Irish voters have overwhelmingly backed
amending the Constitution of Ireland to allow gay and lesbian couples
to marry.
Supporters trounced opponents 62.1 to
37.9 percent.
Official results from Friday's vote
were announced live Saturday on big-screen televisions to a crowd of
thousands gathered at Dublin Castle's central square.
Leo Varadkar, a Cabinet minister who
came out gay during the campaign, called the vote “a social
revolution.”
“People from the LGBT community in
Ireland are a minority,” he said. “But with our parents, our
families, our friends and co-workers and colleagues, we're a
majority.”
The Iona Institute, a socially
conservative Catholic advocacy group, backed the “no” campaign.
“We would like to congratulate the
Yes side on winning such a handsome victory in the marriage
referendum,” the group said in a statement. “For our part, The
Iona Institute is proud to have helped represent the many hundreds of
thousands of Irish people who would otherwise have had no voice in
this referendum because all of the political parties backed a Yes
vote.”
Attention now turns to Northern
Ireland, the last country in western Europe where gay couples cannot
legally marry.