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
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Issue 38
06.2015
EDITORIAL
The Equality Agenda
V
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 states 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. •

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