Fergus Finlay wrote in The Irish Examiner this week about the Children and Family Relationships Bill, and his piece unfortunately follows a familiar template adopted by most of the legislation’s defenders. It goes something like this: 1. Talk about the good bits of the bill 2. Avoid any questions that might be awkward. 3. Assure...
When two different questions get quite different results on the same issue it is a good sign that voter intentions on that issue are volatile. Thus it was that a poll by Red C and another one by Millward Brown on the issue of same-sex marriage and conducted within a week of each other got...
Let’s forget for a moment about the upcoming referendum on same-sex marriage and consider instead the disastrous attitude of our Government and opposition parties towards marriage overall. Taoiseach Enda Kenny summed it up very well last week when he reduced what marriage is all about to two words, “I do”. Enda Kenny, Frances Fitzgerald, Leo...
Frances Fitzgerald’s speech last night introducing the Children and Family Relationships Bill to the Dail was a masterpiece of evasion, in particular when she commented on the aspects of the Bill dealing with Donor Assisted Human Reproduction (DAHR). Here’s what she had to say: “The Bill will not change the rights of most children in terms...
It’s fair to say that Fintan O’Toole doesn’t like the section on the Irish Constitution that deals with the family, that is to say, Article 41. In his column in Tuesday’s Irish Times he associates it with de Valera’s Ireland and finds the article to be more or less incomprehensible. He has a particular objection...
Stephen Fry’s latest attempt to remind the world just how relevant and intelligent he is has brought Irish media legend Gay Byrne into the debate. In his show “The Meaning of Life,” Gay asked Fry what he would say, should he encounter God at the Gates of Heaven (assuming Saint Peter has given him a...
Twenty years ago two baby girls were mixed up at a clinic in the French Riviera city of Cannes, southern France and ended up growing up in the wrong families. On Tuesday, a court in the southern town of Grasse ordered the clinic at the centre of the mix-up to pay €1.88 million ($2.13 million) — six times less...
We should be grateful to The Irish Times for setting out in its editorial today such a comprehensively adult-centred view of marriage. The newspaper is entirely happy to completely separate the issue of children from the issue of marriage and never thinks to ask whether this is actually a good thing or not. It’s not,...
The Government has decided to call the Bill to amend the Constitution and permit same-sex marriage,” The Thirty-Fourth Amendment of the Constitution (Marriage Equality) Bill 2015″. Giving it such a completely loaded name, entirely favourable to the Yes side has been called into question by legal academic, Dr Seán Ó Conaill. Dr Ó Conaill believes...
There’s a persistent idea on the Yes side that notions that the idea of a child having a “right to a mother and father” or “a right to a relationship with their genetic parents” is a nonsense argument because – or so the reasoning goes – the state can’t guarantee it. Their mother might tragically...
