I’m almost afraid to start writing. The first thing you notice about the ‘gay marriage debate’ is that it involves a viper’s nest of phrases, offensive terms, insulting words, politically incorrect language, legal jargon and oppressive sentiments. Suddenly the difference between marriages, civil unions, religious unions and legal unions become all important. Semanticists and pedants are busily having a field day.
So let’s boil it down to the utterly simple. In Ireland, an arguably liberal society, gay men and women, as consenting adults, cannot have their love for each other acknowledged by the state, the majority church, or the legal system. In this writers opinion this is a disgrace.
Ireland is one of the only countries in Europe not to give any recognition to same sex couples. As a country that has made a point of jumping on the anti-George Bush, anti-America bandwagon, we now appear to take great pleasure in emulating his medieval policies which try to prevent same sex couples receiving any recognition as a union in the United States.
However strongly you feel about this, one way or the other, there isn’t a huge amount of use in just shouting and screaming about it. Let’s deal with some of the traditional arguments that are regularly made against the idea of gay marriage.
It’s un-natural!
Many people take ‘Route 1’ and just maintain that gay marriage, and indeed being gay, is not what nature intended and is an offence to natural law. This argument is made despite the fact that gay men and women have been present right down through history. ‘Being gay’ has been a feature of human kind for as long as ‘being straight’ has. Just because it’s the minority does not preclude it form being natural. Furthermore, since when did we suddenly get so concerned about things being natural or not, was it as we bit happily into our apple (having first washed it to get rid of the pesticides) or was it as we picked up our plastic pens to formulate some bigoted arguments?
It will undermine and corrupt the age old institution of marriage
Some people, including George Bush, argue that the institution of marriage that has existed for millennia will be destroyed by the introduction of gay marriage. According to this line of argument the word marriage has always meant a union between a man and a woman and this should not be changed. Would these people also argue that we should revert to a time when marriage only meant a union between a white man and a white woman or a black man and black women…but not a mixture? Looking to history in search of lessons for the future is a good idea, dragging old and discriminatory ideas with us from the past is not.
Gay Marriage is not supported by major religions
Many religious prohibitions or calls for action are recognised as dubious in the extreme. The Catholic Church still condemns the use of condoms in the Aids ravaged regions of Africa and elsewhere. There is no reason not to take the beliefs of one particular church and follow them in your personal life. However those beliefs should not be used in the decision-making processes of a state.
Gay Marriage will not produce children
Proponents of the ‘its not natural’ school of thought offer up the fact that a gay couple cannot have any children as a defence of their argument. Denying the opportunity of marriage to people on this basis is very flawed. Taken to its conclusion everyone would have to have a fertility test before they married, ‘Sorry Sir, those sperm are not up to scratch, far too lazy for our liking, I’m afraid you just can’t marry’. The ridiculousness of this does not have to be further pointed out.
The list of arguments goes on and on, some idiotic and some quite pertinent but none that serve to justify what is an unambiguously discriminatory practice in this country, denying gay men and women the right to marry.
This discrimination does not just exist in the abstract. It has serious manifestations in the ‘real world’ of day-to-day living. Under Irish tax law it is considerably more beneficial to be paying tax as a married couple than as two single people. The Revenue Commissioners will not recognise the union between the couple and therefore will not grant them the same tax breaks as would be granted to a legal marriage.
The problem of legal recognition does not only affect tax. In the event of one partner dying the lack of a legal link can often leave the remaining partner in long and drawn out inheritance battles with the family of the deceased. Heterosexual married couples take for granted the fact that if one dies all their joint property and finances will be left in the control of the widow or widower unless stated otherwise in a Will. This security does not exist in the case of gay couples, regardless of how long they have been living together.
The effect of this discrimination spreads into all aspect of life in a society that has been built on the narrow-minded view that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman. It is time to end this discrimination.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Fathers Should Figure
The issue of Fathers’ Rights is one of those that bubbles away, every so often percolating into our consciousness only to drain straight through and return to the backburner. This is a travesty, an injustice happening in front of our eyes, which, worse than going unnoticed, is noticed but ignored.
As a father your rights of guardianship over your children are very vulnerable. Nowhere in the constitution are the rights of the father guaranteed. This leaves a father who is either unmarried, separated or widowed in a situation where his children can be taken away from him very easily by the relevant authorities.
