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Post by hibernicus on May 22, 2016 20:04:32 GMT
Sorry if I have been a bit slow in posting, Maolseachlann - have been under a lot of work and other pressures lately.
Meanwhile, there's no rest for the wicked - the Irish papers this weekend have been mounting a marriage abolition fest, with much celebration of last year's referendum result and the Sindo throwing in a multi-page special about how far we have come since the defeat of the first divorce referendum 30 years ago.
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Post by maolsheachlann on May 22, 2016 20:06:42 GMT
I didn't mean you particularly, Hibernicus!
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 3, 2016 19:15:36 GMT
In the current PHOENIX Goldvulture's religious correspondent, He Who Must Not Be Named, opines on the likely outcome of Pope Francis's proposed visit to Ireland. INserting his trumpet in the usual orifice, He Who Must Not Be Named opines that it will depend on the Irish Church's prior willingness to accept the will of the majority of Irish Catholics that [they want Barabbas] priests should marry and women should become deacons as a step towards receiving the priesthood. He hopes the two Archbishops Martin will persuade Rome to go along with this [just like he used to hope the Papal Nuncio would be reassigned to Guantanamo]. He also calls for the reinstatement of Fr Tony Flannery, who has just complained that the ACP rank and file are [insufficiently heretical] don't really understand his reform agenda as his friend HElmut Schuller does, and for other equally deserving censurees to be cleared of censure. To keep up his general standard of accuracy, HWMNBN speaks of Pope Francis being offered a "Ceide Mile Failte" to IReland. That should be "Cead" - Ceide is the prehistoric site in Enda Kenny's constituency. For Fr Flannery's lucubrations, see HERE www.tonyflannery.com/working-for-church-reform-at-home-and-abroad/
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 9, 2016 18:17:12 GMT
It appears that the worst fears of the Europhiles have already been realised. The inhabitants of Hull have started running around naked and painting themselves blue, like the Ancient Britons. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/09/thousands-strip-naked-in-hull-for-spencer-tunick-photographs[Warning - contains photographs of the alleged artwork] On a more serious note, Mr Spencer Tunick, whose party trick is to photograph crowds of naked people in public places, really fills me with disgust - there is something profoundly dehumanising about this extinction of individuality and intimacy.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 9, 2016 18:28:11 GMT
The IRISH TIMES informs us about how some members of the homosexual community are engaging in drug-fuelled orgies. This is presented in a studiously non-judgmental manner - with one exception: EXTRACTS Adam Shanley, director of Gay Switchboard Ireland, says people may engage in chemsex because of problems with intimacy and relationships, as well as wider social pressures such as sexual health stigma, gym-fit body expectations and turning online chats into genuine relationships. “If you’ve grown up hearing how gay people are inferior and less, it’s possible that you enter adulthood repressing who you are and guarding against intimacy... Schools remain free to teach whatever they want about sex and sexuality. US President Barack Obama recently withdrew all federal funding for abstinence programmes. Here, publicly funded schools using these models remain under no obligation to share any information about what they are teaching. Meanwhile, some schools continue to either ignore homosexuality and the gay children in their class, or they issue a bland statement that “homophobia is wrong” while either openly or tacitly supporting religious doctrines that gay people should abstain from sex. END In other words, it is not enough that schools should be discreet because that might be "tacitly" supporting religious doctrine that homosexual acts are wrong. They must openly proclaim said acts to be good, and anything else is not acceptable. And chastity is not even to be named among you, for thus sayeth the Lightbringer Barack Obama. Furthermore, those who desire sex without intimacy are merely reflecting institutionalised homophobia, even though such behaviour (by heterosexuals as well as homosexuals) has been actively promoted in sections of popular culture for decades: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_Flying_(novel)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_Control_(Raf_song)www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/chemsex-how-ireland-can-get-ahead-of-the-curve-1.2698872
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jaykay
Junior Member
Posts: 65
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Post by jaykay on Jul 11, 2016 19:38:35 GMT
"If you’ve grown up hearing how gay people are inferior and less,..."
Oh for God's sake, they're really pushing this poor old tattered strawman so much that it's become one of their perpetual victimhood "truths". Tell the lie, tell it big and all that. Who, under the age of almost 40, has ever actually encountered anything of this nature, except perhaps very rarely? As if there is/was a constant campaign of denigration of homosexuals that they have to close their ears against? Fact is: while homosexuality was generally disapproved of, we didn't focus on it; it was, largely, ignored. And the "queer" jokes etc. that were there were equally balanced by jokes about "spastics", blacks, you name it. Yes, a very un-pc time, at least among kids. But I just wish they'd get over their distortion of the truth. And get over themselves as well. Some hope.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 11, 2016 19:53:02 GMT
What is really ominous about it is not just the propaganda (and I would say there was a bit more substance to their claims than jaykay might, though not much). It's the implicit call for state power to be used to make it obligatory for all schools to teach that chastity kills (note the reference to abstinence education). This isn't unique; I believe ALIVE was recently denounced on the radio for publishing a Dumbag column in which teenagers who use pornography are described as playing into the hands of the devil. (I am not sure of the exact language used.) Apparently (again I am not sure of the exact words used) a psychologist was wheeled out to say that using pornography is a normal part of teenage development and it is wrong and harmful to make them feel guilty about it.
