I’d like to blog…

… but I’m quite busy at university. I’m going to blog interesting stuff about my research project once it properly gets under way but for now here’s a notice of two events:

• GLEN are holding an information session on the Civil Partnership Bill this Wednesday (7th October) in the Westbury Hotel (Grafton St.) at 8pm. As they say:

The aim of these events is to inform people about what is in the Civil Partnership Bill and to discuss what it will mean practically for lesbian and gay couples. Dr Fergus Ryan, Head of DIT’s Law Department, will provide a detailed account of the Civil Partnership Bill.

Contact them for more details: http://www.glen.ie/

• MarriagEquality are also holding a workshop for adult children (18 years old +) of same-sex couples, to “share their experiences and opinions on growing up with LGBT parents” on November 21st. I’ll be there and if anyone else wants to be, call Dawn on 01 6599 459 or email dawn@marriagequality.ie. For more information see this page.

I’ll be back again more regularly soon.

– Conor

 

Map of Free WiFi Hot Spots in Dublin

So, on the back of this article and the PDF that accompanies it, I decided to create a Google map of the free WiFi hot spots around Dublin. There’s loads of them! So, no excuse not to head in to town, grab a coffee and surf some internet! The map is embedded below:

Enjoy and spread it around! If there’re any more you can think of please feel free to e-mail them to me: conorpendergrast[at]gmail[dot]com

 

Letter in today’s Irish Times

In a letter in today’s Irish Times (Amnesty and Civil Partnership) that follows up on Amnesty’s support of full gay and lesbian marriage as the only equality and John Waters‘ response denying that there is a human right to marry, Pauline Welby points out that in Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it is accepted that

Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution . . . The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State

Well spotted Pauline! While I’m sure some people will try to twist it and insist that this right is only for men to marry women and women to marry men, any sound interpretation would conclude that this is for men and women to marry either a man or a woman.

Now, isn’t that good news for a bank holiday Monday?

 

@CharityTreasure: New Twitter Account

I was out shopping around charity shops today and Tweeted a couple of finds I made. I was also discussing with my girlfriend how useful the internet and Twitter in particular could be for charity shops; they would be able to Tweet about the nicer new items that come in each day and also remind people about the special sales they have every two weeks or so (We saw Chanel handbags in one charity shop on George’s St.). So I got thinking and decided that I’d set up a Twitter account that checks on Twitter for the hashtag #charitytreasure and then retweets it. Voila, the birth of @charitytreasure. So, go forth and scour the stores that you find (Capel St. and George’s St. in Dublin are pretty good for this) and tweet the finds with the tag #charitytreasure. You can share your purchases or anything you find that would be great but doesn’t fit you. I found a ton of things today that were both too big and too small for me that I wanted to share with other people. So now I can.

Looking for a mobile phone charger? The Goodwill Thrift Store on Capel St have them for €6 each #charitytreasure

Conorp

 

Sons and Daughters

Well, last week was a lot of fun. I had 1001 hits on the website and got my (heavily edited) letter in the Sunday Times, as well appearing on Matt Cooper‘s show on Thursday with Brenda Power (audio here – mp3, 5.3mb). I read Brenda’s second opinion piece and don’t think I’ll comment on it further than what I’ve already Tweeted – It’s an opinion piece that is not based in fact and she appears to have some sort of obsession with the idea that marriage is purely for reproductive purposes. As I said:

“To have and to hold, is sickness and in health, til you die from exhaustion having given birth to 8 children.”

