Much of the world celebrates St. Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland, on March 17. The feast day is a chance for people around the world to celebrate their Irish heritage and the nation’s culture in honor of the man who brought the Christian faith to the Emerald Isle over 1,500 years ago. Most Americans still fondly think of Ireland as the fabled Land of Saints and Scholars, but the country has veered sharply to the left in recent years, both politically and culturally. Here are four things about modern Ireland that might surprise you.

1. The LGBT Agenda Is Dominant

It’s said that there’s a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow, but Ireland has seemingly forgotten the gold and gone all-in on the rainbow. Over the past decade in particular, Ireland has embraced the LGBT agenda with stunning speed and to an almost limitless extent. In 2015, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, Ireland became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage by national popular vote. In fact, same-sex marriage has been added to the Irish constitution as a guaranteed right. In 2017, Irish law was formally amended to allow same-sex couples to adopt children, and politician Leo Varadkar, who openly identifies as gay, was elected Taoiseach (Ireland’s word for prime minister).

In the 1980s, politician and activist David Norris campaigned to repeal existing laws which criminalized homosexual acts, but the Irish Supreme Court rejected Norris’s efforts “on the grounds of the Christian nature of our state and on the grounds that the deliberate practice of homosexuality is morally wrong…” Norris thus appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, ultimately resulting in the decriminalization of homosexual acts under Irish law in 1993. The new legislation was signed into law by then-President Mary Robinson, who had represented Norris before both the Irish Supreme Court and the European Court.

Years later, Varadkar issued a formal apology to those who identify as LGBT in Ireland — calling them “unknown heroes” — for the nation’s prior laws criminalizing homosexual acts. “What we can say is that we have learned as a society from their suffering. Their stories have helped change us for the better; they have made us more tolerant, more understanding and more human,” the then-Taoiseach said.

Ireland also passed the Gender Recognition Act in 2015, legally permitting those who identify as transgender to change their gender on licenses, passports, and even birth certificates, and, in 2019, a government review even recommended allowing minors to change their gender identify on official documents. In 2020, Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth Roderic O’Gorman, another Irish politician who openly identifies as homosexual and is in a same-sex marriage, announced that he would be following through on that recommendation and introducing legislation to the effect. O’Gorman also moved to criminalize so-called conversion therapy in the Emerald Isle, saying at the time, “Legislating for a ban on conversion therapy will send a clear and unambiguous message to everyone, both younger and older, that a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression is not up for debate.”

In 2023, it was discovered that over €1.3 million in government funds (equivalent to over $1.4 million) had gone missing between 2021 and 2022. It turns out, O’Gorman’s department had siphoned the money into a single fund which was then used to pay various LGBT activist organizations and projects. O’Gorman denied any impropriety, declaring that diverting funds in such a manner was a routine government practice. The minister did, however, endorse a program to “expand” LGBT culture and resources in rural Ireland, called “Making Ireland The Best Place In Europe To Be LGBTQI+.”

In fact, the Emerald Isle has fairly consistently been ranked one of the world’s top 10 most LGBT-friendly countries. The majority of Ireland’s significant cities are home to a number of LGBT bars and nightclubs and regularly host Pride events, including in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, and Waterford, among others. Even the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin has been infested by the LGBT agenda. Irish Freedom Party Founder and President Hermann Kelly told The Washington Stand, “The director of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin told me 20 years ago as a journalist that the parade was not about St. Patrick. Indeed, to watch the spectacle today, it’s like a homosexual Pride parade with gay flags, as well as those from Ukraine and Palestine.” Kelly added, “The only symbols in short supply are the Irish flag and the big man himself.”

