Ireland Makes History: First Country in the World to Vote for Gay Marriage
The results are in: Ireland has officially become the world’s first nation to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote.
With a final count of 62.1 percent voting yes, with a total turnout of 60 percent, marriage equality is now legal in Ireland.
Responses from officials were vastly positive. Irish Prime Minister Edna Kenny, who supports marriage equality, said the vote was sending “a message of pioneering leadership” from the Irish people. The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the vote signals the start of a “social revolution.”
Leo Vradkar, Irish Minister of Health and the country’s first openly gay minister, said the overwhelming support for marriage equality indicated “the Irish people had their minds made up on this some time ago.”
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