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.

 

Frontline – July 5th 2010

As you may or may not know, yesterday’s Frontline (a weekly current affairs programme on RTÉ One, hosted by Pat Kenny) concentrated on the family. A fairly broad topic, but it allowed for plenty of healthy and heated debate. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch it again on RTÉ Player here. I watched it again last night after we got home.

There are some parts of the programme that were amazingly frustrating. This naive and romantic idea of the mam and dad happily married is bizarre to say the least. Without doubt the majority of families were very happy and and just the typical range of problems, but being married doesn’t necessarily make you a) happy or b) a great parent.

Anyway, to address three parts of yesterday evening (I don’t think I could ever get time to address everything I want to address). My own family story starts at about 27mins 30 secs (Let’s be honest, you’re only watching it again to see my pretty face 😉 )

First, Pat mentioned registering guardianship as a possible idea for creating a legal bond of sorts between Daragh, Bernadette (as our non-biological mother) and myself. In England, perhaps, but not in Ireland – such a concept doesn’t exist here.

Second, David Quinn was asked, by Pat, “What about Conor and his family there? The lads turned out, as far as I know, splendidly, they are well-balanced people. They lived in a happy, family situation for the best part of 30 years, I don’t know how old the lads are. You know it kind of runs counter to your whole argument” (around 31mins in). David responds by talking about gay adoption. Now, either by ignorance or by intent he appears to have missed a pretty crucial point; Daragh and I weren’t adopted. Two men donated sperm to Ann, who used artifical insemination to impregnate herself. No adoption there, no daddy there, no heterosexual relationship there. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume her didn’t hear Ann refer to herself as the biological parent of both Daragh and myself. Maybe I’ll bring a family tree next time.

Third, this idee of an opt-out for registrars who have a “conscientious objection” to a gay or lesbian couple registering a civil partnership is absolutely ludicrous. You don’t see a car salesman being permitted to not sell cars to gay people, or lesbians, or black people, or Polish people, or Catholics, or Protestants, or a person with a physical disability or anything else covered by equality legislation. If you are a registrar, employed by the State and paid for by the people of Ireland, then do your damn job or quit. If it’s that much of a problem, fuck off to somewhere that you won’t have to be bothered by gay people, or women wearing trousers. Guh.

Finally, that guy talking about the debate not being about equality and… “certain acts”. Oh my. Please, get your mind out of the bedroom. His point of “sexual acts between two people of the opposite sex, that’s how we all came into the world”. Oh dear, mate. No. Let me introduce myself and my brother. I’ve already outlined how we were conceived, so I’ll spare you the details. The laughs in the background exemplify the reaction to him anyway.

But damn, I think he exposed The Gay Agenda. In the sexy way.

Anyway, thanks for the kind words on Twitter and Facebook.

All the best,

Conor

 

What does family mean to me?

As part of the WRF2 project

I realised recently that I spend an incredible amount of time with my family. From an outside perspective, that would make sense; I live with my brother (and girlfriend) and my parents live just around the corner. Three of us work in the same place and the fourth is there practically every day anyway. Thinking about it like this, it makes sense that we see each other all the time. This is only a recent occurrence, I think. I lived in France for a year and throughout a lot of my degree I saw them very little. In September I’m off to Belfast – that means I’ll see them a lot less. Having said that, I doubt it’ll make much of a difference. My grandparents live in New Zealand and yet I still hear from them pretty frequently. The wonders of text messages, cheaper international phone calls, e-mail and VOIP means that we can keep in touch from far, far away.

So what does family mean to me? I guess it means love, security and warmth. It means having people around you. We’re a pretty close-knit family I reckon. Working together makes it difficult at times, but that’s pretty normal!

Family to me means whatever we decide to make it. It doesn’t matter to me that people think my parents shouldn’t have children, or even that they shouldn’t have a legally recognised relationship. Try telling me that my mums don’t deserve recognition for staying together thirty years, for raising four cats, two dogs, a pony, a horse, countless chickens, rabbits, fish and two children. They’ve done a damn good job. They’ve provided for us for the last 24 years of my life and I know they’ll give me the support I need whenever I ask for it – and even when I don’t.

I’ve got a little brother who I can only really describe as a character – I’d be surprised if he stood still for more than a year at any point in his life. While I love a bit of consistency, he gets twitchy and craves change.

We aren’t perfect, but I’m pretty sure none of us care. We love each other and that’s far more important than any stepping-stone legislation, any discriminatory escape clause, any pompous self-serving religious and political figures, any idiot arguing from morals on an issue of rights.

We are family too – even if you don’t think we are.

Happy Pride everyone – enjoy the day, whether gay, lesbian, bi, straight, trans or other.

 

On Panti’s Radio Show Tomorrow

Just a quick update to let you know that Daragh (the lil bro) and I will be on Ms. Panti’s radio show tomorrow. The show, broadcast on Open FM, has a special guest on (no, not us). You can listen in through OpenFM.ie or on 89.9FM on the old wireless. We’ll be on at about 7:20pm, so tune in and have a listen. We recorded it during the week and it was very relaxed and great fun to do so I’d like to thank Panti and the team for having us on!