Tag Archives: homophobia

paul

Paul Murphy MEP, speaking under parliamentary privilege in the European Parliament in Strasbourg today discussed homophobia and named names.

“Like the other MEPs, I have been inundated with emails claiming that this report represents an attack on the freedom of speech – because it condemns homophobia. It is deeply ironic because in Ireland at the moment, you have a real attack on the freedom of speech.

National broadcaster, RTE, has censored Rory O’Neill for calling out homophobia, even worse than that, it has paid out 85,000 euros reportedly in damages to those accused of homophobia.

It’s an attack by the right wing conservative forces in Ireland, acceded to by RTE, designed to censor debate in advance of a likely referendum on marriage equality. We must refuse to be silenced.

When John Waters says that gay marriage is ‘a kind of satire’, that is homophobia.

When Breda O’Brien says ‘equality must take second place to the common good’, that is homophobia.

When the Iona Institute campaign against gay marriage because it is gay marriage, that is homophobia.

In the words of Rory O’Neill, these people should get the hell out of our lives.”

Not going away.

Previously: Rory O’Neill (Miss Panti) on Broadsheet

(H/T: cairotango)

Meanwhile…

 

Currently at 55,000 views on YouTube, Panti’s Noble Call video is kind of a big deal.

The original facebook video has over 7,000 views.

Textbook Streisand effect, in fairness.

Panti Bliss, Irish Drag Queen, Gives Impassioned Speech About Homophobia (HuffPost)


This drag queen’s brilliant response to homophobia will move you to tears (Pink News)

Previously: Meanwhile, At The Abbey

molodoi-dalnevostochnik

A Russian newspaper editor has been fined 50,000 roubles (£860) under the ‘gay propaganda’ law for printing that “being gay is normal”.

Alexander Suturin, the editor-in-chief of newspaper Molodoi Dalnevostochnik (above), was found guilty of breaking the law, as the article propagated “homosexual relations”. In being found guilty, his newspaper became the first media outlet to have been found in breach of the law.

Russia: Newspaper editor fined under anti-gay law for printing ‘being gay is normal’ (Pink News)

Previously: “Leave The Children In Peace”

MacGill Summer Schools 2011

[Noel Whelan at the MacGill Summer School in Donegal, 2011]

The suggestion that anyone who disagrees with full equality for gays and lesbians is homophobic is surely a misuse of the word.

An overwhelming majority of our parents’ and our grandparents’ generation opposed equal rights for gays and lesbians; indeed most of them supported the continued criminalisation of homosexuality.
To many of us today that seems irrational on their part, but which of us would brand our parents or grandparents as a shower of homophobes?

Calling opponents homophobes may bring some level of satisfaction to those who do it and may attract cheers of applause in their own circles and on microblogs in the liberal realm, but it does nothing to advance the cause of debate.

It is also counterproductive in the effort to engage and persuade the mass of the moderate Irish electorate to support and vote for marriage equality.

Fianna Fail adviser and political analyst Noel Whelan in Saturday’s Irish Times.

 

Meanwhile…

Readiness to hurl the word ‘homophobe’ may not help the liberal reform agenda (Noel Whelan, Irish Times)

Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland

541281_392535250769241_247655545_n

Someone.

‘the plan to introduce same-sex marriages must be defeated, it’s a crazy idea. We must show true compassion for all society by stamping out homosexuality altogether, we must remind all of where the aids epidemics started, we must remind people of the bizarre, sexual lifestyle they lead, we must point out that if children were to live with such people, i.e., gays, they could easily pick up aids. Yes, these will be hurt by what we have to say and that is hard for them but we must protect the health of our nation’. That’s from Jo, and it looks like a female Joe because it’s spelt J-O.”

Blimey.

Midwest Radio

GCN

Update:

Mid-West Radio presenter apologises for offensive text which was aired on Wednesday last (facebook)

Thanks Stephen Hennelly

18/6/2013 G8 Conferences In Ireland

He’s gone full Tsartard.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says gays should feel welcome at the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, but they must “leave the children in peace.”

Putin told volunteers Friday that gays visiting Sochi “can feel calm and at ease,” and vowed that there would be no discrimination at the games. But he emphasized that, according to a law banning homosexual “propaganda” among minors, gays cannot express their views on gay rights issues to anyone underage.

Putin: Gays must ‘leave children in peace’ (AP)

Photocall Ireland

rte-the-god-slot-cure-gays-tweetScreen Shot 2014-01-17 at 05.21.44producer

Aine Bermingham from Utter Digital details her step-by-step guide how not to deal with social media faux pas as occurred with the promotion of RTÉ Radio One’s ‘The God Slot’ [produced by Gerry McArdle] last night.

