Matt 24 watch, 261: An open letter to the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) on a May 22 2015 "same sex 'marriage' . . . " referendum

Mercatornet reports:

THURSDAY, 7 MAY 2015

Ireland’s same-sex marriage referendum: ‘one-sided, reckless and divisive’

BY BRUCE ARNOLD

On May 22 Ireland will hold a referendum on same-sex marriage. Voters are being asked to add a definition of marriage to the country’s constitution, which would make it the only one in the world to expressly guarantee the right to same-sex marriage. The clause to be inserted is: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”
The Taoiseach (prime minister), Enda Kenny, has given the Yes vote his strong backing. A leading Irish journalist, Bruce Arnold, has just published an open letter to him in which he asks Kenny to think again. 

 ___________________

Dear Enda,

We have known each other for the whole of your political career, having first met after you succeeded your father in the by-election that resulted from his death. …

Perhaps the most important challenge you faced in your political career was the last general election. … I supported your candidature and your courage in putting a quality back into the search for power and a set of principles, not always effective, but good enough to support in the contest during that election…

I have to confess that much of this support and sympathy has been undermined by the inept and already damaging impact of your handling of the Marriage Referendum. If the referendum is carried, I see this as irreparably damaging to moral life in this country, to married life and the future of the family, and leading to the encroachment of wildly inappropriate approaches to the birth and development of children. It runs the risk of splitting the country irreparably.

I have shown recently how totally out of step with the rest of the world Ireland has become in pursuing an unwanted and unjustified constitutional amendment. It is being pushed through in a political atmosphere of almost total ignorance and hysteria. If the referendum is carried, Ireland will be the only jurisdiction in the world providing explicitly for same-sex marriage in its Constitution. It will become the flag bearer for same-sex marriage and gender ideology internationally.

This week, in a pithy and courageous call to the people, Brendan Howlin used a phrase about an aspect of the economy that resonated immediately with me. He called for “the full ventilation of the full truth”. In the marriage referendum the opposite has been the case. In your article in the Irish Independent on April 27th, for example, you repeat the blatant untruth that underlies your whole approach (“… importantly, marriage equality will not in any way affect the institution of marriage. It will only extend equal legal protections to all couples.”).

How then could the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court also say on April 27th, to proponents of gay marriage: “you're not seeking to join the institution, you're seeking to change what the institution is. The fundamental core of the institution is the opposite-sex relationship and you want to introduce into it a same-sex relationship?”

Do you, Enda, take us all for fools? The dogs in the street know that marriage will change radically. What is now a natural institution that predates the Constitution and is protected by it, will become an artificial creation of the Constitution and be defined by it . . .  [MORE]

 Let us ponder the implications of  the sort of ideological and political rhetoric that are being used to urge on us all sorts of proposals that are at minimum questionable and controversial, without a due and sober, full ventilation of the full truth -- that bears in mind more than is likely to be promoted in the major media etc, discussion. END