Tag Archives: John Waters

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In August 2012, the UCD newspaper College Tribune interviewed John Waters for an article on gay marriage. The interview was conducted by the paper’s then editor James Grannell.

Anon writes:

“Quotes from  this interview have been widely circulated on social media in the last week, by Paul Murphy MEP in the European Parliament and by Senator David Norris on Friday’s Late Late Show.  I am sending this because the publication of further details from this particular interview is in the public interest, irrespective of whatever side of the debate any individual falls on. Of particular interest, perhaps, are previously unpublished sections around the 30-33 minute mark.”

We have transcribed the full audio [below] however some parts of the conversation were impossible to discern due to poor sound quality. We are happy to correct any mistakes.

John Waters: “Sometimes I speak to classes of foreign students in a certain language school. In this particular class I noticed recently,they had all Googled me. And they had kind of, you know, a few of them were kind of waiting for me.
Now I think under the kind of instruction of their tutor more than anything, it is not the kind of thing a class would do spontaneously. And, yeah there were certain headings: abortion, gay marriage…and they were kind of like, exactly as you say, they all held the same views, and they were all kind of convinced that I was some kind of backward, kind of, reactionary redneck and they were going to make a joke of me. So I just said okay, em, gay marriage, what do you want to know? So ‘why are you opposed to gay marriage?’ I said, well, in a certain sense I said, you know, it’s not even gay marriage that I’m opposed to: it’s the idea of gay adoption. Because marriage is fundamentally societies way of organizing the the nurturing of children into the next generation. Marriage is the crucible in which children… and we had all that semantic, pedantic, argument that goes on in the whole country, some people blah, blah, blah, bullshit.
And, but I said, you know, where are the children going to come from for gay couples to adopt? Presumably these children are going to have other parents, real parents, fathers and mothers. What is your position on that? Do you have a position? Because I can tell you that the people who advocate gay marriage have nothing to say on this spectrum at all.”

James Grannell: I found that in my interview…

Waters: “Yeah.”

Grannell: “…they are…”

Waters: “They’re not interested in the words like (inaudible)

Grannell: “No. And it doesn’t really come into their conversation.”

Waters: “Well I would go further and say that actually it is obviously an obstacle (inaudible) the parents.  supply of children for the gay couples to adopt…you know, about adoption initially being to create conditions in which the child who had been deprived of his parents or her parents for whatever reasons: death, incapacity, whatever, to have the same chances as other children by having society replicate, in so far as possible, the conditions of a normative family for that child. Now we have inverted this…”

Grannell: “Yeah.”

Waters: “…into the idea that the child has become the product, the commodity, that is supplied to different , differently defined alternative families. This is not what adoption is and then I said that, there was this guy who was being particularly vociferous in the front row, and I said to him, you know, supposing you get your girlfriend pregnant?
I don’t know, he might have been from France, but in Ireland, if this happened to a young man. You would find that you had actually zero rights. You have a right to be consulted, which means they’ll tell you – maybe, if they can find you – if the mother says where you are, and they’ll tell you that the child is going to be adopted.
But I can tell you one thing, you do not have the right to adopt your own child. You do not have the right to say that you were child should not be adopted, you know, you have the right to apply for guardianship to the court, which may or may not be granted and if it isn’t granted well then you can forget about it. Do you care about that? Do you care about your own human rights?
So, what I’m saying is that there are lots of arguments that you obviously haven’t heard about this. Don’t think that this is something you can just jump on to become a fashionable person – to become a person with the right opinion. If you’re going to have opinions, by all means, whatever opinions you want, arrive at them on the basis of reason, and logic, and the facts. But don’t be coming to me thinking you’re superior to me because you actually happen to have a different – you know, a certain opinion which you picked up from your fashionable teacher or your fashionable friends. So this is not limited to abortion, which is even more interesting and I go into that in the article in the Irish Catholic. So. And that’s really the general experience. And you find that with politicians as well. Politicians see this as an opportunity to advertise their liberal credentials.”

Grannell: “Do you think that is a big part of it? These people are talking . I know that David Quinn has mentioned it to me and I was talking to Brendan O’Neill in London. And some people have been saying that, at a time when politicians don’t have much moral weight with people, this is something they can latch on to and show that they’re liberal and that they’re all for equality. Do you think that it’s been latched on to by them?”

