I am commenting from the land not of Pride Day but of Pride Season. Yes, three full months of it. Canada. Headed by a prime minister whose pre-politics job was as a substitute drama teacher in a private school, a failed actor, which is why he does "sincerity" so badly.
And now to my point, besides that bit of a rant:
On the Irish government's Hate Crimes bill, now before the Seanad Éireann, the Upper House, gript.ie, one of the few Irish papers (if not the only) to cover it critically, wrote on 23 June 2023:
'The bad news for opponents of the Government’s Hate Speech bill is that on paper, all of the odds favour its comfortable passage: Having been almost five years in development across two separate Governments and three Justice Ministers, it is clearly and unambiguously a priority for the civil service, who have driven its implementation from day one. The Government has clear majorities in both houses of the Oireachtas. The media are, at the very best, ambivalent about the bill, and at their worst openly enthusiastic for it, safe in the knowledge that it is not their speech that the bill is intended to restrict. The bill also has the unfettered enthusiasm of almost every state funded lobby group that has voiced an opinion, up to and including the hilariously misnamed “Irish Council for Civil Liberties”.
'... Privately, two Government TDs described it to me [gript's John McGuirk] respectively as “a disaster” and “an own goal” respectively, and expressed serious relief that it is not coming back to the Dáil [the Lower House] because if it did, they felt, several Government TDs [like MPPs or Members of Congress] would be minded to vote against it.
''The entire reason for the present wobble is public pressure: Many bad laws are eruditely opposed at the time of their passage, but few laws capture the public imagination in the way that the hate speech bill has. What’s more, the opposition to it has largely been organic, and not as a result of hostile coverage from the usual main media organisations – RTE, for example, has barely mentioned it. Politicians have noticed this element more than any other.
'This reflects not only the unpopularity of the bill, but a shift in the way the public engages....'
That shift in the way the Irish public engages looks very much to me to be the result of a lot of hard work by those who saw its dangers. The fledgling NotAllGays, for instance, contacted all 60 members of the Irish Seanad.
It may now be common knowledge that this year's "Dublin Pride" got caught for posting on its "history" page an altered photo from Ireland's first gay rights march, in 1983, held as part of the response to the murder of Declan Flynn in Dublin's Fairveiw Park. The original photo has one placard reading, "THE POLICE AREN'T ON YOUR SIDE, EITHER." The "Pride" version has that same placard photoshopped to read, "TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS" . I think we cannot call out such mendacity too many times.
In closing, a huge shout-out to the ever-growing numbers of individuals and groups in various countries who let us know what's actually going on with the GenderBorg. If we don't know, we can't respond, can't see that what's happening far away also has real-life here-and-now implications for us.
It was a great episode! Have something big here Dennis - actual video of a 2023 Mermaids Training Session. You may want to mention it in the next episode.
Bangs, salutes, cheers, and whistles, gentlemen!
I am commenting from the land not of Pride Day but of Pride Season. Yes, three full months of it. Canada. Headed by a prime minister whose pre-politics job was as a substitute drama teacher in a private school, a failed actor, which is why he does "sincerity" so badly.
And now to my point, besides that bit of a rant:
On the Irish government's Hate Crimes bill, now before the Seanad Éireann, the Upper House, gript.ie, one of the few Irish papers (if not the only) to cover it critically, wrote on 23 June 2023:
'The bad news for opponents of the Government’s Hate Speech bill is that on paper, all of the odds favour its comfortable passage: Having been almost five years in development across two separate Governments and three Justice Ministers, it is clearly and unambiguously a priority for the civil service, who have driven its implementation from day one. The Government has clear majorities in both houses of the Oireachtas. The media are, at the very best, ambivalent about the bill, and at their worst openly enthusiastic for it, safe in the knowledge that it is not their speech that the bill is intended to restrict. The bill also has the unfettered enthusiasm of almost every state funded lobby group that has voiced an opinion, up to and including the hilariously misnamed “Irish Council for Civil Liberties”.
'... Privately, two Government TDs described it to me [gript's John McGuirk] respectively as “a disaster” and “an own goal” respectively, and expressed serious relief that it is not coming back to the Dáil [the Lower House] because if it did, they felt, several Government TDs [like MPPs or Members of Congress] would be minded to vote against it.
''The entire reason for the present wobble is public pressure: Many bad laws are eruditely opposed at the time of their passage, but few laws capture the public imagination in the way that the hate speech bill has. What’s more, the opposition to it has largely been organic, and not as a result of hostile coverage from the usual main media organisations – RTE, for example, has barely mentioned it. Politicians have noticed this element more than any other.
'This reflects not only the unpopularity of the bill, but a shift in the way the public engages....'
https://gript.ie/dont-look-now-but-the-hate-speech-bill-might-just-be-wobbling/
That shift in the way the Irish public engages looks very much to me to be the result of a lot of hard work by those who saw its dangers. The fledgling NotAllGays, for instance, contacted all 60 members of the Irish Seanad.
For more on the Irish fight against the bill, see https://thecountess.ie/save-free-speech-rally-laoise-de-brun-bl/ , the many articles against it at https://freespeechireland.ie , its twitter @FreeSpeechIre, NotAllGays Ireland at https://www.notallgays.org, its twitter @NotAllGays. The list is by no means exhaustive and includes other organizations, the names of which I forget, and many, many individuals, LGB and straight.
It may now be common knowledge that this year's "Dublin Pride" got caught for posting on its "history" page an altered photo from Ireland's first gay rights march, in 1983, held as part of the response to the murder of Declan Flynn in Dublin's Fairveiw Park. The original photo has one placard reading, "THE POLICE AREN'T ON YOUR SIDE, EITHER." The "Pride" version has that same placard photoshopped to read, "TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS" . I think we cannot call out such mendacity too many times.
In closing, a huge shout-out to the ever-growing numbers of individuals and groups in various countries who let us know what's actually going on with the GenderBorg. If we don't know, we can't respond, can't see that what's happening far away also has real-life here-and-now implications for us.
It was a great episode! Have something big here Dennis - actual video of a 2023 Mermaids Training Session. You may want to mention it in the next episode.
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/mermaids-training-caught-on-camera