1995 Divorce referendum 50.3 % voted Yes

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496170#Comment_119496170

Divorce allows you to remarry, to remove your former spouse as your legal next of kind etc. It's an act of closure.

Count Dracula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496182#Comment_119496182

I think it is , no doubt.

But I can't help feeling that it also a negative option on modern marriages.

It is like the Bill Burr joke about parachuting, you wouldn't do a parachute jump if the instructor mentioned you have a 43 per cent chance of survival?

People get marred now for all the wrong reasons. I have no idea if that is a good or bad thing either, but I do think the power of a marriage is over, it has been devalued by divorce, rightly or wrongly.

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496210#Comment_119496210

No, it allowed those in unhappy marriages a legal way to get out. People have always gotten married for the wrong reason, including shotgun weddings. In the past they were just forced to stick it out and be miserable.

A happy marriage isn't undermined or threatened by the availability of divorce.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119491695#Comment_119491695

Yes it is always nice to grab the most emotive example, but no matter what example you choose, yes voters are responsible. If you don't make your opposition or support to a particular issue to your local representative then you have to accept that your inaction contributed to the outcome.

machiavellianme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119491443#Comment_119491443

I still miss the free food in nightclubs. Sure, it was mostly vile but when you explained that you were driving 7 others, weren't drinking or doing drugs, they brought out the good stuff. Justified the 3 quid in!

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119492368#Comment_119492368

Well I grew up in those times and I would not agree at all with your perspective. The only real problem I have with the woke movement is the tendency to take things out of historical context and then go off in a tangent. You cannot place todays values and thinking on people's actions and then blame them for not following that approach. Complaining about the continued honouring of such people rather than consigning them to history is a different matter.

Racism was not rampant in the 90s in Ireland for the simple reason that the most of the people were ignorant of what it was. We were a very homogenous group back then and while there were Gollybars etc around it did not strike anyone that there was a problem with them. I can remember there were just 2 foreigners (Nigeria) in my class of over 100 in college and apart from the colour of their skin, you could not really think of them as foreigners since they had been educated by a religious order from Limerick. They were catholic like the rest of us, spoke with Limerick accents and had more or less the same mannerism as well.

RobbieTheRobber

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496620#Comment_119496620

What the fudge has the woke movement got to do with my post Jim?

Is not being a racist equivalent to being woke?

So jason sherlock in the 90's was not subject to racist abuse as a high profile example because there was none here?

Manach

The implosion of the familiy structure and the redefinition of marriage to meanlingess are a consequence of this. Without marriage being the stable bed rock of society, then the institutional frameworks have been rotted away. The OP's highly orginal woke take of comparing Ireland's past to Afghanistan fail state today might be better used for Ireland's future.

Juran

Divorce is dissolving a legal agreement.

Legally Married couples can transfer / gift unlimited money or property to each other, no gift tax. If one dies, the other is entitled to their savings and half their pension, plus any life insurance payout, plus the shared house, and any other assests, with no inheritance tax. If one is ill and incapiciated, the other one as next of kin can make decisions eg. Approve surgery, switch off life support, etc. One can claim the tax credits for the other one, if only one person is working.

There are probably other legal implications which I can't think of right now.

I know some women who got married (kinda young) and was so focused on the white wedding day, honeymoon, etc, but had no ideal of what marraige meant from a legal side. A good few found out later when divorce cost them a fortune, both legal fees and having to sell their house, spilt assests, etc.

I'm not anti marraige, and I agree that couples should have the right to chose to dissolve their legal marraige agreement if they need it.

Fr Tod Umptious

This thread is a great example of hindsight.

Back in the 80s and 90s people thought it was so bad in the 40s and 50s under the cosh of the church, but things are better now.

In the 2020s people thought it was so bad in the 80s and 90s under the cosh of the church, but things are better now.

People don't go around living their lives with a view to how that era will be viewed in decades to come.

People live their lives in the here and now.

What are normal lifestyles and values now are normal lifestyles and values are now because they are normal lifestyles and values.

They are not the normal lifestyles and values of decades ago and they are not normal lifestyles and values of decades in the future.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496678#Comment_119496678

Do you think it's healthy to remain in an unhappy marriage? I noticed your jab at gay people marrying too. So far not seeing any negative consequences from that either.

bad2thebone

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496620#Comment_119496620

Absolutely, I think it's the whole woke movement, new wave liberals etc who are just digging up the past and they think we were all ignorant knuckle draggers back then.

