David QuinnSome of those pushing for a redefinition of marriage are guilty of scaremongering says David Quinn
A lot of very inflated claims are being made by the ‘yes’ side in the marriage referendum about what will happen if it is passed or if it is defeated.
Children’s Minister James Reilly has warned that the mental health of young gay people will be put at risk if we vote No. He has warned that the very debate is doing this.
This is coming from a man under whose watch mental health services were slashed. He had no choice, he will say. Still and all, it’s a bit rich to be giving warnings about threats to mental health when you have swung the axe at mental health services.
Various Government spokespeople, including Mr Reilly, have warned that the economy and our international reputation will suffer if we vote ‘no’.
These same people then turn around and accuse the no side of ‘scaremongering’ for bringing the rights and welfare of children into the debate even though the section of the Constitution we are being asked to change is called ‘The Family’. Does the family suddenly have nothing to do with children?
Having warned us of the dire consequences of voting No, the Yes side then flip these on their heads when talking about the wonderful things that will follow if we vote Yes.
The mental health of gay people will improve if we vote for same-sex marriage.
Our economy and international reputation will bloom if we vote the ‘right’ way.
There is not the slightest evidence to back up either of these claims. It’s true that the mental health of gay people tends to be worse on average than that of the general population. But the same holds true in famously liberal Holland which has had same-sex marriage for 10 years.
It’s simply nonsense to say a Yes vote will boost our economy and improve our international reputation.
It might momentarily improve our international reputation among, say, readers of the New York Times. But among Indians or Chinese (say)? Highly doubtful.
As for our economic prospects, the German economy is the strongest in Europe and the second strongest in the world. Germany doesn’t have same-sex marriage.
Some of these grossly inflated claims about the good economic and reputational effects of a Yes vote were made by Stephen McIntyre, the head of Twitter Ireland last week at a public event attended by Enda Kenny.
He said that people work better when they can be themselves. No doubt. But presumably gay people who work at Twitter already feel full at liberty to be themselves. McIntyre would need to produce a lot of evidence to support any contention that productivity in a country like Germany is harmed because it doesn’t have gay marriage.
One wonders, however, if a Twitter employee who does not believe in same-sex marriage and will be voting No on May 22 would feel genuinely at liberty to say so to his fellow employees or to his bosses?
At the launch of the No campaign last week by Mothers and Fathers Matter, one of its chief spokespeople, Keith Mills, who is himself gay, wondered if Twitter would employ him given his views no matter how qualified he was. One hopes they would.
Possibly the most inflated claim in favour of a Yes vote in the last couple of weeks was made by Eoghan McDermott of the Communications Clinic.
He said on the Marian Finucane Show on Sunday that a Yes vote would send the right signal to Vladimir Putin in Russia and the Islamist fanatics of ISIS, currently murdering with abandon in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.
Neither Putin nor ISIS will play a blind bit of attention either way.
These claims all smack of desperation, and the irony is that the Yes side are consistently accusing the No side of precisely this.
I suppose this is inevitable in any campaign of any sort. Each side will accuse the other of making false or inflated claims or of plain scare-mongering.
To date, however, our media seem much happier to broadcast Yes side accusations against the No side without properly examining the claims being made by the Yes side.
Indeed, at the launch of the No campaign by Mothers and Fathers Matter last week, spokesperson Kate Bopp said that children raised in single parent families are more likely to have poor outcomes, for example, are more likely to drift into crime than children raised by their biological married parents.
President Barack Obama, who was raised by a single mother said exactly this, and more, in a Father’s Day speech in 2008.
In fact, Barnardos said in 2008 in a report to coincide with something called ‘The Da Project’: “Children are less likely to end up in the criminal justice system when they have had regular contact with their father before the age of 11.”
The media demanded that Kate Bopp produce evidence on the spot to back up her claim. Fair enough you might say. In truth it is only fair enough if similar demands are made of the Yes side.
For example, Justin McAleese, son of Mary McAleese, came out as gay at the weekend and said that 10 percent of the population is gay. This is based on a completely outdated study.
National statistics offices in countries like Britain and the US have come up with a figure more in the region of 1.5 percent. Even allowing for underreporting it would be a struggle to come up with a figure of much more than 3 percent.
Has Justin McAleese, or anyone else who quotes the 10 percent figure ever been asked by journalists to back it up? Highly doubtful.
So what see is a Yes campaign that makes highly inflated claims and rarely gets challenged about them while the No campaign is constantly challenged.
This makes for a very one-sided debate. Don’t be taken in.