What constitutes responsible sex education? What should it look like? It’s an ongoing debate, but one thing all sides at least pay lip service to is the idea that that the information we give to young people in schools should be based on scientific evidence. So why are some key facts about condom effectiveness...
Over at The Public Discourse, here’s a really interesting piece by Jennifer Lahl of the Center for Bioethics in America on surrogacy in the US, and on some of the legal battles now taking place in various states. With Alan Shatter’s Children and Family Relationships Bill on the horizon, this topic is one we ought...
Catholic schools are not entitled to promote Catholic views on sexuality, Dr Jacky Jones, formerly of the HSE, announced in The Irish Times on Monday. She made this interesting statement in reaction to the coverage of Pure in Heart in the media – Pure in Heart being a Catholic organisation that goes into schools around the...
In his column last week, Fintan O’Toole of The Irish Times tried to argue that the institution of marriage has not declined at all in Ireland. His chief piece of evidence was that the number of marriages in Ireland has actually gone up compared with a few decades ago. He overlooked many countervailing facts including...
The Catholic lay group Pure in Heart has been attracting criticism lately, some of which actually managed to mention them in the same breath as Holocaust deniers. The chief reason for the criticism is that they promote chastity. In his weekly column in The Irish Independent David Quinn defends Pure in Heart and specifically addresses...
Do dads matter in the lives of their children? The authors of this article from The Atlantic are in no doubt that they do and that children often suffer when they don’t have a father who looks out for them. The authors draw on both evidence and stories to back up their argument. It’s a...
Breda O’Brien was interviewed by Marian Finucane on her programme last Saturday about same-sex marriage and the ‘homophobia’/RTE apology controversy. Breda discusses the implications of same-sex marriage for children’s rights, and the personal impact of some of the hate mail she has received for her stance on the issue. The interview also discusses the work...
A new RTE/Sunday Business Post poll confirms the finding of an Irish Times opinion poll on same-sex marriage from a few months back, namely that support for the proposition stands in or around 75 percent. That’s a very big lead. However, this latest poll confirms what some commentators have suspected all along, namely that much...
The debate about homophobia and same-sex marriage was the subject of an item on BBC World’s Have Your Say programme, available here. Rory O’Neill took part in a discussion with Caroline Farrow of Catholic Voices and Brandon Ambrosino, a gay writer who supports gay marriage but, in his own words, wants to “open up the...
In his latest opinion piece in The Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole takes issue with The Iona Institute’s thesis that marriage in Ireland is in decline. On the contrary, says O’Toole, marriage “has proven to be far more robust than either conservatives or radicals ever imagined.” Unfortunately, Fintan can only make such a broad claim by ignoring...
