Vote. By vote. By vote.

As anyone who looks at my Facebook page will notice, I’ve turned it into a bit of a campaigning platform in recent weeks. I have many reasons for doing this, but at the heart of it all is a belief that everyone should be entitled to a level playing field where love is concerned. I can’t assume that the campaigning of others will see that this referendum is successful. I may not have the time to be out knocking on the doors as much as I would like, but I do have a strong urge and sense of duty to get involved in this historic referendum, so here I am. I have particular personal reasons for wanting to be vocal about this issue, which I’ve never publicly commented on before. My reason for that is not because of any desire to hide anything, but out of simple respect for my son’s privacy. My son and I have made a joint decision to change tack on that for now, and today, shouting from the rooftops, I’m going proud and loud. Proud and gifted to be the mother of three amazing children. Humming with pride for one in particular over these days of change and revolution. Intent, for the cause that’s in it, on being loud. *** November 23^rd, 1993. After a long, difficult labour with complications in the final stages, my first child, a great big boy, arrived. All 10lbs 1oz of him. He’d travelled the last bit of the journey uphill. The epidural had gone wrong, leaking fluid into somewhere it shouldn’t be. My lower half was raised, my head dropped, a move aimed at easing the mind-cracking headache that had come with the faulty epidural. It didn’t ease anything. They took away my boy, wheeled him back to me in a steel-barred cage on wheels. He was wrapped tight in a blanket, a cross-looking pupa on the verge of a new beginning. The headache persisted, I couldn’t lift my head, could barely turn to see him behind his bars. As soon as the nurses disappeared I made a deranged grab for him, hauling him into the bed beside me. The nurses reappeared, said they’d better put him back into his cage, said it would be safer, said I might smother him. He was going nowhere. I’m a pacifist. But if one of those nurses had tried to take my boy to put him back behind bars, my starting move would have been to bite them. I barely held back a growl when they again suggested taking him. At that moment, in my state of pain and joy and primal rawness, I understood how a person could kill for their child. I made a sort of vow to my boy then. Something along the lines of moving mountains to make the rest of his journey a little less uphill. Something along the lines of doing my best to make the road a little more smooth than it might be in this cruel and strange and often beautiful world. My beautiful boy is a man now. I asked him a question a couple of years ago, and when he answered: yes, I am gay, I asked why he hadn’t told me before. Well, did you ever have to announce to anyone that you were straight? And that was that, and all was good, and by then I’d lost some of that earlier compunction to smoothen the road. The groundwork had been done. Time and experience had taught me that parenting was more about preparing them for following their own chosen paths than trying to lay a golden carpet ahead of them. But I have my moments. Still. A maxim I’ve stuck with along the way is: choose your battles. I‘ve chosen one of late. A big one. An important one. A smooth the road one, with respect to my young man’s ability to go his own way. I’m back to the vow you see, all these years later, with that same growl hovering in the background. You see, if anyone thinks I’m going to lie still while they try to put my lad into any kind of cage – barred, metaphorical or otherwise – they would be mistaken. If they think I would see him there in that cage, rather than folded in whatever loving arms his own fate and nature have led him to, they would be getting it all wrong. That growl, the urges – the path-smoothing, mountain knocking ones – are not confined to the home turf either. It’s about more than just my own boy, you see. This is about a whole lot of other people too. People known to me, and people not known to me. It’s just me here, reaching out. One voice. One vote. At the moment I am moving through each day with a sense of trepidation. The misinformation and scare-mongering coming from the no camp is alarming. I am very worried that the skewed information it is putting out there is reaching a significant number of people. I believe that if the referendum fails, it will see emotional devastation in its wake. If the no campaign’s main focus, i.e. the well being of children, is genuine (I do believe it is, but misguided and ill thought out) I think theirs is a stance that will backfire disastrously if a no vote is carried, because the selective nature of the message means that the welfare of children will definitely be effected if the referendum fails. The welfare of the many children of gay parents in this country. And the welfare of the many many children who are travelling their personal journeys towards maturity and their own unfolding sexuality if that just happens to be gay. I worry for these children. I am deeply concerned for them, and for their welfare going forward, if this referendum fails. Because this is a very public issue now. And if a tight-lipped, behind-closed-doors Ireland left and continues to leave hurt, wounded, broken people in its wake…this more open, more vocal Ireland will, if it votes no, leave another sort of devastation. There can be no doubt when it’s all so upfront you see: A NO vote most definitely, most definitively says out loud to these children: WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR WELFARE, WE ONLY CARE ABOUT THE WELFARE OF CHILDREN BEING RAISED BY “CONVENTIONAL” STRAIGHT COUPLES. This is the message you will be sending if you vote no. Whether you’re building, or taking down a mountain, at the end of the day it can only be done one stone at a time. Stone. By stone. By stone. Vote. By vote. By vote. I don’t need to say which way I’ll be voting. I ask you to join me. For the future of my son James, a superb young man I love very, very much; for the future of others known and not known to me and you; for the future of our country as it continues its own faltering journey along a still new and barely hewn path, towards a more compassionate and open future, where all citizens will be treated equally whether they are gay or straight, or the children of gay or straight people.