The following questions were presented to P A Mag Lochlainn in his role as President of NIGRA (Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association) from a law student researching for her dissertation, and included are hiSeanswers on behalf of NIGRA and some other comments:

“Thank you for setting out your questions below. I will endeavour to answer them as best I can, although several of them seem to me rather curiously-phrased, or to tackle questions from a very unusual point of view. Others I found irritatingly vague or imprecise, assuming, it would appear, that we both speak from some unspoken context or other.

Sorry I’m just reading your e-mail through properly again where you requested that I paste the questions into this e-mail. I have sent an attachment in the previous e-mail but just in case it won’t open here are the questionSeand andsers again.”

1. Do you think the Sexual Orientation Regulations were necessary? If so why?

This is one example of what I find a weird approach. Do you believe that ANY equal rights legislation is NOT “necessary”? I suppose that we COULD follow St Paul’s counsel to slaves to meekly accept their lot in life as ordained of God, and to pray for their master. My approach would be Res Ipsa Loquitur, freedom and equality are not any man’s gift to another, but a basic and inalienable right belonging to every man. We could talk all year about equality and freedom, but I suspect that isn’t what you want to hear.

This question was one of the points raised by the Christian Institute high court challenge to the recent GFS legislation, and was quite effectively thrown out of court by the judge.

You are not SERIOUSLY suggesting that the law nowadays should disadvantage one person against another, just because one person is of a different gender (eg female), or colour (black), or religion (Jewish) or whatever?

Or are you really unaware of widespread homophobia? Two of my lesbian friends sat together on a late-night buSeand held hands. A drunk man glared at them and then smashed one of them in the face with his fist. Do you really think it is all right to allow such attitudes to fester in society? If you do, what’s your attitude to racism? Or the good old Nazi practice of eliminating the mentally ill?

2. What do you feel is your role in society in relation to the SORS?

Another very strange question. When you say “my role” – whom exactly do you mean by “me”? Do you mean retired people (I’m retired), do you mean citizens of Northern Ireland / United Kingdom / European Union, do you mean men (as opposed to women – the Presbyterian Church here is arguing about a women’s right to preach), or what? Perhaps you meant to ask what part I played (or my organisation played) in bringing about the SORS?

And why this (rather patronising, it sounds) “do I FEEL is my role”? Am I not qualified to KNOW (not merely feel)? Surely the question should be “What role did you play etc” or “What IS your role in etc”?

Similarly with “in society”? Where ELSE would I exercise my role? In the divine order of creation? In the fierce law of nature? Every human being exists per se in society: it is a datum, a given. That, after all, is why we need laws at all.

I am proud to say that NIGRA helped very much in the struggle for some measure of equality and human dignity. We communicated with hundreds of people, organising volunteers through many sister organisations in the LGBT community, fighting especially the lieSeand misinformation of some of our so-called Christian opponents.

3. Why do you think Northern Ireland was only permitted a 2 month consultation period in which to respond to the Regulations yet the
rest of the UK was granted 3 months?

Here you betray a serious lack of research, and a certain bias in your choice of term. It was to do with legislative “windows” in the calendar. Legislation does not pass from draftsmen into law every day of the week, but in batches. The opponents of law reform claimed that the consultation period was too short. David Ford of the Alliance Party effectively trashed this lie when he pointed out in the Assembly debate that any group which genuinely wanted to oppose the legislation seemed to have managed quite effectively to do so within the time allotted. I recommend that you read the Assembly Hansard.

4. How do you think the SORS will impact and have effect on NI socity? Do you think it will differ any compared to the rest of the UK?

“It” will differ – WHAT will differ, pray? Clearly the SORS will be the same over the whole kingdom – I don’t understand your question.

I can think of at least one possible difference in application. The LGBT community here generously allowed the legislation to stipulate that where a bed-and-breakfast business was carried on in the family home, the business could continue to discriminate. We didn’t need to be so generous (there are no such let-outs for those who wish to discriminate racially or on religious grounds, for example), and the regulations for Great Britain may well not allow this lee-way.

The BBC tested the new regulations by hawking two lesbians around the north coast resorts of CountieSeantrim and Derry, only to find the couple welcomed in every boarding house they tried. It was with great glee that I pointed out to the perplexed production staff that the infamous case where two gay men had been refused a double bed in a bed-and-breakfast occurred NOT in Northern Ireland at all but in Scotland! Public attitudes in Northern Ireland were in this case quite demonstrably much more liberal than those in large areas of Great Britain. It also reinforced the lesson that Northern Ireland’s reputation for intolerance is based only on the loud-mouthed ranting of a very small minority which arrogantly claims to speak for the vast, silent majority.

