David Quinn - Your views

CiaranMT

Hi all,

Just wanted to see what the Christianity forum thinks of David Quinn, particularly the Catholic posters. This comes after my reading a few of his recent articles on Kenny's rebuke to the Vatican.

Does he represent a significant portion of the population, in your view?

Are his views still relevant?

Looking forward to the discussion.

antiskeptic

I heard him speak a couple of times and have been impressed enough. He takes an apologists approach to defending his faith - not the ubiquitous "from this rock springs the entire Roman church - says the Roman church" circularity.

He sees the advance of the godless agenda (piggy-backing on notions of "secularism") and speaks out on that in a pragmatic way. He certainly seems knowledgeable and insightful on his subject.

If I had to choose my favourite Catholic representitive it would probably be him

philologos

He's good on some things, not so good on others. He certainly doesn't deserve the tirade of abuse on twitter that he receives pretty much daily.

alex73

The whole Bishop McGee/Cloyne situation is the dying breath of the evil that had rooted itself. This is a movement to a godless society and anything that paints religion in a negative light is used. David Quinn tries to bring a balance view to the situation. The Truths of Faith don't change because of the bad example of some.

irishh_bob

im not even a believer but i still like david quinn , i like his conservative politics , thier is such a thing as a consevative athiest believe it or not

quinn correctly points out that the state has often been just as guilty of neglect when it comes to child abuse , see the roscommon case or many others , this country ( state sector ) is full of waffling bleeding heart liberal professional hand ringers who love to pontificate about childrens rights ( looking at you fergus finlay ) but who oppose any reform of the various useless QUANGO,s and state agencys which do nothing but engage in perenial hand ringing when it comes to neglect of children or vulnerable people in general , beit social workers , psychologists or various kinds of care proffesionals , the culture of buck passing is endemic within the irish state and david quinn often shines a light on this

Manach

From the one or two times I've went to his site, I came away fairly supportive. I'd first heard of him when during a college discussion on any future children's rights referendum, as one with whom the lecturer (having a progressive viewpoint) disagreed with but that in his opinion Mr. Quinn could intelligently & well argue the conservation worldview (slightly paraphrasing).

PatricaMcKay

He annoys me, I think he wants to be the Irish version of some American neo-conservative think thank, and frankly we have enough problems.

irishh_bob

PatricaMcKay wrote: »

He annoys me, I think he wants to be the Irish version of some American neo-conservative think thank, and frankly we have enough problems.

neo conservatives dont care about religon in general , a neo conservartive is baschically a neo liberal who believes in going to war , david quinn is a social liberal

Slushfund

Quinn is just ok. He's too soft on the Hierarchy by far. He's does not do enough hard investigative journalism into the real individual culprits behind the cover up scandals, especially the individual bishops and cardinals.

He has asked some interesting questions about the media and other vested interests though ;


e.g.

- How many know that the Cloyne Report itself acknowledges that the church's child-protection guidelines are better than the State's guidelines ? It says that compared with the church's guidelines, the State's are "less precise and more difficult to implement".
- How many people in Ireland know that the clerical abuse scandals peaked in the 1970s and 1980s?
- How many know that of the several hundred allegations received by the church in the last two years, almost none relate to incidents that happened in the last 10 years?
- How many know that a large section of public opinion grossly overestimates the number of child abusers in the priesthood, as a Royal College of Surgeons survey some years ago ascertained?
- How many know that Catholic priests are no more likely to abuse children than comparable groups, which is what 'Newsweek' magazine discovered when it contacted US insurance companies to determine whether they charged a higher risk premium for Catholic priests than for other clergy?

He acknowleges the Vatican deserves to be in the firing line, but rightly says so does the State. But it is not in the firing line to anything like the same extent and Quinn rightly asks Why not?

E.g. When asked whether the HSE and the gardai were "acting in accordance with the Children First guidelines", only 13pc said 'Yes'.

