In 2006, the president of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), John Egan, threatened the then government that gardaí would field candidates in the next election in marginal constituencies. He said they would be “waiting in the long grass for them”.
The then minister for justice, Michael McDowell, and the Garda commissioner, Noel Conroy, reacted with fury. PJ Stone, general secretary of the GRA, was forced to issue a retraction within 24 hours, and to apologise. Compare the reaction to the GRA coming out in favour of a Yes vote in an editorial in the Garda Review.
The editorial says that only remnants of bigotry and unenlightened thinking could animate anyone who disagrees with redefining marriage.
We have also seen gardaí registering voters in every major university, but doing so under giant Yes banners, not as impartial public servants.
In an extraordinary lapse of judgment, former Supreme Court judge Catherine McGuinness, a noted activist for a Yes vote, posed with a garda outside Pearse Street, in a way that could only be interpreted as gardaí giving support to the Yes side.
There was no fury from the Minister for Justice about any of these things. PJ Stone did not find himself on the carpet in front of the Garda Commissioner. There was virtually no media discussion of the unprecedented interference in the democratic process.
Political impartiality
Of course, threatening to stand in byelections endangers the power of politicians. Members of the police force urging a Yes vote simply undermines the democracy that politicians pledged to protect, just as gardaí took an oath to remain apolitical and impartial.
Is this why people have felt absolutely free to tear down No posters or deface them, and post pictures on social media of it happening?
Given the obvious partisanship of gardaí, is it unsurprising that people feel there will no consequences for committing an anti-democratic crime?
Until Nuala O’Loan’s intervention this week, virtually no attention was paid to the issue at all, which shows just how stifling the consensus has become.
O'Loan, of course, was police ombudsman in Northern Ireland at a most troubled time, and has acted in an advisory capacity regarding policing and police accountability, in India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Malaysia, the US, Canada, Finland, The Netherlands, Macedonia, Romania, Portugal and throughout the United Kingdom. She told the Irish Catholic that "the police are supposed to be independent. Trust in them is dependent on that independence. This should not have happened."
Even if a person thought same-sex marriage is the most important civil rights issue of this generation, how could anyone be indifferent to gardaí becoming so partisan, given the implications it has for our democracy?
As Nuala O’Loan also said, “Since the gardaí and the GRA are established by statute to carry out specific functions, and are publicly funded, that makes them even more an emanation of the State, under the same obligations I would argue as the State not to intervene in referendums.”
It is just one of the deeply disturbing aspects of the debate – or should that be non-debate – in advance of the referendum. The framing, right down to what you will read on your ballot paper, that is, “marriage equality”, has been designed to shut down debate. And our Taoiseach offered to debate, and then disappeared behind a wall of advisers.
There is also a silencing of dissent. Heather Barwick, a lovely young American woman, spoke in Ireland last weekend about how much she loves her mom, and her mom’s lesbian partner.
Heather used to be a poster child advocate for gay marriage, feted for her views by the gay community. But she had a deep-down ache of longing for her dad.
Since she has come out and said that children do best with a mother and father, she has been subjected to torrents of abuse and vitriol.
But worse than the internet trolls are the sophisticated commentators who patronise her and tell her that actually, she herself is not best-placed to understand her situation, and her grief has nothing to do with having two moms.
How far we have come in a decade, that someone does not have the freedom to say, “I missed my dad.” Saying you oppose the redefinition of marriage so it becomes an institution that focuses primarily on the adults is to open yourself to being accused of being a bigot or a hater.
Exclusion of children
Where do I get the idea that marriage is being redefined as having nothing to do with children? From the Yes advocates who constantly say it has nothing to do with children.
It certainly has nothing to do with listening to children, now adults, who have anything critical to say, but everything to do with invalidating them and their right to speak. Add that to the reality that people are afraid to say to their neighbours that they are voting No.
It is deeply sad we are now a country where people cannot freely express themselves, and a country where even the police force can be captured to achieve a political goal.