It’s an odd time for the DUP. Having spent the past two years backing the government on a Brexit that a majority of Northern Irish citizens voted against, it now finds support for Irish reunification at its highest ever level in Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic and, crucially, among their supposed ideological fellow-travellers in the Conservative party. More pressingly still, MPs this week voted to extend crucial human rights to Northern Ireland, direct from Westminster, paving the way for the decriminalisation of abortion and the implementation of marriage equality, in line with the rest of the UK.

How did a party as frothingly opposed to liberal social change as it is to Irish reunification end up presiding over a reality in which both are more likely than they have been in decades?

Explaining any aspect of Northern Irish politics in depth is a bit like giving a friend an update on all those operations that your dog has just had – it’s obviously sad, complicated, and painful, but without ever actually being interesting, which means that the second you begin speaking, your pal is only half-listening, and merely waiting for a polite moment to change the subject.

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Nevertheless, here is an attempt. The important thing to remember is that Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly was set up for a dynamic that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the UK: two broadly equal-sized populations, diametrically opposed on their biggest issue. So, like toddlers divvying up chores, one got to wash, and the other dried. One got first minister, the other deputy – and all symbols, flags, anthems and holidays were to be given equal respect, as two clearly defined, but resolutely immiscible, halves. This incentivised immoderation, since whichever party espoused the most assertive and intransigent arguments for its community stood a better chance of wielding influence. This – not some inherent tactical genius on the part of either party – is how Sinn Féin and the DUP swiftly overpowered the more moderate SDLP and UUP, and now hold every single Northern Irish seat in Westminster bar one, and 61% of seats in the Stormont assembly itself.

Having gained their position through inflexibility rather than political savvy, it’s not surprising that deadlock is so common. This is best evidenced by the current 913-day suspension of Stormont, following fallout from the renewable heat incentive scandal, in which the DUP was implicated in a morass of financial mismanagement somewhere between sheer incompetence and rank corruption: Sinn Féin accused the DUP of not being held accountable for the scandal, and refused to come back to the table until this occurred. Then the music stopped and Northern Irish voters were left like embarrassed partygoers, sipping lukewarm drinks and calling cabs while our married hosts accost each other with insults that have clearly been brewing for a while.

This isn’t new. A Stormont suspension that began in 2002 lasted four and a half years. Northern Ireland’s devolved government has been suspended for 42% of the last 17 years. Suspension of parliament may not be the norm, but it is a norm – and one within which Northern Irish people do not have the luxury of placing their lives, and the pursuit of their human rights, on hold.

It is for this reason that Sinn Féin is sanguine about accepting “direct rule” in this instance, because in the absence of a devolved parliament, people still need human rights, and both abortion rights and marriage equality are among its stated positions. It is also why the DUP is opposed to having full equal treatment under British law, because while it loves being British, for it that means things like bowler hats and mushy peas, not reproductive rights and especially not anything that gets in the way of its hateful views about gay people.

And look, it’s easy to call the DUP homophobic – because it’s entirely true in every conceivable way. Founder Ian Paisley spent the 1970s attempting to “save Ulster from sodomy” and the language hasn’t been moderated much since. Ian Paisley Jr has said he is “repulsed by gay and lesbianism”. In 2008, then party leader Peter Robinson called homosexuality “an abomination”, after his wife, Iris Robinson MP, announced in the Commons that “there can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing innocent children”. Last year Arlene Foster was praised for becoming the first DUP leader to attend an event for LGBT people but, once there, she insisted that the DUP’s campaign to deny them equal rights be “respected, if not agreed with”.

On this issue, the DUP isn’t just out of step with common sense, but also with its own electorate. Polling on the subject indicates that local support for marriage equality is so broad, it simply must include a significant cohort of DUP voters. A SkyData survey from last year suggested 76% of Northern Irish people support marriage equality. Perhaps the only other comparably unanimous issue is abortion, where polls consistently show most people in Northern Ireland agreeing that the law should be changed.

And this is a point that should be emphasised, amid well-meaning commentary referring to these issues as controversial – in actual fact, few issues in Northern Ireland are less divisive.

It remains to be seen if Foster and her pals will end up living in a pro-choice, gay-friendly united Ireland – a Sodom and Begorrah, lifted directly from their most fervid nightmares, one that they would have accidentally helped create. Like Homer Simpson, his arm trapped in a vending machine by his refusal to let go of the snack he was attempting to pilfer, the DUP is losing the fight to block its citizens’ rights simply because it’s too stubborn to resume the very parliament it controls.

It is this intransigence that has been cannily exploited by the thousands of people all over Northern Ireland who have spent decades campaigning for all of us to get the rights we deserve. It is their efforts, and their victory, we should celebrate. There’s often very little to cheer about the sickly animal that is Northern Irish politics, but this week shows there could be life in the old dog yet.

• Séamas O’Reilly is a writer from Derry. His first book, a memoir about his childhood, entitled Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, is due to be published next year