Category: Media (Page 3 of 11)

As appeared in Letters – The Kerryman – 29 April 2015 edition

It’s difficult to steer any conversation about Marriage Equality away from a discussion about children. This can be frustrating for those of us who support Marriage Equality, as it’s obvious only adults can get married. Truth be told however, those of us who support equality, have more than a passing concern for children and how they will be affected by this referendum.

We are concerned about those thousands of gay and lesbian children watching this campaign unfold. Watching as their desires and aspirations to one day marry and perhaps have children, are compared with incest, child abuse and bestiality. Hearing calls that they submit to a life of pitiful chastity. Being further reminded, that to many they are, and should remain, second class citizens.

We are concerned about the thousands of children who are being raised by a gay parent or parents. As they hear their parents described as unworthy and unsuitable for marriage. As they hear their families described as inferior. As they hear themselves described as disadvantaged. This, despite all the scientific evidence available, which shows their families to be the equal of all others.

We are concerned about all those gay children who are being raised in a nation that stigmatises homosexuality to the extent that gay and lesbian children experience self-harm, suicide, mental-illness, homelessness, poor education, substance abuse and unemployment to a much higher degree than their straight brothers and sisters.

We are concerned about all the straight children being brought up to see their gay and lesbian peers as deviant and lesser. All those straight teens experiencing the confusion of puberty, who are given licence to shield their fears by attacking anyone different.

We are very concerned about children. We would see them shielded from the ugliness of this campaign. But we know, and it breaks our hearts that we know, the vile things being said in opposition to Marriage Equality, are the daily experiences of many gay and lesbian children. So yes, Marriage Equality is about children. It is but a small step towards the creation of a country that values gay and lesbian children as much as it does straight children.

As appeared in Letters – The Kerryman – 25 March 2015 edition

The first picture is of the letter I responded to. I could not find a link to it. This is a link to my letter.

I write in response to John Doyle’s (March 18) impressively crafted letter attacking marriage equality. While I’m certain Mr Doyle’s concerns regarding the LGBT community are genuinely felt, it’s important to consider just how little LGBT people are asking for in this referendum.

They are merely asking to have the same rights as my wife and I enjoy. What are those rights exactly? Well, my wife and I got married in a Registry Office. That’s it. That is all there is in the marriage equality referendum.

And while children are not mentioned in the referendum, sure let’s discuss them anyway.

My wife and I are free to choose whether or not to have children, but this right was not granted to us on marrying. We were always free to have children. Gay people are having children and they will continue to do so, regardless of the result of this referendum.

Will anything change? Well, the families of gay people will be afforded the same respect as mine. I think my marriage will survive that. And if my wife and I look to adopt a child? We’ll be in competition with single people, gay and straight, and other couples, gay and straight. The tiny number of children who are put up for adoption are most fortunate to have so many adults, ready and able to love them.

As for some LGBT activists being a tad impolite to their opponents. I would suggest Mr Doyle try a bit of Christian charity. No opponent of marriage equality encounters the violence and withering scorn that gay people experience from childhood. This referendum will not end the violence that gay adults and children endure, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

As appeared in Letters – The Kerryman – 4 February 2015 edition 

(Wrote this letter in response to this article)

As I read Brian Whelan (January 21) condemn the actions of the recently murdered French cartoonists, I thought of the film ‘Life of Brian.’ Banned in this country for many years, I think I watched it at least a dozen times before the ban was lifted. The little men who banned it, thought it offensive, even hateful.

Then I thought about Father Ted. An entire sitcom dedicated to mocking the type of people who banned Life of Brian and hundreds of other films and books.

After that I thought about the thousands of barbs, small and large, that gay people will have to endure, as we approach the marriage equality referendum.

There are people who think gay children should not be subjected to the prejudices of others. They reason that children do not have the fortitude to cope with wounding words. They would see their enemies silenced, for is not attacking the beliefs and rights of any group, a form of hate speech?