We were less sensitive, we had comedy,we had fun,we didn't care about identity politics. You'll get the odd thick bastard but he was just thick and had no filter usually just a clown but he wasn't any harm really. Just had his own way with words.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496614#Comment_119496614

Oh how I remember those days lol standing in the que waiting for soakage ha ha

And the sound systems were loud, very loud. I still get the ringing in the ears now and again like my mum says about the show bands in the 60's they gave me tinnitus lol

Most towns had a few night club's,one would be more alternative and the other would be dance music.

I tell my 21 year old son about those times during the 90's he says it sounds better than the shite of today. He's not into dance music he's more alternative. There's no more alternative night clubs, where you would have DJ's spinning anything from The Cure,the Pixies, Smith's etc to the underworld and the prodigy. And some good old grunge and heavy metal for the moshing.

It's all different now, they're very soft and regulated. The amount of times I had a cigarette in one hand and holding a beer in the other attempting to dance. The fun was in the danger. Nobody could record it back then either, we'd laugh about the previous night out and probably over exaggerate a story.

Oh wait for it, ladies were left in free on certain nights you don't get that nowadays. Although the woke gouls would suggest that letting women in free was undermining their ability to pay an entry free. Thats the level of the stupidity of the woke culture.

Count Dracula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496222#Comment_119496222

As long as it is happy it is not anyways.., but the reality is that marriages are rarely happy for a lifetime, hence the vows taken during the ceremony.

I do feel that divorce has allowed either partner to spit the dummy and walk out. That is not the point of commitment or marriage.

The whole concept of marriage is vowing a commitment to someone else until the day you die. That is what should matter.

It worked very well for centuries.

There is scope to blame the divorce initiative in Ireland on US soap operas like Dallas or Dynasty.

Spoiler Warning

That last statement was a bit of a windup , gottya muddrphuckers.

thefa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119497040#Comment_119497040

That’s the thing - even those happy marriages go to trials and tribulations so it’s not as simple as happy v unhappy. There’s probably people who have pulled the trigger on divorce too early or even marriage.

I do think that the availability of divorce does make the decision to marry less onerous but it’s better for people to have the option to divorce and put the decisions on them.

bad2thebone

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496678#Comment_119496678

I ain't religious, but you make a great point.

There's a lot of so called intelligent idiot's who got married and didn't see the red flags before hand which was waving right in front of them .

I never got married because I knew damn well I wouldn't be able for it, and why drag some lady into something that wouldn't be good for her. I'm too ferral,wild and independent. A lot of thickos don't think of that before they take some poor misfortunate woman as a hostage. They think it's a walk in the park marriage. Sadly it's not, you've lad's in their late 20's getting married and they never grow up. Some of their toddlers are more mature emotionally.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496919#Comment_119496919

In fairness you're fairly ignorant based on this, there were lots of people who suffered because of the below, in the 80s in particular.

Back when there was no contraception lol you're joking right you'd regularly see a rubber johnny on the road even during the 80's . The Pink elephant in Limerick was an open gay bar along with Loafer's in Cork. You had incognito the gay sauna in Dublin and a few other bar's catering for the gay community. Sometimes we'd drop in for a pint, especially in Loafer's in Cork as it was near a friend's house off Douglas Street.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119497040#Comment_119497040

But whatever about not always being happy, some marriages are constantly unhappy. That equally feeds down to their children. That's not a remotely healthy mindset to pass down through generations. So sometimes it's far wiser in long run to accept that something isn't working at all and to move on. Ireland doesn't have a particularly high divorce rate btw.

yagan

I don't understand anything about woke, it just sounds a safe word some individual use when they're uncomfortable. Youth culture was stronger in the 90s because for most of the decade nearly 50% of the population was under 25, compared to about 30% now. (nostalgia for the 90s in Ireland can be monolithic in the way the 60/70s can be in the US)

At the start of the 90s I felt like nothing could ever change, chaste men and women seemed to hold a monolithic veto on the last word in public discourse and half my leaving cert year had emigrated. People who had taken vows against marriage were rolled out constantly as authorities on marriage, etc... It seemed as if married reality was always subservient to the whims of marriage abstainers.

For me the bigger watershed had happened when contraception was liberalized in the 80s. Some pedant might take issue with the way I worded it but it was socially cathartic in allowing people explore sexuality without having to get married. The youth culture was so big and with liberalised contraception you could get through the 90s without listening to the old monoliths lecture about the sanctity of marriage or any sexual matter. You could only cringe over the x-case because the older monolithic generations held the power.

I can chime with the comment that 2022 has more in common with 2000, than 2000 had with 1995. Domino's of the RCC had been falling, Eamon Casey being a huge calving of the Iceberg, but I was surprised divorce actually passed as it felt change was impossible. In my mind the old monoliths were only truly silenced by the referendums of the last decade. The youth wave of the 90s became the voting majority and will probably become a monolith for following generations.

bad2thebone

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119497154#Comment_119497154

Am the only one who's suffering are the people who are still crying about it. There's a lot of the people who you're undermining by bringing up their past want to forget about these times. I'm trying to tell people that it wasn't all bad and some people had thicker skin's than others.

