A Farewell to Innocence

The Children and Family Relationships Bill, currently before the Oireachtas, is probably the most heinous bill ever presented for the consideration of our legislators in that it proposes measures that will undermine the innocence of the most vulnerable of children.

Although some of those who oppose it accept that it may have some beneficial provisions, the bill proposes to deliberately deprive children of either a mother or a father. That is so iniquitous that, regardless of any good the bill might contain, it is still an abomination.

The deprivation of either a mother or a father will become the norm when Adoption Authority employees, and those of accredited agencies, who can’t in conscience provide the kind of “service” that is required by the new law eventually get squeezed out of their posts. Thus decisions on adoptions will be left to the type of creep that doesn’t see anything wrong with, and proactively promotes, intentionally denying to a child either a mother or a father.

And where are those who sanctimoniously claimed to care for children when such statements gave them an excuse to attack the Catholic Church? Enda Kenny and Alan Shatter, for example, are supporting and pushing this bill. It was Shatter who introduced its first draft.

Do they no longer care for the most vulnerable of children, those who for whatever reason have lost their natural parents, and are now in need of adoption? These same children may soon be deliberately deprived of either a mother or a father, thus perpetuating their vulnerability throughout their childhood, and affecting their whole lives.

And if the bill itself is destructive, that is greatly accentuated by its context.

To begin with, on several occasions since the end of 2013, prominent members of the government have stated that legislation permitting adoption by homosexual pairs would be enacted before the referendum on the redefinition of marriage – explicitly in order to prevent adoption of children from being an issue in the referendum.

So the government is rushing a bill through the Oireachtas to influence the outcome of a referendum. Whether or not it is legal to do so, to enact legislation for the purpose of prejudicing referendum results certainly undermines democracy, and is a mark of the utter disdain with which this government treats the population.

Furthermore, now that the child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church have played themselves out and run their course, the paedophile lobby – in abeyance for several decades – is being resurrected. Yes, soon paedophobes will be as unacceptable in fashionable intellectual circles as homophobes and islamophobes are today.

It might be too much to expect of the geniuses in government and the media to foresee that the convergence of these facts – this bill and the revival of the paedophile lobby – could have consequences before which even the worst of our legislators might recoil.

Last May the Ombudsman for Children provided advice on the Children and Family Relationships bill in a revealing document, favouring every element of the bill (perhaps it would be naive to expect otherwise, as the office is an arm of, and dependent on, the State).

The section on adoption begins with the perfunctory claim that it is all about the rights of children. But this is as deceitful as when the same claim comes out of the mouth of a politician who supports the “rights” of people, based on their sexual orientation or marital status, to adopt children.

It becomes clear further on in the same document that it is about the rights of adults, not children. Quoting a House of Lords (UK) judgement on the issue, it claimed that to prevent unmarried couples from adopting would be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. The judgement in turn relies on the very tenuous basis that being unmarried is a status, and you can’t discriminate against anyone based on their “status”.

Really? Well everyone has either the status of being married or the status of being unmarried. Does that mean that everybody has the “right” to adopt children?

Legislation such as this will have a profound effect on the social, cultural and moral life of Irish society long into the future. But, as usual we can expect it to go through the Oireachtas without any public debate, and even without the public being properly informed about it.

The few noble exceptions in the Oireachtas who oppose the bill will be treated with scorn by their colleagues and all but silenced by the media.

Government parties, opposition parties, the civil servants involved, the Ombudsman for Children along with other quangos, NGOs and lobby groups, and almost the entire media close ranks on the issue and shut down any possibility of real debate.

This will have more dire consequences for the future of Ireland than even the worst of economic policies, although the latter will be discussed endlessly in the public forum.

Those who promote this abomination, those who vote for it – that is the deliberate and systematic denial to future generations of vulnerable children of either a mother or a father – are inviting the wrath of God on themselves and on the whole country.

But the punishment is unlikely to be swift. The Dáil probably won’t be swallowed up by the earth on the day the bill is enacted. Nor is a tsunami likely. The more usual, more probable and more severe punishment will be that we suffer the consequences of the legislation itself. And that could take some time to happen.

It is a pity that those in government don’t undertake to accept moral and legal responsibility for the consequences of the laws they enact. But then, those who vote for evil laws are unlikely to give much heed to the concept of moral responsibility, and they can expect to be safely dead from old age by the time the legal consequences are fully manifest.

At the very least those who vote for the Children and Family Relationships bill will have earned for themselves the undying contempt of posterity, and especially of those whose innocence will have been shattered by their malevolent actions.

Future generations will have to live with the fruit of what is being planted by our present government. We can’t foresee or calculate all of the consequences, but for certain society will have to endure the vengeance of those whom it abandoned as children to the selfish whims of adults.

When it comes to elections and referenda, we should always keep in mind that the moral law is superior to, and has far more serious repercussions than, any worldly considerations about the economy, political correctness or – the big preoccupation of our current leaders – what people on foreign shores will think of us.