Irish Minister for children appears to be mates with Peter Tatchell

Thanks for that background @ScreamingBeans. Makes sense as to why it can be hard to find info.

The whole thing makes me uneasy.

I watched a clip of PT advising how to quash parents' objections to the model of Sex Ed he promotes (have parents collect their child for each lesson - the removal rate drops to zero. Presumably because parents have commitments such as work, which means they can't collect children each time)

Comments underneath about children needing protection from their bigoted parents.

And from what I can see, any attempt to raise concerns or even, in trendy parlance 'to educate yourself' is being met with shouts of bigotry, homophobia and far right leanings.

And not a peep from the man himself. I would have thought anyone taking their role seriously would have come out immediately to clarify their stance.

What is it about him that makes some people hold him in high regard and not focus on those views he expressed in the letter to the Guardian?

I think it's because the British media feel guilty about him.

When he first came to public attention, it was because he was standing as an MP in Bermondsey. It was one of those classic Labour Party sleight of hand things where they ship in middle class candidates to working class safe seats and ignore the local party's views (are they still doing this?). Tatchell was thoroughly resented by the local labour party because he was foreign (antipodean), very young (27) and they felt he knew nothing about Bermondsey's community (lots of dockers and people in the supply chain around that and the docks were closing). And Tatchell had been imposed on them. When it came out that he was gay as well, homophobia was added to the list and the local party wouldn't work for him.

He was subjected to a torrent of homophobic abuse from the local and national media. After having been a Labour safe seat forever, the liberal party candidate won, ironically it was Simon Hughes who was in the closet at that time and has spoken of his guilt at having won the seat in that way in the interim.

One of the obsessions with "wrong side of history" IMO is that a lot of people in our media were homophobic in the past and feel embarrassed and ashamed of it and are determined not to be on the wrong side again. As social attitudes regarding homosexuality shifted quite quickly and the Bermondsey by-election was reassessed, I think there was a bit of a feeling that this young man whose only crime was to be gay had been monstered by the media and with all their liberal credentials, no one had really stood up for him with any real enthusiasm. I think lots of people now in charge of the media, felt guilty about how their profession had treated him.

It's why they gave him such positive coverage in the years after. I really think they felt he was really hard done by and they don't want to be unjust to him again. So they draw a discreet veil over anything too dubious.

He is confident that he is untouchable.

I had my reservations about his appointment before I saw this.

It's worrying me that very few people seem to be talking about it. And he hasn't made any attempt to respond to it.

I remember Tatchell from his OutRage days speaking up for the " right" of gay men to inflict bodily harm upon each other during sex. It's a long time ago now 1997, but Operation Spanner was a notorious case in it's day.

www.irishtimes.com/news/jailed-sado-masochists-lose-case-in-rights-court-1.44763

The men's sex acts mainly involved genital abuse with hot wax, sandpaper, fish hooks and needles, as well as ritualistic beatings with spiked belts, stinging nettles and a cat o nine tails.
The gay rights group, OutRage, condemned the ruling. Its spokesman, Mr Peter Tatchell, said: "The state has no legitimate business invading the bedrooms of consenting adults and dictating how they should have sex."

Oh bloody hell. Reluctantly place marking

teaandtoast123
Peter Tatchell isn't an MP.

It is absolutely appalling that anyone that has openly expressed these views is still an MP. How is this possible?
And the new Irish Minister for CHILDREN proudly displaying photos of him in his Tweets.

He probably knows a lot about a lot of people.

I never heard of him somehow and I was also a child in the 80’s.

It just seems strange that someone who has written things like that was given the award I linked to. I thought people wouldn't want to obviously support someone like that.

What is it about him that makes some people hold him in high regard and not focus on those views he expressed in the letter to the Guardian?

