Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly addressed the annual Accord conference in Belfast last weekend. O’Reilly, one of Ireland’s best known journalists in a previous life is probably best described as a conflicted liberal. She has supported most of the liberal causes down the years, but she’s smart enough to know that the liberal reforms have a downside as well as an upside, especially in the area of family life.

In fact, O’Reilly is that very rare thing, a liberal (or is she a conservative liberal?) who understands the concerns of traditionalists about what happens to families and children in societies which place such a high value on adult autonomy.

In her speech, which deserves a wide circulation, she discusses with great sensitivity how commitments like marriage, which insist your own freedom must take second place behind your responsibilities, lose out when so much emphasis is placed on adult autonomy and self-fulfilment.

She says: “And perhaps that is what those who value the traditional married state perhaps fear most.  That in the unravelling of traditional units, in the blending of disparate families, in the separation of procreation from the linear narratives captured in multi-generational family trees, we grow closer to a chaotic state where our connections weaken and where the common good is not ultimately served.”

This is exactly what those who value traditional marriage fear most. And it is what is taking place all around us. It is spurred on by the over-emphasis on personal freedom and also by new forms of reproductive technology that think nothing of splitting motherhood between birth mothers and genetic mothers, and turning fathers into sperm donors and mothers into egg donors and treating the natural ties as though they hardly matter at all.

Unfortunately when traditionalists raise these sorts of concerns they tend not to be listened to. But given Emily O’Reilly history as a liberal, although admittedly a conflicted one, perhaps a few more people than usual will listen to her.

Her speech in full is here.

(PS Emily ought to check out ‘Freedom’s Orphans’ by David Tubbs)