The bittersweet beauty of Northern Ireland's equal marriage reform

As of midnight tonight—or tomorrow; I’m never really sure how that works—marriage equality will be legalised, and abortion will be decriminalised in Northern Ireland. It feels rather strange to write those sentences as fact and not optimistic fiction, but here we are. I have been involved with the campaign to bring marriage equality to Northern Ireland since 2011, before the coalition government in Westminster introduced it in England and Wales, and now, six years later, we are on the cusp of an incredibly important day for civil rights. It came not with fanfare, or a referendum as in Australia and the Republic of Ireland, or even through the local Assembly which remains mothballed—bar a one-off meaningless reunion today—but via the adding of an amendment to the Northern Ireland Executive Formation Bill in July.

Labour MP and Armagh native Conor McGinn had been working closely with the Love Equality coalition to bring marriage equality to the floor of the House of Commons and was ultimately successful. On a quiet day in July, when most people back home were enjoying the bank holiday, we were there: a small group of activists who had dared to believe that one day it would be possible, watching BBC Parliament on the projector of the LGBT community centre in Belfast as the tellers called the results and we erupted in bittersweet jubilation.

McGinn’s amendment, and that of abortion rights campaigner Stella Creasy MP, were contingent on the Northern Ireland Assembly remaining gridlocked by political impasse until October 21st 2019—today.

The DUP, and some more conservative-minded MLAs, have sought to recall the NI Assembly today in an attempt to block the reforms. With Sinn Féin, the Alliance Party, Green Party and People Before Profit MLAs explicitly stating that they won’t be attending, however, there is no hope of an Executive being formed. Despite calls from anti-choice groups to form an Executive for the single purpose of blocking legislative progress, then, the laws will become reality as of tomorrow.

Marriages won’t happen right away: the Northern Ireland Office needs time to pass the necessary guidelines and legislation. There are details to be worked out as part of this process. For instance, it’s not clear if Civil Partnerships will automatically convert to a marriage, or if people will have to effectively re-marry. At the moment, February next year is being touted as a possible date—the law potentially becoming a tangible reality on Valentine’s Day 2020.

I wish I could explain just how surreal today feels to people. I don’t think I can put it into words—but I’ll try. It’s been an incredibly long and arduous road towards realising marriage equality for Northern Ireland. For the longest time, I thought we would be fighting well into the next decade as there seemed to be no achievable path through the Assembly or via the Courts. I never gave up hope, though. None of us did.

In a place where if you’d told someone on the street thirty years ago that one day the violence would stop they would have laughed at you in disbelief, it was the unwavering belief from a small group of people that things could change that led us to peace. That same commitment and spirit, to continuing to call for civil rights even when the odds were stacked against us, was what kept us going. We were always uncertain of the method, but always confident of the eventual outcome that this could be done. Through the rallies, the false starts, the homophobia on the airwaves and in the papers, through the good days and the bad, we kept each other going.

Today is bittersweet. There are those who should have been here to celebrate with us but aren’t: people that didn’t make it or that were taken from us. I’m thinking of them today, and I’m thinking of how utterly alone I felt when I came out at the age of nineteen, of how I didn’t think I’d live to see my twenty first birthday and how I didn’t have anyone to turn to. How completely wrong I was. I found a tribe, which became a family, which became an army. I wish I could go back and tell myself that it really would be okay, that I would find those people and that they would fight for me and for what we deserved which is to be treated as equal citizens.

I am so humbled and blessed to count amongst my friends and peers some of the fiercest civil rights activists of our time. Here’s to them, here’s to us and here’s to waking up tomorrow a little freer and a little more equal.