Marriage Equality: United we are strong? …or maybe not!

When I drove through Dublin during the week, I was wondering why some of the lamp posts had five different Marriage Equality Referendum posters on them. There was one from Fine Gael, Fine Fail, Labour, Sinn Fein all asking for a YES vote and then there was one poster asking for a NO vote from an unidentifiable (print too small) organisation. The Yes Equality posters were only added a few days later.

Going through all the events in Dublin I came across quite a number of fundraising events for the Yes Equality campaign, but the four parties that also ask for a YES vote didn’t ask for money.

These two things together made me wonder why the Yes side doesn’t work together!? I would expect (and hope) that the Yes side will achieve a landslide victory in this referendum and considering the extremely rare scenario that ALL relevant political parties and a huge proportion of the non-politically organised population are of the same opinion we really can expect that outcome, but would it not have been EVEN stronger if the YES side had come together, had left their differences aside and would have presented a block of support for the referendum?

In a football team it helps if the 11 players work together while trying to achieve a win. Imagine if all 11 tried to play their own game without helping and co-operating with their team members!? The match could still be won, but it would be a lot riskier than if they all helped each other.

Sure, I can think of a number of reasons why all players in this competition did want to get (and claim) the goal for themselves, but is the common goal of winning the match not much bigger and more important than getting individual goals?