The following is a synopsis of an event reported in an article by John Waters in the Irish Times of 16th January. He uses the name ‘K’ to preserve the anonymity of the people involved:
Due to his wife suffering from illness and spending months in hospital K was looking after their children, on requesting financial help from the HSE attention was drawn to his situation and social workers began making regular calls. His wife returned home and the calls continued. Growing more frequent, they culminated in 5 social workers arriving at his door. Having convinced his wife (who was in an increasingly deteriorating mental condition) that the children should be “taken away for a few days” they physically restrained him as they removed the children. A barring order was then obtained against K on the basis that he was excessively in "control" of his wife by virtue of her dependence on him. With him barred there was no one in a fit condition to look after the children and they were taken into care. In the last year K has had a total of 50 hours contact with his children, 2 days and 2 hours out of 365 days, roughly 0.005% of the year.
The HSE have used the issue of K being in increasing control of his wife, due to her illness, as the reason to justify taking away his children, this man, who was doing quite a good job of looking after his children, has basically had his children stolen by the state. A barring order does need any written pleadings to be submitted in order to be granted, a care order however does, but in this case the HSE avoided the need for a care order by manipulating the situation to a point where there was no one to look after the children and they therefore had to be taken into care.
Mr. Eamonn Quinn, secretary of Unmarried and Separated Fathers of Ireland, points out that “Our system of family law operates behind closed doors and there are problems with a system where judges can override fathers’ rights without accountability.”
The situation is represented adequately in the FAQ section of a website on Irish Family Law.
Question:
What are my legal rights in respect of my child?
Answer:None. Unmarried fathers do not have any automatic legal rights in respect of their children.
Question:
What are my legal rights in respect of my child if my name is on the Birth Certificate?Answer:
None.
Question:
Can my child be adopted without my consent?
Answer:If the mother and her husband (or any other applicants) apply to adopt your child the law requires that, if possible, you are consulted before any adoption order is made in respect of your child, even if you are not a joint guardian of your child.
Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights upholds a fathers right to their family and to know, love and care for their children. The absence of a similar proviso in the Irish constitution is glaring.
The Joint Committee on the Constitution, which formally launched its report on a review of the Constitution on 24th January, recommends some legislation to improve the plight of the Irish father.
Although this represents some small progress it does not go far enough. It does not recommend that any rights of the father in respect to his children be enshrined in the constitution. By leaving the basic right of the father out of this country’s constitution the people of Ireland are allowing the continuation of massive acts of injustice and denial of human rights.
The children that were abused in various institutions, religious and secular, in Ireland many years ago are now asking questions of the silence that surrounded their ill-treatment. The children that are now being denied access to their fathers and who have been wrongfully taken into state care are going be the ones who will be asking very awkward questions in ten or twenty years time.
As a generation, as a society, what are we going to say to them? That no one really cared enough to do anything, that some people tried but no one listened? If we don’t act now to change this situaion then there will be no answer to give that won’t leave our heads hanging in shame.
As a father your rights of guardianship over your children are very vulnerable. Nowhere in the constitution are the rights of the father guaranteed. This leaves a father who is either unmarried, separated or widowed in a situation where his children can be taken away from him very easily by the relevant authorities.
The following is a synopsis of an event reported in an article by John Waters in the Irish Times of 16th January. He uses the name ‘K’ to preserve the anonymity of the people involved:
Due to his wife suffering from illness and spending months in hospital K was looking after their children, on requesting financial help from the HSE attention was drawn to his situation and social workers began making regular calls. His wife returned home and the calls continued. Growing more frequent, they culminated in 5 social workers arriving at his door. Having convinced his wife (who was in an increasingly deteriorating mental condition) that the children should be “taken away for a few days” they physically restrained him as they removed the children. A barring order was then obtained against K on the basis that he was excessively in "control" of his wife by virtue of her dependence on him. With him barred there was no one in a fit condition to look after the children and they were taken into care. In the last year K has had a total of 50 hours contact with his children, 2 days and 2 hours out of 365 days, roughly 0.005% of the year.
The HSE have used the issue of K being in increasing control of his wife, due to her illness, as the reason to justify taking away his children, this man, who was doing quite a good job of looking after his children, has basically had his children stolen by the state. A barring order does need any written pleadings to be submitted in order to be granted, a care order however does, but in this case the HSE avoided the need for a care order by manipulating the situation to a point where there was no one to look after the children and they therefore had to be taken into care.
Mr. Eamonn Quinn, secretary of Unmarried and Separated Fathers of Ireland, points out that “Our system of family law operates behind closed doors and there are problems with a system where judges can override fathers’ rights without accountability.”
The situation is represented adequately in the FAQ section of a website on Irish Family Law.
Question:
What are my legal rights in respect of my child?
Answer:None. Unmarried fathers do not have any automatic legal rights in respect of their children.