The past week and Damien’s post got me thinking – we need a louder voice of children of LGBT couples in Ireland. So, here we go. If you are the son or daughter of a LGBT couple and would like to maybe do a joint blog, with the chance of radio, TV, newspaper, blog interviews (depending on how comfortable you would be with them) please e-mail conorpendergrast@gmail.com, or add me on Twitter and DM me. Or sure just leave a comment here 🙂

Inevitably there’ll be cases after the Civil Partnership Bill is brought in that highlight the massive problems with neglecting children in legislation. This’ll be our chance to stand up for our own rights and demonstrate how lesbian and gay parents are equally capable of raising well-adjusted and emotionally and socially stable individuals. Here’s the American Psychological Association’s policy on sexual orientation and parenting (And no Brenda, it’s not a single study. You can find similar policies but children’s groups across the US, but because of the relative rarity of cases in Ireland and even the UK, there are fewer studies here).

 

Yesterday, Thanks and This Evening

Hello all,

Just a quick post to mention two things.

Firstly, thank you to everyone who posted a comment, passed on this blog or read it yesterday. It was the busiest my blog has ever been, with 278 views, and I feel honoured to have that level of attention. Thanks specifically to Gaelick, Damien and Angry Potato for the links. I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging as much recently, I didn’t really feel the twinge of desire to express myself until I read that article.

Secondly, I’ll be on Matt Cooper’s The Last Word this evening at about 6pm, talking to him and Brenda Power. Should be good fun, so feel free to listen in and text in comments. It’d be nice to get some support.

 

Open Letter to Brenda Power

Dear Brenda,

I read with a heavy heart your article in the Sunday Times on 5th July and felt it necessary to respond in order to dispel the notions that you used to form your argument against allowing same-sex couples to be considered to adopt children in this state. Your concern for the rights of children in Ireland is admirable, but your arguments, ironically, serve only to stigmatise children of same-sex partners. As the sons of a lesbian couple who have been together for nearly thirty years, my brother and I are more than aware of one of the criteria in particular you specify in the adoption process; “the likelihood of social acceptance of the child”. My parents are not (yet) in a legally recognised relationship. According to the law, I am no more than a stranger to my non-biological mother, Bernadette.

Not allowing gay couples to be considered as adoptive parents and not recognising their relationships as marriage is not only inequality, it’s social stigmatisation. You are essentially stating: “You’re relationship is not as valid as a heterosexual relationship. You are of less value to society. You’re family and children ought to be treated differently.” This, in effect, teaches us that children of same-sex partners are not socially acceptable. The irony, you must see, is that by denying these couples the right to be considered to adopt because their children might not be accepted socially, you are deciding by default that children of same-sex couples should not be accepted socially.

Yours sincerely,

Conor Pendergrast

[I also sent this to the editor of the Sunday Times. If anyone has an e-mail address for Brenda, I’d appreciate if you could comment and let me know what it is. The article itself can be found here, with Panti’s response here.]

 

Angry angry angry angry angry #nbd

I have a headache. I’m pretty pissed off. I’ve been reading about the amendment to the Defamation Bill (2006). I’ll make this short, ’cause if I ramble I’ll just get more annoyed.

The background: According to the Constitution, it is illegal to blaspheme. Article 40

6. 1° The State guarantees liberty for the exercise of the following rights, subject to public order and morality:
i. The right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions.
The education of public opinion being, however, a matter of such grave import to the common good, the State shall endeavour to ensure that organs of public opinion, such as the radio, the press, the cinema, while preserving their rightful liberty of expression, including criticism of Government policy, shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State.
The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.

However, there is no definition of the term “blasphemous”. This was realised by the Supreme Court in 1999, where it was recommended that this be removed from the Constitution. However, Dermot Ahern has proposed that instead we amend the Defamation Bill to include a definition of blasphemy, as well as a fine punishable by €100,000 (so as to have the case  automatically seen by the Supreme Court). Now, a spokesperson says that:

“The Minister has been told by the Attorney General that he has to have a law in relation to blasphemous libel, so he is amending the existing law to remove the jail term,” he said. “The alternative in not having the law is for the country to hold a referendum removing that article from the Constitution.”

Hang on, hang on, hang on. So instead of getting rid of a pathetic part of the Constitution, we’re gonna keep this awful idea?