This is why child-protection expert Geoffrey Shannon told RTE's 'Morning Ireland' yesterday that the failure to properly implement Children First has been abject, and it is why he accused the HSE of adopting an "a la carte approach" to the guidelines.

Similarly, the new director for child and family services in the country, Gordon Jeyes, said recently that Ireland doesn't have "a proper child-protection system".

Quinn goes on to state while there has been huge pressure on the church to get its house in order, nothing like the same pressure has been put on the State, even though the State's failure to properly abide by its own guidelines has been abysmal.

Shannon's report is due out some time in the autumn. When it comes out, will there be a press conference presided over by government ministers as there was with the Cloyne Report?

Will RTE broadcast the press conference live? Will its programmes feature one inveterate critic of the HSE after another? Will the first 20 minutes of its news at both 6.01 and 9pm deal with the report as was the case on Wednesday when the Cloyne Report was published?

Will there be a 'Prime Time' special? Will RTE commission several emotionally charged, two-part documentaries cataloguing the circumstances in which some of the 200 children died?

Will HSE employees who abjectly failed to protect children have to resign, or at least be named, as has rightly happened in the case of the church? Will the RTE board ask the station why it gives so much coverage to the church's child-protection failings and so little to the State's failings by comparison?

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/david-quinn-where-is-the-media-frenzy-when-the-state-fails-children-2822335.html

Tim Robbins

He's well read. However, some of his arguments are sophistry. For example, his argument about gays not being allowed to marry is based on the state having to acknowledge the special relationship between a man and a woman because the child's rights to his natural parents are contigent on this. It sounds very fancy but if anyone really believes this is a good argument they should also be against adoption. Which very few are.

He's a psuedo intellectual with bar arguments behind layers of sophistry.

CiaranMT

irishh_bob wrote: »

neo conservatives dont care about religon in general , a neo conservartive is baschically a neo liberal who believes in going to war , david quinn is a social liberal

Social liberal as in socially liberal?

This the same David Quinn? :pac:

irishh_bob

CiaranMT wrote: »

Social liberal as in socially liberal?

This the same David Quinn? :pac:

how could i have possible made that mistake , he is of course a social conservative , i must not forget to take my brain medicine

Manach

Brain medicine - that makes the world seem a different,nicer place, please sign me up

Tim Robbins

irishh_bob wrote:

neo conservatives dont care about religon in general , a neo conservartive is baschically a neo liberal who believes in going to war , david quinn is a social liberal

Neo cons are pretty religious in the states. Where the term originated.

Ash.J.Williams

the "vote for labour vote for abortion" guy?

antiskeptic

Tim Robbins wrote: »

He's well read. However, some of his arguments are sophistry. For example, his argument about gays not being allowed to marry is based on the state having to acknowledge the special relationship between a man and a woman because the child's rights to his natural parents are contigent on this. It sounds very fancy but if anyone really believes this is a good argument they should also be against adoption. Which very few are.

The argument here involves what it is the State thinks it should promote in order to produce a particular desired outcome. In the case of encouraging and supporting marriage between men and women, the State is also supportive of a child's right to be raised by it's biological parents.

In a situation where this can't occur (say the two parents are killed and there is no one else to look after the child), adoption is introduced to look after the child's preferred need for non-institutional care. This aside from any potential to be raised by it's biological parents.

In the case of homosexual marriage, the state is ignoring the child's right to be raised by it's biological parents because in supporting gay marriage it is also encouraging familial units which are structurally unable to fulfill that goal. Indeed, it is actively in encouraging that that goal not be met.

It's one thing the State being forced to take the next-best option (adoption). Quite another to do it when you don't have to do it (gay marriage)

That is the argument. It's neither fancy nor sophistry.

Morbert

antiskeptic wrote: »

The argument here involves what it is the State thinks it should promote in order to produce a particular desired outcome. In the case of encouraging and supporting marriage between men and women, the State is also supportive of a child's right to be raised by it's biological parents.

