Pro-life student Gavin Boyne Jason Osborne
Pro-life campaigner and student Gavin Boyne (22) has criticised what he has described as inconsistent criticism of when people come under fire on social media.
This comes in the wake of the recent controversy surrounding Senator Fintan Warfield, which saw a picture surface on social media of the Sinn Féin representative wearing speedos and sporting a Pope Francis t-shirt from the World Meeting of Families in 2018.
This resulted in a torrent of online criticism and alleged abuse which saw Senator Warfield report some tweets to gardaí.
Politicians and journalists rushed to the aid of Senator Warfield, condemning the alleged abuse. Former Minister for Health, Simon Harris, tweeted: “Solidarity with the Senator. Disgusting and vile abuse directed at him. Those behind it and those who quietly stand by and refuse to condemn it are disgraceful. Shame on them.
“Twitter and other social media companies would want to wake up and take action”.
Responding to the events on Twitter, Mr Boyne referred to the debacle as “hypocritical”. He tweeted that in 2018 a photo was shared on Twitter by journalists which had been “dug up by trolls who trawled my personal social media accounts. The reason the photo had been dug up was because I was campaigning for a ‘No’ vote in the #Repeal referendum.”
Direction
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Mr Boyne said that “if you happen to be Catholic or pro-life” then abuse and condemnation in your direction appear to be justified.
Speaking of his experiences of the abuse, he said: “I received some of the most vile and personal attacks after…this, people telling me to kill myself, that I should have been aborted, to watch out because I was going to beaten up.
“I had people on my Facebook, random accounts, commenting under pictures of me and my family.”
He concluded by describing it as “an extremely difficult period of my life to deal with”.