Peter Tatchell is a Patron of 'Educate & Celebrate' My daughter's school think they're wonderful.

https://www.educateandcelebrate.org/peter-tatchell-patron/

Oh, look at what they've put their name to...

www.educateandcelebrate.org/have-your-say-please-dont-back-pedal-on-gender-recognition-act-reforms/

[quote SuperSleepyBaby]Thanks, I didn’t know much about Tatchell until I read the thread so was just wondering what the view of him was before the article in the Sun

I wonder about this award he got in 2016 (link below) - were his views known about or not regarded as significant?

www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/lgbt-advocate-peter-tatchell-honoured-at-ceremony-in-dublin-1.2799859?mode=amp[/quote]
even I heard about him in the 80s and I was a child back then. His views were well known, he didnt try to hide them back then. Now he does try to distance himself, but it's all still out there. Am very surprised he hasn't bothered to try get it all taken off the internet, unless by doing that would have a Streisand effect?

Sorry for awful grammar. Clearly not writing policies about having my children.

Back in the 80s I was working in the NHS, writing policies and procedures related to AIDS and having my children. I do remember there was a lot of publicity around PT and Garriet Harman's support for PIE. Back then I only read the paper and listened to the radio. It was pretty shocking at the time.

Letter from Tatchell. Apologies if it's already been posted.

also at a later date he can't say he wasn't warned

I wrote to the Minister for Disabilities (not R O'G) last year on an issue. I am still waiting for a reply.....

I am so sorry, yet unsurprised to her that

Welcome to my "through the looking glass" world of batshit insanity

Thanks for at least trying

All you can do is to bring the issue to his attention and see how he responds. The proof of the pudding...
I wrote to the Minister for Disabilities (not R O'G) last year on an issue. I am still waiting for a reply.....

Thanks, I didn’t know much about Tatchell until I read the thread so was just wondering what the view of him was before the article in the Sun

I wonder about this award he got in 2016 (link below) - were his views known about or not regarded as significant?

www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/lgbt-advocate-peter-tatchell-honoured-at-ceremony-in-dublin-1.2799859?mode=amp

PT's views were pretty well known when PIE was set up, which I think was in the 1980s.

Not by everyone they weren't

I had no idea about him in this respect.

I was heavily involved in AIDS activism at the time and, largely due to the influence of gay friends with HIV and AIDS, saw him as a committed AIDS activist and nothing more.

But that means RO'G has had since Nov 2018 to disassociate himself from PT and he hasn't. I would also question how the new Government didn't do a forensic trawl through the SM accounts of its candidates before appointing it's ministers. He is the Minister for Children FFS.

I cannot claim to know what has happend here, however I have dropped the ball in relaiton to many issues simply because of the overwhelming deluge of information and misinformation out there.

I think that much like Asda (and I suspect Tesco) the ground will have been prepared for the Trojan horse to enter the city many moons ago.

RO'G might be someone who has not conducted due dilligence, or it may be the case that he has been falsely reassured or guided by a minion who was part of the ground being prepared before he was in post. This happens a lot.

All you can do is to bring the issue to his attention and see how he responds. The proof of the pudding...

[quote SuperSleepyBaby]The photo of the new Minister and Tatchell is from June 2018 and this article in the Sun about Tatchell is from Nov 2018. Were Tatchell’s views widely know before Nov 2018?

www.thesun.co.uk/news/7706940/gay-rights-activist-children-sex-note/[/quote]
But that means RO'G has had since Nov 2018 to disassociate himself from PT and he hasn't. I would also question how the new Government didn't do a forensic trawl through the SM accounts of its candidates before appointing it's ministers. He is the Minister for Children FFS.

in the UK, Nick Griffin and the BNP were talking about grooming gangs years before the scandal got into the mainstream press. It's unfortunate.

Forces seeking to destabilise societies, generate social division, commit genocide and start wars have used sex crimes and allegations of child sexual abuse and the murder of babies since time immemorial.

The Blood Libel is an important example.

A more recent example is the Nayirah testimony

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

One of the reasons we must all work together to protect children from abuse (apart from the very obvious ones) is that if we stay silent and are deemed complicit we could end up in a very dangerous situation indeed.