DUBLIN — Ireland’s rush to permanently redefine marriage is a startling development for a country that legalized divorce only 20 years ago. How could the nation that “saved civilization”  precipitously decide to make its constitution “gender neutral,” especially in a section devoted to … the family?

Key organizations opposing the radical change believe one answer can be found in the multimillion-dollar external financing program that has quietly poured money into Ireland to fund several homosexual-rights organizations since 2004, especially from U.S.-based Atlantic Philanthropies. Although not as well known as the Gates Foundation, Atlantic has a similar pedigree: Billionaire businessman Chuck Feeney is giving away the fortune he made as co-founder of DFS, airline duty-free shops. One of his targets is Ireland, perhaps because his parents were Irish-Catholic Depression-era immigrants to New Jersey, where Feeney was raised.  

Between 2004 and 2014, Feeney’s foundation virtually created the gay-rights movement in Ireland, with direct investment of more than $17 million and priceless indirect support, according to Breda O’Brien, a Catholic columnist at The Irish Times, research compiled on the blog Yes Funding Exposed and Atlantic Philanthropies’ own website and reports.

The referendum asked Irish voters on May 22 whether or not to add this language to Article 41 of the Constitution: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”

Atlantic-supported organizations led the “Yes” campaign, including Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN), Marriage Equality, Transgender Equality Network Ireland and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.

A related group that received Atlantic money, LGBT Diversity, is no longer active.

 

Catalyzing a Movement

Last year, Atlantic Philanthropies produced a document explaining the many facets of movement-building support. “Catalyzing LGBT Equality and Visibility in Ireland, 2004-2013” described the program’s four goals: Deliver legislative change on same-sex partnerships and transgender identity; expand “mainstream services” to include the LGBT community; develop organizational capacity; and increase cohesion of the groups receiving funding.

To do that, Atlantic awarded multiyear grants, funded staff positions for organizations that, if they existed, had relied on volunteers and brought in international advisers. For example, 10 years ago, GLEN was a volunteer organization with one paid employee, concentrating on HIV/AIDs prevention.

According to “Catalyzing LGBT Equality,” GLEN’s “multiyear grant from Atlantic enabled them to ramp up their work into a full-time highly professionalized lobbying machine.” The report boasts, “As a result of Atlantic’s investment, enduring LGBT sector organizations are staffed with highly respected and skilled strategists, lobbyists, campaigners, marketing experts, program managers and community organizers.”

A triumphant short film on campaign successes, accompanying the report, memorably explains that Atlantic supports small human-rights organizations “vulnerable to traditional values.” Overall, Atlantic Philanthropies takes credit for Ireland’s “landmark 2010 civil-partnership law, a scheduled public referendum on civil marriage [held May 22] and government creation of a Gender Recognition Advisory Group.”

 

‘No’ Response

Strangely, Feeney and Atlantic Philanthropies were revealed as primary backers of “Yes” campaign organizers only in the last month leading up to the vote, although these contributions — as well as the report and film — are listed on Atlantic Philanthropies’ website. O’Brien wrote a scathing piece in The Irish Times on May 6, with the tame title “Asking Questions About Funding for Referendum Campaign,” although the subhead, “Groupthink has been exalted to an Irish sacrament,” was penned by the author.   

O’Brien pointed out that while the Irish press is normally highly critical of foreign funding for domestic initiatives, Atlantic Philanthropies received no criticism or scrutiny. She called GLEN “the most successful lobby group in Irish history.” O’Brien suggested that her fellow Irish citizens had convinced themselves the “Yes” campaign was the work of a grassroots movement “because if we admitted that it is instead a slick, elite movement of highly educated professionals funded from abroad, we might have to admit we were skillfully manipulated.” She concluded, “Can American money buy an Irish referendum? Let’s wait and see.”

Following O’Brien, “No” campaigners incorporated a critique of Atlantic Philanthropies’ role into their materials. KeepMarriage.org called Feeney’s $17 million in funding the No. 1 fact out of “Four Things Yes Campaigners Really Don’t Want You to Know.” Local chapters of Mothers and Fathers Matter, a leading organization opposing the constitutional rewrite, put out a press release on May 15 calling the Irish media’s indifference to Atlantic Philanthropies as a prominent bankroller “a form of corruption.”

The blog “Yes Funding Exposed: How to Buy an Irish Referendum” sprang up earlier in May. On May 11, the blog explained it “demonstrates how private interests in Ireland and abroad are, through spending millions promoting one side, distorting the democratic process and potentially changing the course of Ireland’s social history.” And “Yes Funding Exposed” pointed to a pattern by which non-LGBT organizations, financed by Atlantic Philanthropies, endorsed the “Yes” campaign, a tactic that represented a potent indirect form of support for constitutional change. An international nongovernmental organization, Madrid-based Citizen Go, even started a petition asking Atlantic to “stop meddling in Irish politics.”   

On May 23, as many “No” campaigners were conceding defeat in the referendum, the Catholic, pro-marriage group Iona Institute tweeted Mothers and Fathers Matter spokeswoman Eileen King’s message on Irish TV: “We were up against buzzwords and money.”

Victor Gaetan is an international correspondent and a contributor to Foreign Affairs magazine. Read more at NCRegister.com.