Any excuse.


Irish Media Giant’s ‘cure the gays’ Twitter crisis. 10 Social Media Fails by RTÉ (Utter Digital)

rory1

Panti Bliss aka Rory O’Neill (above) appeared on RTÉ One’s ‘Saturday Night Show’ and talked to Brendan O’Connor about his life.

On Sunday, our Lars Biscuits posted a short clip from the interview and an accompanying transcript.

Last night, RTE asked us to remove the video of the interview as “concerns have been raised about its content”. [We have asked who raised the concerns and are awaiting a reply from the station].

They further cautioned: “You are hereby put on notice that the publication and continued publication of this interview and any transcripts thereof may be defamatory.”

So we totally freaked out and removed the post.

We are unable to embed the video for copyright reasons but have reposted the transcript (below) as we believe the question of what is a homophobe is one of opinion, the subject is one of public interest, the opinion is based on facts stated or known (e.g. Breda,/John/Iona’s opposition to gay marriage) and it appears to be honestly held.

Therefore (until we hear otherwise)…

Rory O’Neill: “…but of course I’ve met people who have just absolutely had awful, terrible experiences coming out to their families and..”

Brendan O’Connor: “And but a lot has changed hasn’t it since then like?”

RO’N: “So much has changed. And I think em a small country like Ireland sometimes we get a bad rap because people think “oh small conservative country blah blah blah”. But actually I think a small country like Ireland changes much faster than a big country because absolutely…I’m..think about it every single person in this audience has a cousin or a neighbour or the guy that you work with who is a flaming queen. I mean you all know one. And it’s very hard to hold prejudices against people when you actually know those people. And Ireland because it’s such small communities grouped together, everybody knows the local gay and you know maybe twenty years ago it was okay to be really mean about him but nowadays it’s just not okay to be really mean about him. The only place that you see it’s okay to be really horrible and mean about gays is you know on the internet in the comments and you know people who make a living writing opinion pieces for newspapers. You know there’s a couple of them that really cheese..”

BO’C: “Who are they?”

RO’N: “Oh well the obvious ones. You know Breda O’Brien [Irish Times Columnist] today, oh my God you know banging on about gay priests and all. The usual suspects, the John Waters and all of those people, the Iona Institute crowd. I mean I just..you know just…Feck Off! Get the hell out of my life. Get out of my life. I mean..[applause from audience] why…it astounds me…astounds me that there are people out there in the world who devote quite a large amount of their time and energies to trying to stop people you know, achieving happiness because that is what the people like the Iona Institute are at.”

BO’C: “I don’t know. I don’t know. I know one of the people that you mentioned there which is John Waters. I wouldn’t have thought that John Waters is homophobic?”

RO’N: “Oh listen, the problem is with the word ‘homophobic’, people imagine that if you say “Oh he’s a homophobe” that he’s a horrible monster who goes around beating up gays you know that’s not the way it is. Homophobia can be very subtle. I mean it’s like the way you know racism is very subtle. I would say that every single person in the world is racist to some extent because that’s how we order the world in our minds. We group people. You know it’s just how our minds work so that’s okay but you need to be aware of your tendency towards racism and work against it. And I don’t mind, I don’t care how you dress it up if you are arguing for whatever good reasons or you know whatever your impulses…”

BO’C: “Because it is what you believe, it’s your faith or that, yeah?”

RO’N: “…it could be good impulses..and you might believe that these impulses are good because you’re worried about society as a whole and all this rubbish. What it boils down to is if you’re going to argue that gay people need to be treated in any way differently than everybody else or should be in anyway less, or their relationships should be in anyway less then I’m sorry, yes you are a homophobe and the good thing to do is to sit, step back, recognise that you have some homophobic tendencies and work on that. You know stop spending so much of your life you know devoting energies to writing things, arguing things, coming on TV to do anything to try and stop people achieving what they think they need for happiness.”

We offer a right of reply to anyone mentioned.

Previously: Panti At The Abbi

Fauxdelma Healy Eames

Also: Ignorance is Not Panti Bliss (Matthew Mulligan, Trinity News)

pootsybear

NI Health Minister Edwin Poots has defended his opposition to gay adoption and gay men donating blood in the Assembly today. Mr Poots denied he thought homosexuality was an illness, but said there were heterosexual men “who would desire lots of other folks. Those of us who are married shouldn’t be doing that. People can resist urges. And in terms of all of this I would just encourage people to take a sensible and rational view of these issues.”

