Ireland’s gay marriage vote was never an equal contest

In more ways than one it’s impossible to be heard above the din right now in the wake of the Yes vote in Ireland on gay marriage. There’s a special noise that goes with an orgy of self-congratulation, a roar of mutual approbation, and it drowned everything else out in Dublin as the results came in today. Like rugby, only more triumphalist. Actually, I was watching the scene from the Sky studio in Millbank, where my interlocutor in central Dublin, Patrick Strudwick, a journalist and activist, was appearing on a screen on the streets and had to shout over the crowd to make himself heard, to repeat, over and over again, ‘It’s a victory for love, for equality, for human rights’.

Mind you he did go off piste sufficiently to declare that I was a bitter loser and a bigot (I was expressing concern that the family courts would be influenced by the vote when it came to decisions on the guardianship and custody of children).