Home

rights

Lies, Damn Lies and Cogging Conservative Websites

Submitted by Ciarán on Fri, 11/07/2008 - 23:29

There's more from Michael O'Driscoll in today's Irish Times letter's page. He has come back with the same irrelevant claims he made last time and the usual bizarre notion that a move from discrimination to equality is a zero-zum game. Still, fair dues to him for answering the claim that he hadn't provided evidence on his claims that homosexuality leads to greater levels of domestic violence and the like. He does answer it in this letter, though not in his own words. His research, it seems is based on a series of studies, misquoted with abandon all over the right-wing internet (including in this wonderful brief (pdf) from United Families International).

Of course I wouldn't for the life of me suggest that O'Driscoll is himself doing the misquoting. For instance, he says that

The homosexual authors of Men Who Beat The Men Who Love Them also claimed that domestic violence affected half of all gay couples.

Strange: I've looked and the book says absolutely nothing of the sort. It does engage in some surmising about domestic violence rates but not actual measurement. How can O'Driscoll be so confused? Maybe he hit on this site (a Canadian pro-life outfit by the looks of things) which lifts, with permission, a 2004 article that states that

According to the homosexual authors of Men Who Beat The Men Who Love Them, domestic violence affects half of all gay couples.

Interesting. Is this the first ever cogging of a misquote of a misrepresentation in the Irish Times? read the rest of this post »

Don't Know Much

Submitted by Ciarán on Thu, 03/07/2008 - 20:15

I had a mentor who said to me once that the fact that straw men exist is no reason to waste time on them. Wise words indeed when it comes to academic writing. With blogging on the other hand, it can be fun. So it goes with this profoundly daft letter to today's Irish Times. One Michael O'Driscoll of Cork manages to be wrong on all the facts and illogical by his own mistaken premises. What an achievement. At the risk of being accused of liberal intolerance (still, to the best of my knowledge, liberals only need to be happy to suffer fools, not to indulge them) I think this merits some sort of response. read the rest of this post »

Village People Part II

Submitted by Ciarán on Mon, 09/06/2008 - 14:28

And on it goes.

As I said before, the free speech distraction is the last (and very often first) refuge of the non-thinking rogue. People in a public role seem to believe that all sorts of remarks are fine (as long as an imaginary friend is invoked) and that consequence-free public statements can be made if everyone magically knows that you are - just for that moment - engaged in an very private articulation of your views. Out loud. In public.

And then they can respond with shock at those terrible liberals looking to take their rights to say anything that's in their heads away. So to be clear: nobody is questioning Iris Robinson's general rights to free speech. They are questioning her utterences in the context of her role as a public representative. If Robinson finds it difficult to do her job without proclaiming her revulsion at the behaviour of people for whom she works, why doesn't she make her own life easier, ditch her public responsibilities and resign?

Also, this sort of behaviour is of course neither unique to the DUP nor to Northern Ireland. Just as a point of interest however, are those of us who live here going to have to get used to a yearly jamboree as the people our taxes pay for take an opportunity to peer into bedrooms and tut-tut lingeringly at all the carry-on?

There's No Private Freedom of Speech

Submitted by Ciarán on Sat, 23/06/2007 - 13:31

I'm always astounded at the arguments, generally trotted out by reactionary sorts, that some dreadful comment or other is to be defended on freedom of speech grounds. I suppose it's a convenient strategy for the bullshitter. You know, why defend the indefensible when you can take umbrance at people questioning your freedom to speak? Best to ignore the fact that they're generally not questioning your entitlement to speak. They're generally questioning your honesty and your manners.

But still, the claim to a right to speech is fundamentally correct even if it's generally invoked by people who don't really care whether it's correct or not. One doesn't go around saying that people shouldn't be allowed say things simply because they're offensive. To be a little bit Millian, best to get it all out there, eh?

The serious problem with the 'free speech' distraction is that it tends to be used where no free speech exists. Although we may have a fundamental right to free speech, it's not an inalienable right. We can legitimately sign it away on a daily basis. Most notably, people's signing an employment contract either explicitly or implicitly involves their constraining their speech rights. In my profession, I can't start telling you what I think of my students, or what they got in their exams, or - as is the case in most jobs - my opinions of my colleagues, or myriad other things. If I did speak my employer would be well within their rights to fire me. I have contracted to remain silent where my private thoughts contradict a range of my employer's interests.

Of course, I can break the rules, but if I value my private thoughts so much that I can't abide by those rules, then I really ought to resign.

Well, you can see where I'm going with this. There is a ministerial code of conduct in Northern Ireland. Ministers sign it. And yet, when clever Ian Paisley Jnr announced last month that he finds what homosexuals get up to repulsive (why is it that some people spend so much time thinking about gay sex?) people trot out the free speech defence. David Vance asked if it is a crime for Paisley to say what he said, as if that's the question. Sam Hanna leaves a comment on Slugger attacking the 'bigots' that deny Paisley his rights to free expression. And on it goes. The debate came up again yesterday on Slugger, hence this post.

But this isn't about shutting down free speech. It's about the obligations that come with the job. Free speech only exists in the context of role, and when it comes to some roles (Paisley's and my own professions included), some public comments can never be made in a private capacity.

None of us are entirely free in the sense that the free speech defenders think. Or rather, there's an easy solution if one finds the constraints on speech that one has volunteered to adopt too much. Resign.

Content: © 2006-2008 Ciarán O'Kelly and Isabel Duggan. Site: Drupal, using variations on a port of the Wordpress's Dark theme.