Waters: “And interestingly it is the more conservative – quote, unquote – who are most vulnerable to that because they’re looking for brownie points. They think it doesn’t matter, they don’t really care, fundamentally, it’s not an economic issue in an obvious way. It’s not something that their careers will live or die on and so it’s an opportunity to buy credit, you know, in Ireland, with the Irish Times. Oh he’s a liberal, on that issue at least he’s on the right side, so we’ll cut him some slack somewhere else, you know. If you’re in Fianna Fail, you need some slack right now. That’s why Fianna Fail in its recent Ard Fheis had a whole movement which swept the board pushing gay marriage when in fact there there is no discussion at all, none, no discussion. And I actually spoke, I was actually at the Ard Fheis, and I actually raised this question and I said hang on, don’t get carried away with this have a discussion about it because there is lots of issues which you should be looking at here and which you won’t get another chance to look at.”

Grannell: “Do you think there is a danger there because in UCD, there is really isn’t any discussion ongoing? Do you think there is danger on a national level as well, that without proper debate, proper discussion, and people actually looking at both sides of the argument, that something that could be cast into law which will prove two or three years down the line perhaps to cause huge issues…”

Waters: “Oh I have no doubt about it and I think it is going to happen and I don’t think there is any way back from it now, because the way that this is being set up, where there is almost a blackmail clause involved, you know, whereby if you don’t support it you are a homophobe and this bullying is actually silencing people and it is preventing any kind of open discussion people are actually afraid to go out now and march on this issue and you are smeared at and ridiculed and particularly at a time of the internet and the way that they use the internet to bully and harass people and demonise people and I think that it is having this effect. So it is eventually going to happen, and of course the consequences will flow and among the consequences I predict will be the whole, this is really a kind of a satire on marriage, that is being conducted by the gay lobby. It is not that they want to get married it is that they want to destroy the institution of marriage because they are envious of it and they see it as a, really, as an affront to their equality.
“It doesn’t mean much, it doesn’t really mean much, this is the interesting thing, when they were fighting for civil unions, and I raised this question that what they really were wanting was marriage, what they what they were really wanting was adoption. They all denied it, oh no no no, that’s completely paranoia we have no interest in marriage at all, this is about our civil rights. Fine, I have no problem with your civil rights, so that’s fine, you’ve got that but the next day they got out of bed and started to campaign for marriage which is purely an attempt to discredit an institution, a normative institution, on which society, on which human civilization, is founded, and inevitably if you do that there will be consequences, and among those will be be that marriage will become really a nothing in our culture, in time.”Continue reading →

John_Waters_CNA_World_Catholic_News_8_22_12bropFurther to Pantigate.

From Kevin Brophy, a solicitor acting for John Waters (above):

RTE said in their recent statement “I want to reassure you that RTE explored every option available to it, including right of reply. Legal advice was sought and all avenues were explored, including an offer to make a donation to a neutral charity”. They further went on to say that they took a particular course of action partly because of “the decision by the complainants not to accept RTE’s proposed remedies”.

This is a grossly misleading version of what actually happened.

This is what actually happened.

I was instructed by John Waters on January 11th to write to RTE seeking an apology and a retraction and the removal of certain defamatory comments from the internet broadcast of the Saturday Night Show. My instructions were very clear at that time. John Waters and the Iona Institute clients wanted an apology and a retraction and nothing else.

RTE proposed a right of reply which was like asking my clients to prove they are not homophobic. John Waters also made several attempts to deal with the matter himself, including having a lengthy telephone conversation with the producer of the Saturday Night Show. In the course of this conversation, he discovered that far from showing a willingness to vindicate his reputation, RTE had spent the previous two days conducting an internet trawl in a fruitless attempt to belatedly substantiate the allegation made by Mr O’Neill. They failed in these endeavours.

John Waters then proposed the precise wording of an apology and further proposed that a donation of €15,000 be made to the St. Vincent De Paul to mark the seriousness of the defamatory comments. This proposal did not come from RTE, it came from John Waters. RTE were not happy to broadcast the apology we had drafted and instead said they intended to go ahead with a totally unsatisfactory two sentence statement. Over the course of the following 7 days, an unsatisfactory wording was eventually agreed and was broadcast.

