The BAI (Broadcasting Authority of Ireland) has been facing a backlash ever since it ruled that an item on Newstalk’s Breakfast Show breached the broadcast regulations by being excessively biased in favour of same-sex marriage. The Breakfast Show had to read out the ruling last week. A similar ruling was made against the Mooney Show...
Independent TD Mattie McGrath spoke recently about his Private Members’ Bill entitled The Disability (Amendment) Act 2014 during a press conference organised by the advocacy group Every Life Counts. Deputy McGrath seeks to regulate against the continued use of the phrase “incompatible with life.” Another key word in his statement was “dehumanising.” Indeed. This brought...
A debate over ‘assisted suicide’ is already taking place in Ireland and is only going to gain in intensity over time as the population ages, healthcare costs increase and notions of personal autonomy continue to override other important social and moral goods. In any debate we have about this matter, it makes absolute sense to...
Bishop Kevin Doran said at a talk on Thursday night organised by The Iona Institute that if we permit same-sex marriage, the link between marriage as an institution and procreation will have been destroyed. This is the child-centred view of marriage. Brian Sheehan of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) responded by offering a...
Let’s call a spade a spade: a lot of academic research – especially in the social sciences – either reports on the bleedin’ obvious, or backs up the arguments of the researchers, and usually goes some way to maintain or augment their grant. BBC Radio 5 Live was awash with this latest research the other day,...
Iona Institute Director David Quinn was on Newtalk’s Moncrieff programme last week talking about surrogacy. In a long interview, Moncrieff and Quinn discussed the differences between surrogacy and gamete donation on the one hand and adoption on the other. Quinn asked Moncrieff to consider some of the unintended consequences that could come about through legislation...
Wow. That was, essentially, my reaction upon first reading Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ speech on marriage a the Vatican’s Humanum Conference (or the Colloqium on the Complementarity of Man and Woman in Marriage, to give it its full name). This is one of the deepest, most profound defences of the institution of marriage that I’ve ever...
The American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) recent report lends more weight to the argument that marriage is good for your pocket. It argues that “changes in family formation and stability are central to the changing economic landscape of American families, to the declining economic status of men, and to worries about the health of the American...
The Italian Supreme Court has decided that a couple who used a surrogate mother in Ukraine to have a child should not be allowed to raise the child. The child will be placed for adoption instead. The case shows how strict some European countries are about surrogacy. Ireland should follow suit. Italy, like France, Germany,...
Shane Coleman: … Some European countries, Germany, Sweden, France, I think as well, ban surrogacy, completely. Would you be of a mind to do that? Minister Varadkar: I’ve heard that. I haven’t actually checked that up yet as to whether they ban it outright. They certainly may ban commercial surrogacy and I would be very...
