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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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!

 

And So A Group is Formed

Last Saturday I participated in a research group. It was a kind of focus group. There was one thing that made it special: all the people there were the sons or daughters of lesbians or gay people. I’ll admit, I was excited. So we did the workshop, which was an open discussion about our families and our experiences of being the children of and in the LGBT community. It was really interesting listening to people talking about their families and there was a great positivity to the group.

So the pieces fell in place and, as one might expect, we decided to create a group of sorts. This is going to be a long-term project. We plan on setting up a support, information, advocacy and campaign group for children of LGBT parents. We’ll have a website, Facebook, Twitter and all that jazz. Sound like a bit of fun, or something you’d like to get involved in? Leave a comment or drop me an e-mail (conorpendergrast[at]gmail[dot]com).

But why would you need a group like this?

One theme that emerged from the group was a feeling of being a bit of an outsider. For me,  as a kid, there were times when I felt like a bit of a weirdo, having two mammies (of course, it occurred to me that there are very few ‘normal’ families out there). Having a bit of support in place could make life a lot easier for other children like us.  Knowing that there are plenty of people out there with two mums or two dads can make a big difference.

[Edit: Props to MarriagEquality for organising the event]

 

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).

 

“Why Marriage Matters”

Without writing too much of an essay, I’d like to discuss a document I found by a group against extending the right of marriage to same-sex couples. I’ve decided not to link to it, to avoid giving them more air-time essentially. The document can be found here (pdf, 472kb). Obviously, you’ll find them fairly easily if you want to.

The first page of this document is essentially a “marriage is good and this is why”. According to this, marriage reduces the risk of poverty, protects mental and physical health and married people live longer and happier lives. 

So, why not extend this advantage to gay people? If these are the benefits to society (happier, healthier people; less risk of poverty; protection of mental and physical health) then surely we should avail of this for all members of society, not just straight people.

For those that argue that this might not stand true for same-sex families, let’s look at some evidence from the American Psychological Association  (as opposed to from a research body that acts as a front for conservative groups).

research indicates that, despite the somewhat hostile social climate within which same-sex relationships develop, many lesbians and gay men have formed durable relationships

Interesting eh? And how about:

Researchers… have also speculated that the stability of same-sex couples would be enhanced if partners from same-sex couples enjoyed the same levels of social support and public recognition of their relationships as partners from heterosexual couples do.

And finally:

research has found that the factors that predict relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship stability are remarkably similar for both same-sex cohabiting couples and heterosexual married couples

For more information on this, take a look at their policy resolution (pdf, 194kb).

So now I turn to the second page, which includes the gem:

“Here are answers to help you defend the family”

From what? Please, tell me what I need to defend my family against? I think this point is often overlooked: We’re not talking about banning families. We’re not talking about abolishing heterosexual marriage. We’re talking about extending the opportunity and the option of marriage to more people.

 

“But this is what every same-sex home does — and for no other reason but to satisfy adult desire.”

That’s rubbish, utter rubbish. My own “same-sex home” was started with the intent of raising a family in a loving atmosphere. Saying that a home is started to “satisfy adult desire” makes it sound like a brothel, as opposed to the truth; that my family and that of other same-sex families are rarely different to opposite-sex families in terms of the love shared and the reasons they were started. 

“Marriage is about bringing male and female together, so that children have mothers and fathers, and so that women aren’t stuck with the enormous, unfair burdens of parenting alone— and that is good.”

In a same-sex relationship, the couple tend to distribute household tasks in a more equal way, as opposed to in heterosexual relationships, whereby the male and female tend to conform to their gender stereotypes. Marriage isn’t about bringing male and female together, it’s about joining two individuals in a committed and long-term relationship.

“Once you rip a ship off its mooring who knows where it will drift next?”

This kind of disgraceful scare-mongering is what is fuelling the anti-gay marriage movement. I can already hear someone scream “Won’t someone please think of the children?”. I am not looking for polygamy, I am not looking for marriage for brothers and sisters, I’m not looking for people to be able to marry their horses. The analogy used here implies that enabling  more members of society to marry their loved ones will lead to a breakdown in society’s family values and seems to be spoken of in the same tones as the apocolypse.  I’ll put this as clearly as possible: I want my parents to have the option to mark their relationship (24 years going this year) in a socially and legally recognised manner. This will not degrade anyone else’s relationship or marriage. If anything, it will strengthen the position that marriage will have, by ensuring that it is an institution open to all members of society, regardless of sexuality.

Legal scholars warn that the tax exempt status and accreditation of Catholic organizations could be at risk.

Sorry for needing to ask, but why exactly should Catholic organisations get tax exempt status? The Catholic Church has an unestimatable worth, hidden from view with loopholes and veils of secrecy. Check out this more a little more information (but very little to be honest). If anyone can shed some light on the financial goings-on of this Vatican-based powerhouse I would be very grateful.

But I digress. Why should any institution that teaches that people are not equal, that some people are evil by default, that reason and logic should be condemned at all opportunities and that their ideas are the only ideas that should be accepted ever be given funding and tax breaks by a state? Religion is ultimately harmful, as suggested by Voltaire:

Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities

Anyway, there’s plenty more there for people to look at and discuss. Feel free to leave a comment (especially if you disagree, I like a good chat 🙂 ) and keep the debate going about this.

 

Compelled to blog

I found two new campaigns this evening I felt compelled to blog about.

1. Amazon’s move to classify all LGBT material as “adult” (regardless of whether it contains or does not contain nudity, sexual references etc. and additionally exclude it from some searches and best seller lists. They are also excluded from the sales rank feature. Check out the Twitter hype on it (I’m getting about 30 new results a minute for it) and sign the petition. Then make some noise about it, to a friend, on your blog, via Facebook, in your next tutorial, wherever. But tell at least one person…

2. This video is incredible, in the “that can’t be real” sense. Ridiculous. How can bringing in marriage for a group of people force a different group to change their lifestyle? Utter rubbish as usual. Check out the counter-campaign here, from the Human Rights Campaign.