In a situation where this can't occur (say the two parents are killed and there is no one else to look after the child), adoption is introduced to look after the child's preferred need for non-institutional care. This aside from any potential to be raised by it's biological parents.

In the case of homosexual marriage, the state is ignoring the child's right to be raised by it's biological parents because in supporting gay marriage it is also encouraging familial units which are structurally unable to fulfill that goal. Indeed, it is actively in encouraging that that goal not be met.

It's one thing the State being forced to take the next-best option (adoption). Quite another to do it when you don't have to do it (gay marriage)

That is the argument. It's neither fancy nor sophistry.

The argument assumes any heterosexual familial unit is better at preserving the child's rights than any homosexual familial unit.

The argument is also misapplied. It should be regarding adoption rights, not marriage rights, as people get married for reasons other than adoption rights, and marriage is not the single criteria for adoption rights to be granted.

If it is not sophistry, it is borderline.

antiskeptic

Morbert wrote: »

The argument assumes any heterosexual familial unit is better at preserving the child's rights than any homosexual familial unit.

The childs right in question is a child being raised by it's two biological parents. A homosexual familial unit cannot do this by design.

The argument is also misapplied. It should be regarding adoption rights, not marriage rights, as people get married for reasons other than adoption rights, and marriage is not the single criteria for adoption rights to be granted.

By formerly recognising homosexual familial units, the State opens the way for systematic adoption by gay couples, one of whom is the biological parent of the offspring being adopted by the other partner. If you think that you can enable marriage but draw a line at adoption (where one of the partners in the homosexual unit is the biological parent) then you are, I think, engaging in sophistry.

Consider that the State-element of marriage confers rights and protections on a couple in the context of a unexpressed expectation that the male/female family unit will provide the State with the replacement population it needs. That some people won't be able to have children, that others will choose not to have children at all, doesn't alter the macro-intent behind the States support. So, the question isn't the intent of the couple getting married. It is the intent of the State in their providing the benefits that accrue to a married couple.

Tim Robbins

antiskeptic wrote: »

The argument here involves what it is the State thinks it should promote in order to produce a particular desired outcome. In the case of encouraging and supporting marriage between men and women, the State is also supportive of a child's right to be raised by it's biological parents.

In a situation where this can't occur (say the two parents are killed and there is no one else to look after the child), adoption is introduced to look after the child's preferred need for non-institutional care. This aside from any potential to be raised by it's biological parents.

In the case of homosexual marriage, the state is ignoring the child's right to be raised by it's biological parents because in supporting gay marriage it is also encouraging familial units which are structurally unable to fulfill that goal. Indeed, it is actively in encouraging that that goal not be met.

It's one thing the State being forced to take the next-best option (adoption). Quite another to do it when you don't have to do it (gay marriage)

That is the argument. It's neither fancy nor sophistry.

Good try.

Same logic can be applied to hetrosexual couples who can't conceive. They shouldn't be allowed to get married either because they can't biologically conceive so the same logic must be applied that you apply to gay people who can't conceive.

BTW a gay person doesn't even need to get married and can currently adopt as can any single adult.

I agree marriage should be protected and safeguarded but this can be done in ways which do not treat gay people as second class citizens but enforce the pursuit of a lifelong bond between two adults which treats gay people the same way as hetrosexuals.

The reason why this is sophistry because it is trying to infer something from the rights of the child.
As if people who don't agree with you aren't considering the rights of the child. It fails because if the rights of the child are to be raised by its biological parents then adoption also goes out the window.

Genghiz Cohen

Wait, antiskeptic, you keep saying homosexual marriage harms "a child's right to be raised by it's biological parents".
But, if you think about it, any time a child would be raised by homosexual parents, they would have no chance of being raised by it's biological parents. Whether the child is put up for adoption, or the child is born by artificial insemination or surrogacy, the child will never be raised by both its biological parents.

