a conservative country is astounding. Cheers for the Irish!

Nice wide margin 😀

Roscommon/South Leitrim are very rural, even though the vote was relatively close. Happy to see that Wexford (where my family is from) supported equality so strongly.

I knew that it would pass. Today is a great day for equal rights. My mother's family is from Sligo and Mayo. My father's family is from Cork.

The PBS News Hour (yeah, I know, for old white people according to one DUer) had extensive coverage of this last night. Rural v. urban. Expats flying home from as far away as Australia... THAT is impressive.

http://blogs.wsj.com/expat/2015/05/23/as-ireland-voted-for-same-sex-marriage-thousands-of-expats-came-hometovote/

Straight girl, shacked up 21 years (not interested in marriage for myself) and crying big years over all the #HomeToVote tweets. For some reason, one about the émigrés being like an elf army showing up at the end of The Lord of the Rings really did me in.

One guy interviewed had racked up thousands in airfare just to get #hometovote. Meanwhile in this country, or at least my state, midterm turnout barely averages in the double-digits.

I just looked up NC's May 2012 vote on marriage equality -- turnout was just under 35%. And that was with the vote scheduled the same day as the Republican primary, with the "God hates" crowd loaded for bear.

This summer's SCOTUS ruling cannot get here fast enough... I'm optimistic!

Congrats to the people of Ireland!

On Sun May 24, 2015, 11:45 AM an alert was sent on the following post:

A big Fuck You to the Vatican and WonderPope. I love it!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=1101632

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS

Vicious, profane slur on the Catholic Church and its liberal new pope.

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Sun May 24, 2015, 12:03 PM, and the Jury voted 1-6 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Give me a break. Please learn how to use the alert system properly and don't let your tender feewings get all in a knot over somebody being critical of the Pope and the Catholic Church.
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I think the comment is vile and shows considerable prejudice against catholics. But I do not see it as being any different from other fundamentalist atheist comments. It is an opinioin, and opinions are like ...
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: LOL! The news is something to celebrate and the sentiment is quite appropriate given the nature of the surprising result after 2000 years of brutal oppression by the Vatican/Church!


Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Fuck off, alerter.
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: meh
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Offensive as heck.
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.

-1.

This "liberal" pope gets great PR but he is just as vile as the rest when it comes to gay people:

One recent example:
http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/davidbadash/pope_francis_announces_support_for_laws_banning_same_sex_marriage_and_adoption

Because you recently signed up on our liberal-progressive discussion board, I'm SURE you are also disgusted by homophobia and misogyny no matter where it occurs -- correct?

I think, have gone the way of American Catholics. i.e. Socially liberal, for the most part. Catholics on both sides of the pond pick and choose which Church prescriptions they're going to follow and which they aren't. The previous ultra-conservative pope was in open conflict with American nuns, who he said were infected with "feminism". The "rock star Pope" Francis may not directly contradict teachings about homosexuality and abortion, but at least he's insisting that churches not exclude gays, divorcees and people who've had abortions from communion/services, signalling some tolerance and respect for individual choice.

See post #32.

62.1% vs 37.9%. That is just brilliant.

my people are a FINE people!

what the referendum vote means:


Civil partnerships for same-sex couples have been legal in Ireland since 2010, giving couples legal protection which could be changed by the government.
However, if the vote is passed, married gay people would have a constitutional standing that could only be removed by another popular vote.


Ireland Forever!

Thank you for posting. Just showed it to my fiancé. Neither of us is Irish but this brought tears to our eyes. How wonderful!

What you have is 50 state votes for somewhat unproportional electoral college votes.

The reason why is that the early US politicians distrusted direct democracy, and set up the system to make it very unlikely it would ever happen.

Constitutional Republic that also mandates state governments have a republican form of governance.

At a national level, we don't put fundamental rights issues up for popular votes. Instead, we place those decisions in the hands of Justices from elite law schools. Most of them went to elite schools anyway, but some went to Yale.

is not about preventing a tyranny of the majority in the sense you've sketched it. Electing the president and changing the constitution are different processes (a two-thirds vote in the house).

In any event, electoral college votes for president is a stupid anachronism and serves no useful purpose in the modern world. The USA pioneered a bunch of innovations especially on the checks and balances side and acted as a model for a lot of newer democracies (along with the UK parliamentary system that inspired it, which is actually replicated by slightly more countries), but its system of government is far from perfect. It's packed with anachronisms

While states may have provisions to amend law or state constitutions by direct vote, there is no parallel federal process. There are two methods to amend the constitution. One is that 2/3 of each House of Congress passes an amendment and the other is a Constitutional Convention where 2/3 of the states propose an amendment. With either path, the proposed amendment must then be ratified by 3/4 of the states. But neither route has direct popular vote by the national electorate.

about how the POTUS is elected

And people still think the world is moving backwards.

Go Ireland!

South Africa also enshrined a prohibition on discrimination based on sexual orientation in our constitution, which has inevitably led to marriage equality (and insurance equality and all the other good stuff), but unlike Ireland it was not by popular mandate but was negotiated by the progressive parties and the ANC during the transition out of Apartheid. If we put it to a popular vote it would probably be struck down. The fact that this was passed by the people of Ireland signals a massive shift in attitudes, especially among Catholics, in Ireland.

This is great to see. Congratulations to Ireland's citizens and voters.

Russia, China, old soviet allies?