And there is, in Ireland as elsewhere, a generational shift: the Yes side invested in a voter-registration campaign, telling young people that they’ll be able to say, “You made history. The Catholic Church has argued for No, although not all priests and nuns have, and its failure, as far as the polls can tell, to move great numbers of voters has been taken as part of the price it is paying for its long and scandalous failure to protect children from predatory clergy members. (It also had a picture of Ernie and Bert, but that doesn’t seem to have been the problem.) The bakery lost, an outcome that the No side has seized on as a harbinger of sad days to come. The video also mentions the case of a bakery in Northern Ireland that was sued over its refusal, on religious ground, to fill an order for a cake with a pro-marriage-equality message in the icing. Pro-Yes ads have played on the don't-miss-the-wedding theme, as in a moving video in which a gay couple wonders if the father of one of the men will be there at the polls (he is, with a Yes badge), and a rural Irish father walks with his daughter to vote, in a way that mimics walking her down the aisle, saying “I wouldn’t miss it for the world”: If they can see how a conservative belief in the institution of marriage and in the unity of families, and an atavistic desire to be present at the wedding of one’s own children, translate into support for same-sex marriage so can, say, Mississippians. If the Irish can vote “Yes,” the thought goes, anyone can. Ireland is its own sort of icon among nations, as a very Catholic country where homosexuality was criminal until 1993 and divorce wasn't available until 1997. Since 2013, it has been legal in most of the United Kingdom, though not in Northern Ireland. It came to the Netherlands, in 2001 Belgium, in 2003 Spain and Portugal, in 2005 Norway, Sweden, and Iceland, in 2010 Denmark, in 2012 France, in 2013 and it goes into effect in Finland in 2017. Ireland would not be the only country in Europe with marriage equality. He was wearing two badges-one urging a Yes, in English, the other an affirmative Irish-language “Tá.” He emphasized the openness of the vote: “The Yes will obliterate publicly the remaining barriers of prejudice and the irrational fear of the them and us.” It would, he said, be “a joyful day for our country and for our people.” “In two days, the people of our country can actually go out and create history: the first country in the world to have a referendum of the people on a matter as essential as marriage equality,” Kenny said. Even with all that company, Kenny’s call did, indeed, have an iconic ring to it. Brown, a popular sitcom mother played, in drag, by Brendan O’Carroll, starred in a widely shared pro-Yes video, making the case from her Archie Bunker-like armchair. The main worry of marriage-equality supporters is that voters, thinking that it's a done deal, will fail to turn out. Every major political party supports it, and Yes is leading in the polls. Miriam Lord, of the Irish Times, wrote that Kenny sounded as if “he wasn’t too sure what that actually meant.” The minister of health, who was there, too, along with every other member of the cabinet except one, who had to show Prince Charles around the country, “nearly fell off his chair laughing.” Fine Gael, their party, is right of center, and Kenny has not been a crusader for gay rights. But they were all there to make a last-minute plea to voters to vote “Yes” on a referendum, this Friday, that would bring same-sex marriage to Ireland. "I have no intention of becoming a gay icon," Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach, or Prime Minister of Ireland, said, when asked if he might, at a press conference on Wednesday.
A country legalizing gay marriage at the polls, rather than through the national legislature or the courts, would be a historic first.