Hilary Fannin: With this vote we are asking big questions of ourselves

I drove to my sons’ school the other day, probably to disgorge one of them, two minutes before lockers closed. Traffic is always bad around the main gates, cars hammering up and down the road from one important destination to the next. Sometimes you can sit in the middle of the dual carriageway, indicator blinking like a nervous groom, long enough for all the cows in the country to come home, change into their sweatpants and stick a korma in the microwave.

While I was waiting there, beached in a sea of family saloons, I noticed that the driveway, just beyond the entrance to the school, had been decorated with an enormous rainbow, drawn in coloured chalk. It was unmissable, to eye and heart. We are an inclusive school, the rainbow was saying, there is room here for all of us.

Maybe it's my age (I recently found myself weeping over Masterchef, which is some trick), but I find the current debate around the marriage equality referendum quite emotional. On both sides, people are passionate in their advocacy. We are asking big questions of ourselves, I suppose, pushing hard against a caul of restraint.

There are those who firmly believe that marriage is only for a man and a woman, and that families are units populated by mothers and fathers and the fruit of their loins; those for whom such certainties, such rules, offer security and order and protection.

Nobody wants to destroy another person’s sense of wellbeing, or to tell someone that beliefs they’ve held on to all their lives are flawed or worthless or meaningless.

Change is hard

I’ll be voting Yes because I feel that same sense of protection and order and security should be available to everyone, whether they are gay or straight. I think we should all have the right to marry the person we love, regardless of gender, because marriage has worth and meaning and no one should be denied their right to it.

Many of us grew up in this country at a time when straight meant not taking a left or a right, and gay was how you felt after a good belt of the cooking sherry.

Change is hard – hell, I get rattled if the cat sleeps on the wrong side of the bed – but we have changed. Voices that were petrified for generations have begun to be heard, and I’m glad. Grateful.

But I’m just another yabbering, predictable old liberal, so I thought you might like to read something I came across recently, a Facebook posting written by an 18-year-old.

I contacted him, asked his permission to reprint some of it, and he agreed. I did this because when I sat at my kitchen table and read it, I felt uplifted. Maybe you will too:

“Perhaps it’s because I surround myself with people who are wonderfully broad-minded and supportive that it came as a shock, but seeing the ‘Vote No’ posters definitely put a stop to the I-know-it’s-not-in-the-bag-but-it’s- probably-going-to-pass-anyway attitude which I held towards this referendum.

“I can’t help but think about my own experience of being gay in Ireland, and wonder if it would have been bettered if we’d had this discussion and passed this referendum when I was younger.

“As much as it’s about giving gay couples the choice to have their relationships recognised and valued in equal amounts as their straight equivalents, it is important in ensuring gay children and teenagers aren’t made to feel inadequate or abnormal because of their sexuality at any point in their lives.

“It’s also important for closeted teens and adults; the passing of this referendum could be the catalyst to their self-acceptance and coming out.

"It's important to the parents of gay children: to a Dad like mine, who watched with shock and a loving acceptance as his son converted a Bob the Builder tool station into a kitchen; or a Mum like mine, who found Mary-Kate and Ashley books hidden in pillowcases and obliged happily in performing synchronised dance routines to These Boots Are Made For Walking at family weddings.

“It’s important to the parents of gay children so that they can know their child will grow up to have equal opportunities and choices, regardless of who they love.

“It is massively important for all of us, because passing this referendum would convey an Ireland that wishes to progress, that is committed to implementing equality, that wants to change something that simply isn’t good enough as it is.”

• Famished Castle by Hilary Fannin, directed by Rough Magic's Lynne Parker, runs at the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, until May 23rd. paviliontheatre.ie