BNP leader's lovechild to be Italian PM

The world seems remarkably nonchalant about the fact that British National Party leader Nick Griffin's love child by Mr. Bean appears poised to become Prime Minister of Italy.

Above, Mr. Bean and Nick Griffin.

Below, the fruit of their secret love, Italian Democratic Party leader, Matteo Renzi.

The judge with an eye on history

The Washington Post today has an interesting profile of Judge Arenda Wright Allen who penned the historic judgment (covered in my last blogpost) overturning Virginia's ban on gay marriage, surely, with an eye in its place in the history books.

              Arenda L. Wright Allen

Click here for the story. 

Virginia is for lovers: Happy Valentine's Day

In the latest of a succession of federal court judgments that have overturned states' bans on same-sex marriage, a federal judge in Richmond, Virginia ruled that the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage is a violation of the United States Constitution.  Her decision has been stayed, pending an appeal.

Leaving little room, it has to be said, for doubt as to on which side of the fence she stands herself, Judge Arenda Wright Allen opened her judgment with a quotation from Mildred Loving, one of the plaintiffs in the now famous U.S. Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virgina that saw the state's ban on interracial marriage declared unconstitutional.

We made a commitment to each other in our love and our lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match.  Isn't that what marriage is? … I have lived long enough now to see big changes.  The older generations's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realise that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry… I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.  Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others… I support the freedom to marry for all.  That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

What has led to this growing stampede to have state bans overturned, as in Utah, Kentucky (where the issue was the state's refusal to recognise out-of-state same-sex marriages) and now Virginia's constitutional ban on gay marriage, is the U.S. Supreme Court decision of last summer that overturned the Defence of Marriage Act.

Although the Supreme Court declined to hear the merits of the arguments in the California case that directly challenged that state's gay marriage ban, in U.S. v Windsor, as some observers predicted at the time (including Justice Antonin Scalia, in his barnstorming dissent), the Court opened the path to state bans being declared unconstitutional.

Gay, gayer, gayist?

From the comfort of my armchair in Washington and no longer inhabiting the ivory towers of academia, I had no idea what a shitstorm of debate, both in Ireland and in the social sciences, I was wading into with my blog post commenting on 'Pantigate' and use of the word homophobia.  A slightly edited version of it appeared as a column in last Friday's Irish Times.

It certainly provoked mixed responses:

@Cripipper @IrishTimes One of the finest contributions yet to this whole debate. Brilliantly written and argued
— Mark Paul (@MarkPaulTimes) February 7, 2014

(my mum on the Irish Times comment section, using the pseudonym 'Labhaoise O'Donovan')

I don't think I persuaded many by my argument, as each side in the debate is fairly entrenched, but I still feel that it is the one that would have been accepted by the High Court (which was the legal advice that RTÉ also received). In some respects by paying out, RTÉ has saved the the gay rights activist community from a loss in Court that would have affirmed that to be against gay marriage is not to be homophobic per se.

But in the past week, the debate has further broadened and has led me to ask, why do we even use the term 'homophobia' at all?

When crossing the street became criminal

Way back in the day when for a few months I first gave writing a blog a bash, I wrote a post about an elderly British gentleman and his experience of being arrested (using what would not pass for reasonable force in a British court) and his subsequent experience of the American criminal justice system.

His experience came to mind last month, in the much reported case of an elderly Chinese man who was again subjected to what would appear to be an unreasonable use of force by the NYPD during his arrest.

In both cases the men were arrested for the uniquely American crime of jaywalking.  I asked on Facebook at the time why was jaywalking an issue for American police.  A friend (hi Carm!) came back with the not unreasonable suggestion that:

Panti's In A Twist

The liberal blogosphere, Facebook and Twitter in Ireland (and indeed further afield) have been ablaze these past few days, following Rory O'Neill's impassioned and stirring speech after the curtain-fall of the Abbey Theatre's The Risen People last Saturday night.  O'Neill (in the guise of his stage persona, Panti Bliss) gave a deeply personal and rousing exposition of the oppressive nature of homophobia, both internalised and external, and derided the Irish commentariat (and RTÉ in particular) for depriving him, as a gay man, the right to define what is and is not homophobic.  It was certainly one of the most powerful pieces of public speaking heard in Ireland in many years.  However, there remains one fundamental problem: O'Neill was fundamentally wrong in his key conclusions.

Things Culchies Love

Yesterday's post of Feilim McHugh's brilliant da, reminded me of a list from many years ago of 'Things Culchies Love'.  If you're not Irish, you probably don't know what a culchie is: it's someone from the country; someone who engages in agricultural pursuits.  I think it's pretty fair to say that Feilim's oul fella is a culchie (the giveaway was the hat).

So, in honour of Feilim's da, here is, resurrected from the vaults of the interwebs, a list of things culchies love.

The most Irish thing you will ever see in your life

No really, this is the funniest thing I have seen in a long time.  It is more Irish than Bono and Sinéad O'Connor dancing The Waves of Tory down O'Connell Street in giant shamrock costumes while knocking a sliotar back and forth between them and skulling a pint with a wee chaser.  It is, pure brilliance.

WARNING: There is some very, erm, authentic language used here.

NSFW, unless you are in Ireland.

Or Australia.

And don't work in a convent.

Unless all the nuns are Irish.

If the embedded video isn't working, click on this link.

Post by Feilim Mchugh's Driving License.

Amanda Knox and a Broken Justice System

I got really annoyed on Thursday evening, when I read a comment on CNN in an article entitled 'Amanda Knox retrial verdict: Six things to know'.

Firstly, why was she back on trial?  Fair enough, that's a question the answer to which anyone interested in the verdict should know.  Second up:

Had I been eating cornflakes I would have choked on them.  "Renewed questions about the effectiveness of Italy's justice system"?  Here is a line that (if it wasn't) might as well have been lifted directly out of a release from Amanda Knox's well-funded PR machine.


Compare and contrast with its coverage of the execution of Troy Davis, a man put to death in Georgia despite the fact that most of the original prosecution witnesses had subsequently retracted their testimony, alleging they were put under pressure to testify by the police and the DA.

Is that a Neknominate bandwagon I hear passing?

Ireland's Minister for Communications deserves to be moved to Minister for Transport in any Cabinet reshuffle, for he rarely misses an opportunity to jump aboard a passing bandwagon.

UPDATE: among those also clambering on, in the wake of Pat Rabbitte's statement, appear to be most of the British press: see here and here and here for examples.

Minister Rabbitte and his wife.

Today's Irish Times reports that the Minister had called for a ban on the so-called internet drinking game 'Neknominate', whereby you film yourself necking a drink, post the video to Facebook, and then nominate someone else to do the same thing.

It all sound harmless enough, right?  Well, it probably would be, in a normal country with a normal relationship with alcohol.  However, Irish and British people do not have a normal relationship with alcohol, so instead of sun-drenched Australians cross-dressing in bikinis and downing a bottle of Victoria Lager, or attempting to down a beer while water-skiing, we get people downing pints of vodka and biting the head off a dead chicken, downing pints of whisky, and downing beers and then getting into a flooded river.

Sadly, these last two 'Neknominations' appear to have led to the deaths of at least one, and possible two (the circumstances surrounding the whiskey-drinking 'Neknomination' are in dispute) young men in Ireland, which has prompted the Minister to lead the charge of "something must be done!"