Those dirty little islanders!

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fe03ec62-0135-11e5-a60e-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3aysZ6vc8

Irish voters have given their overwhelming backing to same-sex marriage in one of the most extraordinary referendum results in the country’s history.
As counting got under way around the country on Saturday after an exceptionally high turnout in the referendum on changing the Irish constitution to recognise gay marriage, campaigners for a Yes vote hailed what they said would be a momentous result in this traditionally conservative country, while the No side conceded defeat. The official result is expected to be announced at about 5pm.

The early results suggest that Ireland is on course to become the first country to introduce same-sex marriage in a popular vote rather than through legislation or the courts.

“This is not a referendum, it is a social revolution in Ireland,” said Leo Varadkar, the health minister. “It makes us a beacon of equality and liberty for the rest of the world.”

Gay rights campaigners converged on the Royal Dublin Society, one of two counting centres in the city, on Saturday morning while thousands of young people looked on and cheered as piles of ballot papers clearly showing support for the measure began to stack up on the Yes side.

Campaigners said the key to the outcome was a surge in voting by young people — including by young emigrants who returned in large numbers for Friday’s referendum vote on an issue that has gripped the nation for months.

But they stressed that while the youth vote was essential, the scale of the Yes vote suggested that same-sex marriage received majority backing even from older voters in more conservative rural Ireland.

“We couldn’t have won it without young people, but they did not win it by themselves,” said Colm O’Gorman, head of Amnesty International in Ireland.

The Yes campaign generated the most active grassroots movement ever seen in an Irish referendum, with thousands of young people canvassing support door-to-door over many weeks.

Campaigners for a Yes vote say the introduction of same-sex marriage will end one of the last areas of discrimination against gay people in Ireland, which has usually been a laggard in introducing liberal social change. The country decriminalised homosexual acts only in 1993, and divorce was introduced two years later — many years after similar measures elsewhere in Europe.
[color="Red"]Apparently the sheeple learned fast!

The No campaign had insisted that backing the change would “redefine” the traditional Irish Catholic idea of marriage and the family in a way that would be unacceptable to Irish people. That was also the view of the Catholic Church, which emerged late in the campaign to urge a No vote but was largely sidelined in the debate — a sign of how its influence has diminished in recent years following sexual abuse scandals.
[color="Red"]Going by the Pope of Satan´s politics that is probably no accident.

The Iona Institute, a family values think-tank that led the No campaign, conceded that proponents of same-sex marriage had won “a handsome victory” but said it hoped the government would “address the concerns voters on the No side have about the implications [of the vote] for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.”

In the referendum, voters were asked to include a clause in the constitution that reads: “Marriage may be contracted between two people without distinction as to their sex.”