If the right of the child to be raised by it's biological parents was paramount, such things as adoption and such wouldn't exist.

On another, slightly related point, the right of the child to be raised by it's biological parents is trumped by the right to a healthy happy home, every time. Children are taken away from abusive parents every day and placed in to caring foster homes.

robindch

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

On another, slightly related point, the right of the child to be raised by it's biological parents is trumped by the right to a healthy happy home, every time. Children are taken away from abusive parents every day and placed in to caring foster homes.

The excellent This American Life did an interesting doc on gay marriage and gay parenting a few years back. I'm sure it's still up on their website, though I've no idea which one it is.

A few interesting things came out. Firstly, it's almost impossible in the USA to get funding for research on gay anything, since the conservative factions (a) wish to pretend that their society is as free as possible from gays or the "gay agenda" as Fox News calls it; the less research, the less likelihood that anybody's ever going to hear about it or, even worse, accuse them of funding it; and (b) they're deathly scared that the research will show that there's no downside to gay marriage or gay parenting.

Secondly, of the little research that has been carried out -- budgets scrounged together principally from savings made in other projects -- the results show overwhelmingly that gay marriage, fostering, adoption and parenting have outcomes which are at least as good as those from heterosexual relationships, and frequently, far better.

Any time the topic comes up, I'm reminded of this article on gay fostering + adoption in Ireland and Zach Wahls' Churchillian contribution to the debate in the Iowa legislature on whether gay people should be prevented from marrying each other:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSQQK2Vuf9Q

Iowa's Republican-controlled house ignored the speech and voted 62-37 to prevent the kind of marriage they don't like.

As for Quinn? Well, a man of his education who uses it to develop and propagate opinions like his -- assuming they are his -- the man ought to be ashamed of himself.

Fanny Cradock

robindch wrote: »

A few interesting things came out. Firstly, it's almost impossible in the USA to get funding for research on gay anything, since the conservative factions (a) wish to pretend that their society is as free as possible from gays or the "gay agenda" as Fox News calls it; the less research, the less likelihood that anybody's ever going to hear about it or, even worse, accuse them of funding it;

Have you got a source for this?

robindch

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Have you got a source for this?

As I said, it was on an episode of TAL from some years back -- putting my finger in the air, probably around 2005 or so.

lmaopml

The red tape around adoption needs to be sorted out - but it's more an international problem rather than a home issue..and an endless process of hope and rejection..

There are far too many orphanes world over than parents waiting to adopt them - and most of those are heterosexual couples I would imagine.?

I think it's a non issue at the moment - if a gay man wants to adopt a child than it's more an 'issue' because they have to apply as a 'single' applicant, and prove they are capable etc. and go on the list like everybody else - not 'skip' it.

It's gruelling, the adoption process, it's not a right for anybody to adopt - (sexuality is a non issue here ) - you 'have got' to prove that you are capable, and doing it for the right reasons, and can provide everything for the love, safety and welfare of the child - 'Everybody' is ultimately subject to the same process - although sometimes it delays things, and can be heartbreaking, but maybe that is a good thing too....


- if a gay 'woman' wants to adopt or have a child, than they are physically capable of making a choice and dealing with all the consequences of being artificially inseminated etc etc. and the physical process, but the child is at least one of their biological offspring..

A gay man can't do this..no surprise there....but he should NOT skip the queue either...sad all round.

This is no side story, this is a very real issue.

The rights of the 'parents' and their (sexuality) is grossly undermining the human rights issues of the children only waiting for loving parents to adopt them.

It's a 'human rights' issue from the perspective of the 'child' NOT from the perspective of anybody who claims the 'right' to 'adopt' a child...

The 'rights' are ALL discussed imo from the childs perspective - not the parents rights etc. or even 'would be' parents rights..

themadhair

Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision pretty much ends any argument against same-sex marriage as it relates to children.