RTE’s response to the proposed donation to the St. Vincent De Paul was that they felt the figure should be €5,000. My very strong advice was for John Waters to issue proceedings against RTE as I did not believe they were taking the matter seriously.

It should also be noted that these negotiations were ongoing at a time when John Waters was being subjected to the most outrageous level of online abuse and adverse commentary.

Eventually RTE offered €40,000 and this was accepted. I did not recommend the figure as I felt it was too low. The bottom line here is that if RTE had accepted John Water’s original proposal, this case would have settled at a fraction of the final cost to RTE.

I have acted for John Waters for many years. In previous defamation actions he has requested that settlements be passed to charity. John Waters agreed to this final settlement and apology in the hope of putting an end to the matter and in deference to the members of the Iona Institute, who had also been defamed. This is not a case of John Waters trying to silence the gay lobby or prevent freedom of speech. He was defamed. He continues to be defamed. If RTE had acted appropriately and sensibly on day one, this current storm would never have arisen.

Kevin Brophy,  Brophy Solicitors

Thanks Vincent Murphy

From February 5:

“RTÉ’s apology to John Waters and members of the Iona Institute following the receipt of six legal complaints and you will, no doubt, have seen the ongoing debate on this subject.
I want to reassure you that RTÉ explored every option available to it, including right of reply. Legal advice was sought and all avenues were explored, including an offer to make a donation to a neutral charity.
“However, based on the facts of what was broadcast, and having regard for broadcasting compliance issues, the seriousness of the legal complaints, and the decision by the complainants not to accept RTÉ’s proposed remedies, we decided that a settlement was the most prudent course of action. Senior counsel was consulted and confirmed that the legal position was far from clear.
“As a dual-funded public body, RTÉ should not knowingly progress to defend an action when it is advised, internally and externally, that such a defence is unlikely to succeed before a jury.”

Glen Killane, RTE managing director Television in an email to staff on February 5.

Meanwhile…

 

19/7/2012. Preparations for Irelands PresidencyScreen Shot 2014-01-24 at 04.14.32

Just two months ago, I was writing enthusiastically about the possibility that Lucinda Creighton might soon step forward as a rallying figure “for the growing numbers of disenchanted citizens now struggling to breathe in this Republic of Fiscal Rectitude and Very Little Else”.

Lucinda Creighton is a great woman. In a healthy country, she would be embraced as a God-sent force to take us into the heart of the unfolding century. But, now, on second thoughts, I don’t believe it’s going to happen. The moment has passed without as much as a click in the night.

Mmmf.

Lucinda’s shimmering political moment has turned out to be a mirage after all (John Waters, Irish Times)

Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland

johnwaters

[John Waters]

From the [BAI] Broadcasting Authority of Ireland:

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has, today (23.01.14), confirmed receipt of a notification from the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Pat Rabbitte, of the resignation of Mr. John Waters from the Authority. Mr Waters was appointed to the Authority by the Government in September 2009.
Since his appointment, he has served as an Authority member; served a two-year term on the Compliance Committees; and was a serving member of the Contract Awards Committee at the time of his resignation.
Speaking about the resignation of Mr. Waters, the Chairperson of the Authority, Bob Collins said: “John has been a valued member of the Authority and of both statutory committees since the establishment of the BAI in 2009. He brought additional expertise and experience to the Authority through his previous service on the Board of the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his service and know I speak for my fellow members when I say that his insights and contributions will be missed.”

 Previously: Waters, Panti And RTE

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missPantiok[John Waters, top, and Miss Panti, above]

Since her appearance on the Saturday Night Show a fortnight ago Miss Panti, also known as Rory O’ Neill, has received legal correspondence from three members of the Iona Institute…and one from Irish Times columnist  John Waters.

Solicitor Simon McGarr on his blog Tuppenceworth.ie writes

[When RTE removed Miss Panti’s interview from the RTE Player] RTE initially sought to obscure the source of this legal concern, telling TheJournal.ie that the censorship was:

due to potential legal issues and for reasons of sensitivity following the death of Tom O’Gorman as would be standard practice in such situations.

The unseemly attempt to use Mr. O’Gorman’s death as an explanation was overtaken by events when, on Thursday the 16th January, the Irish Independent ran a story headed “RTE cuts part of show after legal complaint from Waters”;

It removed the entire programme earlier this week, after claims that comments made by a guest about journalist John Waters were defamatory.

