The Awkward Second Album

Well, that grew legs. It grew legs, then ran away around the place for a long while. Then it decided to keep going for longer. Even a day later I’m still getting lots of hits. So, well, thanks everyone for sharing that post. It was by far my most popular blog post to date, racking up nearly 1500 views on the blog yesterday and over 400 today. Here’s the stats, click to bigify:

 

Average beforehand was about 10 – 20 views a day. I really must post more and I will, now that I’m coming to the end of my masters.

If you’ve read Richard’s response, then let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks to everyone who left nice words on the last blog post and people who followed the RSS feed etc.

I’ll try to entertain all you kind folk again in the future. As always, if there’s some newfangled or re-hashed arguments against gay marriage or gays and lesbians having kids, do let me know. Twitter is a good place to find me.

Conor

 

Dear Richard

Hello everyone, it’s been a while. I’m responding to this.

Dear Richard,

There are a few points in your piece that I’d like to respond to. I’ll try to be brief (no guarantee though). You say:

Explaining that you oppose gay marriage as a gay man tends to get a baffled response at first.

I think, had you phrased that a little differently, it would be less baffling. Had you said “I don’t want to get married”, I doubt you would get such a reaction. Opposition to gay marriage, on the other hand, is different. Opposing marriage rights for lesbian and gay people, as a gay man, is an expression of your desire to deny yourself a right. If you don’t want to get married, then don’t get married.

I have no problem with dissent. It’s vital. Lucinda Creighton was (is still, I think?) Deputy spokesperson on Justice with special responsibilities for Immigration, Integration and Equality. That’s why there was such a reaction, because her poorly-constructed argument (the one you appear to support in your article, but do correct me if I’m wrong about that) was that gay men and lesbian women shouldn’t be allowed marriage rights because they don’t have children. Well, they do have children and they should be permitted to marry. She’s also a public representative. David Quinn? He’s not a public representative. I don’t really care what he says. I follow him on Twitter, just out of morbid curiousity.

Actually, gay people should defend the traditional understanding of marriage as strongly as everyone else.

Which part of the “traditional understanding of marriage” should be defended exactly? The ban on divorce? The ownership of women as property and no longer being seen as separate legal person? Marriages motivated by property transactions and dowries instead of love?

I think you’re falling into the trap of the romantic idea of marriage. I realise that you are conservative, but that doesn’t mean you have to always think that tradition is best – that’s just a silly stereotype. Lesbian women and gay men will not lead to the degradation of marriage. It will not lead to the decline of society. It will not kill the dinosaurs. It will lead to (and prepare yourself for a shock) lesbian women and gay men getting married. The definition of marriage is and has been constantly evolving, and too right. It’s just a legal term that needs to represent the culture and society of the time.

If, however, I or gay friends form civil partnerships, those are much more unlikely to involve raising children.

Gay men and lesbian women have been having children in London since the early 1980s and probably before that. Ireland is a smaller country, where homosexuality was still illegal in our lifetime, Richard. The smaller population means that there are fewer gay men and lesbian women, even in Dublin. Societal norms haven’t yet caught up with the needs that lesbians and gays feel to have a family.

They do have families and want families. My mums met in London in the early ‘ 80s. They fell in love and wanted a family. So they had one. Using a sperm donor they had me, then using a different donor they had my brother.

My family needs marriage. My friends who have lesbian and gay parents need marriage. Without it, our rights are not protected and the rights and responsibilities of my parents are not enshrined in law. I’ll explain that: Surely those of you out there who want to protect children and families should realise that we are children and families! We are being put in vulnerable situations by the lack of legislation on the matter and, by extension, those who oppose marriage rights for lesbian and gay people.

A wealth of research demonstrates the marriage of a man and a woman provides children with the best life outcomes, that children raised in marriages that stay together do best across a whole range of measures. This is certainly not to cast aspersions on other families, but it does underscore the importance of marriage as an institution.

Prove it. Really, do. At least name-check one institution or research report. Off the top of my head, I’ll counter your argument with the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Neither of them are lobby groups for gays or lesbians, but they still support gays and lesbians being parents, as they have seen (through a wealth of research) that they raise children just as well as straight parents. Here’s a technical report that I found within 5 seconds of searching on the AAP’s website from way back when in 2002, which even then realised that the evidence was on the side of lesbians and gays being good parents. Really, why would it be any other way? As a straight man, I’m not arrogant enough to say that I will, by default, be a better father than you, Richard, simply because of your sexuality. That’s a ridiculous notion.

