Paul KeenanDear Editor, Regarding David Quinn’s ‘Gender-bending’ comes to your local primary school’ (IC 17/4/14), to publish such a disrespectful and demeaning article about transgendered people in your newspaper presents a most hateful side of Catholicism.
Trans people have the highest rate of suicide Ireland. Where was your editorial judgement? One would expect any report to be based on fact and indeed a knowledge of the subject.
‘Aunty Ben’ is an award winning show based on a lot of love. It will make a tiny contribution to ensuring the next generation might not be as bigoted as the previous one. It will promote respect.
Luckily groups like TENI and Gay Switchboard will do their best to clear up the fallout for these marginalised people, who bravely and truthfully struggle with their gender identity. Meanwhile you can pick next week's subject for the Institute to pontificate on, without burdening them with the journalistic requirement to research or regard the wellbeing of their subjects – the real people who struggle with daily living.
No-one is doing more disservice to the Good News of the Gospels than the zealots who speak so much ill in their name and those who lazily and harmfully facilitate that. Your editorial policy needs to return to some semblance of decency and respect for all those who struggle with difference and who despite reading such bile, resolve to try to live a truthful life, one day at a time. To associate such a smug, nasty attack on vulnerable people does little to build a respectful society, which used to be the primary and laudable aim of Catholicism. Is that really the best your can do?
Yours etc.,
Brian Merriman,
Founder International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival,
Kilmainham,
Dublin 8.