Siding With The Enemy: Strange Bedfellows Indeed

"For man himself is born to trouble,
As the very sparks fly upward."
- Book of Job, 5: 7

By Charley Brady

Oh boy, this moral dilemma stuff doesn't really get any easier, does it?

It normally passes me right on by, as I tend to see the world in black and white.

Yeah, I know that it's not that way but maybe that's why I've survived so long without going completely mad. [Debatable - Editor]

So how can someone like me who wants to see equality for all have a problem with this week's Civil Partnership Bill, which was pushed through the Dail on Thursday evening? To say that it was pushed through in fact is to take away how fast this actually was railroaded ahead. For crying out loud, it takes us forever to prosecute bent bankers and corrupt politicians and even then nothing will happen to them anyway! (Case in point, Bertie Ahern, still to answer questions to the satisfaction of the Tribunal that HE set up will NEVER be taken to account for his highly questionable financial dealings. It doesn't stop him poncing around the world telling the gullible how great he is.)

So here is the polar opposite: A Bill that has a lot of foreseeable problems with it has begun to be discussed one day and the next day it's through as if it has been fired out from either a cannon or from the collective backsides of Fianna Fail.

I am all for gay couples having the same rights as those that are (supposedly in some cases) straight. They should be entitled to marry, just as those of separate sexes do. They should be entitled to the same rules of inheritance if one partner should die.

I have seen too many gay relationships that lasted a lifetime compared to some of my straight acquaintances (and yes, myself if I'm honest. I couldn't hold down a relationship for more than six years, maximum) who are in and out of them every ten minutes.

By the way, any couple, straight or gay, that can continue to love and be loved through the decades, stun me.

Yet I will probably be controversial here and rile the gay community. I don't mean to as this is of course just my opinion: I do not believe that along with the right to marry and be treated equally under the Law should go hand in hand the "right" to adopt children. I just don't accept the arguments for it. As we stand on the mental evolutionary scale at the moment it is not fair on children who will suffer for this down the road. After all, is there anything crueller than children in the playground when they find out that somebody's Mommy and Daddy are actually Mommy and Mommy or Daddy and Daddy? Maybe there will come a time when we can accept all diversity (within reason, obviously) but we're not at that stage in our development yet; and let's be honest, we won't be in my lifetime.

So just because a couple of adults don't feel "fulfilled" - one of those hideous buzz words that we have adopted from America - a child gets to spend his or her formative years as the butt of cruel jokes.

How can I put this? Oh yeah: "You selfish bastards." That's what I was looking for.

A gay friend of mine used to berate those who wanted their perfect designer lives "fulfilled".

He was a gruff guy and what you saw was what you got but "Christ's sake, Charley" he'd say when I pressed him on this: "we don't have friggin' wombs so how were we ever meant to have kids?"

He's been dead for a few years now but I often wonder what he would have made of Angie and Brad, for example, where one of their ever growing brood is allowed to dress as she pleases, i.e. as a boy when in fact she is a little girl, just because scary Angie reckons it's good for her developing sexuality. These are children for Pete's sake! They need some sort of bloody structure. Brad I don't take into account in this, as he just seems to do whatever the hell the harridan tells him to do. Great actor, but whipped or what?

If anybody else but a celebrity had given the interview that she did this week, the social services would be parting the two of them from the kids pretty damned sharpish; and who could blame them?

Sharing blood? Knives under the pillow for sex games? Self harming? Sex at 14? Yes, Mommy, I'm old enough to read your interviews but not old enough to understand and I want to be just like you when I grow up.

Hell, I'm as twisted as the next guy but this one seems to love flaunting her lack of boundaries.

What a wagon.

Or how about the bizarre case here a couple of weeks back when a woman who was born a man gets the right to change the name on his/her passport? Oh come on, he had already gotten his sex change (thank you, taxpayer) and he was being left to live his life as a woman in peace; but how the hell can a guy who has fathered two children make such a hue and cry about getting the name on his passport changed to that of a woman?

I try to understand this whole "transgender" thing but I'm sorry. I'm pretty broad-minded but at the close of the day I'm as old fashioned as many who grew up as I did.

NO. I just don't understand it.

If these folks feel that they were born in the wrong body and that they are happier in their new one, that's OK with me; but don't ask me to be a cheerleader for those who have won their right to live as they choose when these exhibitionists then take it that extra mile and want a legal document like a passport changed - and of course, in our PC world they get it.

Forget the pain that their children and ex-spouses must have gone through; forget the slap in the face for the parents who proudly named their little boy. As long as they get the "right" to live as they please then nobody else's pain comes into it.

This is partly what I mean by being in a morally grey area. You see, these are the gut reactions of myself and many like me; but I will put my hand up and say that I don't understand the intricacies of gender re-alignment (Jeez, how quickly we get used to the lingo). So I may be quite wrong in what I'm saying, but in truth I doubt that anybody - yes, even the so-called experts - understands this either. It's just all too new. Perhaps a future generation will have a better grasp on it; or perhaps they will think that we took extremes of equality, if you will pardon such an apparent contradiction, far too far.

I'm aware that I've strictly speaking gone off on a tangent from the topic at hand but what the hell, I just wanted to get that off my chest.

So: the Civil Partnership Bill. I'm delighted that same sex couples will now be able to be married in a parish hall. Or am I? That bloody grey area again.

Part of me says why shouldn't they have this right and the other half says why would they want it?

The main problem with this Bill is that it allows no leeway at all for the priest or the civil registrar of faith. Indeed, if these people refuse to perform or even allow such a ceremony then they are liable to, under the Equal Status Act of 2000, find themselves cooling their holy asses in jail for up to two years or a penalty of €32,000.

I never thought that I would find myself siding with Father Church but let's put it this way:

Last year I wrote several times in this and other newspapers of the outrageous Blasphemy Law that was introduced into Ireland and which meant that people like me, who make fun of organised religion could be fined up to €100,000 or a couple of years in the slammer. I chose to ignore this rubbish, as I want my right to make fun of desert religious nonsense if I feel like it. Nor do I care if I have to go to jail to defend that right. (Well, that's a bit of a cheat actually as I don't have the loot to get me the Monopoly card to pass by and so jail it would be.)

It's called "freedom of speech", something that is being slowly strangled in this country and in the most subversive way.

However, since I not only ask for this right but demand it then I will defend completely any priest or person of faith who has a problem with this Bill. What's good for the goose is good for the gander and all that.

They have rights too, you know. They have the right to practise their religion as they see fit and if that means that they take a stand against same sex unions then so be it.

They have the right to do that.

Why should a person have to face a fine or lose their job as happened with a civil registrar in England last year?

I am the first bullish guy out of the pen to say: "Respect my rights as an atheist."

So why wouldn't I be the first to say: "Respect the rights of people of faith, since you our useless government have put them in a hopeless position."

I'm actually puzzled on this one as there would have only taken that simple "conscience clause" to give our clowns in politics a get out. Even they can't be that thick - or are they? Is it possible that it simply boils down to that? That they really are as dim as I always suspected that they were. Or is something else going on here? After all this wasn't just a random decision.

Whatever. Time makes for strange bedfellows. I sure as hell would never have thought that I would be siding with the religious nuts. Yet when I see fellow humans following their conscience how else am I supposed to feel?

So let me be as clear as a nice blue ocean on this: if it comes to it that some priest or other God-botherer finds that he can't go along with the stipulations of this ill- thought out Bill the I'm on his side.

Honestly, I must be getting soft.

May whatever God you believe in go with you and I hope to see you next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net