Civil Partnership Bill on RTE 1 Frontline - Now Monday 5th @ 21.30

TylerIE

I imagine it will be on RTE Player in the future but will hopefully give the country a real feel for the need for full equal rights!

L1011

Kenny's introduction and initial approach was rather pro- the David Quinn side, he's wobbled back to proper neutrality now but he rather shown his cards on this.

rainbow kirby

#rtefl hashtag on Twitter, if anyone is following it.

Pat Kenny's bias in favour of David Quinn's side is actually painful to watch.

Aggressive secularists got a big lol - agree that Kenny seems biased.

TylerIE

I got pulled away ten minutes into it so will have to catch the later edition or wait for player.

Kenny was a bit smart with a guy who said about "me and my partner getting married" or adopting or similar and interrupted him saying "the law will have to change", during a previous episode of Frontline, and appeared to dismiss the guy because of same, so his reported bias here is no real surprise.

I did notice at the beginning that there were literally only a handfull of claps for the more conservative statements though, which was reassuring.

LookingFor

My lingering impression was that the debate was rather unfocused. It didn't seem clear what exactly people were debating, in the sense that everyone seemed to have their own 'thing' they were advocating. Maybe that's a byproduct of the fact that the civil partnership bill was already passed, so there was no central focal point that people would fall on one side or the other of.

I thought there wasn't as good a job done of challenging David Quinn on the whole 'keep marriage special' thing as could have been in hindsight. His approach seems to be based on the kind of view that when people get into a particular kind of family unit, it's like going to a shop and picking out which one they want. And so we need to keep marriage - heterosexual marriage - 'special' so that people will pick it. But that's not reflective of reality, at least wrt whether someone forms a heterosexual partnership or a homosexual partnership. Thus if you extend marriage to homosexuals, you're not in any way disincentivising heterosexual marriage; people are motivated toward one or the other at a much lower level that has nothing to do with what the state does or does not provide for. Heterosexual marriage would be no less 'special' if gay people could marry the same way, it would simply be less exclusive. I think it's difficult to propose that availability of marriage to gay people would undermine the popularity of heterosexual marriage - people will do what they want to do, they are either gay or straight, they either marry or don't. That's the reality. David Quinn seems to think we need to keep it special in order to herd people toward it, but you're not going to herd gay people into heterosexual marriage (or healthy heterosexual marriage at least)...nor are you going to herd straight people away from marriage if gay people could marry.

ixoy

LookingFor wrote: »

I thought there wasn't as good a job done of challenging David Quinn on the whole 'keep marriage special' thing as could have been in hindsight. His approach seems to be based on the kind of view that when people get into a particular kind of family unit, it's like going to a shop and picking out which one they want. And so we need to keep marriage - heterosexual marriage - 'special' so that people will pick it. But that's not reflective of reality, at least wrt whether someone forms a heterosexual partnership or a homosexual partnership. Thus if you extend marriage to homosexuals, you're not in any way disincentivising heterosexual marriage; people are motivated toward one or the other at a much lower level that has nothing to do with what the state does or does not provide for. Heterosexual marriage would be no less 'special' if gay people could marry the same way, it would simply be less exclusive. I think it's difficult to propose that availability of marriage to gay people would undermine the popularity of heterosexual marriage - people will do what they want to do, they are either gay or straight, they either marry or don't. That's the reality. David Quinn seems to think we need to keep it special in order to herd people toward it, but you're not going to herd gay people into heterosexual marriage (or healthy heterosexual marriage at least)...nor are you going to herd straight people away from marriage if gay people could marry.

If only I could use wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey tricks and throw you back into the Frontline studio: argument very well made.

witty_name

Pat Kenny is the most frustrating man in the world.

Allowed Quinn far more time to speak than Bacik, and then proceeded to interrupt her when she did speak.

Was surprised to hear the amount of people applaud Quinn that did.
Although, wasn't surprised that they all took the same, traditional family themed approach... all of them unable to quote actual research.

It's really unfortunate that this biased host, and this terrible show, are the only ones to give any air time to civil partnership bill, and the idea of alternative families.

jaffa20

Jim Walsh was ridiculous and shown up by the woman in the audience re the conscience clause. I loved her.

witty_name

jaffa20 wrote: »

Jim Walsh was ridiculous and shown up by the woman in the audience re the conscience clause. I loved her.

Is this the retired supreme court judge? What a hero.

Annasopra

witty_name wrote: »

Pat Kenny is the most frustrating man in the world.

Allowed Quinn far more time to speak than Bacik, and then proceeded to interrupt her when she did speak.

Was surprised to hear the amount of people applaud Quinn that did.
Although, wasn't surprised that they all took the same, traditional family themed approach... all of them unable to quote actual research.

It's really unfortunate that this biased host, and this terrible show, are the only ones to give any air time to civil partnership bill, and the idea of alternative families.

I know a fair few people are lodging complaints with RTE and the BAI that Pat Kenny was so biased

witty_name

Johnnymcg wrote: »

I know a fair few people are lodging complaints with RTE and the BAI that Pat Kenny was so biased

As do I, thinking of doing so myself.

I watch the Frontline fairly frequently, and Kenny is always biased, but I've never seen him this bad. If I were Bacik I wouldn't have been so collected.