Irish liberalization—with regard to homosexuality as well as divorce, contraception, and abortion, which have all seen significant legal reform if not outright legalization—has come about not through a gradual replacement of older conservative generations, but because huge numbers of people have simply changed their minds, according to the sociologist Pat Lyons’s careful sifting of opinion polls. In the case of gay marriage, I believe they are changing their minds, not necessarily about the importance of family to Irish life, but about the definition of family.

This is possible in part because the source of the constitution’s vision of family, the Catholic Church, has suffered a near-collapse in prestige and authority, particularly because of revelations about the sexual abuse of children that was covered up by the church hierarchy. Government inquiries into this pattern of abuse and denial, such as the Ferns and Cloyne reports, became household names, symbols of the shattering of the Church’s reputation in Ireland. The Irish overwhelmingly still believe in God, but they’ve lost their faith in the Catholic Church: While 51 percent had great confidence in the institution in 1981, only 19 percent did in 2008.

But, like Lainey and Rita, the Irish gay-rights movement has met its conservative neighbors at least halfway. In their 2013 submission to the Constitutional Convention, a forum tasked with developing recommendations on constitutional revision in a variety of areas, the Gay & Lesbian Equality Network noted that “more than a thousand couples have registered and celebrated their civil partnerships which have been treated as weddings by family, friends and neighbours across every county in Ireland.” Marriage Equality argued in its submission that Ireland was ready to “cherish same sex families equally with heterosexual married families”; its first point in favor of same-sex marriage was that “marriage is good for families and society.”

For some, the payoff only comes after the death of an older generation. As one gay man interviewed by the sociologist Róisín Ryan-Flood reflected, “It was almost like ... your father and mother’s dead, their issues die with them.” But more strikingly, older, rural voters appear to be reconsidering. Lainey told me recently about being introduced as Rita’s wife by one 70-something woman to another at a family friend’s funeral. Now, Lainey is bringing the marriage question directly to her neighbors’ doors. She’s re-enacting a Marriage Equality advertisement called “Sinéad’s Hand,” which followed a young man traversing Ireland to ask every citizen for permission to marry his girlfriend. Lainey explained to me: “I am asking peoples’ permission to marry Rita. The responses I’m getting are hilarious. People are looking at me as if I have two heads. When I explain that that’s what the referendum is about, that in fact I would have to call to every single voting person in Ireland and ask their permission to marry Rita, it kind of hits home. I haven’t had any bad experiences, and everyone I have asked has said yes.”

The Republic of Ireland is far from a paradise for LGBT people, and even a yes vote on May 22 won’t change that. According to one survey, Ireland was one of the most homophobic Western countries around the turn of the century, as measured in willingness to have gay neighbors. Another survey, in 2006, found that 80 percent of Irish teachers were aware of homophobic verbal bullying among their students. Religious-run institutions are still permitted by law to discriminate in hiring on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.