If gay couples are considered equally eligible for marriage, even though gay relationships do not tend towards child-raising and cannot by definition give a child a mother and a father, the crucial understanding of what marriage is actually mainly for has been discarded.

Marriage is not mainly for child-rearing. It’s for expressing love and making concrete vows to your partner. It’s about committing yourself to one person. Child-raising is not exclusive to marriage and marriage is not exclusive to child-raising. I would prefer if people made a long-term commitment before they had children, because that would protect the children, but I can’t and won’t force people to do something.

I know, I know. I’m a liberal, you’re a conservative. Maybe you won’t see what I mean. Maybe you won’t realise that your opposition to marriage rights for lesbian women and gay men leads to discrimination on a social and institutional level against the two people who I hold dearest in the world – my mums. Usually, Mothers’ Day is less fun for me as I have twice as many presents to buy. This Mothers’ Day though, I had two mums to get loving text messages from. Is that so wrong?

I don’t care if you don’t want to get married Richard. I really don’t. What is wrong is that you want to stop my mums from getting married. You want to stop my friends who are gay and lesbian from getting married. You want to stop the men and women who have provided such incredible role models to me throughout my life getting married. That makes me sad.

All the best,

Conor Pendergrast

Proud son of two loving mums.

Ps: Comment below, because that’s the point of having a blog.

 

My opinion on the plenary at #picamp

If you don’t know what #picamp is, then take a look at this. It was an unconference about how to improve politics, organised by Slugger O’Toole. We had our own session about reasoning and critical thinking in politics for Belfast Skeptics, you can read about that here. The whole day was really good overall, but I had some reservations about the session after lunch, which was a panel-based discussion apparently about why old-media journalism p0wns blogging and is full of win. Or something. Anyway, I didn’t taken many notes so I can’t remember completely the content of the talk, but it was frustrating.

The plenary felt like a bitching session about blogs and blogging, which was really bloody pointless. Ideas like “bloggers can’t be held accountable” and “bloggers don’t check their facts” and the notion that news media will survive without changing its ways are all seriously short-sighted and foolish. As one participant (possibly Will Perrin) pointed out, the panelists were all tarring all bloggers with the same brush, while suggesting that the integrity of journalists were second-to-none. After this was suggested, the debate was altered somewhat to take this into account, but it’s a key point: there are very few investigative journalists left in the mainstream media (MSM). Similarly, the overwhelming majority of blogs are not worth printing.

But there are some real gems there. Maman Poulet and The Story are two examples of that. It was claimed that bloggers don’t hang on to stories and continue pecking away at them, but that’s utter crap. You can easily say the same about MSM; the vast majority will run stories that are relevant to the moment and then move on. This was addresses in the discussion; it’s a huge financial commitment for a newspaper to release a journalist to spend a few days or weeks working on a story that might lead to nothing. Bloggers, on the other hand, tend to earn a grand total of zero cent from their blogs. Most of them are just works of passion and a desire to stop being fooled by bullshit. Look at Tuppenceworth and their probing in to Your Country Your Call. If you think that the MSM is going to survive in the future, you ought to have a better plan than just holding tight and slagging off blogs.

There shouldn’t be a “them versus us” debate there. There is no debate, the Internet and blogs are going to exists. They’re going to get news out faster than MSM can ever do and they’ll do a far better job at “niche” news than any non-speciality journalist will. Bloggers are competing with MSM and MSM shouldn’t feel the need to compete with bloggers. When I read a blog, I want opinion. When I read a newspaper, I don’t want opinion. I want fact. One problem is that newspapers are so swamped with opinion pieces, celebrity scandal and partisan news reporting that I don’t bother reading any of that crap. I also think that newspapers are a huge waste of paper. They’ve a shelf-life of, what, 12 hours at most? If I get a tablet device, I’ll probably read more papers, ’cause that way I can digest the stories easier.

So, there we go. The discussion annoyed me. I can see where the panellists where coming from; their industry is changing rapidly and in a way that is totally out of their control. Fear is gripping newsrooms around the world. Lashing out at the “bloggosphere” won’t help that.

Comment below to give your opinion.

