The outcome of the same-sex marriage referendum, while in conformity with most predictions, was sufficiently emphatic for it to take on the appearance of marking a very significant change in the prevailing attitudes, and social landscape, of the country.
If indeed such change is discernible from the referendum’s passing by a comfortable majority, it has not come about overnight or been wrought by the workings of the campaign that preceded last Friday’s poll.
The accommodation of gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender people as a discrete minority component of the population has …