In 2023, Arts Minister Catherine Martin announced that the St. Patrick’s Day festival in Dublin that year would focus on “inclusivity” and would feature drag queens and LGBT-themed dance clubs. The festival included “queer performance and art in celebration of Irish LGBTQ+ club culture,” much of which was promoted by the LGBT Cultúr Club, which was also given four performance stages for drag queens, stripteases, and LGBT DJs. The group also revamped the traditional Irish Céilí, renaming it “Géilí,” so that the first syllable rhymes with “gay.” Events were headlined by the likes of LGBT podcaster PJ Kirby, drag queens “Panti Bliss” and “Pixie Woo,” and “queer” singer-songwriter Elaine Mai. Dublin even hosted “an all-night queer dance party in Tent Mór,” which the festival’s website said was centered on “drag fabulosity.”

2. Abortion Is Legal and on the Rise

Less than five years before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the nearly 50-year run of federal protection for abortion, Ireland legalized the slaughter of the unborn. For much of the 20th century, abortion was notoriously illegal in Ireland, giving rise to tales of pregnant women traveling to other countries to dispose of their unborn children. Police took allegations regarding committing abortions seriously, and abortionists faced at least a decade in prison if convicted. One abortionist was even sentenced to death by hanging, although the sentence was later downgraded to life imprisonment. The Irish constitution was even amended in the 1980s to read, “The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

The Irish constitution was amended again in the 1990s to allow Irish women to travel outside the country for abortions if it was deemed medically necessary to save the woman’s life. Over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, numerous efforts were made to liberalize abortion legislation, but most came to nothing. In 2002, a proposal to allow abortion in Ireland if the life of the mother was at risk was narrowly defeated in a national popular vote. In 2005, a trio of women sued Ireland in the European Court of Human Rights, citing the country’s abortion laws. The court, however, determined that Ireland’s laws were not in violation of the European Charter of Human Rights and were, in fact, “legitimately trying to protect public morals.” New legislation was introduced in 2012 to allow for abortions in Ireland if the life of the mother was at risk, either from fatal health complications or from suicide. In the former case, a woman had to be approved by an obstetrician and a medical specialist in the field relevant to her life-threatening illness; in the latter, a woman had to be approved by three medical and psychological specialists who all had to agree that there was a real risk of suicide present.

In 2018, though, the Irish voted 66% to 33% in a national referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment, which prohibited the ending of an unborn life. Instead, the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act of 2018 was introduced, allowing abortions on demand during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and afterward in instances where the mother’s life or health were at risk. The law went into effect in January of 2021. By that time, it was reported that 200 Irish doctors had registered as abortionists. Since then, the number of abortions in Ireland has only increased. In 2019, the first year that abortion was legal, 6,666 unborn children were killed, followed by 6,577 in 2020. In 2021, only 4,577 abortions were reported, but the Health Service Executive (HSE) estimated that the real number was over 6,700, since reporting was disrupted by COVID-19. 2022 saw over 8,000 abortions committed in Ireland, and 2023, the last year for which statistics are available, saw over 10,000 unborn children killed in abortions.

3. Immigration Has Reshaped Ireland

The Emerald Isle of the 21st century is also notable for its sudden and steep decline from an almost entirely homogenous nation to a hotbed of Islamist extremism, fueled by an open borders immigration policy. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ireland experienced an economic boom, known as the “Celtic Tiger” period, which encouraged many from poorer countries to seek employment in economically ascendant Ireland. While most of these jobseekers came from other European nations — such as Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Italy, and Spain — a growing number began arriving from the Middle East and India. According to the 2022 census, nearly 20% of the population of Ireland’s largest city, Dublin, are foreign-born noncitizens. Brazilians and Indians make up the largest faction, at over 11,000 and over 10,000 respectively. Nationally, foreign-born noncitizens made up at least 12% of Ireland’s population.

Kelly commented, “The political and media elite of Ireland are currently awash with cultural self-loathing — as I call it, ‘hibernophobia.’ They want us to be the hole in the polo mint, so that every culture from mass immigration is to be celebrated in Ireland, except that of an Irish Catholic people.”

One of the fastest-growing non-Irish groups in Ireland is Islam. Many Muslims began moving to Ireland in the 1990s and, in less than 20 years, Ireland’s Muslim population expanded by over 1,000%. In recent years, Muslims have begun outpacing the Irish natives as far as birth rates, with “Muhammad” becoming the most popular male birth name in cities like Limerick and Galway and climbing into the top 10 nationally.

