We did it.

Ireland, Ireland, Ireland. We did it. I still can’t quite believe it. Everyone I knew was voting Yes to marriage equality on Friday – from the obvious candidates, the always-politically-engaged types, to people who’d never been particularly bothered about voting before or regular Mass-goers who might have been expected to listen to the (still unforgivable) instructions from bishops about voting No. But there was anxiety too – anxiety about the lies and craziness the No campaign had been flinging around, not halted by broadcasters and newspapers terrified about ‘balance’, and anxiety about the accuracy of the polls, thinking back as far as the tight margin in the divorce referendum in ’96, and as recently as the UK general election earlier this month.

I have never been so anxious, so hopeful, so moved, so terrified, by any vote ever.

It’s bonkers in some ways: the peculiarities of the Irish constitution meant a referendum was needed, and the idea of voting on extending equality is distasteful at best. There was only one right answer. And we did it.

As Una Mullally, one of the absolute troopers of the Yes campaign, has noted, it wasn’t just Dublin or the cities pushing this through. Only one out of the forty-three constituencies got a No through, barely; areas that would have been viewed as traditional and backwards and in thrall to the Catholic church were going ‘Yes, Yes, Yes’ all day yesterday as the results came through.

Final thought from Fintan O’Toole, whose piece has me tearing up (a fairly regular occurrence over the past few days):

It looks like a victory for tolerance. But it’s actually an end to mere toleration.

Tolerance is what “we” extend, in our gracious goodness, to “them”. It’s about saying “You do your own thing over there and we won’t bother you so long as you don’t bother us”.

The resounding Yes is a statement that Ireland has left tolerance far behind. It’s saying that there’s no “them” anymore. LGBT people are us.