There is only ONE important issue this election

And it has nothing to do with € 145 billion (+/-), or job creation, or any of that other boring stuff.

Oh no.

Grafton street this morning:

In the midst of putting up the ‘Labortion’ posters, they seem to have remembered that there is indeed another important issue:

The ‘Labortion’ party wants marriage equality too!

That allowing gay people to marry is bad is seemingly self-explanatory, so they just slapped up a piece of an article.

Next week’s slogan: ‘A vote for Labour is a vote for Satan.’

Tagged: Abortion, Anti-choice, LGBT, Marriage equality, Politics, Pro-life

UN removes LGBT from list of groups vulnerable to discriminatory killings

A reference to sexual orientation on a list of discriminatory grounds on which killings are often based was removed from a UN Resolution last week.

The resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions aims to highlight groups of people who are specifically targeted for killings. Sexual orientation has been on the list since 1999, but was removed after a vote in the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly November 16th.

Removing this reference means that sexual orientation is no longer one of the grounds of discriminatory killings on which states are called on to protect and investigate.

Benin proposed the amendment based on the following statement :

sexual orientation [has] no legal foundation in any international human rights instruments and there [is] no legal justification to highlight it

The amendment was passed with 79 states for and 70 states against (see list here).

Recognition of the vulnerability of LGBT people in many countries is now considerably weakened, and many human rights and LGBT organisations including the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and Human Rights Watch have expressed worry and anger about the situation.

Tagged: LGBT, UN, Violence

Sex, Sin and Society – Irish Times Poll Indicates a Liberal Ireland

The Irish Times have over the last three days published the findings from their poll ‘Sex, Sin and Society’. And the results are very interesting

A majority of the people surveyed disagreed with many of the common practices of the Catholic Church (such as not allowing women to be ordained to the priesthood).

The results also showed that for many issues politically perceived as too complex to deal with and too liberal to introduce to Ireland (such as allowing gay couples to adopt and the abortion debate) the majority of people have their minds made up, and many show very liberal attitudes.

As the findings are not available online (only in printed editions of the Irish Times) I have pasted a selection of the findings below:

LGBT Issues:

• Would you think less of a person if he/she revealed to you that he/she is gay or lesbian? NO: 91 %
• Do you think gay couples should be allowed to marry? YES: 67 %
• Do you think gay couples should be allowed to adopt children? YES: 46 %
• Do you believe the recently enacted civil partnership legislation undermines the institution of marriage? NO: 60 %
• Should people who have changed their gender be allowed to change their birth certificates to reflect their new sex? YES: 48 %

Religion:

• Do you believe that Catholic priests should be allowed to marry? YES: 87 %
• Do you believe that the Catholic Church should allow women to be ordained to the priesthood? YES: 78 %
• Do you believe that the Islamic face-covering veil, the burqa, should be banned in public places? YES: 49 %

Legislation:

If a friend came to you privately to ask you for your assistance in having an abortion, would you…

• Help her: 49 %
• Refuse to help and try to persuade her to have the baby: 26 %
• Take some other course of action: 24%
• Don’t Know: 1%

• Do you think the following law is unjust: Boys can be prosecuted for having sex with a girl under 17, even if consensually. Girls can not be prosecuted for having sex with underage boys. YES: 87 %

On the Constitution:

• Needs some amendment: 59 %
• Not fit for purpose and needs to be rewritten:19%
• Has stood the test of time well: 12%
• Don’t know: 10 %

Sex and the Sexualised Society:

• Do you regard sex outside marriage as immoral? NO: 79 %
• Much recent commentary claims that current fashions in clothes and media sexualise young girls at an early age. Do you agree? YES: 84 %

Many of these findings show that change is needed. It’s time to shake the sleeping dogs awake and get some heads out of the sand. And maybe these survey results can finally give the bishops (and their colleagues) the kick up the arse they need to start adapting to modern times.