Question:
What are my legal rights in respect of my child if my name is on the Birth Certificate?Answer:
None.
Question:
Can my child be adopted without my consent?
Answer:If the mother and her husband (or any other applicants) apply to adopt your child the law requires that, if possible, you are consulted before any adoption order is made in respect of your child, even if you are not a joint guardian of your child.
Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights upholds a fathers right to their family and to know, love and care for their children. The absence of a similar proviso in the Irish constitution is glaring.
The Joint Committee on the Constitution, which formally launched its report on a review of the Constitution on 24th January, recommends some legislation to improve the plight of the Irish father.
Although this represents some small progress it does not go far enough. It does not recommend that any rights of the father in respect to his children be enshrined in the constitution. By leaving the basic right of the father out of this country’s constitution the people of Ireland are allowing the continuation of massive acts of injustice and denial of human rights.
The children that were abused in various institutions, religious and secular, in Ireland many years ago are now asking questions of the silence that surrounded their ill-treatment. The children that are now being denied access to their fathers and who have been wrongfully taken into state care are going be the ones who will be asking very awkward questions in ten or twenty years time.
As a generation, as a society, what are we going to say to them? That no one really cared enough to do anything, that some people tried but no one listened? If we don’t act now to change this situaion then there will be no answer to give that won’t leave our heads hanging in shame.
No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish
It takes a lot to shock and appal me, but shocked and appalled I was when I made a discovery last week. The majority of my friends have cleaners. Now, if my small and very unprofessional research is anything to go by the average reader will currently be wondering why I was surprised by this. It seems that an extraordinary amount of people in present day Ireland have cleaners. Admittedly I do hail form a house where we have yet to purchase a dishwasher but that is more out of a lack of necessity than any other reason.
Does this mean anything though? Is it merely an indication of the nouveau riche society in which we now live? Are cleaners an inevitable aspect of any country whose wealth continues to inexorably rise? Or is it a sign of something darker, a more malevolent undercurrent that is showing itself in the Irish psyche?
People with which I have broached this issue have all expressed serious surprise that it should even be thought twice about. Indeed, the overriding opinion would seem to be, ‘these people need jobs, we need jobs done, so where’s the problem?’. The problem is what this represents.
We have created in this country an underclass of workers that don’t exist in our minds as real people. This underclass constitutes the same positions that the Irish filled in other countries in the past. The days of Irish travelling to foreign shores to do the jobs that no one else would do are remembered as hard days, dark days, days of no Dogs, no Blacks and no Irish. Yet despite these recent and relevant memories we are now creating the same situation in our own country, we have an underling class, and no one seems in the least bit bothered by it, ‘these people need jobs, we need jobs done, so where’s the problem?’.
When I was chatting with a friend recently he mentioned that there had been two Polish men working on his extension at home. They had worked for about ten hours and had been paid €50 for it by their contractor. Everyone made the relevant ‘isn’t that terrible noises’ and then moved swiftly on to the next topic of conversation. Not one person was more than superficially surprised by this. There was no talk of reporting the contractor to any employee equality body or any other manifestation of their concern. Why? Because no one was really concerned at all, no one cared, ‘these people need jobs, we need jobs done, so where’s the problem?’
People seem to have fabricated two different sets of standards by which they measure quality of life. A line of argument I repeatedly came up against was that ‘these people’ are happy, they are earning far more here than they would be in their home countries. This may be true but surely income is not the only issue involved, what about quality of life, job satisfaction, even basic happiness?!
A large proportion of the people working as cleaners and in other menial jobs are qualified to be doing much more highly paid and surely more rewarding jobs. One woman I spoke to who is a teacher has a fully qualified Polish teacher doing her cleaning for her. There is no one that can suggest that this Polish woman is getting the same job satisfaction and resultant quality of life cleaning someone else’s house as she would be if she was teaching.
If the situation was reversed and Irish graduates were only working in menial jobs for poor pay there would be outcry, the government would be called upon to set up committees, boards, discussion groups and any other number of forums in order to ensure individuals had the opportunity to pursue their profession of choice. But because we are dealing with people that look slightly different, talk in a different tongue and with different accents to our own no one is interested.
Ireland is supposed to be one of the great success stories of the European Union, a union that is supposed to have no borders and equal opportunities for citizens across the economic arena. But it is not opportunities for the benefit of all that we see in Ireland it is exploitation for the benefit of a few.
As a nation Ireland is more equipped than many to deal with our new multi-cultural society. We have only moved one generation away from extreme economic hardship yet we seem determined to inflict the same adversities on a whole new group of people. With a small bit of empathy we can avoid a situation that could imitate the one which blew up in the suburbs of Paris last October. It would be disingenuous to say that we are any where near the level of difficulty and unrest that France is in, but what we are seeing is the foundation stone of these problems being laid.
