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The votes are still being counted, but the results are obvious: Ireland just voted to approve gay marriage, with landslide numbers and incredible turnout.
The number of “Yes” votes in the national referendum is so high that the only question left, while the ballots keep being counted, is whether any constituency in the whole country will have had a “No” majority – even in rural conservative areas, it’s staying pretty close to 50-50, favoring Yes by a point or two.
They’re now the first country to approve gay marriage by national vote.
I’m too excited to articulately tell you how awesome this is.
If you want to read something smart on the matter, check out this Daily Beast piece about how the overwhelming support of gay marriage is essentially a giant “F you” to the Catholic Church, which lost national trust after the child sexual abuse scandals of the last decade – and then proceeded to campaign against gay marriage by urging people to Think of the Children.
If you want to have a happy cry into your Saturday brunch: Ireland has a large population of mostly young people living abroad. It also doesn’t have absentee voting. The result was #hometovote, an incredibly moving hashtag of people tweeting their journeys home to vote for gay marriage.
Ireland is way up there in the top three of countries I’ve ever lived in, and when I was there the LGBT society at my university in Limerick made me welcome with open arms. I’ve been so, so proud to watch them campaign these past few months – and I wish I could be there for the parties tonight! Seriously, congratulations, all of you beautiful people.