John Waters
‘The tenor of the contest has been so nauseating that the deepest parts of my psyche had begun to anticipate this outcome.
It was little things: the frivolity of the Yes side: “Run for Repeal”; “Spinning for Repeal”; “Walk your Dog for Repeal”; “Farmers for Yes”; “Grandparents for Repeal,” which ought to have been “Grandparents for Not Having Grandchildren.”
This, like the same-sex marriage referendum in 2015, was a carnival referendum: Yessers chanting for Repeal, drinking to Repeal, grinning for the cameras as they went door-to-door on the canvass of death.
Today, Ireland dances on the graves of little children. It is a country where freedom means the right to do just about anything you please, without risk of consequences.
On the day of the vote, the media gave us a picture of our Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, grinningly dropping his vote into a ballot box, over the headline: “All the lads in the gym are voting yes.”
It is the epitaph of the country I grew up in, the only one I had to call home, this ancient land, traceable into antiquity by its piety, its valor, and its sufferings.
This fool we are obliged to call Taoiseach (Chieftain), this man without qualities—who entered the last election three short years ago as “pro-life”—has led my people into a hell beyond imagining.’
John Waters. Ireland: An Obituary
He’s taking it well.