~ Conor

 

Hyperlocal Session at #picamp

I was at the Political Innovation unconference organised by Slugger O’Toole on Saturday and attended a few sessions. There’ll be a post on the Belfast Skeptics website about our own session on critical thinking, but I took a few notes on the hyperlocal session. It was hosted by Will Perrin of the Kings Cross Local Environment site in London. What he suggested was to just throw something on the Internet and get writing! Write about local things that are happening, then if there are problems just send the information on to local councillors for help. Will has said that once the local politicians realise that the intent of the website is positive overall, they are eager to get involved. He has said that anyone can be involved in generating content, including politicians and that this is mediated by the golden rule: no party politics on the site. With that in mind, people are very cooperative. Examples of hyperlocal sites include:

• The aforementioned Kings Cross Local Environment
• BangorDown.com
• NewcastleRocks.org
• HeeleyOnline.org
• Parwich.org

For resources in setting up hyperlocal sites, check out Talk About Local, which appears to have a huge amount of resources for starting up hyperlocal sites. In addition to this, OpenlyLocal.com has a ton of information and a map of loads of hyperlocal sites as well as information on local government. Anyway, if you want to add more, do so in the comments below.

 

 

Why I Am a Skeptic (Cross-Post)

By cross-post, I mean a post that was posted somewhere else as well as here, on my blog, not that I am cross, as in angry. Or cross, as in dressing.

To be honest, the question of why I am a skeptic doesn’t come up very frequently. I suppose I don’t really define myself too rigidly as a skeptic. For me, it’s more of a case of applying skepticism to various areas of my life. My first introduction to the idea of organised groups of skeptics was only around a year ago, when at a UCD (Dublin) Humanist Society talk, one of the founders of the Irish Skeptics Society spoke to us. While I had already been interested and had applied skepticism to my own life, I didn’t really have a name for it at that point (other than critical thinking, I suppose). So, listening to the Irish Skeptics Society was really interesting and got me a little keen on the ideas. I dug around and found a load of podcasts, starting with science and moving on to specific skepticism podcasts (Little Atoms and Skeptics Guide to the Universe were perfect introductions to the topic).That was what first hinted to me about the Skeptics in the Pub groups nationwide. This being around April, I knew I would be moving to Belfast and was keen to find any similar groups. To my surprise, there were no skeptics groups in Queen’s University, in Belfast or even in Northern Ireland at all! I had emailed the two founders of the Irish Skeptics Society and they suggested setting up a group of our own. Speaking with Phil and Alana about this, we all realised that it was probably an excellent idea. So we set up the group. (I also visited Irish Skeptics in the Pub before I moved, which I thoroughly enjoyed).

But why am I a skeptic? I’m a skeptic because I prefer, and try to avoid, accepting ideas without evidence of validity. If we are to progress as a species, we need to weed out ideas that are baseless and encourage those that have support from reason and proof. The scientific method isn’t perfect, but it’s constantly being improved.

Should you be a skeptics? I don’t know. I think people ought to apply critical reasoning to as much of their life as possible. But is it necessary to define yourself as a skeptic? Is the term skeptic even necessary? At the moment, I think it’s pretty important. It’s a good way of promoting the ideas of skepticism among people who have yet to hear about it. I hope one day that it won’t be needed any more and that people will, by default, not accept ideas without first question their validity. It’s a long-term goal, but it’s achievable.

I was keen on starting Belfast Skeptics in the Pub both for myself and for other people. For myself, I wanted a group to chat with who would attempt to discuss concepts without reference to tradition, popularity or any of the many logical fallacies (which I’m sure we’ll cover in more detail in the future). For other people, I think a forum in which you can question your own ideas is hugely important. People need to feel free to challenge ideas that are clearly (as they say on Skeptics with a K) bat-shit crazy, as well as ideas that are more generally accepted. Like millions of animals rafting across the oceans (from here). Think that’s not very important? Well, people still believe that MMR causes autism. Which it doesn’t. And yet it still gets air time.

Question your ideas and questions other people’s ideas. That’s why I’m a skeptic.

Take care,

Conor

 

Ernie: “Hey Bert.”

Bert: “Hey Ernie.”

E: “Say, Bert, how long have we known each other?”

B: “Well I don’t know Ernie, maybe 30 years?”

E: “Yeah, I guess so Bert. Say, we’ve become pretty close in that time Bert.”

B: “Well yeah Ernie… I guess we have”

E: “Em, Bert,you know the way we’ve been sharing a room all these years?”

B: “Yeah Ernie”

E: “Well, why was that? Cause, you know, I didn’t think we’d have to share a share like back at the beginning of the show, when the producers were trying to cut every cent”

B: “I donno Ernie, why do you always ask me these questions, I just don’t know!”

E: “Well, eh Bert, eh. Say, have you seen the Wizard of Oz…”

 

Finally.

 

This week I have mostly…

Been recovering from this.

Been beaming about this.

Been face-palming about this.

Been playing this.

