Shortly before Christmas, The Irish Times published an article that took a crack at yours truly over my support for the special status of marriage. But nowhere the article does its author, Anthea McTiernan, consider the evidence in favour of the family based on marriage, nor does she come up with a working definition of...
New figures show that more than one in five abortions in the UK (22.1 percent) is carried out on girls under the age of 20. Dominique Jackson, writing in The Daily Mail, reckons the answer to this is more sex ed. But her conclusion is flatly contradicted by figures she quotes in her own article....
The UK’s deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has attacked in rather odd terms proposals to give a modest tax break to married couples. In a speech a few days ago he said: “We should not take a particular version of the family institution, such as the 1950s model of suit-wearing, breadwinning...
The findings of the recent Pew survey showing the low level of marriage in the US aren’t really all that surprising to those who are familiar with the issue. Just over half (51pc) of US adults are now married says Pew, based on US census data. Only last year, the Institute for American Values released...
Two major reports on the family have been issued in the last few days, one on attitudes to the family in Ireland, one on family structure in Ireland. The first shows that there is a lot of wishful thinking going on about the changes to family life that are taking place, the other confirms that...
Earlier this year, Labour Senator Ivana Bacik and her colleague in the Dáil, Labour TD Aodhan O Riordán proposed ending the prayers said in the Oireachtas before each session, supposedly to promote greater “pluralism”. Both Senator Bacik and Mr O’Riordán placed this issue on the agenda of the Committee on Procedure and Privileges (CPP) in...
Family law scholar Helen Alvare, an associate professor at George Mason University, has written a thoughtful two part series for the Witherspoon Institute’s blog, Public Discourse, on how family law has evolved over the decades from being child and marriage-centred to being freedom and adult-centred. This trend is very much present in Irish law as...
Last month the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Canada rejected an attempt by breakaway Mormons to recognise polygamous marriage. Pressure is growing across the Western world to no longer restrict marriage to one man and one woman. The biggest and most successful source of that pressure is the gay rights movement, but increasingly Muslims...
The Family Scholars’ blog, which carries a range of stories and opinion items on contemporary family issues recently carried a post by an author calling himself Rnewman and bemoaning the attitude of his fellow countryfolk to marriage and the family. He points out the irony of a country where state supports for the family are...
During the riots that engulfed parts of Britain last summer, one figure stood out for the clarity of his analysis and the credibility of his witness, namely Labour MP, David Lammy (pictured). Lammy was raised in Tottenham, one of the worst hit areas, and from the age of 12 was raised by his mother alone,...