The Irish Independent understands that representatives of Mr Waters sent a legal letter to the broadcaster, seeking the removal of the interview.
…
Mr Waters refused to comment when contacted by the Irish Independent. However, sources confirmed that he contacted the broadcaster and asked for the programme to be removed.

When he did not receive what he saw as a satisfactory response, his solicitors sent RTE a legal letter.

Now, this is where we reach an interesting point. Because, provided we accept that the Irish Independent was accurate, this was not merely a letter from an aggrieved citizen to a broadcaster.

It was also a letter from one of that Broadcaster’s regulators seeking to have that broadcaster censor a citizen, who was both contributing to a matter of public debate and engaging in a defence of a minority of which he is a member, bona fide and without malice.

This is, to put it mildly, an unusual situation.

 John Waters is not just a private citizen. He is a member of the Government-appointed Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. And as part of that appointment he has to accept certain constraints on his behaviour. Firstly, uniquely amongst all citizens, the nine members of the BAI are told to protect one constitutional right above all others.

The Broadcasting Act 2009 sets out the obligations and function of the Authority and its members in Section 25 (1) of the Act. They must ensure

(b) that the democratic values enshrined in the Constitution, especially those relating to rightful liberty of expression, are upheld,
and
(c) the provision of open and pluralistic broadcasting services.

This section sets out what are the primary duties of the Authority and each of its members. They place an obligation on all the Authority members to be act to ensure that the right to freedom of expression is “especially” upheld and that broadcasting services are “open and pluralistic”. This is actually their job.

There is a corollary of this.

The nine members of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland must not seek to lightly restrict liberty of expression on the basis of claims of defamation untested before the courts. The inhibitions on them before seeking the silencing of debate are significantly higher than on the rest of us.

A broadcasting Regulator who is obliged to uphold the constitutional “liberty of expression” above all other democratic and Constitutional values and to act to “ensure the provision of open and pluralistic broadcasting” can choose to follow their statutory duty. Or they can contact a broadcaster and obtain the silencing of a dissenting view without testing the legitimacy of their complaint before a court.

But I can’t see any way that they can do both.

More here: The BAI, John Waters and regulating away Other voices (Simon McGarr, Tuppenceworth.ie)

Update: Helpful BAI Statement on new Code of Business Conduct Issued today (Simon McGarr, Tuppenceworth.ie)

John_Waters_CNA_World_Catholic_News_8_22_124830649618_17510a452c-300x225

(John Waters, top, and the heavily-regulated streets of Dun Laoghaire, above)

Thank God (yes, Him) almighty, he’s free at last.

Following an arduous spell in ‘chokey’, lax parking evader John Waters went on The Right Hook on Newstalk this evening to declare his innocence outrage and WAR on Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown council
.

George Hook: “I’m joined by my first ever jailbird, just released from prison, it’s John Waters, the legendary, iconic indeed, columnist with ‘The Irish Times’. How did you finish up in jail?”

John Waters: “Well, I spent a couple of hours in jail this afternoon, George, I was supposed to be in for a day, but they let me out after about two hours. It all goes back about three and a half years, to a parking ticket that I got in Dun Laoghaire, for being one minute over, well over the great period as well, which is apparently a technical point, which I don’t understand as well, anyway, so one minute over the grey period, and they issued me a ticket.
I ignored the ticket, it went to court, I was fined sixty euros and eighty five euros expenses. I told the judge there and then that I would not be paying it, because I believe there is a fundamental issue here about the right of people to inhabit and enjoy the public spaces and the parking regime in Dun Laoghaire is absolutely crucifying, not just to the spirit of the people in the town, but the actual traders in the town, there are now a hundred empty lots in between the shopping centre and the main street.”

Hook: “One has to say, before we get to your particular problem, it is held, by many, many people that Dun Laoghaire is being destroyed by the draconian regime of parking and that’s commonly…”

Waters: “…It’s a ghost town now George.”

Hook: “The Chief Executive of Dun Laoghaire Town Council, I’ve crossed swords with, many a time, in his previous appearance at Dublin City Council, and he certainly believes he is right. But not many people agree with him. But, nevertheless, this is a democracy, you broke the law, you were fined, and then you refused to pay it. So, jail for you!”

