Susan Phillips who appeared on the Brendan OâConnor show on Saturday and denied that she opposed the decriminalisation of homosexuality of 1993, must have forgotten this:
[quote=âSidney, post: 897771, member: 183â]Susan Phillips who appeared on the Brendan OâConnor show on Saturday and denied that she opposed the decriminalisation of homosexuality of 1993, must have forgotten this:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BfbOvMRCIAEpQMJ.png[/quote]
I saw that going around alright- What a stupidly horrible person.
[quote=âSidney, post: 897771, member: 183â]Susan Phillips who appeared on the Brendan OâConnor show on Saturday and denied that she opposed the decriminalisation of homosexuality of 1993, must have forgotten this:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BfbOvMRCIAEpQMJ.png[/quote]
Now that Niamh Horan has boldly broken the glass ceiling for the the cunt of the year competition, maybe Susan has a chance to make it two in a row!
Whatâs your emoticon fucking problem?
Fintan has his sayâŚ
Whatâs the difference between homophobia and an honest belief that it is OK for the law to discriminate against gay and lesbian couples? In the words of the cider ad, thereâs nothing added but time. Over time â usually far too much time â mainstream opinion comes to recognise that honest beliefs once held by decent people were reprehensible, not because the people were bad, but because the beliefs were shaped by prejudice. This will happen, probably quite soon, with beliefs about sexual orientation.
The legal action taken by John Waters[/URL] and members or patrons of the [URL=âhttp://www.irishtimes.com/search/search-7.1213540?tag_organisation=Iona%20Institute&article=trueâ]Iona Institute[/URL] against [URL=âhttp://www.irishtimes.com/search/search-7.1213540?tag_organisation=RT%C3%89&article=trueâ]RTĂ following comments made on the Saturday Night Show by Rory OâNeill/ Panti Bliss is in my view unpleasant. But it may in one respect be no bad thing. It has effectively outlawed accusations of homophobia. RTĂâs apology lays down a standard for public comment on issues around gay marriage: calling someone homophobic causes them âupset or distressâ and we canât have that. Iâm not sure this is a particularly good standard for public debate. Nevertheless, these are the new rules and they are not without their benefits.
The main benefit is that highlighted by the Iona Institute itself in its statement on the affair. It says that the point of the legal action was to ensure that individuals who oppose full legal equality for homosexual couples âdo not constantly have their motives and intentions called into questionâ. Fair enough. Letâs all accept â as I do without reservation â that the motives and intentions of the Iona Institute, John Waters and the vast majority of those who oppose gay marriage are decent, humane and entirely genuine. They believe with complete sincerity that defining marriage exclusively as âthe sexual and emotional union of a man and a womanâ is very important for the good of society as a whole. They further believe that it would be a failure of moral duty on their part not to uphold that belief in public, even if it is unpopular.
So, fine â their âmotives and intentionsâ are good and even brave. But hereâs the real question: so what? When, throughout the benighted history of structural discrimination, have âmotives and intentionsâ made the slightest difference to the questions of justice, equality and universal human dignity? Structures of inequality tend to begin with raw power â you are my slave because Iâve conquered you. But as they become ânormalâ, they are genuinely felt by those on the right side of the divide to be good and wholesome â you are enslaved because you are not fit to be free and need my benign control to stop you harming yourself.
Sincerity is as irrelevant here as malevolence â it simply doesnât matter why people uphold structures of discrimination. Throughout history, decent, moral people have believed with complete sincerity that slavery is a moral good, that women are lesser beings who must be protected from their weakness by being obedient to men, that Jews should be confined to ghettoes, that the Irish are incapable of rational thought, that Catholics are unfit to live in democracies and so on.
[B]Aristotle and LincolnThis is true even of very great men. Aristotle thought slavery entirely natural. Abraham Lincoln[/URL] thought for most of his career that when slavery was abolished blacks should be shipped out to [URL=âhttp://www.irishtimes.com/search/search-7.1213540?tag_location=Africa&article=trueâ]Africa because they couldnât possibly live side by side with free whites. Does this make Aristotle and Lincoln bad men? No. It just makes them examples of highly moral and intelligent people who cannot escape inherited structures of discriminatory thought.
When those structures exist â and surely the Iona Institute would not deny that there is an inherited structure of discrimination against people whose sexual orientation is deemed to be outside the norm â being personally benign is neither here nor there. Before the law was changed in 1993, gay men were subject to penalties of up to life imprisonment for having sex. In reality, many of them encountered benign and humane police officers or judges who tried to ensure that the law was applied lightly if at all. Did this make the law any less obnoxious?
Itâs good that most of those who oppose gay marriage love and respect and cherish individual gay people, though they should hardly expect a pat on the back for not hating their fellow citizens. But they need to recognise that thatâs not enough. The whole point of the law is that itâs not about giving people equal status because you like them. Itâs about freeing people from subjection to the arbitrariness of other peopleâs benevolence. Gay men and lesbians shouldnât have to care one way or the other whether the members of the Iona Institute love them or not. Just as the rest of us shouldnât measure the rights of our fellow citizens by what they get up to in bed.
[/B]
[quote=âMark Renton, post: 898198, member: 1796â]Fintan has his sayâŚ
Whatâs the difference between homophobia and an honest belief that it is OK for the law to discriminate against gay and lesbian couples? In the words of the cider ad, thereâs nothing added but time. Over time â usually far too much time â mainstream opinion comes to recognise that honest beliefs once held by decent people were reprehensible, not because the people were bad, but because the beliefs were shaped by prejudice. This will happen, probably quite soon, with beliefs about sexual orientation.
