Month: February 2013

Spin warning – twisters hitting all areas

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

This is an all points spin warning about serious twisters hitting Ireland today – courtesy of the Irish Times. The warning comes courtesy of the Pro Life Campaign at approximately 1600 hours today. Read and judge for yourselves. This is what we – and the unborn – are up against.

Irish Times presentation of latest poll on abortion “grossly distorted”, says Pro Life Campaign

The presentation by The Irish Times of today’s Ipsos MRBI poll on abortion was “grossly distorted”, according to the Pro Life Campaign.

In its analysis of the poll results, The Irish Times states that public support for abortion legislation has risen from 23% in 1997 to 71% today.

Ms Sherlock said: “This is a completely distorted and inaccurate presentation. The 1997 MRBI poll which The Irish Times claims showed only 23% support for abortion actually found 77% of people supported abortion in a variety of circumstances, depending on how the question was asked. However, like the poll published in today’s Irish Times, it made no distinction between abortion and necessary medical treatments in pregnancy.

“The 23% mentioned by The Irish Times was just one of the findings in a multiple choice question that included other categories of support for abortion.

“Five years later, in 2002, when the electorate had an actual choice to make in a referendum, 49% voted YES to row back on the X case ruling. An IMS poll conducted just afterwards found an additional 5% voted NO on pro-life grounds.

“In other words, despite findings like the one cited by The Irish Times from 1997 and the latest Ipsos MRBI poll, when the people have an actual democratic choice, a clear majority rejects abortion.”

Ms Sherlock concluded: “Polls showing high levels of support for abortion are nothing new. Whenever the question suppresses the distinction between induced abortion (that targets the life of the baby) and necessary medical treatments to preserve the life of the mother (where every reasonable effort is made to save the life of the baby), the results show high support for abortion. Such polls, however, significantly under represent the opposition among the electorate and create an inflated perception of the extent of public support for abortion.”

ENDS

Born to kill?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

More of the infuriating madness to which the Late Late Show exposed us was the subject of Charles Moore’s column in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. But as he sees it, all this is not just madness but is also bad and very dangerous.  He wrote:

 Last week, I appeared on the panel of the BBC’s Any Questions? in Guildford. We were asked whether we thought women should be allowed to take part in full front-line combat roles in the Armed Services. I said I didn’t think that it would be an advance in human civilisation if women abandoned their traditional association with peace and started killing people as men do.

This did not please the questioner, an intelligent student from the politics department of Surrey University, or her supporters sitting with her. They thought that the only question was the ability of the woman – if she was fit to fight, fight she should, and no one should stop her.

Afterwards, I reflected on the oddity of the situation. It did not seem that the student and her colleagues were particularly interested in military matters in themselves. They also did not seem the sort of people who, in other circumstances, would be at all keen on people killing people. I could imagine them protesting against militarism. Yet here they were, pushing for a woman’s right to kill.

Why? Because of Equality, of course. It gets you into strange situations.

(Read the full article in the Telegraph)

Illogically induced brain trauma

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters4 Comments

I was in the Late Late Show audience last night. The show, on Irish television, is the longest running “chat” show in the world – we are told. I was invited on the basis of my being on the side of traditional  marriage in the forthcoming debate on gay “marriage” which is going to begin raging in this jurisdiction soon.

One homosexual person on the panel, “married” with children, objected to the term gay being attached to their campaign for legislative change. He said that what their campaign was about was “marriage equality”. A strange signal hit my brain cells – like when someone says something entirely illogical but you cannot at once put your finger on the illogicality. Essentially the nerve-ending which was touched was the one which sent a signal to my brain when writing the last paragraph telling me again that when gay is used with the word marriage then that word marriage must be put in inverted commas – because as a compound noun, gay marriage does not, and cannot, exist if marriage is accepted as a bond between a man and a woman sharing rights which depend on their complimentary biological nature.

Marriage in this sense, the sense in which the marriage bond has been understood from time immemorial, has nothing essentially to do with love. A marriage contracted between a man and a woman may be loveless and it will still be a marriage. A marriage without the commitment to share the couple’s complimentary sexual faculties is not in the proper sense a marriage at all.

I thought to myself that there must be some logical formula which can unravel this fallacy? Perhaps this is it?

Current meaning of marriage: “biological man+ biological woman+(children)”. That’s it.

What the “marriage equality” campaign is proposing is the following: “biological man+ biological woman+(children)” = “biological man+ biological man+(children)” or  “biological woman+ biological woman+(children)”.

Is this not patently false?

If you want to see the somewhat unbalanced discussion and experience first-hand the same brain trauma you can check it out at 1 hour sixteen minutes into the show.