Waters: “It was a hundred and forty five euros, all in all, or one day in Wheatfield in lieu. So, that was May 1, March 2011, that was the hearing. I would say there was a bit of paper-work going through, which I ignored for a few months and then it dried up and I thought, maybe they’ve forgotten, maybe they haven’t, I don’t know. But then, about a year ago I arrive back and there was a warrant on my door-mat and the name of a Guard, with a card, saying; call him.
The warrant at that point was actually four months out of date. So, I contacted my solicitor, asking him to call the Guard and point this out to him. The Guard said, ‘Ah well, we’ll always get it re-issued, no problem!’. And March this year, they re-issued it, and they’ve been trying to get me ever since. Now, I haven’t been at home very much this year, I’ve been away quite a bit.”

Hook: “But you were a fugitive from justice at this point?”

Waters: “Yeah, I was, I was on the run, but anyway, we negotiated an end to the stand-off, clearly, they weren’t going to give up. So I said I was quite happy to go to jail. So I said I would arrive at Dun Laoghaire Garda Station 12 noon on Tuesday, that’s today, and serve my time. And I did so and I arrived.
Now, the bizarre thing was George, you can take this with a bit of grain of salt, in a way, but like, the negotiations between my solicitor seem to go on, and the Guard in question went on and it seemed that the Guard was a bit a wagon, a weapon, you know, but actually in person, he was a really nice guy.”

Hook: “He was only doing his job!”

Waters: “That’s true, but you know, we had a great old chat on the way down…”

Hook: “Now, hang on a minute, he then had to get into a state vehicle and drive you to Wheatfield Prison?”

Waters: “No, no, there were two Guards, there was him in the back with me and there was the driver, who drove at high speed out of Dun Laoghaire Garda Station, clipping the toes of some elderly women, who were protesting…”

Hook: “Ah come on now, come on.., they were protesting about your incarceration, the elderly women?”

Waters: “No, they were traders, they weren’t all elderly, there were about fifteen or twenty local traders who came out to protest, don’t forget Dun Laoghaire has been crucified…

Hook: “And were they protesting about your jailing? So, you had… ah come on now, you chatted them all up and said, listen now; I’m going to jail!”

Waters: “If you went out to Dun Laoghaire, you’d see along the main street there’s a big, one of the, one of the closed-down shops has a huge hoarding, with a picture of me and an article I wrote for The Mail on Sunday, The Irish Mail on Sunday, about the recent closure of Marks & Spencer in Dun Laoghaire and the effect it’s going to have on the town and the fact that it’s down to the policy of the Dun Laoghaire…”

Hook: “Correct, it’s outrageous!”

Waters: “It’s unbelievable!”

Hook: “It’s not the, it’s not the Council, it is the Chief Executive, who appears to..”

Waters: “Owen Keegan!”

Hook: “Yeah, Owen Keegan, who appears to have untrammeled powers.”

Waters: “He does yeah, he seems not to like cars, or car drivers. But the problem is, you see, I…this is, it’s one thing for me, I’ve been here 22 years in this area, in the Dun Laoghaire area and I go in maybe three or four days a week having my lunch there…I’ve only been caught three times, and I paid two tickets ‘cos maybe I was ten minutes over, this one, one minute. The guy, the traffic warden, I was told by a passer-by that the traffic warden actually saw my ticket, went down an alley-way, waited there for two or three minutes until the clock clicked past the point where my ticket was no longer valid!”.

Listen here

Pics: DublinObserver

johnwaters-1Further to John Water’s column regarding women and abortion in the Irish Catholic

Irish-born Oxford-based scientist David Robert Grimes (above) writes:

Dear John,

You’ve been writing since long before I was even born, and your prose has never been in question – but of late, I cannot help but notice the rosary clutching morally indignant Ireland you paint is not the Ireland many of us know, and I’m concerned about your grasp on reality.

I’ve always found the open letter format to be twee, and feel perhaps it would have been more appropriate to have such discourse with you online. But you have made your hatred of modern technology clear, and claimed on numerous occasions that bloggers and Wikipedia editors are idiots,

I wouldn’t dare demean your evidently gargantuan intellect by suggesting such a plebeian thing without due cause; while you have of course demonstrated that your preferred medium for malcontent rants is in the pages of the national paper of record, I shall confine mine to this unworthy medium.