At this stage all we require is an attitude change, to get to the point where people are shocked by a Polish labourer earning €5 an hour for a ten hour day, to get to the point where we find it unacceptable that we have a qualified teacher cleaning the houses of people with the same qualification, to get to the point where we no longer sit back and say, ‘these people need jobs, we need jobs done, so where’s the problem?’
Does this mean anything though? Is it merely an indication of the nouveau riche society in which we now live? Are cleaners an inevitable aspect of any country whose wealth continues to inexorably rise? Or is it a sign of something darker, a more malevolent undercurrent that is showing itself in the Irish psyche?
People with which I have broached this issue have all expressed serious surprise that it should even be thought twice about. Indeed, the overriding opinion would seem to be, ‘these people need jobs, we need jobs done, so where’s the problem?’. The problem is what this represents.
We have created in this country an underclass of workers that don’t exist in our minds as real people. This underclass constitutes the same positions that the Irish filled in other countries in the past. The days of Irish travelling to foreign shores to do the jobs that no one else would do are remembered as hard days, dark days, days of no Dogs, no Blacks and no Irish. Yet despite these recent and relevant memories we are now creating the same situation in our own country, we have an underling class, and no one seems in the least bit bothered by it, ‘these people need jobs, we need jobs done, so where’s the problem?’.
When I was chatting with a friend recently he mentioned that there had been two Polish men working on his extension at home. They had worked for about ten hours and had been paid €50 for it by their contractor. Everyone made the relevant ‘isn’t that terrible noises’ and then moved swiftly on to the next topic of conversation. Not one person was more than superficially surprised by this. There was no talk of reporting the contractor to any employee equality body or any other manifestation of their concern. Why? Because no one was really concerned at all, no one cared, ‘these people need jobs, we need jobs done, so where’s the problem?’
People seem to have fabricated two different sets of standards by which they measure quality of life. A line of argument I repeatedly came up against was that ‘these people’ are happy, they are earning far more here than they would be in their home countries. This may be true but surely income is not the only issue involved, what about quality of life, job satisfaction, even basic happiness?!
A large proportion of the people working as cleaners and in other menial jobs are qualified to be doing much more highly paid and surely more rewarding jobs. One woman I spoke to who is a teacher has a fully qualified Polish teacher doing her cleaning for her. There is no one that can suggest that this Polish woman is getting the same job satisfaction and resultant quality of life cleaning someone else’s house as she would be if she was teaching.
If the situation was reversed and Irish graduates were only working in menial jobs for poor pay there would be outcry, the government would be called upon to set up committees, boards, discussion groups and any other number of forums in order to ensure individuals had the opportunity to pursue their profession of choice. But because we are dealing with people that look slightly different, talk in a different tongue and with different accents to our own no one is interested.
Ireland is supposed to be one of the great success stories of the European Union, a union that is supposed to have no borders and equal opportunities for citizens across the economic arena. But it is not opportunities for the benefit of all that we see in Ireland it is exploitation for the benefit of a few.
As a nation Ireland is more equipped than many to deal with our new multi-cultural society. We have only moved one generation away from extreme economic hardship yet we seem determined to inflict the same adversities on a whole new group of people. With a small bit of empathy we can avoid a situation that could imitate the one which blew up in the suburbs of Paris last October. It would be disingenuous to say that we are any where near the level of difficulty and unrest that France is in, but what we are seeing is the foundation stone of these problems being laid.
At this stage all we require is an attitude change, to get to the point where people are shocked by a Polish labourer earning €5 an hour for a ten hour day, to get to the point where we find it unacceptable that we have a qualified teacher cleaning the houses of people with the same qualification, to get to the point where we no longer sit back and say, ‘these people need jobs, we need jobs done, so where’s the problem?’
Obsession With Madeline Shows Our Self Obsession
Since the disappearance of Madeline McCann in May of this year the media and general public has remained gripped by the convoluted twists and turns in the case.
Initially attention was entirely devoted to a huge awareness campaign ensuring that Madeline’s face will remain familiar to millions of people for a long time to come. Recently attention has turned from interest and hope for Madeline’s safe return to speculation and endless ill informed debate on whether or not her parents had anything to do with the disappearance.
One way or the other it can be said that this case has remained to the front in newspapers, on radio and on television since the day the story broke. The question is, why? Why is it that the disappearance of one child should receive the volume of attention that it has?