The legal action taken by John Waters[/URL] and members or patrons of the [URL=âhttp://www.irishtimes.com/search/search-7.1213540?tag_organisation=Iona%20Institute&article=trueâ]Iona Institute[/URL] against [URL=âhttp://www.irishtimes.com/search/search-7.1213540?tag_organisation=RT%C3%89&article=trueâ]RTĂ following comments made on the Saturday Night Show by Rory OâNeill/ Panti Bliss is in my view unpleasant. But it may in one respect be no bad thing. It has effectively outlawed accusations of homophobia. RTĂâs apology lays down a standard for public comment on issues around gay marriage: calling someone homophobic causes them âupset or distressâ and we canât have that. Iâm not sure this is a particularly good standard for public debate. Nevertheless, these are the new rules and they are not without their benefits.
The main benefit is that highlighted by the Iona Institute itself in its statement on the affair. It says that the point of the legal action was to ensure that individuals who oppose full legal equality for homosexual couples âdo not constantly have their motives and intentions called into questionâ. Fair enough. Letâs all accept â as I do without reservation â that the motives and intentions of the Iona Institute, John Waters and the vast majority of those who oppose gay marriage are decent, humane and entirely genuine. They believe with complete sincerity that defining marriage exclusively as âthe sexual and emotional union of a man and a womanâ is very important for the good of society as a whole. They further believe that it would be a failure of moral duty on their part not to uphold that belief in public, even if it is unpopular.
So, fine â their âmotives and intentionsâ are good and even brave. But hereâs the real question: so what? When, throughout the benighted history of structural discrimination, have âmotives and intentionsâ made the slightest difference to the questions of justice, equality and universal human dignity? Structures of inequality tend to begin with raw power â you are my slave because Iâve conquered you. But as they become ânormalâ, they are genuinely felt by those on the right side of the divide to be good and wholesome â you are enslaved because you are not fit to be free and need my benign control to stop you harming yourself.
Sincerity is as irrelevant here as malevolence â it simply doesnât matter why people uphold structures of discrimination. Throughout history, decent, moral people have believed with complete sincerity that slavery is a moral good, that women are lesser beings who must be protected from their weakness by being obedient to men, that Jews should be confined to ghettoes, that the Irish are incapable of rational thought, that Catholics are unfit to live in democracies and so on.
[B]Aristotle and LincolnThis is true even of very great men. Aristotle thought slavery entirely natural. Abraham Lincoln[/URL] thought for most of his career that when slavery was abolished blacks should be shipped out to [URL=âhttp://www.irishtimes.com/search/search-7.1213540?tag_location=Africa&article=trueâ]Africa because they couldnât possibly live side by side with free whites. Does this make Aristotle and Lincoln bad men? No. It just makes them examples of highly moral and intelligent people who cannot escape inherited structures of discriminatory thought.
When those structures exist â and surely the Iona Institute would not deny that there is an inherited structure of discrimination against people whose sexual orientation is deemed to be outside the norm â being personally benign is neither here nor there. Before the law was changed in 1993, gay men were subject to penalties of up to life imprisonment for having sex. In reality, many of them encountered benign and humane police officers or judges who tried to ensure that the law was applied lightly if at all. Did this make the law any less obnoxious?
Itâs good that most of those who oppose gay marriage love and respect and cherish individual gay people, though they should hardly expect a pat on the back for not hating their fellow citizens. But they need to recognise that thatâs not enough. The whole point of the law is that itâs not about giving people equal status because you like them. Itâs about freeing people from subjection to the arbitrariness of other peopleâs benevolence. Gay men and lesbians shouldnât have to care one way or the other whether the members of the Iona Institute love them or not. Just as the rest of us shouldnât measure the rights of our fellow citizens by what they get up to in bed.[/B]
[/quote]
Already posted in the decent journalism thread. Keep up Mark
Sorry, mate⌠Iâm not MBB, I donât check every thread.
Ah no, I skip one or two for the most part, the horsey one I would only click into by accident, or to check if theyâve killed any new horses. I tend to stay out of the smashing tunes lately until they build up a few days pages given the shite that tends to get posted there recently. Iâd also avoid the dorts, cricket, serie a, one of the roma threads, the list goes on mate. Iâd actuall encourage @Rocko to give us the option to put a thread on ignore if possible.
Thatâs a cardinal error. Thereâs usually a good off topic row worth reading in nearly every single thread.
I dip in and out on a rare occasion in case thereâs an incident of say⌠an attack on someone like farmer which may or may not have taken place under the guise of a wrestling thread once upon a time 
There could be all manner of shenanigans in the Wexford / Clare GAA threads that Iâll never know about.
I would like to add all manner of doggy dog threads to the list
So @Bandage[/USER] & @[USER=1]Rocko - are we not allowed call it as we see it anymore?
Surely we can still expose mickee, MBB etc for the homophobes they are.
I will add the fitness thread to that too.
Thank fuck
Then why did you think it was dumb to stay out of threads that hold no interest just a few posts back?
It was a general thing. I think you are just dumb.
:rolleyes: dreadful.
I know, at your age as well. Must have been the parenting, cos the education is pretty good in Ireland.
This line 