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jaykay
Junior Member
Posts: 65
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Post by jaykay on Jul 11, 2016 22:57:46 GMT
Not trying to deny there was no discrimination. I should have made that a bit more clear. Yes, there was. One certainly would not have admitted to being homosexual easily, and for those who did it took courage. But such a time is at least 25 years gone. What annoys me is the wilful distortion of actual history, as if such were still occurring.
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jaykay
Junior Member
Posts: 65
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Post by jaykay on Jul 11, 2016 23:24:08 GMT
Ooops, sorry for what looks like a triple negative😉 The perils of commenting late on a train, on a mobile. But the agenda-driven distortion of what things were really like is what gets me. As though we used have a Fairview murder every weekend (and I knew a member of the family concerned at that actual time). Maybe I'm going a bit too far, I hope not, but in this country we ought to be wary of "history".
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jul 12, 2016 9:05:54 GMT
I don't think you're going too far jaykay. I was born in 1977 and I was completely oblivious to homosexuality until it started to be spoken about in relation to AIDS, and then it was 'official' information, like public health ads, and not schoolyard talk. For me that was around 1986-1988, I'd guess. I can understand the argument that homosexuality was invisible and unacknowledged, but it just didn't seem to feature in the public consciousness until very recently. I suppose the assumption, insofar as people did think about it, was that it was a deliberate perversion rather than an involuntary orientation (which seems to be the received wisdom now).
And yes, I was only a child at the time, but I can read..it's hard to find any inkling of homosexuality in most books and articles written in Ireland before the time I'm mentioning. I guess that can still mean there was queer-bashing going on in chippers and bike-sheds, but those claims seem rather hysterical and unverifiable to me.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 17, 2016 17:58:28 GMT
More high standards from the Paper of Record. YEsterday's Saturday TV listings said of an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's THE SECRET AGENT that it is set in London in the 1880s, and the central character is spying for the Soviet Union... (founded 1917, just in case you're an IRISH TIMES journalist). This is well down to the intellectual standard of their abortion coverage.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 9, 2016 20:42:57 GMT
Two particularly irritating features of the SUNDAY BUSINESS POST lately: Their US correspondent has gone overboard for the Democrats, and is constantly fantasising about the glorious days to come when President Hillary Clinton names Barack Obama to the Supreme Court, while at the same time she equates the Republicans with the alt-right (quite literally; she found an alt-righter to interview and presented him as a typical RepUblican). Their books and literature editor Nadine O'Regan recently ran a piece about the tension between her professional duty of impartiality and her habits of acquiring REPEAL T-Shirts and posting photos of herself participating in pro-choice marches. (Actually, since the SBP is a private corporation funded by its voluntary buyers and advertisers the issue is not neutrality - as it is with RTE which is funded by compulsory state levies to which all taxpayers must contribute - it's whether they fairly represent the competing views.) To think that in the early to mid-90s the SBP had a reputation for giving fair coverage to pro-lifers and Catholics; but that was almost a generation ago.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 27, 2016 21:34:44 GMT
The Irish media have been falling over themselves to glorify Saturday's March of the Herodian Blackshirts (aka March for Choice) but the IRISH TIMES is determined to retain its well-earned title as MOLOCH'S HERALD. Last week they interviewed a number of female emigrants on the issue (sprinkled with such phrases as "barbaric", "archaic", "basic healthcare", "denial of women's bodily autonomy", etc). Yesterday they had Una Mullally proclaiming that the March for Choice "shows what consensus is like" -i.e. she's saying pro-choicers don't exist and don't matter. Today we have Fintan O'Toole declaring that pro-lifers are "zygopaths", the Pro-Life Amendment is "zygotic" and reflects "national zygosis" and that if men's lives were endangered by it as he claims women's are it would already have been repealed. As usual he claims that the view that life begins at conception is theological rather than scientific. Substitute "three-month-old infant" for "zygote" and see how his article reads. (Only available online to subscribers). I wonder will they get tired of this by tomorrow's issue, or will the Energiser Bunny of Death keep on beating his drum in their pages?
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 29, 2016 20:28:10 GMT
MOLOCH'S HERALD goes on its merry way. Yesterday Miriam Lord's prominently-located Dail sketch gushed over the Trot TDs who wore their nice new REPEAL blackshirts in the Dail chamber, and poured scorn on Enda's equivocation. (At least pro-lifers and pro-choicers can agree that Enda is beneath contempt - though when the time comes Herod and Pilate will be friends.) Today the Scarlet Lady of Tara Street condescended to publish an op-ed by an Irish journalist in Australia pointing out just how atrocious the abortion laws of the countries we are exhorted to imitate really are (I've seen pro-choicers calling for Ireland to be like Canada, where there are no legal restrictions whatsoever.) This will now be pointed out as "proof" that the rag's coverage is "realLy" balanced.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 11, 2016 21:49:02 GMT
Yesterday Una Mullaly had a column in the IRISH TIMES declaring that the large number of women who voted for Trump shows how deeply misogyny has been internalised. Is this the same Una Mullaly who regularly informs us that restrictions on abortion are unacceptable because they imply that women are not responsible adults capable of making their own decisions?
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