This question is usually greeted with impassioned replies about how beautiful Madeline is, how heartbreaking it must be for her family, followed perhaps by some reference to the cruelty of it all happening whilst the family were on holidays.
All these answers are indeed valid. But, only to a point. Madeline McCann is one child, the disappearance of whom is undoubtedly a tragedy for her family. However some sense of scale is surely needed. For example the humanitarian crisis in Darfur has continued with only moderate attention from the world at large.
A newspaper feature on Darfur will not come close to attracting the same readership as a front page headline on Madeline McCann. UN estimates put the number of people killed during the protracted difficulties in Darfur at 200,000 with over 2 million people displaced.
There is a definite imbalance here. But this is not an imbalance that can be simply placated with a criticism of the media world and their priorities. The bare fact of the matter is that the stories that get reported are stories that pay to get reported. Ignore all talk of social conscience and responsibility, money drives the media.
Most of that money comes from advertisements, the most successful media companies are the ones that can attract the most advertisements and the companies that can attract the most advertisements are the ones with the highest customer base.
It is an unavoidable conclusion then, that the ultimate control of what goes into to newspapers or what appears on current affairs programmes lies with the consumer. We decide where our priorities lie and then go about reading, listening and watching the information that satisfies our priorities.
So it is us, not the media that has decided that the Madeline McCann case is more important than the Darfur crisis, or indeed more important than any number of other tragedies, crimes and crises that go unreported and unnoticed every day.
If we acknowledge this fact then we are left with a very uncomfortable question. Why do the general public, you and me, think that the disappearance of one child is a more important than an issue like Darfur or human rights abuses in China or military coercion in Burma?
Is it simply that we are not capable of sympathising with anything that we can’t apply to our own lives? A large amount of parents in Ireland have been on holidays with their young children, a large amount of parents in Ireland have not seen their house, belongings and loved ones burned to the ground by a ruthless militia force.
Presented with the evidence as it is it is hard to come up with a basis for our preferences that isn’t distinctly suspect. Can it be that we are only capable of being concerned with that with which we identify? I’d like to think not. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be huge amount of evidence to support my optimism.
Initially attention was entirely devoted to a huge awareness campaign ensuring that Madeline’s face will remain familiar to millions of people for a long time to come. Recently attention has turned from interest and hope for Madeline’s safe return to speculation and endless ill informed debate on whether or not her parents had anything to do with the disappearance.
One way or the other it can be said that this case has remained to the front in newspapers, on radio and on television since the day the story broke. The question is, why? Why is it that the disappearance of one child should receive the volume of attention that it has?
This question is usually greeted with impassioned replies about how beautiful Madeline is, how heartbreaking it must be for her family, followed perhaps by some reference to the cruelty of it all happening whilst the family were on holidays.
All these answers are indeed valid. But, only to a point. Madeline McCann is one child, the disappearance of whom is undoubtedly a tragedy for her family. However some sense of scale is surely needed. For example the humanitarian crisis in Darfur has continued with only moderate attention from the world at large.
A newspaper feature on Darfur will not come close to attracting the same readership as a front page headline on Madeline McCann. UN estimates put the number of people killed during the protracted difficulties in Darfur at 200,000 with over 2 million people displaced.
There is a definite imbalance here. But this is not an imbalance that can be simply placated with a criticism of the media world and their priorities. The bare fact of the matter is that the stories that get reported are stories that pay to get reported. Ignore all talk of social conscience and responsibility, money drives the media.
Most of that money comes from advertisements, the most successful media companies are the ones that can attract the most advertisements and the companies that can attract the most advertisements are the ones with the highest customer base.
It is an unavoidable conclusion then, that the ultimate control of what goes into to newspapers or what appears on current affairs programmes lies with the consumer. We decide where our priorities lie and then go about reading, listening and watching the information that satisfies our priorities.
So it is us, not the media that has decided that the Madeline McCann case is more important than the Darfur crisis, or indeed more important than any number of other tragedies, crimes and crises that go unreported and unnoticed every day.
If we acknowledge this fact then we are left with a very uncomfortable question. Why do the general public, you and me, think that the disappearance of one child is a more important than an issue like Darfur or human rights abuses in China or military coercion in Burma?
Is it simply that we are not capable of sympathising with anything that we can’t apply to our own lives? A large amount of parents in Ireland have been on holidays with their young children, a large amount of parents in Ireland have not seen their house, belongings and loved ones burned to the ground by a ruthless militia force.
Presented with the evidence as it is it is hard to come up with a basis for our preferences that isn’t distinctly suspect. Can it be that we are only capable of being concerned with that with which we identify? I’d like to think not. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be huge amount of evidence to support my optimism.
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