The Equality Agenda - Village Magazine

June 2015 3

Online

www.villagemagazine.ie

@VillageMagIRE

Village Magazine promotes in its

columns the fair distribution of

resources, welfare, respect and

opportunity by the analysis and

investigation of inequalities,

unsustainable development

and corruption, and the media’s

role in their perpetuation; and

by acute cultural analysis.

Editor

Michael Smith

editor@villagemagazine.ie

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+353 1 873 5824

Art Director

Allister O’Brien

Editorial Board

Niall Crowley, Joan Fitzpatrick

Bride Rosney, Michael Smith

Contributing Editors

Niall Crowley, John Gormley

Printers

Boylans, Drogheda, Co Louth

Village is published by:

Ormond Quay Publishing

6 Ormond Quay Upper, Dublin 7

sales@villagemagazine.ie

Issue 38

06.2015

EDITORIAL

The Equality Agenda

ILLAGE champions equality: equality of outcome

It was pleased to see gay people advance one step

towards a particular equality with straight

people, obtaining the equal right to marriage.

Ideally Village would take that equality further and

extend it not just to the family based on marriage, gay

or straignt, but to all families. That seems

fundamental.

Indeed, though people must make whatever private

domestic arrangements best suit their circumstances,

Village does not favour special state support for mar-

ried people (as opposed to for children). There is no

reason to favour families by taxation for example, espe-

cially if all they represent is a union based on love, as

opposed to a commitment to open a baby-making

factor y.

The real issues that needed addressing are the

stresses that are placed on young people between the

ages of , when, on average, gay people realise they

are gay, and  when, on average, they ‘come out’. Anti-

bullying campaigns and civic education are a crucial

part of this. Certainly the juggernaut that drove the Yes

campaign will have helped generate discussions and an

aura around homosexuality that can only help to

undermine such stresses. Important too is to inculcate

in parents the importance of making it clear to their

children, as a component of the love all parents feel for

them, that they are as worthy and as loved whether

they are gay or straight. Particular eﬀorts should also

be put into campaigns to eliminate prejudice against

lesbians and trans people.

For Village the campaign often seemed intolerant. Of

course it is good to be intolerant of intolerance. But it is

a respectable, if – for this magazine – unattractive com-

ponent of many religions, including Catholicism, to

elevate the roles of the family, of children and of pro-

creation and to denigrate sex without marriage.

Nevertheless, civilisation does not require that Catholi-

cism immediately surrender the integral ediﬁce of

Thomistic thinking that underpins it and move on an

onward journey via tolerant Anglicanism to an admira-

ble liberalism and onward to equality (of outcome,

mind).

No. Religion may be wrong-headed but democracy

requires it be tolerated. It was wrong for many liberals

to impute homophobia as the driving motivation of the

likes of the Iona Institute. Indeed it was suﬀocating to

see that the Catholic Church seemed so fearful of

defending its traditional Aristotelian, teleological view

of Nature.

In many ways indeed it seems the old societal cer-

tainties of Catholicism have been replaced with more

practical though none the more compassionate certain-

ties of Anti-Catholicism.

The most important egalitarian imperative is to

ensure that every child at two years of age has the pros-

pect of being anything he or she wants to be. It is

important that excellent education is available for all to

compensate for, and help eliminate, the unfairnesses of

background. Childhood deprivation and unequal

opportunities should be eliminated as a priority by any

regime for which this magazine would have any

respect. Yet it is the priority for none of our political

parties.

Beyond this, Village believes that every policy and

every institution should be assessed (‘equality-

proofed’) for the extent to which it contributes to

equality. The state’s principal role is to provide for

equal quality of life for all of its citizens (and through

sustainable development for that of future

generations).

The best method for evaluating equality is the Gini

coeﬃcient and it is shocking that so little is heard about

it in the discourse in , even from the parties of the

Left. If Labour could point to year-on-year improve-

ments in the Gini coeﬃcient during its periods in

government, there might be a reason to vote for it.

Equality-prooﬁng would be useful for any policy: for

example the national development plan, departmental

strategies and policies, local authority development

plans, and all town and country planning decisions

should be assessed for their impact on equality of out-

come; and if they do not conduce to it , they should be

changed.

Institutions from the Trade Unions to Nama to Sinn

Féin could usefully subject their policies and actions to

a rigorous scrutiny as to what they tend to achieve for

equality, as registered by the Gini coeﬃcient.

Finally. of course there must be practical application

of abstract theories of equality. Certain spheres must

be priorities. Any sector that has been discriminated

against deserves measures to protect it against preju-

dice and indeed positive discrimination to reverse the

prejudices of the ages. It is exciting to live in an age

when so much progress has been made on women’s

rights, the rights of ethnic minorities and in rights for

gay people. But there remains a slate of actions to right

historical wrongs for these and other sectors.

For Village the most important sectors for attention

are those that get it the least. The rights of Travellers,

of people with disabilities, of asylum seekers, of trans,

of fathers, the standard of living of the working poor

and the unemployed, and the rights of future genera-

tions faced with climate change and species collapse.

Because it converges on, though never meets, a great

human goal the agenda of equality of outcome is a com-

prehensive one. Sadly the recent economic displosion

and oncoming environmental cataclysm should have

catalysed a radical shift towards more egalitarianism,

and ultimately towards equality. Stringency, education,

compassion, imagination and rat cunning are neces-

sary virtues in its promotion, overt and otherwise. •