We should certainly consider banning ridicule and offence. We should consider it so that we may realise how monumentally dangerous this would be. If a belief or ideology cannot survive being mocked, then it’s probably not a worthwhile idea in the first place.

The little men who demand the silence of others, should remember that one day they too may be silenced.

As appeared in Letters – The Kerryman – 10 September 2014 edition.

Over the past few decades an unknown number of Chinese women have been forced to have abortions. This is because the Chinese government has a strict one-child policy. It is rightly condemned as a barbaric practice. We all agree women deserve better than this.

When the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act passed last year, I imagined Ireland was going to treat women better. I was wrong. Women can now be forced to continue with pregnancies they wish to end. They can be threatened with force-feeding and pressured into consenting to major surgery. Don’t women deserve better than this?

Why do some women in Ireland now face forced births? Is it simply the result of bad legislation? Is it because our politicians are too cowardly to offend the people who favour forced births? Or is it because they don’t think women deserve any better?

All law concerning women’s reproductive health has since 1983, been subject to the Eighth Amendment. No one under 49 years old has been offered the opportunity to remove that Amendment. Not a single woman of reproductive age has been able to vote on the Constitutional Amendment which limits their access to reproductive care. Surely those women deserve better?

If our politicians remain steadfast in their cowardly refusal to address the Eighth Amendment they could at least seek to reduce the harm caused by the resultant legislation. We now know that only girls and women in poverty or in the care of the State are unable to travel to the UK for abortions. The government has it within its power to ensure no woman is denied an abortion because of financial straits or citizenship issues.

It is the very least that women deserve from a government who refuses to offer them a genuine choice.

Recently the Kerry County Council voted to hang a crucifix in the Council Chamber.

This is a link to a Radio Kerry interview with Councillor Joe Culloty who proposed this.

This is a link to my interview with Radio Kerry arguing against it.

And this is a letter I wrote to The Kerryman on the same topic.

There is an unfortunate side-effect to the decision of Kerry County Council to hang a crucifix in their chamber. Though an atheist, I’ve always been comfortable assuming the vast majority of my elected representatives will be Roman Catholic. I trusted they would put our common citizenship above our differing belief systems.

I’m now going to have to ask each council candidate what religion they practice and I’ll need to know how invested they are in that practice and if they’ll represent me to the same extent as someone from their religion.

The Council has decided to privilege one religion over a whole hosts of others, for no reason other than it is the religion of the majority. Will we next see a shrine to white skin? A shrine to heterosexuality? A shrine to the able-bodied? A shrine to people who aren’t in negative equity?

Kerry Councillors have a duty to all the people who live in Kerry. Not just the people who elect them, not just the people who look like them and certainly not just the people who pray like them.

My column in The Kerryman. 22 January, 2014

I grew up in Lixnaw, which has a great deal of history. My parents’ house is 100 metres from where the Norman lords of Kerry had their castle. Thomas FitzMaurice was made Baron of Lixnaw and Kerry in the 13th Century. He founded the Franciscan Monastery in Ardfert.

Where the castle once stood, are the ruins of the later FitzMaurices’ stately home. In that big house was born Arabella FitzMaurice-Denny, who founded the first Magdalene institution for ‘fallen’ women. She had a nephew who became a Prime Minister of Britain and gave his name to Landsowne Road Stadium.

Go a hundred metres in the opposite direction and there’s Lixnaw’s GAA ground. I still remember the day the farmers of the parish arrived with tractors and trailers to draw soil dredged from the River Brick to the new pitch. On the day it opened Kerry played Limerick in hurling. I can’t remember who won, but I remember it was sunny.

Hurling has always been the first love of Lixnaw. Three Lixnaw men, Maurice Kelly, John Murphy and Maurice FitzMaurice (great-grandfather to today’s county football manager, Eamon FitzMaurice) played on the side that won Kerry’s first ever All Ireland in 1891. It may seem strange to some that Kerry’s first win was in hurling, but the real irony is that the Lixnaw men played with our fiercest rivals, Ballyduff.

