Two years ago, Ireland became the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote.
We were joined by two women who were instrumental in the Marriage Equality campaign to reflect on the historic decision. Grainne Healy is the co-founder of the campaign and editor of the book Crossing The Theshold, and Linda Cullen of COCO Television, who is co-director of the documentary The 34th: The Story of Marriage Equality in Ireland, the opening film at this year's GAZE Film Festival.
Grainne explained how the book came about: "Immediately after the win we produced a book that was about the 107 days of the Marriage Equality campaign, and it made us realise that it would be a good idea to write up a longer history. The wider campaign actually took 14 years."
"When we first formed, there was a sense that our first task was to get the community on board with the idea. It took a number of strategies to try to get that across."
From an LGBT point of view, Linda was originally unsure about the idea of same-sex marriage. However, she told us why she changed her mind.
"I started thinking, do we want to be part of this? But very quickly you realise it is a rights and equality issue, even though it might not be for me at this moment in time. Lots of LGBT people want to get married and they should be allowed to."
"When we got to the point of the referendum, it became: do the people on the street think you're okay or do they not? Are lesbian and gay people going to be treated equally?"
We wanted the government to legislate for this, but at first none of the key political parties were willing to take it on, on the basis that they thought it would be challenged in the courts. Once we had the Constitutional Convention, we were then in a referendum campaign."
While Linda was worried about the possibility of losing the referendum, Grainne never thought this would happen. She says this was because of the "values-based approach" taken by the campaign, which encouraged many people outside of the LGBT community to lend their support.
"Irish people value family, love and inclusiveness, and very quickly we had thousands of organisations and individuals coming behind the campaign."