Ireland’s Muslim population has not assimilated particularly well to the culture of its hosts. In multiple instances, Muslim immigrants have committed acts of violence against Irish natives. Yousef Palani, for example, made headlines for slaughtering a trio of Irish men, including two whom he beheaded. Another Muslim killed an Irish man for being Catholic and took a video of himself laying a crucifix over the dead man’s body. An Islamist teenager stabbed a Catholic priest and military chaplain, faulting the Catholic Church and Western military powers for wars in the Middle East.

In late 2023, Dublin erupted in violent riots after an Algerian Muslim stabbed three little girls outside a school and attacked their caretaker. One of the five-year-old girls attacked spent nine months in a critical care unit in the hospital. Irish flags were waved at the protests, along with signs reading “Irish Lives Matter” and “Ireland Is Full.” Other protests focused on the government housing immigrants and refugees in small rural communities without even notifying — much less seeking — the consent of the residents. In at least one instance, the government even housed adult male refugees in a children’s school, without notifying parents.

4. Christianity Is Waning

For centuries, Ireland was well-known for training priests, monks, and missionaries, then sending them out into the wide world to preach the gospel. It was Irish monks who preserved records of Sacred Scripture and re-Christianized Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, and Irish priests and nuns who built Catholic parishes and schools in American metropolitan hubs like New York City, Boston, and Baltimore. But recent years have seen a sharp decline in the practice of the Christian faith in the Emerald Isle.

Nominally, Catholicism is the dominant religion in Ireland, with 69.1% of the population identifying as Catholic, according to the 2022 census, which is down from over 75% in the 2016 census. While other Christian denominations account for 7% of the population, roughly 15% identify as having “no religion” at all, up from less than 10% in 2016. Following Christianity and “no religion,” Islam is the third-most practiced religion in Ireland, which is in turn followed by Hinduism.

Among Irish Christians, however, belief in the faith is waning. In 2002, weekly church attendance amongst Irish Christians fell below half (down to 48%) for the first time in decades, possibly even centuries. According to a survey conducted by Amárach Research in 2023, only about 14% of Ireland’s Catholics attend Sunday Mass. Prior to COVID-19 closures, only about 24% of Irish Catholics attended Sunday Mass, but less than 60% of that 24% has returned to regular Mass attendance. Nearly a third of those who stopped attending Mass said that their faith “isn’t as strong” as it used to be. A prior study conducted by Ireland’s Catholic bishops in 2010 found that at least 10% of self-identifying Irish Catholics don’t actually believe in God. That’s a far cry from the Ireland that St. Patrick set ablaze with devotion to Christ back in the 5th century.

The Rocky Road to Recovering Ireland

Ireland is not, however, without hope. There is still a strong contingent of Christians and conservatives willing to fight for the country, and that contingent is growing every day. Over the past several years, hundreds and thousands of men have attended the national Men’s Rosary Rallies, publicly praying for Ireland’s return to the Christian faith, typically on a monthly basis. Another sign of hope came when Irish voters overwhelmingly rejected a pair of proposed constitutional amendments last year, attempting to redefine both the family and motherhood. One amendment, which would have removed reference to marriage as the foundation of the family from the constitution, was shot down by 67% of voters. Another amendment, replacing references to motherhood and womanhood in the Irish constitution with gender-neutral language, was rejected by 74% of voters. Following the failure of the proposed amendments, which were heavily backed by the government, Varadkar resigned from office, quipping, “Clearly we got it wrong.”

Whether praying in the streets or casting ballots in the voting booth, the land which St. Patrick baptized is not yet lost. Kelly said, “For myself and the Irish Freedom Party, as a proudly Irish nationalist, pro-life, pro-family party which believes in Irish sovereignty and self-governance, we can also feel a resurgence of a desire to celebrate our own culture based on Christianity and our Gaelic roots — be that in language, music, dance, or our own national athletic games.”