Been listening to this (Careful, it’s got naughty words in it).

Been preparing for this.

 

Catching up after Voices of Children

After the conference last week, I’ve been pretty busy, but earlier on in the week my Shorter (and Better) Half pointed out a couple of negative posts online (they weren’t on blogs, because blogs – like this one – encourage interaction by using a comments section and making contact easy). The bulk of them seem to come from Senator Rónán Mullen, who sent out a press release protesting the conference (if anyone can get a copy of that press release I’d appreciate seeing it, for curiosity sake). The two pieces I’m looking at are from The Iona Institutes website – one boo-hoo-ing the EU support and the other complaining about the limitations of the study.

First thing is first – Rónán and the Iona Institute: This conference was not about promoting gay adoption. I realised that’s the easiest thing for you to cling on to, because it’s really, really easy to be simplistic about it and scare people with the idea of gay and lesbian people adopting children, but the conference wasn’t about that. I’ll talk slowly and try to make this clear:

The conference was to launch the report, which look at the opinions and experiences of a group of children of lesbian and gay parents.

Not. Gay. Adoption.

The main focus of the conference was on us and the report. Honestly. If you weren’t there, I’m very disappointed. It was open for registration, there’s no reason why you weren’t there.

There were different perspectives on solutions to the problems we’re facing at the moment. The idea of accepting that your homophobia-inspired opposition to proposal such as the Civil Partnership Act, civil marriage for lesbian and gay people and the right to be considered for adoption for lesbian and gay parents is having a negative impact on children is probably too hard for you to swallow though, so you can conveniently ignore it.

Second – We know there were only 11 people in the study. I was there. We pointed this out. We all encouraged further research in Ireland in this area. Don’t talk to me about the limitations of small-scale qualitative research – I love that shit and can pick holes in weak research fairly easily.

The Iona Institute fail to point to other research, on larger groups over a longitudinal scale, in the UK and the US however. Cherry-picking, that’s called. Also, this line struck me as poignant: “Four were born by sperm donation and have no contact with their fathers.”. Yeah, funny, I’m one of them. It is my choice that I have not had contact with the man who donated sperm to my mothers.

Anyway. Comments section below is you agree or disagree. Honestly, the opposition to this is so banal and repetitive. The evidence is that gay and lesbian parents do a great job at raising children who are well-balanced on an emotional, social and whatever else scale. That’s the goal – getting parents who do a good job.

Doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what their gender and sexuality is.

 

Voices of Children Conference this Wednesday

Just a quick note to let you know, in case you’ve missed it, that there’s a conference happening this Wednesday that will focus on the lives and experiences of children of lesbian and gay parents. Organised by MarriagEquality, the conference is called Voices of Children and will be used to launch a report on research in to children of lesbian and gay parents. There will be a number of speakers in the morning (I will also be making a brief appearance) and the afternoon will host three workshops: One about LGBT families in education; a second on the Irish healthcare system; and the third will be watching a short documentary on children of LGBT parents in the UK.

You can still register for the event and I would encourage you to do so as soon as possible. It should be a really interesting conference, with a nice balance of empirical evidence and personal stories. I’ll try and Tweet about it on the day too. Once I get a final copy of the report, I’ll put it up here too.

 

Passion and Emotion

I heard Mick Nugent talking on the radio the other day, speaking in his role as chairperson of Atheist Ireland. He was talking about the place of the Angelus on RTÉ and how it has been pretty much exactly 60 years since it was first introduced (on 15th August 1950).

Anyway, he mentioned that the Angelus was something that didn’t annoy him. The show’s presenter appeared to instantly assume that this meant that Mick didn’t actually care about the topic. This idea worries me. The thought process goes like this: You do not feel angry about a topic, therefore you do not care about the topic, thus there must be an ulterior motive for your involvement in the debate. Otherwise why get involved at all? The Angelus debate is only a small part of the overall campaign for secular government and national media. This is clear.
However, the notion that you have to be angry or distraught about something in order to campaign for or against it is just foolish. The best debates are by those with cool heads; heightened emotion clouds judgements and prevents rational thought.
What I suggest and assume is that this concept is symptomatic of the current paradigm of news reporting and news media stories at the moment. Anecdotes, personal opinions and vox-pops are all the rage. You can’t move for hearing “It’s disgraceful Joe, it’s terrible Joe”.
Personal stories are moving and emotive. They are far more convincing than data and rational arguments. I can accept that; it’s well-established in social psychology literature. Surely, though, it’s utter foolishness for emotion to argue emotion.