Irish consultation on Referendums on Family, Care and Gender Equality - urgent! Deadline 19 May

Marie am entitled to my opinion as is everyone here and he is not a very nice man..

Hang on, BOOTS52PollyPrissyPants, you said Leo Varadkar 'hates Irish people'. Leo Varadkar is Irish. Full stop. There are many things to criticize him about, but I object to extra digs at him 'not being really Irish', or another one I've seen elsewhere on social media (not attributing it to you at all, to be clear) ' he hasn't a clue about families' - because he's gay. He's an elected politician, let's have a right go at him about his politics, not other aspects of his identity.

People in the South East have been protesting for years to have 24/7 cardiac care as the cath lab hours were 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday and outside those hours patients were transferred to Cork by ambulance resulting in patients dying in the back of ambulances while being transferred.

I've taken part in a number of those protests and when it comes to trauma and cardiac care the quicker treatment is given the better chance of a positive outcome hence the golden hour.

Leo's Waterford grandmother had a heart attack on a Bank Holiday and had to be transferred from Waterford to Cork so her chances of a positive outcome diminished and she died in Cork. This was well reported in local media at the time. He was Taoiseach at the time and Minister for Health before that and didn't give a rat's arse about the people in the South East or anyone visiting the South East, the buck stops with him.

Could someone confirm for me whether this is pretty much the only explicit reference to the word 'woman' in the constitution.

I'm trying to understand why they are so hellbent on changing this - it's not like it will have any actual implications for women day to day. The marriage equality and abortion referendums were for for specific legal changes to be made - but I don't understand why this is being pushed.

The only thing I can come up with is that they want to shore up the concept of 'gender' in the law, including the constitution - which is obviously nonsense.

Thank you 'alittleprivacy' I do not know anybody who knew about this until a long time after.
Also to 'honeyrider' Leo hates Irish people and especially working class people and he is a west brit tory. He should be in jail for what he has done with his leaking documents in the past but he has friends in high places.

What did he allow happen?

Leo doesn't even hide his hatred of women. I don't know how his maternal family tolerated him at his grandmother's funeral after what he allowed to happen.

The dishonesty of comparing discrimination on the grounds of any of the other things to that based on sex is so dishonest. Disability is rooted in medical / physical issues and money well spent will enable people with disabilities to function to their full potential. We have a long way to go on that - as with everything, capital expenditure is easy, paying people is the challenge. The problem for disabled people is less social discrimination that the government failing to put money where its mouth is.

All the other things are spectrums and socially constructed - including race, though race defined around skin colour, or race defined as being a Traveller, are certainly still areas where the intolerant can make life hard for people.

But sex is sex is sex. Not a spectrum, not something anyone can opt out of, and a world where 'male' is seen as synonymous with 'human', and women as varying from the norm throws up many problems. Disabled, working class, same-sex attracted, Traveller, minority race women have an extra challenge compared withd, w-c, s s-a, T, m r men, because of their sex. Indeed, d, w-c, s s-a, T, m r men may be among the people putting obstacles in their way because they are women.

And so it has been for centuries. God, Varadkar hates women, doesn't he?

Not quite right. The marriage referendum had absolutely nothing to do with trans but when they legislated for same sex marriage, they also legislated for legal self-id of sex. So they used a massively popular piece of legislation as cover to sneak in self-ID.

Sorry for not giving a source for the quotation from An Taoiseach, the current one, Leo Varadkar. (I have a sneaking suspicion that Tánaiste Micheál Martin knows that this gender mullarky is baseless, and wouid say so if he thought there were votes in it.). Here it is; I'm pretty sure the statement was made on 6th December, but I don't know whether it was in a speech or a statement.
https://www.thejournal.ie/women-in-the-home-referendum-9-6240724-Dec2023/

I too was hoping that somebody with influence and a legal/constitutional background would pick up on the Taoiseach's suggestion that, alone amongst the Protected Characteristics in Irish equality legislation, sex-based rights would downgrade all the other rights.
It's reminiscent of David Lammy accusing women of 'hoarding' rights.

Thinking about it, the change in the law happened when Katherine Zappone was still riding high, didn't it? Utterly toxic individual. Speaking of despising the lower orders, women and men.

That is such a shocking statement. I didn't see it the last time you posted it - was it challenged at the time? I take it this was Taoiseach Leo not Taoiseach Micheal (not because I think M is sounder on women's rights, but I think he might be a too cute to say it out loud).

Despising women has always been an acceptable fallback position in Irish 'public leadership', but abolishing us for all legal purposes has taken it to a whole new level. Pity they chose Albert instead of Mary O'Rourke all those years ago. Though maybe not for Northern Ireland.

I posted this quotation from the Taoiseach on Craicnet a while ago:

“All citizens are equal before the law, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, social class or anything else and we believe that by elevating any particular category, for example, that of sex-based discrimination, it could unwittingly downgrade others, such as those relating to disability, race or ethnicity for example,” (my underlining)

Sex-based discrimination was written out of Irish legislation when the word 'sex', which was clearly defined, was replaced by 'gender', which they never got around to defining, and which includes self ID.
Sex-based discrimination was not just downgraded, but entirely removed from equality legislation.
So giving women the same legal protection as other groups is seen as 'downgrading' other rights.. but there's only one group whose rights would be 'downgraded' by sex-based equality legislation, isn't there?!

This is just for them to include the trans element in there.
Am I also correct in saying that for the marriage referendum they snuck in the trans element that anyone could change their gender?

Email sent.

Thanks for sharing, have sent email

My thinking is they are going to hold the referendum anyway - there won't be enough opposition submissions not to, particularly with the lack of awareness around the deadline.
By objecting, it will be on record and they'll have to debate in public which hopefully will lead to it not being passed.
Maybe wishful thinking!

Sorry meant to quotes Annasgirl there re sending to my gc friends!

I have done this also

But if they hold the referendum and they lose because they've been forced to explain themselves contrary to the advice in Denton's, isn't that better for everyone?

I also used this wording and I forwarded the email to
all of my GC friends and urged them to resend. Perhaps we could all do this? We have an hour left.

If there is a referendum, I think it'll be very interesting - the era of no debate, which was their most successful tactic - ended by their own hubris.

What I would like to see them explain is why gender equality is constitutionally relevant but sex equality isn't.

Maybe post a link to this on
Craicnet?

Thank you very much for highlighting this,

I have just sent a version of SealHouse's wording.

I've objected.