This & That: Take 18

By AM Monday, December 24, 2012

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From Depraved Unionist Party to Traditional Unionist Vice.

Dirty Davy Tweed made the switch from DUP to TUV in more ways than one. The belligerent bully who was wont to lead the mob hurling abuse at Catholics - and fellow unionists who were not as raging as himself - seemed more Davy Weed than Davy Tweed in court when found guilty of abusing young girls. Gone were the bluster and the bellowing as the Beast of Ballymena stared at his first Christmas behind bars.

The thug heard the judge say: ‘the offences with which you are charged are not only vile and wicked, they are particularly disturbing and distasteful crimes.’

The big brute had it all going for him. International rugby star turned politico, and now all the esteem and regard he worked up has gone down the plug hole to the sewer where it will languish to the end of his days.  He has every right to ruin his own life but none to destroy the lives of his victims or families. In the course he has usurped his own family’s peace of mind with turbulence.

When a bully, like Salman Rushdie’s tyrant, gets their comeuppance, a society’s shadow lightens and only hypocrites grieve.  


Kentucky Fried Humanists

In the US state of Kentucky there is a homeland security law that ‘requires the state’s citizens to acknowledge the security provided by the Almighty God - or risk 12 months in prison.' More religious freakery, the law first came into effect in 2006 and despite some legal flurries the Kentucky Supreme Court has so far refused to review it although it is in clear breach of the First Amendment which separates church and state.

The law is sponsored by Tom Riner, a Kentucky State Democratic Party representative who is also a Baptist minister with links to the Centre for Moral Clarity. Riner has been defeated in a number of cases by the American Civil Liberties Union which has challenged his firm belief that the Ten Commandments should be emblazoned on plaques in front of public buildings. Michelle Goldberg in her splendid book on the rise of Christian Nationalism details some of the battles fought around this issue as the Christian right including judges try to shove their religious opinion down the throats of others.

American atheists have gone to the US Supreme Court in a bid to have Riner’s law declared unconstitutional. Hopefully they have it dismissed as unjust, unreal and unremittingly vindictive.


Tracks and Toes

According to a poll published in October around two thirds of Irish citizens support same sex marriages. The momentum for greater rights protection in Ireland is an encouraging development as society here continues to unshackle itself from centuries of repression by the Catholic Church.

A few evenings back I caught the start of a television show examining the impact of TV on religion in Ireland. Some of the images were startling. One woman viewing them for the purposes of commentary expressed the view that she could understand it had they been filmed in the 1500s but not in a 1960s European society. The deference to the dog collared rogues of Catholicism was embarrassing to watch as the anonymous pressure of the group coupled to the Church power to marginalise led people to assume humiliating public postures.  But as Tanaiste Eamonn Gilmore pointed out attitudes today would be unrecognisable to the Ireland of thirty years ago. Now, a priest is more likely to have his sense of entitlement shoved up his fundament if he tries to pontificate. Anybody falling to their knees to kiss the bishops’ ring these days would be regarded as deranged. Then it was the thing to do. John Chares McQuaid and his like had to power to label as deranged those that did not tug the forelock. Central to any notion of Irish freedom is the means never to go back to that.

As the authoritarian structure of the Irish Catholic Church continues to wilt in the face of a relentless surge towards more human rights and greater liberty, a willingness on the part of clerics to go quietly into the night is none too evident. Bishops have grown more strident and have taken to marching in the streets in a bid to deny greater rights to women. Let them stride barefooted around the Dail all they wish, but if they move to once again step into their jackboots and lash out with their  croziers, time then for society to stomp firmly on their toes and halt them in their tracks.