Divorce in a divided land: the Irish debate their past & future.

The November 24 referendum in the Irish Republic may have been as much a question about Irish identity as about the legalization of divorce. Many of the purported legal issues--including land inheritance, which set rural Ireland so solidly against the issue in a previous referendum that met defeat in 1986--had been more or less spelled out in the Judicial Separation Act of 1986 and succeeding pieces of legislation.

During this campaign other anxieties came to the fore, fanned by a campaign full of American-style ads and sound bites: Abandoned children stood behind the slogan, "Hello Divorce. Bye, Bye Daddy." A billboard featured a distraught young woman and her family; it asked: "Will you destroy your daughter's marriage?" There was the ubiquitous threat, "You Will Pay!" a reference to the unsubstantiated claim that taxes would increase by 10 percent to support the victims of divorce. And in an unusual but pernicious bit of anti-Semitism, a member of one of Ireland's smaller political parties questioned whether the Minister for Equality and Law Reform, Mervyn Taylor, who is Jewish, should be framing laws governing Christian marriage. The Sunday Tribune reported that during the vote count, Una Bean Mhic Mathuna, a "No" supporter, shouted at Frances Fitzgerald, a member of parliament, "Ye're only a sharer of wife-swapping sodomites." She went on to complain: "My rights are not protected, but you can go back to your money-bags husband."

The only real change voted in the referendum allowed divorce and civil remarriage after four years of separation. "Second relationships" are not uncommon in Ireland, nor are they secret. Some people simply live with their new partner. Others, often the well-off, travel abroad, set up residency, and file for divorce. Valid foreign divorces are recognized in Ireland and the parties can remarry civilly back in Ireland. In fact, until 1986, men who emigrated to England could divorce their wives at home without the woman's consent.

The "Yes" vote (50.3 percent) was in varying degrees an effort to come to terms with this past and these inequities as well as to represent Ireland's view of herself as a partner in the New Europe. Though the Catholic bishops supported a "No" vote, they said that Catholics should vote according to their conscience. There were letters from the pope and Mother Teresa opposing; Bishop Thomas Flynn of Achonry said divorced Catholics who remarried could not receive the sacraments, including the last rites. When other churchmen demurred, he modified his statement.

This year begins the commemoration of the Great Hunger that decimated Ireland 150 years ago. Many have argued that the Irish people are only now able to acknowledge what the loss of 1.5 million dead and another million who emigrated between 1845 and 1850 meant to those who survived or remained. This year also marks the second year of peace in the North and the hope to an end of the centuries-old quarrel where religion was made a badge of difference. Of course, divorce and remarriage have been legal in the North and no one has found a qualitative difference among Catholics on this question.

Divorce is a hard reality for any family to face, and sometimes Ireland seems like a big extended family where the view persists that what you don't speak of isn't true. Ireland has now talked about broken marriages and divorce. Mary Pat Kelly is a writer and filmmaker. Home Away from Home: Yanks in Ireland is her most recent film.