“When it comes to adoption I’ve just come from an MLU, a Midwifery Lead Unit in Lagan Valley today and all of the people that were giving birth in that unit were women and all of those women would not have been impregnated by another woman.

“The natural order – whether one believes in God or whether one believes in evolution – is for a man and a woman to have a child and therefore that has made my views on adoption very clear and on raising children very clear, that it should be a man and a woman that raises a child.

“Now people can criticise me for that and they can challenge me for it and they can say it’s backward.

“The truth is that still today in this modern era it is only a man and a woman that can produce a child and therefore I think its in the best order for a man and a woman to raise a child.”


Edwin Poots defends stance on gay adoption (BBC News NI)

Previously: The Abominable No Man

James And The Gay Blood Ban

Dope Springs Eternal

Because QUARES!

Screen Shot 2013-10-01 at 01.22.15Meet Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, who last Friday in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly said the following:

The biggest threats to human existence are basically three and are a consequence of human behaviour which are ungodly attributes. These are:
1.Excessive greed, and; therefore addiction to gather
material wealth by any means necessary mostly through
violent or immoral schemes;
2. Obsession with world domination by any means including the resolve to use nuclear, biological and chemical
weapons to achieve this fanciful dream;
3. Homosexuality in all its forms and manifestations which
though very evil, antihuman as well as anti-Allah; is being
promoted as a human right by some powers

All these three have nothing to do with climate change and are more deadly than all natural disasters put together.

..we know for a fact that all living things need
to reproduce for posterity. They become extinct when they can no longer reproduce. Therefore, you will all agree with me that any person promoting the end of human reproduction must be promoting human extinction. Could this be called promoting human rights when you advocate for a definitive end to human reproduction and procreation? Those who promote homosexuality want to put an end to human existence, it is becoming an epidemic and we Muslims and Africans will fight to end this behaviour. We want a brighter future for humanity
and the continuous existence of humanity on this planet
therefore we will never tolerate any agenda that clearly calls for human extinction.

Watch here

Previously, in an interview with Al Jazeera he claimed he could cure AIDS (but only on Thursdays) and asthma (Saturdays).

Gambia: Gays are biggest threat to world, President Yahya Jammeh tells UN (The Independent)

il_570xN.393041605_brupnicola-hyland-cake-topper-companyDaintree(Nicola Hyland, centre and one of her same-sex wedding cake toppers, top. banned by Daintree Paper, above.)

Jane Casey, at GCN (Gay Community News) writes:

Recently, we received two letters complaining about homophobic discrimination at Daintree Paper [wedding stationers] on Dublin’s Camden Street. This is what transpired…

 

Dear Editor,

I make hand crafted, personalised, clay cake toppers and I was invited by Daintree Paper on Camden St., Dublin to become part of their ‘Wedding Hub’ in May this year. The idea behind The Wedding Hub is a space where brides and grooms can visit and view the stalls of potential wedding suppliers.
One of the toppers in my stand depicts two clay grooms holding hands. After about a week of my stand being in the store I got a call from the owner saying he would like a word next time I am in. He had removed the same-sex couple topper from my stand without my permission because it was in conflict with his religious beliefs and although he is happy for people from the LGBT community to shop in his store, he is not comfortable with promoting same-sex marriage on the shelves.
This was pretty shocking to hear. I told him that what he did was not in line with my own beliefs, and indeed that I wasn’t happy with him removing stock without my consent, and that I could not in good conscience remain in The Wedding Hub if he refused to place the topper back where it was. After a lengthy conversation, during which it was pretty obvious he wasn’t going to change his mind, I left and removed my stand from the shop a couple of weeks later.
This incident has been all at once shocking, upsetting and anger-inducing. I had been of the belief that this kind of attitude was all but gone, but I was very sadly mistaken. I would like to add that in the weeks following this incident I have spoken to a number of staff members in The Wedding Hub and Daintree Paper, none of whom share the opinion of the owner.
Yours,
Nicola Hyland

Dear Editor,
Thank you for allowing me the right to reply to Nicola’s letter. Daintree does not stock any merchandise that promotes same-sex marriage.
Daintree has a subsidiary company called The Jesse Box, which is a program for teachers and parents to pass Christian faith to children through re-enacting bible stories in a diorama.
There is an obvious conflict here that prompted the action as outlined in the letter from Nicola Hyland.
Yours sincerely
Paul Barnes, Daintree Ltd

The Daintree Letters (GCN)