By Anne Mulhall

On the complex achievement of the same sex marriage referendum in Ireland

The importance of the political mobilization of working-class communities in Dublin in the process of building a self-organized and powerful anti-austerity movement cannot be overstated, and this was a decisive factor in the marriage referendum passing. Voters in Jobstown and young emigrants coming #hometovote were not voting in solidarity with the government and the State, but in defiance of the multiple impoverishments and oppressions that the State has enacted on the majority of those who live here. The political and relational texture and hopefulness of these and other mobilizations, disruptions, acts of citizenship against the State, produced in excess of the managed marriage campaign, are perhaps occluded when the Irish marriage referendum is viewed solely through the lens of the established radical queer critique.

Almost a month has passed since the verdict of ‘Yes…