In a piece in The Irish Times today [1] Laura Slattery basically calls for a total end to the debate about same-sex marriage.
She declares: “We have had the debate and the question has been settled”.
Slattery then turns her attention to the pesky requirement for balance on the airwaves. Surely we won’t have to have anything resembling balance now that the debate is over.
She quotes from an interview she did with Michael O’Keeffe, the BAI chief executive, a while ago, and says she “asked him whether same-sex marriage would still be regarded as the subject of current public debate if the referendum were passed. Could the No side continue to insist, citing the code, that expressions of equality must be countered by faith-fuelled pronouncements?
O’Keeffe responded: “On the assumption that it is passed, then it’s a legal right. For me that should probably be the end of the matter as a matter of public debate.”
Now, I’m pretty sure that O’Keeffe can’t possibly have meant to say what he said, because frankly that would be lunacy. Why? Let’s go back to Slattery’s piece, specifically the last paragraph:
The Irish Constitution continues, thanks to the eighth amendment, to deny human rights to women. Until Saturday, gay broadcasters found their personal lives were controversial, not merely personal. They were disadvantaged in their coverage of the debate because they were the debate. Women broadcasters and journalists, asked to be “impartial” and “objective” about their reproductive rights, continue to feel the chill.
Leave aside for a moment the repetition of the dog-tired canard that every woman is pro-choice, when all polling suggests that they are as likely to be pro-life as men, if not slightly more so. Slattery, and more importantly Michael O’Keeffe, seem to have no idea of the massive contradiction they’ve just unleashed.
Because, of course, the relevant human right recognised by the Irish Republic is the right to life of every human being on her soil.
Let’s hear O’Keeffe again:
“On the assumption that (the referendum) is passed, then it’s a legal right. For me that should probably be the end of the matter as a matter of public debate.”
On his logic, no broadcaster for the last 32 years (since the passage of the pro-life 8th amendment to our Constitution) has been obliged to ensure fairness and balance in the discussion of abortion – and they still aren’t. It can’t be a matter of public debate, because it’s a legal right. So on the basis of O’Keeffe’s logic, and Slattery’s, it would have been entirely fair for broadcasters to freeze Ivana Bacik, Alan Shatter, Choice Ireland, and every other group or individual supporting legalised abortion out of the public square.
Any complaint made to the BAI about unfairness against pro-choice speakers should be immediately found invalid: after all, we’re discussing a legal right – a constitutional one no less. And as for supporters of repealing the eighth amendment: they shouldn’t be allowed on air at all.
Given O’Keeffe’s new broadcasting standards, I look forward to my invitation to the Saturday Night Show to discuss my position on the human rights issue of abortion, unopposed. After all, the right to life of the unborn is a legal right. We had a referendum. As Slattery puts it “We have had the debate and the question has been settled.“ If Slattery believes that human rights in Ireland “aren’t up for debate”, why is this one?
Where would this new principle end? Are all legal rights now to be unquestionable, forever removed from being “matters of public debate”? Or is it just the ‘rights’ that right-thinking people happen to like?
Nobody’s suggesting that gay people talking about their lives should have to be balanced. Nobody not made of straw ever argued that. But O’Keeffe’s new standards, if consistently implemented, could effectively silence the 734,300 people in this country who voted No from ever being allowed to have their voice heard in the media on any issue related to the question of same-sex marriage.
Say, for example, RTÉ holds a discussion on the Ashers Bakery case after their appeal is decided. Will people who support the bakery have the right to representation in the media? Or can they simply be ignored as people who don’t fully throw their weight behind a “legal right”?
Michael O’Keeffe and the BAI need to clarify their position, and clarify it fast.