Author: Ophelia Benson

Yikes again. No wonder those comments are not light reading. I Googled Marie-Therese O’Loughlin – with results.

Look.

At some point during her second year in the Regina Coeli hostel, her mother was admitted to hospital with TB…When Marie Therese’s mother was ill in hospital, Marie Therese’s high chair fell into an “open blazing fire”. She sustained injuries that have left her with scars on her face, hand and leg…Marie Therese went to Goldenbridge, a childcare home, when she was five years old. “There was a lot of name-calling (one of the names they called her was “scarface”), children were frightened of me, and deformity was used against me.” During her time in Goldenbridge, Marie Therese made rosary beads: “nobody ever questioned throughout all my years in Goldenbridge [about] my deformity or whether I should or should not be making rosary beads… no child should be making rosary beads but especially not a child with a deformity… as far as I am concerned it did untold damage to the tissue”. She describes her time in Goldenbridge as very lonely and unhappy, “I don’t remember every getting close to anybody, I just can’t remember… it had a cold atmosphere, I don’t ever remember people saying nice things.”…She had grown up believing that her mother was dead as this was what the nuns in Goldenbridge told her. She returned to Dublin to find her mother’s grave. It was then that she discovered that her mother was alive.

Sad, sad stuff.

Yikes. I’ve just accidentally found a couple of comments on a post from August 2005 – one comment last June, the other yesterday. The post was about the tragic mess of what happened to children of single mothers in Ireland; the comments are from one of those children. Because the post is so old, they’ll naturally go unread; so you should have a look. They’re not light reading.

Well…that’s better. That was a good one. It’s been a long, long time since I listened to election returns with any pleasure. I’d forgotten what it even feels like.

Nothing like 1992, of course. That was one amazing evening. I was even surprised at how elated and hopeful I felt, and how unfamiliar that feeling was. (I was much less surprised at the disappointment later on.) This wasn’t like that, but it wasn’t bad. Pennsylvania! Go, Santorum! Ohio! Indiana. And so on. I wish Lieberman had lost. And, of course, I wish Webb had a bigger lead in Virginia. Looking down the road, I wish the Dems had much, much better candidates for president. But all the same, that was a good one.

I heard on the news last night that Republicans are much better at getting out the vote than Democrats are, but I have to say – they called me three times in the last couple of hours before the polls closed to urge me to go vote. That’s not too bad, I thought.

Two really revolting regressive state initiatives were roundly defeated here: one repealing the estate tax, and one requiring government to pay compensation to property owners for all regulations that could decrease the property value. Yesssssss. Not just defeated, but thoroughly defeated.

That was a good one.

Women – they’re old news, right? That battle was won long ago, right? No..

Bride burnings, honor killings, female infanticide, sex trafficking, mass rape as a weapon of war and many other hideous forms of violence against women are documented in a report released last month by the United Nations. The report, a compilation of many studies from around the world, should have been seen as the latest dispatch from that permanent world war — the war against women all over the planet. Instead, the news media greeted its shocking contents with a collective yawn.

Because…? The news media have other things to do? The subject isn’t important? Women don’t matter? Women deserve what they get? Those places are all far away and we’re fine over here? It’s too boring? We don’t care? We have to wash our hair that day?

The litany of serious abuses against women and girls can seem endless: child marriages, forced marriages, kidnapping and forced prostitution, sex slavery. According to the U.N. report, “A study in India estimated that prenatal sex selection and infanticide have accounted for half a million missing girls per year for the past two decades.”

Well, that will help; eventually there won’t be any women to rape or enslave or mutilate or beat up; problem solved.

Not only are we not doing enough to counter this wholesale destruction of the lives of so many women and girls, we’re not even paying close attention. There are women’s movements in even the smallest countries fighting against the violence and other forms of abuse. But they are underfunded and get very little support from those in a position to help…There was a time when activists cried out for our consciousness to be raised. It’s not too late. We can start by recognizing that the systematic subordination and brutalization of women and girls around the world is, in fact, occurring — and that we need to do something about it.

We’re not even paying close attention. When we do pay close attention, snappy observers like Wonkette rush to tell us we’re ‘fixated.’ What is that about? Why don’t we pay attention, why do people consider the subject beneath their notice? I don’t know, but let’s change that. Let’s do what Bob Herbert suggests and start by recognizing that the systematic subordination and brutalization of women and girls around the world is occurring and that we need to do something about it. Ladies, start your engines.

Oh good, more calls for mandatory religion and against public atheism.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, are introducing a new think-tank report that challenges the secular dream of taking Christ out of Christmas or anything else…In a joint foreword, they welcome the conclusion of the report that faith is not just important for human flourishing, but that society can only flourish if faith is “given space” to contribute and challenge.

Really? Is that true? ‘Flourish’ in what sense? According to whom, by what lights, according to which criteria? And what kind of ‘space’ has to be given, and how much of it, and to whom? Can society ‘flourish’ only if, say, Fred Phelps is given space to contribute and challenge? Or does society do a better job of flourishing if Fred Phelps is thoroughly ignored. Can society ‘flourish’ only if the pope and the archbishop of Westminster and Catholic clerics in general tell everyone in the world not to use condoms? Is that ‘flourishing’?

“Many secularist commentators argue that the growing role of faith in society represents a dangerous development,” the archbishops say. “However, they fail to recognise that public atheism is itself an intolerant faith position.”

Could that be because that’s not true? Could these many secular commentators fail to recognise that public atheism is an ‘intolerant faith position’ because it’s not a ‘faith’ or a ‘faith position’ at all and because it’s not inherently intolerant any more than not playing the saxophone or not watching football or not eating pizza?

The report argues against confining faith to the private sphere, and says that religion will play an increasingly significant role because of the return of civil society, research about the role it plays in happiness and the politics of identity.

The politics of identity is one big reason to hope religion won’t ‘play an increasingly significant role’ in the public sphere; the politics of identity is…tricky and often reactionary stuff.

“We should not react with bewilderment when a public figure does ‘do God’. We should be less scared of public figures citing religious texts in mainstream contexts. We should be more willing to treat other value systems as coherent, reasonable and even valuable rather than as primitive or grotesque mutations of the liberal humanism to which every sane person adheres.”

No we shouldn’t. Religious texts, like so many things, are only as good as they are; many of them are revolting; the less revolting ones are less revolting for human secular ethical reasons that don’t need religion to ground them; so why should we be encouraging ‘public figures’ (which looks like a tricksy euphemism for political figures) to cite them? And we shouldn’t be more willing to treat other value systems as coherent and reasonable unless they in fact are coherent and reasonable – we shouldn’t be subject to blanket instructions to treat all other value systems as coherent and reasonable. Some are, some aren’t, and they should be evaluated on their merits, not on generalized instructions to accept and respect everything.

So archbish me no archbishops.