Tearing down Yes or No posters reveals lack of personal integrity

The atmosphere around the upcoming referendum is becoming more difficult to exist within as we edge closer to May 25th, when the Irish people will finally make a collective decision on the Eighth Amendment to our constitution. It has been a long time coming, and most Irish people have lived in complacency in relation to it for a long time.

Now, as the impending vote seeps into almost every area of Irish life, in our homes, offices, cars and solitary moments of thought, resentment has begun to mass. The resentment will vary depending on your position, but some resentments are universal. We are all tired of advocating for what we see as obviously the right thing to do (regardless of what it is). We are all sick of encountering hostility – at the supermarket, at work, at a family dinner. We all wish that May 26th would just arrive already, so that we might feel somewhat settled again; so that the trepidation and fear inside us (or the boredom, in the case of those who don’t care about the referendum) might abate.

In this sort of climate, our patience loses flexibility; one good tug and it is likely to snap. We thunder about, truculent or exhausted, and think “I’d better not encounter anyone very rude today, because I haven’t got the patience”. Access to the internet does not help with this situation at all. A brief glance at social media is enough to flood you with emotional people being uncharitable to one another, people attacking strawmen of their “opponent’s” positions, and general boorishness of the highest order. Deceit, bad manners and lack of integrity now pervade our daily lives.

After seeing footage on Twitter of Yes posters being torn from poles in my native Limerick, I felt in need of a break. The idea of ignorant knuckle-draggers deciding what others have the right to see immersed me in a miasma of irritation and despair, so I went for a walk in north central Dublin near where I live. I will be voting Yes in this referendum for a variety of carefully considered reasons, none of which mattered to a man I passed, who, seeing my "Repeal" jumper from across the street, gave me a look of disgust and shouted some expletives outlining the sort of person I must no doubt be. I am sympathetic to the better arguments in favour of a No vote but disagree with them. Still, by this point I had had quite enough of that day's exposure to the "Love Both" mentality and its advocates.

I’m not a philistine but I have very little interest in travel

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George Hook got outraged and blamed me and avocado toast

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‘My partner is handsome. Other women give him the glad eye. This is thrilling’

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My English cat is now Irish: she pretends not to see what she doesn’t want to deal with

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Deeply embarrassing

It did not take long, however, to notice that several No posters along my route in Dublin 1 and 7 had been torn down and thrown to the ground, tucked between walls and railings, or turned to face away from the road so they could not be seen. This is a deeply embarrassing state of affairs. In that moment, after another day of referendum-related guff, I simply felt worried for all of us. On every side, people defend their position on the Eighth in terms of principle – they make moral arguments. Moral arguments entail that ends do not justify means, and yet here we stand, baying and chomping at one another, each shrieking about the lack of integrity of the other sort of person, as though they are a sub-species of human.

Tearing down or moving posters reveals a lack of personal integrity and respect for democracy, and a compromise of personal values; the very personal values that both sides argue the other is entirely lacking in. People tearing down posters presumably hold that they are justified in tearing down the “other side’s”  posters because “the other side” lacks integrity, and yet the act of tearing them down declares of the people who do it that they have no integrity at all. I know which side I hold to be right in this referendum, but none of us should sacrifice our individual integrity (something which cannot be taken, but only willing sacrificed) in order to gesture pettily at the “other side”.

We all have to put our trust in the Irish people, many of whom inevitably won't agree with us, but there will still be an Ireland the day after this referendum, and its people will be the same ones who voted with or against your belief. That bears remembering.