The Yes Vote Is Not A Victory For the Workers.

national | politics / elections | opinion/analysis

Saturday May 23, 2015 20:40

by Paddy Hackett

paraichackett at gmail dot com

The Yes Vote Fortifies The Marriage Institution

Marriage in the West is a bourgeois institution.

The outcome of the same sex referendum in the Irish Republic shows a clear majority in favour of it.

Many people see this outcome as a manifestation of progress. However this is far from the case. The popular vote in favour of same sex marriage merely means that the electorate support the widening of the institution of marriage in Ireland. But the issue is that marriage is an oppressive institution that sustains the nuclear family. Marriage today is predominantly an institution of the state and the Christian churches.In the course of human history the family has assumed different forms. The present prevailing family form in the West is a bourgeois form that plays a key role in inculcating bourgeois morality and ideology into the working class.

Much of the radical Left and the gay rights movement by calling for a yes vote were promoting nothing but the fortification of the bourgeois marriage institution at a time when the working class have been increasingly shifting away from it. Instead of calling for a yes vote the call for the abolition of marriage should have been the demand. The very ironical fact that many of those that promoted and voted a yes vote are members of the Catholic Church illustrates the bourgeois nature of the yes campaign. Furthermore the fact that the major parliamentary parties actively supported a yes vote is more evidence of the bourgeois basis of the campaign.

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Comments (4 of 4)

just a weapon of mass distraction and FG giving two fingers to the public and democracy itself

by gaybanker

Sun May 24, 2015 21:09

Just a political distraction. Nothing more.
They dragged this out for months to distract us. Next up they'll throw us the abortion football again.
Pissing themselves laughing at us behind closed doors they are.

You won't see any referenda on whether banks private losses can be socialised again without consulting the people.
Nor will you see any on EU membership
Or privatisation of state assets
Or TD's and upper civil service administrators and banksters pay levels.
Or Nama
Or social housing / rent controls

or anything that truly affects 100% of the population as opposed to just ~5% or less who are gay and want to get married,
or the tiny number of arrogant young fianna fail members considering running for president.

We've been had ladies and gentlemen. Consider the cynical disdain our political class must hold the general public in to
put this before us as the priority referendum we need to hold above all others. It's a huge insult to us all.
I'm happy gay folk can now get married, but relative to other far more important matters that affect all of us, holding this referendum first,
was a complete FG / Labour inside joke on the public at large.

equality is a buzz word

by Mike Socrates

Mon May 25, 2015 10:48

Equality is a current buzz word, bandied about by the media trendies and catchall politicians. Living standards and life chances are what matter for individuals and families. Remember that at the next general election (it could be sooner than April 2016) and vote for those candidates/parties that assert your interests. The general tendency of the commercially-driven mass media is to support centre-right fiscal policies. Remember that the populist pro-gay media do not advocate economic policies favouring the households earning under 25,000 euro per annum. Independent newspapers and the Irish Times are not your friends at election time and in the months before budgets are laid before the Dail.

As for the institution of marriage - discussion about that deserves a separate thread. Marx's view of the holy family; what anarchists have said etc. - all very complicated philosophical, sociological and economic stuff requiring sophisticated thinking.

Marriage keeps tabs on you.

by Michael McGrath

Thu Aug 20, 2015 16:14

When I was an activist with the late Sid Rawle in Chalk Farm Commune, London, in 1974, Sid always maintained that marriage was a tool of the State to keep track of the children and so he encouraged everybody never to marry and never to register their kids' births or names.

If children aren't registered

by Barney Cottbell

Thu Aug 20, 2015 17:23

Sid Rawle lived according to his ideals and enjoyed many good times, while surviving bad times, at least once in jail for trying to organise an illegal summer festival. Sid had seven children by different mothers. If they weren't registered how did they qualify for social welfare entitlements? When Sid died suddenly aged 64 while sitting comfortably beside a campsite fire in 2010 were the parents of these children able to alert them to their father's passing? It seems to me that the non-registration of newly born children could cause them destructive socio-economic complications.
Anyway here is a link to a summary of Sid's remarkable life - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Rawle

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The Yes Vote Is Not A Victory For the Workers.

Comments (4 of 4)