Debating Divorce

In 1986 a national opinion poll indicated that over half of Irish voters favored an upcoming referendum to remove the constitutional ban on divorce. Yet, after nine weeks of vigorous debate during which forces on both sides of the issue presented their cases to the public, the amendment was defeated. In Debating Divorce, Michele Dillon uses the divorce referendum debate in Ireland as a base from which to explore the long-standing sociological preoccupation with how societies decide questions of values. Focusing on culture and moral conflict, she examines the stances adopted by the major players in the debate: the government and the political parties, the Catholic church, women, the print and broadcast media, and activists on both sides. Although the issues of moral conflict that Dillon discusses have special relevance in demarcating Irish cultural values, they also apply to how people in general reason about morals and values. The author highlights the nature of moral discourse, the use of contradictory arguments in moral reasoning, the difficulty of trying to shift moral paradigms during nonrevolutionary times, and the impossibility of keeping facts and values distinct as people g