There's an old generation of gay guy's who were more of a man and masculine than a lot of so called straight men out there today. They didn't care what people thought, they were men who were content with their lifestyle .

Who wants to be liked or approved by people who don't like their lifestyle or approve of it. I've always given the devil the care approach to bullies or strand's of society who are looking down on others such as the church or

They're embarrassed by people like you trying to stigmatize their past and bringing it into the present, enough is enough.

You mentioned unhappy marriages, maybe it's two unhappy people that got together in the first place or one happy and the other was always awkward pedantic, and argumentive, a control freak or abusive.

Red flag's aren't hard to miss.

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119498226#Comment_119498226

The problem with your "red flags should be obvious" thinking is that before 95 people were legally tied to failed marriages long after legal separation.

That thinking made no allowance for thinking.

bad2thebone

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119498785#Comment_119498785

Many a man went out for the paper and never came back again, leaving his wife and kids to fend for themselves.

He shacks up with the dollybird he met down the local pub, no explanation or anything. Just goes, and back in those days a lot of dads usually didn't pay maintenance or even see their kid's . They were weak men. Legally tied to marriages but unable to fulfill their fatherly duties.

I'd say 7 time's out of ten it was the dad who walked out or was thrown out 3 time's out of ten.

But a lot of dad's were loyal true to their words and took the good and the bad. No matter how difficult the menopause year's were or if their spouse wasn't giving them attention or was depressed they weren't running away with some wan because she was looking better on the arm.

A lot of men nowadays are weak men, unable for hassle or family life. So they just run away from it instead of getting help. Feeling left out because the kids and wife come first. Flicking through tinder etc and looking for a bit on the side.

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119499123#Comment_119499123

You're projecting a lot into your posts. it seems your only contribution is that men are weak with and without divorce being legal. Want to add in racism too?

bad2thebone

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119499209#Comment_119499209

No you've already added that.

MrMusician18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119491554#Comment_119491554

There is a habit in Ireland of blaming "the state", Fianna fail, fine Gael and the RCC for the ills of the country up until the mid 90's but this is simply done to absolve the real people who were at responsible - the ordinary citizen.

We have a huge problem recognising that our parents and grandparents were complicit in the failures of the 20th century. They elected those politicians, they sent the women to the laundries but we can't be blaming the people we knew.

Pherekydes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496170#Comment_119496170

I think you're overlooking the fact that marriages broke down before the introduction of divorce. Now, divorce gives these people the chance to start afresh.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119496678#Comment_119496678

Speak for yourself. My (civil, as it happens) marriage is far from meaningless thanks very much.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119491906#Comment_119491906

It's not really a choice if you're a parent, they still control 89% of primary schools, and no they don't pay a cent towards the running of these schools either.

Marcusm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119491507#Comment_119491507

Almost overnight in 1993 condoms went from only being available from behind the counter in a pharmacy to being available on the counter right by the till in every corner shop. Why would anyone go to a pharmacy looking for them now?

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119561895#Comment_119561895

If you want something other than the two types that shops usually sell (something lurid coloured and Durex Extra Safe), you would generally have to go to a pharmacy - or a sex shop. I don't think there's any of those in Donegal.

I'm surprised there's any pharmacies that don't sell them here - its quite common in Spain, Portugal and Italy to see vending machines outside so the pharmacist can meet the requirement of having them available, but blame someone else for the "sin" of selling them!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119561895#Comment_119561895

I wouldn't say that they went straight away to every shop counter in 1993. Clarkes one of the larger shops in swords, now part of the centra chain wouldn't stock them at the time because the older regulars said they would boycott the shop if they did.

The only place you can get them locally where I am in Meath is the vending machine in the pub, as the local shop doesn't stock them.

Now that might be due to the fact that the owner and sole employee is in her sixties, closes up for lunch, stops serving at six on the dot, so mostly gets passing trade and locals calling in for something that they run out of or forget to get in the weekly shopping trip that isn't worth driving the whole way to the nearest village with a supermarket, spar or centra.

Hotblack Desiato

In 1993, in Rathmines of all bloody places, my then girlfriend was turned away from one of the two pharmacies there when trying to get her prescription for the contraceptive pill filled. "We don't do that here".

Imagine small town Ireland with one pharmacy...

Brady's on South Circular Road (then a massive student flatland) was owned by a major FF family and didn't stock condoms until this century