However, I do appreciate the Minister’s position to a certain extent. A referendum on blasphemy? How silly.

I would suggest, instead,that we have a referendum to modernise the document that forms the basis for our State.

We could change such gems as (Article 41):

1. 1° The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.

2° The State, therefore, guarantees to protect the Family in its constitution and authority, as the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and the State.

2. 1° In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.

2° The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.

We could create a secular state, where religion does not interfere with the government and the government does not interfere with religion. There are hundreds of reasons why this should be, but I don’t want to get into that tonight. We could do any number of wonderfully progressive things, such as removing the mention of gods from the Constitution. 

Anyway, look, maybe you think the blasphemy definition should be there. Maybe you are a hardcore anti-secularist Catholic who feels massively offended whenever your faith is questioned. The best advice I have for you is to go and read this article by Michael Nugent (that’s not entirely true, I have more advice). Don’t skim through it, read the entire thing. Me, I’m gonna go watch The Life of Brian and try and calm down. Bah.

 

Overreacting

Overreacting to the outbreak of a new disease can, to a certain extent, be somewhat predicted. Then again, so can the news cycle of the story. At this point, we’ve had the initial panic, the over-reaching dooms-day forcasts and now we are moving to the realisation that it won’t really be that bad and that it is being quite well contained. The abrupt about-turn of various media sources will be done with their normal fluid penchant for “reporting the news”. See here for today’s headlines in the UK papers. Unfortunately they went to press before the American media started to pick up on the fact that swine flu isn’t actually as petrifying and deadly as it seemed at first (see here for a CNN headline)

As reported in that CNN story, approximately 36000 people die every year from seasonal influenza in the United States. So far this year there have been 13000 deaths. And swine has yet to kill a single person there. So why the panic?

I think it has something to do with who we expect to die. I’ve either read a book or watched a documentary that was talking about the difference between people’s reactions to the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who die annually throughout the world compared for example with the 3,000 odd people who died in the 9/11. We’ve no problem with the soldiers dying, because they are expected to do so, but a normal day-to-day average Joe dies and they’re appalled and terrified. Here, we expect old people to die from the flu and from life in general, so when we hear that 13,000 people have died from flu this year we think “Well, they were old, it was their time”. Compare this to swine flu deaths, which appears to have a huge effect on young people. While roughly a hundred and fifty deaths are attributed to flu like symptoms in Mexico (and only seven confirmed deaths from swine flu at time of writing) when you take the young profile of victims and combine it with the rec ency of knowledge of the disease it can trigger mass outrage and panic. Young people are dying from a flu virus? That’s not supposed to happen!

So people overreact. I’m not saying that we should ignore any advised being given by the WHO and government organisations. Be safe. Just… Don’t Panic.

 

In other news, my friend Adrian (of Aide in France fame) has started a new blog for when he gets back to England after Erasmus. He intends it to be his opinion on the media in the UK, heaping praise on the righteous and condemning the hyperbolic wicked. I might have made that last bit up. Have a look at his blog, here’s one of his posts. It’s called the Daily Fail by the way. Nice name, that.

 

Miserable Bollocks

I was going to blog yesterday about how I wasn’t really enjoying my Erasmus year in France any more and that I was very much looking forward to getting back to Ireland in early June. Then I went out and ate dinner and hung out with my friends and played some poker. Which made me realise; If I am unhappy in France it’s primarily my own fault. I have the power to go out and enjoy myself, the friends to hang out with and a town to explore.

I think this is a major problem that a lot of people have, that they don’t recognise that they hold the ability to change the situation when they are no longer enjoying what they are doing. They find themselves having a shit time and instead of dealing with it and making the change they potter on and are miserable. I have a little bit of that, but every now and again I read something or talk to someone or something else and get a wake-up call.

So, less moaning, more enjoying the last 6 weeks I have in Angers.

This is our one shot guys, better make it damn good 🙂

Photo owned by sofauxboho (cc)