Firstly, before we even begin, what, may I ask, is a self-styled Liberal? Evidently some breed distinct from externally styled liberals but further than this I am in the dark; this particular line graces many of your recent outpourings, but what does it mean? Meaning is a word you’re very fond of, but of late I must admit to seeing only empty rhetoric masquerading as something deeper.
Is the opposite of a self-styled liberal a conservative with a stylist? So that’s your secret, you dapper stud, you….

Take, for example, gay rights – Now, you speak much of the gay agenda, which I am curious about – What exactly is the gay agenda? A secret ploy to induce the village people into the rock and roll hall of fame? A nefarious plot to hatch another sex in the city movie? Were it the latter I might rally behind you on basis of taste, but I suspect the entire homosexual community is – somewhat ironically perhaps – far from homogeneous.

If by gay agenda you mean the idea that people should not be discriminated against on basis of their sexuality then I cannot see how one could argue against that without being an absolutely screaming bigot. You’ve said gay marriage is ” destructive to the fabric of Irish society” – this fabric seems very fragile, what exactly is it composed of? A less charitable man might feel you are you just making things up again to support an incredibly weak argument.

No one is advocating forcing people to marry within their own gender, merely allowing homosexual people who love each other have the same chance to be miserable as heterosexuals
Of course, your pet subject recently has been abortion – and of course, that in itself isn’t unusual; it is a subject that has room for a whole myriad of different views.
While I respect your right to have an opinion, would it kill you to think before you speak? Or even do the most rudimentary fact checking?

Perhaps, Mr Waters, you are not aware that many couples take the decision to terminate together, rather than it being some selfish women-being-uppity-gits thing, as you’ve claimed recently. Relationships have more nuance than perhaps you are familiar with.

You’re concerned these women are depriving fathers of their hard earned sperm, but maybe we need to revisit biology 101; while a man and woman share 50% of the genetic input for a child, it is totally false to even try and argue our roles are the same; let’s be honest here, our chief task in the act of conception is a “fire and forget” operation If you’ll excuse the visual – a cameo role in a show which quickly becomes a one woman performance which we can at best support.

You have said that “In the culture we have constructed of recent times, the question of the child’s survival is a matter primarily for the woman.” This is an easy mistake to make – You seem to have conflated culture and biology.

I can see how the confusion arose; doubtless it is the fact that biologists develop their own kinds of ‘cultures’, but I assure you that these are entirely nothing to do with what you think you are arguing. Unless the process of mammalian pregnancy changes drastically and women begin laying eggs, your central thesis is fatally undermined.

If you do have problems with biology, I suggest as a man of faith you direct your complaints to management because I’m afraid liberals and pro choice supporters have precious little influence over this matter. Besides, he’s more likely to listen to you than me, given I keep doubting his existence.

Speaking of that, we really should talk about the whole religion thing; you’re on record as saying that people of faith are “funnier, sharper and smarter” than atheists, so perhaps you can excuse the dullness on the part of this extreme agnostic when I ask where exactly you draw this nugget of divine wisdom from?

You are adamantly against secular education, stating that education without religion indoctrination produces mindless unquestioning robots – yet as you insist on a theistic status quo without a modicum of evidence, perhaps you are not a man in possession of a calibrated irony meter?

I wouldn’t ever wish to take away the beliefs that you hold dear, be they religious or moral. But I would kindly ask you stop insisting the rest of the country subscribe to them. When the recent survey showed the Irish are quite irreligious, you dismissed it as meaningless and said religion “defies measurement… through media as limited as numbers”.

Sadly John, democracy does have a keen respect for the will of the population, and no matter how holy you think your cause is, the numbers say you’re barking up the wrong tree.

This is the crux of the issue that in all your columns you fail to see; you bemoan how secular elements of Ireland have become without realising the majority of the country wants a place where all religions are accepted but none mandated for. No one is forcing you into gay marriage, abortion or any of the other things you rail against, but you and your ilk are trying to force the hand of the many others who do not share your beliefs.

Being an apologist for the Catholic church must be incredibly time consuming at this point in history, when the church are claiming moral authority while defending child rapists in their ranks, but kindly stop presuming to speak for Ireland. Ireland can speak for herself. Whether you choose to listen is your call.

Dear John, We Need To Talk (David Robert Grimes, Three Men Make A Tiger)

Previously: Don’t Go There