A recent addition to the village is a Memorial Arch erected in memory of the Irish people who died in the Korean War. Close by is the convent school. It once included a secondary school and a school for people with learning disabilities. It’s where I cast my first vote.

Next to the convent is St Michael’s Church, built in the 1865. I may not be a Roman Catholic, but I still have strong feelings about what churches should look like and they should look like St Michael’s.

My old school is a short walk away. It looks much different from when I attended. It has been a nursery for many of Lixnaw’s hurlers these last few decades and it’s where I cast my most recent vote.

One day, when I was in I think first class, we were drawn to the sound of a train going through the village. As far as I know it was the last ever train to go through Lixnaw.
The railway station closed and it’s now a home. It has that Victorian architecture common to train stations all over Ireland. A pity I can’t walk from my house to a train station that could take me all the way to Dublin.

The village also has its ‘ghost estate’; locked behind metal fencing, a piece of new history, our monument to failure.

On the other side of the village is the Community Centre. I remember watching my uncle perched high on scaffolding as he helped to build it.

Beyond that is one of Lixnaw’s bogs, where I sometimes helped my neighbours save turf. From there one can see the bridge over to Ballyduff. It’s the third bridge in my lifetime. Hopefully this one’ll last. Across the river is Rattoo Tower. A round tower built a millennium ago to protect against the ravaging Vikings, ancestors to the Normans.

It’s an interesting experience, being able to see a thousand years from my window.

My column in The Kerryman. 15 January, 2014

There’s this thing that happens when an inspirational figure dies. First the person is elevated to a position above mere humanity, then there’s an unseemly fight for ownership of that person’s memory. When that fight is about someone as exceptional and brave and as young as Donal Walsh was, then things get very serious.

That struggle over Donal Walsh is being waged on Twitter, Facebook, in chat-rooms and on blogs. It’s a war about how we should interpret the words and utilise the memory of Donal Walsh in our attempt to reduce suicide in this country. Unfortunately, suicide is a mental health issue that, like any other health problem, requires a lot of money to resolve.

Donal Walsh wanted to save lives. He wanted to inspire his peers to choose life over death, a choice he was being denied himself. He reacted to a spate of ‘copy-cat suicides’ by issuing a message of such strength and integrity, that he gave some of his peers reason to pause. He may have saved lives, achieving in his short life more than many will ever achieve. For this his legacy should be assured.

The trouble for me is the way his message has been taken up by the HSE and politicians. Worse, the media has failed to bring any level of investigative expertise to this issue and have allowed this purest hero to be used as a ‘poster-boy’ in what seems to me a cheap and inaccurate campaign against the scourge of depression and suicide.

Donal Walsh spoke to those of his peers who may have recklessly chosen suicide as a solution to a short-term problem. He was not speaking to those who struggle with the long-term disease called depression.

Depression is no great mystery. It’s a disease like any other. A certain percentage of the population will contract it. Some will have such mild symptoms, that they may cope without help. Others will need some intervention and yet more will need massive amounts of resources, over a long period of time, to save their lives.

Like cancer, it requires money, money and more money to combat. Medication, residential care, long-term sick leave and talk therapy are all very expensive. They are not available to everyone. And even when they are available, a recent study showed that 60% of respondents would not hire someone with a history of mental illness.

Try imagining everyone who contracted depression receiving the same level of care, support and admiration as we think someone with cancer deserves to get. It’s a pipe-dream because depression is a mental illness so it only merits sound-bytes, empty promises and damaging rhetoric about cheering up.

This dismissal of the true nature of depression means the Department of Health, the HSE and our politicians are not implicated in the avoidable deaths of those with depression who take their own lives. That’s the horrible thing being done to Donal Walsh’s memory.

He is being held up as an example to depression sufferers. They may as well be telling cancer sufferers, be as brave as Donal Walsh, just don’t expect to be looked after.

Donal Walsh deserves better than that. Sufferers of depression deserve better than that. If our politicians want to address suicide, start spending and stop telling ill people to cheer up.