In the Sunday Independent of last Sunday week, Eamon Delaney, the former editor of Magill, wrote a column in which he argued that the gay rights agenda is overreaching by seeking, for example, a right to marry, to adopt children, and to intimidate opponents into silence. Admittedly he left himself open to accusations of stereotyping...
In the last year to 18 months the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR, pictured) had handed down several excellent decisions. The most famous is the Lautsi judgement in which it ruled that Italy could place crucifixes on the walls of state classrooms. In another, it ruled that a prohibition on same-sex marriage did not...
One of the sections of Bunreacht na hEireann that will almost surely be for the chop before too long is Article 41.2.1 and 41.2.2, which says that women should not be forced out of economic necessity to leave the home. Speaking for myself, I will shed no tears if and when it does go. Feminists...
Recent headlines highlighting the birth of the world’s seven billionth person cannot obscure the fact that much of the developed world is in fact heading for demographic collapse. In a recent report, entitled the Sustainable Demographic Dividend, Phillip Longman and a number of other scholars track the patterns of demographic decline globally and their causes....
The case of a young boy in the US who sought successfully to get into the Girl Scouts because he “feels” like a girl highlights yet again the corruption of language that comes in the wake of the transgender movement. The boy, Bobby Montoya (7), was initially told by one of the troop leaders for...
The Iona Institute has often argued that when assessing the strength of family life in a country it is mistake to focus solely on the rate of marital breakdown. Far more important is the number of children who are being raised by their two married parents, or not, as the case may be. The rate...
Two years ago I wrote a letter to the Irish Times in response to comments made by Senator Ivana Bacik in her letter to the same newspaper. In her letter, entitled ‘Creeping Fundamentalism’, Bacik set out what she described as fears of a growing ‘religious fundamentalism’ creeping into Irish Society. She based her observations on...
The Witherspoon Institute in the US is opposed to new health insurance guidelines which will force almost all religious organisations who provide healthcare for their employees to fund contraceptive services, sterilisation and even aborifacients despite what the ethos of these organisations might have to say about the subject.. But Linda Greenhouse, the former Supreme Court...
A new report called ‘One parent or five?’ has just been published in America. The author is Elizabeth Marquardt, an expert on how Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) is causing a revolution in our view of parenthood. Elizabeth has previously been a guest of The Iona Institute. This revolution was on display in two ways in...
Why did marriage evolve? There are two basic answers to this question. One is that down to very recent times it was mostly a response to economic necessity. The competing view is that it developed mainly as a way to encourage men and women to raise their children together. An article in the current issue...