5. Would you say that legislation is formed for NI with a specific Northen Irish context?

No, it clearly is not. As noted above, the British government and a lot of people in Great Britain assume that everyone in Northern Ireland is as bigoted and unpleasant as Dr Paisley and his followers, and this impression is fostered by the lies of the Christian Institute (in, for example, their infamous half-page ad in the News Letter, with a similar half-page in The Times). Baroness O Cathain, for example, claimed in the House of Lords that every party in Northern Ireland would oppose gay rights measures – which is a downright lie. Lord Maginness of Drumglass was spectacularly humbled in the Lords when he tried a similar trick.

The treasurer of my organisation, Jeffrey Dudgeon, took the first Strasbourg case against the UK government, trouncing Mrs Thatcher’s government and completely undoing Dr Paisley’s infamous Campaign to Save Ulster from Sodomy.

6. With regards the law, Lord Devlin has argued, “What the law-maker has to ascertain is not the true belief but the common belief”- Do you think a democratically elected body exists to upholdthe will of the majority?

Would this by any chance be the judge who insisted on unjustly keeping six Irishmen in a Birmingham prison for life, because to admit any doubt in their case would open “an appalling vista”? If so, I’m afraid his opinions don’t carry much weight in Ireland, which has proved a graveyard for the reputation not only of so many otherwise eminent British politicians but also of many British legal figures (such as Lord “Whitewash” Widgery).

Be very careful when using words like “majority” in a Northern Ireland context. This is long-recognised unionist-speak for “Protestant power” – the great Unionist premier of Northern Ireland frankly and proudly described Stormont as “A Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People.” Those attitudes are now happily consigned to the dustbin of history, along with Apartheid in South Africa (“Separate but Equal Development”) and Nazism in Germany.

Quite clearly, we in Northern Ireland appear finally to have learned the painful lesson that a majority cannot ignore all minorities, but must seek a more British type of consensus where possible. Did you really mean to ask “Is it the function of a democratically elected body etc” – rather than asking has Northern Ireland actually GOT a democratically elected government (which is how your question reads)?
Perhaps you could clarify this for me?

7. What is your view and/ or experience when the rights to religious freedom conflict with the rights of sexual freedom?

I rarely see any conflict between these rights. I make an exception in the case of ritual gen**al mut**ation of females, which is required by certain religions, or the Indian religious practices of Suttee (which encouraged a widow to demonstrate her love for her dead husband by throwing herself on his funeral pyre, to perish along with him – often a cloak for a plot to dispose of a redundant mother-in-law) and Thuggee (sacred murder of travellerSeand strangers aSean offering to the goddess Kali), as well as the Mormon religious custom of polygamy (which often manifests itself as subjugation and exploitation of young girls) or many of the provisions of Sharia law (such as stoning to death of rape victims).

In the Irish Republic it was until recently against the law for any couple to divorce, no matter what their circumstances or beliefs. In general, like most people, I don’t mind other people practising their religion, provided they don’t use their God myth to tell ME what to do or not to do. One thing I detest (like a growing percentage of the public) is those discordant, over-miked street preachers. If only they’d learn from the Sally Army and present their message in beautiful brass-band music, THAT I would enjoy!

8. Do you have sympathy for the opposing view? What do you make of the counter argument?

WHAT opposing view? WHAT counter arguments, pray? You’re surely not going to argue FOR any of the religious “freedoms” that I listed above? Wasn’t it Jeanette Winterson’s book that was set in Dundee or that area? (Maybe I’m wrong) And I know that you have so far only one Pride celebration for the whole Kingdom of Scotland – LGBT folk in Dundee are still finding their legs, according to Scotsgay. Give me some details of these viewSeand arguments, and I’ll be better able to answer you.

Remember, Ms Stewart, no-one is born a Presbyterian or a Catholic – children the world over are indoctrinated by their parents / family / peer-group / gang / whatever. They often adopt one or other set of illogical beliefs – and then claim special rights for, as it were, believing in the silliest of things. This illogicality is accorded the most solemn rights, and its practitioners put on a par with policemen and teachers of science!

LGBT children, on the other hand, can be distinguished from as early an age as we can measure (Wolfenden Report), and appear to have no more choice than to be right-handed or red-haired. How can any sane person compare my right to write with my left hand, with my neighbour’s right not to be mocked for believing in Santa Claus?

Please expand upon your questions, and / or follow this up with supplementary questions. I am sorry if I have not supplied you with the answers you sought, but am willing to continue this correspondence and clarify as much as possible.