You can legally solemnise marriages in Ireland if you are a psychic medium, tarot card reader, public entertainer, ghost whisperer or ghost buster (Ministers of the Spiritualist Union of Ireland); or if you oversee a culture of covering up child sex abuse, or lie to and positively mislead a state inquiry into child sex abuse, […]
The privileged position of the Catholic Church in Irish law was highlighted by the political campaign launched by Cardinal Sean Brady on Christmas Day, seeking to influence the forthcoming law on abortion from an explicitly theological Roman Catholic perspective. To rub in the discrimination against nonreligious citizens, this overtly political move took place just days […]
The Humanist Association of Ireland faces a fundamental dilemma in how it responds to the Civil Registration (Amendment) Bill. That dilemma is this: does the Humanist Association stop promoting the political cause of separation of church and state in order to be able to legally solemnise marriages, or does it forego the legal solemnising of […]
The Dail today passed the Civil Registration (Amendment) Bill, despite several TDs highlighting concerns raised by Atheist Ireland in our briefing document ‘Legislating for Equality In Marriage Registration.’ Atheist Ireland is now writing to the President asking him to send the Bill to the Supreme Court to test its constitutionality. If it is unconstitutional, it […]
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has been responding to concerns about unconscious bias in its anti-discrimination law project, by repeatedly telling members of the public that the ICCL has sent a detailed 5-page letter to Atheist Ireland about the issue. Here is the ICCL letter, which we received on 13 December, together with comments […]
These three charming men are Scott Schittl of Life House Ireland, Joe Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League, and Michael Sullivan of the Thomas More Society. They are happy and smiling, not merely because they are resplendent in matching uniforms of suit and tie, green anti-choice badge, receding hairline and neat grey beard, but also […]
Atheist Ireland today wrote to TDs asking them to amend the Civil Registration (Amendment) Bill, which will be debated in the Dail this Thursday, 20 December 2012. See an earlier article on this Bill here. We also copied this letter to the Irish Human Rights Commission to ask them to examine the Bill from a […]
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has repeatedly publicly alleged this week that Atheist Ireland has made a number of material inaccuracies in our letters to them about unconscious bias against atheists in their Anti-Discrimination Law project. Today the ICCL publicly posted on its Facebook page that: “The erroneous notion that there is a “representative” […]
Atheist Ireland has today emailed the following letter to the Irish Council for Civil liberties, and to the members of the Advisory Group and Research Team of the ICCL’s Anti-Discrimination Law Review Project. On 23 October Atheist Ireland discovered that the ICCL is running an Anti-Discrimination Law Review Project, an excellent and important initiative, that is seriously […]
The Irish Senate yesterday passed a Bill enabling secular bodies to nominate people who can legally solemnize marriages. Currently only the State or a religious body can do this. The Humanist Association of Ireland has for years nominated people who can conduct marriage ceremonies, but such marriages also have to be legally solemnized by the […]