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.

 

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