily pass and there would only be quiet, dignified opposition like last time. In 2009 at the passing of the Civil Partnerships Bill, Minister for Justice and Law Reform Dermot Ahern said: “This is one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation to be enacted since independence. Its legislative advance has seen an unprecedented degree of unity and support within both Houses of the Oireachtas.” It passed 48-4 in the Senate and with less than 5 dissenting voices out of 160 in the lower house.
I fear the same will not be true this time.
