The Yes Vote Is Not A Victory For The Workers

The outcome of the same sex referendum in the Irish Republic shows a clear majority in favour of it.

Many people see this outcome as a manifestation of progress. However this is far from the case. The popular vote in favour of same sex marriage merely means that the electorate support the widening of the institution of marriage in Ireland. But the issue is that marriage is an oppressive institution that sustains the nuclear family. Marriage today is predominantly an institution of the state and the Christian churches.In the course of human history the family has assumed different forms. The present prevailing family form in the West is a bourgeois form that plays a key role in inculcating bourgeois morality and ideology into the working class.

Much of the radical Left and the gay rights movement by calling for a yes vote were promoting nothing but the fortification of the bourgeois marriage institution at a time when the working class have been increasingly shifting away from it. Instead of calling for a yes vote the call for the abolition of marriage should have been the demand. The very ironical fact that many of those that promoted and voted a yes vote are members of the Catholic Church illustrates the bourgeois nature of the yes campaign. Furthermore the fact that the major parliamentary parties actively supported a yes vote is more evidence of the bourgeois basis of the campaign.