Marriage Equality Launches Report on Children in LGBT Families

The first Irish report to document life experiences of children growing up with lesbian parents was launched by Marriage Equality in Dublin yesterday. The report, entitled ‘Voices of Children’ is a result of a workshop attended by 11 participants between the ages of 18 and 24; all having grown up with LGBT parents.

Based on the findings, Marriage Equality called for the Irish Government to amend adoption and guardianship laws, and for the introduction of civil marriage. Grainne Healy, Chairwoman of Marriage Equality said:

Contrary to the advice of the Ombudsman for Children on both adoption and Civil Partnership, the Irish Government has created a legal vacuum for this group of children. This means that discrimination identified by the children in the report across the education and health system, and in society, will continue unchallenged.

You can sign up to support Marriage Equality’s work for civil marriage for gay and lesbian people here.

Just a Small Note to the Infamous Burke's

The Civil Partnership bill was passed with an overwhelming majority by the Seanad this week.  Happy Days! Reading the Irish Times’ Weekend Review this morning however, I found an article about one family who probably isn’t as happy as myself about this.

According to ‘Small voices that go unheard‘ , members of the Burke family from Castlebar, Co. Mayo drive up to Leinster House 2-3 times a week to show their opinion on homosexuals, bringing posters stating ‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind.’ etc. One of the younger members of the family, Enoch, goes as far as claiming that Aids begins with homosexuals.

‘Of course there are a thousand other things we could be doing’

says Martina, the mother.

Well, I have taken it upon myself to come up with a suggestion, Martina. I hope you and your family like it.

The 8 family members (who does not mind at all having their picture and names spread over the front page of a paper read by tens of thousands of people) drive to Dublin 2-3 days a week, a journey that takes them 3-4 hours. To make it simple, let’s make it 2.5 days a week and a 3.5 hour drive. After the journey, they all stand outside Leinster House for up to 9 hours.

Each of them thus spend 31.25 hours each week on average, including the drive, on their campaigning. That’s almost a full working week. Altogether the Burke family spend 250 hours weekly on this.

The last time I looked up volunteeringireland.ie, the Open Heart House, an organisation dedicated to provide support for people living with HIV, were looking for volunteers for nine different positions. 250 hours weekly from 8 well educated people would probably be a pretty good start, or what do you think Burkes’?

This way, the Burke’s would learn a little something about HIV/Aids, the organisation would get 250 hours a week of the volunteering needs covered, and they could leave the interfering with the Civil Partnership Bill to God. I’m sure God has the power to get the message through singlehandedly (and as of Thursday it seems God is pretty pro-civil partnership).

What do you think Burke’s, could that be one of the thousand other things you could be doing?

Same-Sex Marriage Legalised on Iceland

A marriage equality law giving homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals to be married came into effect on Iceland yesterday.

One of the first people to change their registered partnership into legitimate marriage were none the less than the Icelandic Prime Minister herself, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir and her long-term partner.

As far as I know, Sigurðardóttir is the world’s only openly gay head of state. The interesting part is, her sexuality and now marriage, apparently isn’t really an issue on Iceland.

When Johanna Sigurðardóttir was elected in 2009 Frosti Jónsson, chairman of Iceland’s gay-and-lesbian association, explained

‘There are so many openly gay prominent figures in both the public and private sector here that it doesn’t affect who we select for our highest offices. Our minds are focused on what counts, which is the current situation in the country’

Sigurðardóttir is further a self-proclaimed feminist and under her leadership all lap dancing and strip clubs in the country have been banned. The ban is a result of a law which makes it illegal for any business to profit from the nudity of its’ employees. Purchasing sex has also become criminalised.

Interestingly, both these laws were passed on feminist grounds, rather than religious as is the case in other countries with similar bans. When the ban on strip clubs was introduced, the politician who proposed the ban maintained that the main reasoning behind the legislation was that ‘It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold‘.

I think Ireland, as well as the rest of the world, has a lot to learn from Iceland’s no-nonsensical approach to equality issues. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like any similar legislations on banning strip clubs will be introduced here any time soon, but we can always hope that all the great campaigning for civil marriage to be recognised will soon pay off.