Marriage equality: The young movement that swung the Yes vote

On Saturday, May 23rd, 2015, when it was becoming clear that the people of Ireland had voted Yes to marriage equality, Belong To founding director Michael Barron spoke to the media at the count centre in the RDS.

“We’ve changed forever what it means to grow up LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] in Ireland,” he said. “The Irish people, via the ballot box, have given each and every gay child and young person in Ireland – and across the world – a strong and powerful message that they are loved, they are cared for, and don’t need to change who they are.”

Belong To was founded in 2003 to provide support for LGBT young people and, with its partners in the Belong To Yes coalition, it played a crucial part in the 2015 referendum campaign.

A diverse group of organisations working with and for young people – Foróige, Youth Work Ireland, Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, Headstrong, Yes Equality, Pavee Point, Start Strong, Unesco Child and Family Research Centre, Barnardos, the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Children’s Rights Alliance, the National Youth Council of Ireland, Epic and the Institute of Guidance Counsellors – joined Belong To to highlight the fact that LGBT rights are also children’s rights. It was the largest ever coalition of children’s rights groups in Irish history.

Belong To on board

In June 2014, after the Government announced that there would definitely be a referendum on marriage equality, the Belong To board made the decision that the organisation would actively campaign on the issue.

“Young people all over the country were telling us they wanted us to play a part in it and it was a really important thing for them,” said Barron.

Of course, as David Carroll, then executive director of Belong To, put it, "We were very keen to stress in the referendum campaign that we were not encouraging 16-year-olds to go out and get married the next day. But symbolically, in terms of seeing Ireland becoming a more progressive place, this remained one of the systematic barriers that told them they were second-class citizens."

Every one of the 4,000 LGBT young people across the country who attended Belong To’s youth groups said they were affected by this issue. “The Belong To Yes campaign is part of the Marriage Equality campaign,” said Barron a few days before the referendum. “But it’s also part of a much bigger picture – an overall picture of creating a fairer and equal Ireland for LGBT young people.”

The Belong To Yes campaign included a massive first-time voter registration drive, canvassing, and training and guidance for those who wanted to talk to friends and family about voting Yes.

The movement grows

But at the core was the formation of a coalition of Ireland’s leading children’s rights and youth organisations. Grainia Long became the chief executive of the ISPCC in February. That month she attended a meeting at Belong To’s offices, which made it clear to her that the ISPCC had a part to play in their campaign.

But procedure had to be carefully followed. “As an organisation it’s very important to us that we do follow a particular process in coming to a view on something,” she said. “So we simply did that. We followed the same test that we would apply in relation to any issue. Once we applied those tests it was very obvious to us that the ISPCC position would be to support a Yes vote, and that we were doing it informed by the professional opinion of our staff.”

Carroll said that the involvement of the youth organisations, whose high-profile spokespeople regularly appeared in print and on air throughout the campaign, had a very positive effect on young people themselves.

“For them to hear these very important and credible voices in Irish society saying ‘Your rights are our rights and we want to fight for your rights’ . . . was incredibly powerful,” he said.

“So as well as having a swaying effect on the audiences we don’t reach, which was the most obvious benefit, it really reaffirmed to thousands of LGBT young people around the country that this was an issue that was being taken on by the youth and children’s sector more generally.”

A parent speaks

Tina McGrath was one of several parents who agreed to speak publicly as part of the campaign. Her son came out in 1999, when he was 15.

“I have three children,” she said in May. “My daughter is married; she’s in her 30s. My youngest son is 28 and is getting married in September. And my other son is not equal in the sense of the law – but he is very equal to us. That’s why I think it is so important to young people, for 13-year-olds coming out, and even for young children growing up. If there is equality, if gay people can get married, they’re not looked on as different.”

On April 27th, a seminar took place in Dublin’s Smock Alley at which two LGBT young people, Ailish Kerr and Daniel Zagorvski, talked about what the constitutional lack of equality meant to them. Afterwards, 22-year-old Kerr said she “didn’t think twice” when Belong To asked her to speak at the seminar. “Most of my friends, even if they have been able to vote for years, this is their first time [voting] because it’s something we are all so passionate about.”

The tone hardens

The tone of the Belong To campaign soon turned out to be less “soft” than many of those involved had anticipated. What had been planned as a feel-good public campaign involving warm stories about LGBT young people and their families was forced to become much harder when children became the basis of the No campaign’s arguments.

No campaign posters and pundits declared that a Yes vote would damage children’s “right” to both a male and female parent, constantly linking marriage equality to easy access to surrogacy.

Many young people and their parents found the No campaign deeply distressing. “With all the interviews on TV at the moment, I know they’re giving a balanced view and interviewing both sides, but I find myself now going back to when my son came out at first,” said McGrath in May. “There’s an awful lot of emotion there in relation to what I went through with the bullying in school. [It’s] bringing back a lot of things about how it was and how young people have suffered.”

It was widely agreed by both parents and those who work with young people that the No campaign deeply affected young people.

“One of the things we realised,” said Carroll, “is that young people who have come out in the last couple of years . . . have often thankfully come out to a much better and more positive reception from family and friends, which is a sign that Ireland is changing for the better.

“But what happened to these young people as the debates began to take off was that they were being exposed to views that challenged their right to equality [for the first time] . . . I think that angered and upset quite a lot of parents who wanted the best for their children.”

Belong To Yes campaigners were determined to keep their own campaign positive. “I’m proud of the campaign we have run, and the overall Yes campaign,” said Barron in May. “I think collectively we’ve done an incredible job at keeping it positive. We could have got into a fight and we chose not to. Ultimately we didn’t want to be rowing over the airwaves about the rights of 12-year-olds, because that’s just not okay. Rather than doing that we kept presenting a positive image to counter it.”

Mary and the middle

On May 19th, Mary McAleese gave a powerful speech at a Belong To event in Wood Quay, Dublin, that was the result of six months of planning by the organisation. The personal aspect of McAleese’s speech, which was widely covered in the media, struck a chord with the public, as did her razor-sharp take-down of anti-marriage equality arguments.

“McAleese was a game-changer,” said Carroll. The former president basically “gave permission” for middle Ireland to vote Yes, he added.

In her speech, McAleese talked movingly about being the parent of a gay son. “My husband and I have been happily married for almost 40 years,” she said. “We are Catholics and have campaigned for marriage equality for gay citizens, as a family, since long before we had children. We believe happy marriages are good for individuals and for society. We believe happy gay marriages will be good for individuals and for society too. Will a Yes vote affect my heterosexual marriage or any heterosexual marriage? Not in the least. But it will greatly affect my life and the lives of all parents of gay children. It will give us peace of mind about our children’s future and pride in our country’s commitment to true equality. It will right an unacceptable wrong. Our gay children will be able to know the joy and peace and comfort of being part of a loving married couple fully recognised at the highest level our country can offer.”

After the victory on May 23rd, there was time for reflection. Looking back in July, Barron felt that a big part of what Belong To had done was to “get mainstream children and youth organisations to say Yes. [We managed] to reframe this issue so that mainstream children’s organisations could take on marriage equality as a children’s rights issue. We managed to make it about the kind of Ireland we wanted children to grow up in.”

• This is an edited extract from Belong To Yes: Voices from the Campaign, by Anna Carey, which is launched today. It is available as a free download from belongto.org