Meet Brighid and Paddy.
They’re almost 50 years married and live in Dundalk, Co. Louth.
They say…
Brighid: “Hello, I’m Brighid.”
Paddy: “And I’m Paddy. We are voting for equal marriage, we hope you will vote with us.”
Brighid: “We’re from Dundalk, we’re Roman Catholics and we’ll be 50 years married this year. We wish other couples – gay or straight – could legally avail of civil marriage and have the opportunity to experience the love, protections and companionship that we have experienced.”
Paddy: “Twenty years ago, I probably would have voted ‘No’, but now that I know gay people and see the love and joy they can bring to life, I will be voting ‘Yes’. We worked hard for civil rights in Northern Ireland in the Sixties. Now it is time to support civil rights in the South.”
Brighid: “We’re grandparents and we wish that all our grandchildren are protected and treated as equals, in the playground and in the eyes of the law.”
Paddy: “I ask you to take time to consider and reflect on something. It could happen sometime in the future, that your son or daughter, grandchild, or great-grandchild will tell you they are gay. And when they asked you how they voted in this referendum, or whether you bothered to vote at all, what will you tell them? Will you tell them that you tried to make a difference?”
Brighid: “We have the opportunity to change things, for the better. I know that the ever-loving god that we believe in will say, we did the right thing and the Christian thing by voting yes for marriage equality.”
Paddy: “We ask you to vote with us.”
Thanks Barry The Hatchet and Rob McDonagh
Bang. Freaking. On.
The well fed, public payroll recipients (who availed of all the benefits of marriage) can believe whatever they want. However, I hope they’re not planning on publicly receiving Holy Communion on Sunday. If you speak on video (whatever about what the producer told you) in favour of garriage, you are no longer in communion with the church and you should (yes, should) stay in the pew. I suspect these two are not really catholic at all – they just like going to the church on Sunday to hear Fr Trendy (Dundalk, no less) preach to them how great they all are and talk to their peers about how harmless the lovely gay folks are. The erronous interpretation of Vatican II has a lot to answer for for the emergence of this self-centred, indulgent and conceited mindset.
Troll ABM – ignore.
I know, its boring now
The perfect antidote to ABM’s frenzied fanatical yet bizarrely comical ranting! Love them. ABM – if you’re reading this, this is an example of a loving relationship – you know that which continues to elude you, you sad sod.
That silly sausage probably wants a yes vote.
I call troll ABM not real ABM
There is no real ABM any more.
*wipes away tear*
I’m never entirely sure what the ABM situation is tbh
Damn it! I suspected it was “not real” ABM who has been creating havoc on the Cleric Doran post also. The crazy appears ratcheted up to batpoo levels there.
“The crazy appears ratcheted up to batpoo levels there.”
That’ll be the real ABM then…
Are we talking about an extensive homoerotic DVD collection or real life experiences, ABM?
I’d say it’s probably a home video.
Dude…. Uranus is emitting gas…… there’s a whole post dedicated to it……
Lets hope that there will be plenty more Paddys and Brighids out there.
This is exactly the sort of thing the Yes campaign needs. They need to appeal to ‘soft’ yes/no voters who can still be swayed either way and the image of decent, conservative Catholic couples being persuaded by the Yes campaign sends out a very strong message.
Pair of hetrophobes.
Thats a bit more like it. Better than the shrill hating we have heard from the amateurish yes side so far.. The middle is the vote thats needed to win this. I don’t mean to come across all queenie and diva but finally someone is listening to me.
Yes well done they are glued to your every utterance
My Mum and Dad are heading for the big 50 together and they too are voting yes, both are in their mid to late 70s too.
Makes me proud of ’em both :)
Great stuff! Irish mammies will win this thing make no doubt about that.
+1
isnt that the truth?
Fair play, going to email this to the folks back home. Put better than I could have by their contemporaries.
You don’t have to be catholic to be from a different generation !
And fair play to Brighid and Paddy !
That little nudge at the end – love it.
What a lovely couple. That has actually brought a tear to my eye today (er, specifcially the part about what their marriage has brought them and throughout their life together and how they would wish to extend that to other people).
My dad is voting no even though he has 2 gay sons who got married to men in foreign countries.
He is believing the scare-mongering he is reading in The Irish Catholic newspaper.
Sorry Derval. Maybe he’ll get there one day?
There is hope for everyone and hopefully he will find his way to tolerance one day. 20 years ago, my Dad (now 82) would have voted no but his mind changed as we grew up and some of my friends came out and he could see the truth of what Gay men and women were like rather than any bigoted lies from the likes of those who complain about “the Gay mafia”….
Well, my dad shows love towards his 2 gay sons but I guess what the Catholic Church tells him to do is more important.
He is 81 and his first gay son came out to him 20 years ago also.
I think he is afraid he will go to hell if he votes against god’s will.
If this is the case, then ironically, he is making the selfish choice of choosing Heaven for himself rather than choosing to do a very nice thing for humans who are alive.
Wouldn’t the really selfless, generous thing be to sacrifice your chance of Heaven so that other people can have a fair and good experience in this life?
In fact, if you think about it – if you follow christianity, the best thing a human can do is to kill lots of other humans just after they’ve been to confession, thereby almost guaranteeing them entry to Heaven and sacrificing your own entry to Heaven.
Or would god be able to understand your motives and let you into Heaven anyway?
Oh, this is getting very convoluted.
Another irony is that most christians quite obviously don’t genuinely believe in the christian afterlife judging by how much they mourn when young or old people die.
Children deserve more from society and should not be used as pawns in a “makie upie” family! Dr Trevor Stammers, a trustee of the Family Education Trust, said: ‘The large recent increase in children born to mothers with a same sex partner at the time of the birth is concerning, in the light of a number of recent research studies which have shown – for example – a four-fold increase in emotional problems in children of same-sex parents, compared with children raised by both their biological parents.’
So if that’s already happening, how would gay marriage allow/force it to happen?
Source of this study (and funded by) or you’re talking makie upie yourself Tim.
Thanks
There is a wealth of evidence to contradict this and of course you forget to mention that Dr Stammers is not exactly an impartial researcher. An known ardent religious opponent of same-sex marriage – now what type of evidence would this result-seeking luminary gravitate toward? One swallow, Tim, does not a summer make. You might listen to Colm O’Gorman’s adopted daughter speak about being raised by a same-sex couple debunking all of Mr Stammers’ favoured and easily countered so-called research. If one has a bias, it is dashed easy to confirm it. Quack result-seeking surveys have no place in this debate and if you wish to quote selectively, at least have the integrity, honesty and dignity to also make reference to the wealth of research showing no perceptible differences of outcome. You’ll find that what Dr Stammers considers a same-sex family is quite a novel definition including every and any dysfunctional unit – anything other than compare like with like – a middle class opposite-sex stable and monogamous couple with a monogamous middle class same-sex stable couple. But of course he won’t…I wonder why?
You should read some of those studies – the problems come from people outside the family bullying or discriminating against children in these families, not from the fact they have two mothers/fathers.
Proof or you are lying..Please tell us the source of this so – called study. Ta…
This is lovely.
It does feel slightly like an Isis video though with them being forced to read a statement at gunpoint. But it’s lovely all the same.
That was really sweet.
It’s a good video BUT – it appears that they’re still religious and believe in their Roman Catholic faith. Surely that would make Broadsheet hate them despite their statement that they’ll vote yes?
Wrong.
Read the comments above.
Still wrong.
Thanks for playing the game despite not understanding it.