These new puritans

Regular readers will know I have a particular aversion to the recurrent moral panics to which Irish society is prone. Several drivers can be identified, Radio One’s Liveline show and the tabloid approach to news being the most obvious. But they only succeed in their mission by tapping into something latent in Irish society. It’s something ugly, narrow, reductive, something begrudging and mean.

Which is what? Hmmm!
This is now a broadly secular society in which people, for example Nuala O’Faoláin, can and increasingly do openly assert their agnosticism. Organised religion is much diminished in its pulling power and authority. Yet there is a thriving a la carte, new age kind of religiosity out there too.
Indeed, in many ways old-time religion hasn’t entirely gone away, but has morphed into a range of new secular forms. Of these, the meeja are the most obvious practitioners and advocates, ranging from the stern, high church Puritanism of the Irish Times to the low church fundamentalism of the tabloids.
Some out there have learned the ropes quicker than others, none more so, let it be said, than St. Fergus Finlay, whose dulcet, pious tones are heard so frequently on RTÉ radio (and often, though not always, to good effect).
That we do some things very well is never mentioned. For example, a few weeks ago the European Transport Safety Council commented that Ireland has performed admirably in becoming one of the top ten European countries for road safety. In fact, if they factored in the increase in population, car ownership and driver age profile, we’d seem even better.
But you didn’t see that in headlines, did you? Why? Because it reflects well on us, that’s why. And because the temperance movement wants a reduction in driver alcohol limits to engineer a decrease in alcohol consumption and has co-opted the meeja into the cause. In that scenario, good news is bad news – for those with a prohibitionist agenda.

AN HONEST MISTAKE
Help may be at hand for the nation’s beleaguered drinkers and smokers with the elevation of Brian Cowen to the role of Taoiseach. He’s a man who takes a drink and enjoys a smoke. Even better, in a Hot Press interview, he candidly admitted smoking cannabis as a student – and inhaling. Thank goodness for that. It might even herald a new dawn of realism…
But the notion that, beneath all the secularism and hedonism, some primitive form of religion (though not faith) survives is most clearly vindicated when we consider our attitude to sexual behaviour.
The ruling of the High Court that a lesbian couple with a child is a ‘de facto family’ will have many ramifications, most of them as yet not thought-out. But of course it prompted a chorus of whining from fundamentalists of various hues. To which we can only say: tough.
That development was followed by the acquittal of the 27-year-old Mr K, a Dublin man who had been accused of the sexual assault of a then 13-year-old girl with whom he (at the age of 20) had sex, in Howth, in 2001. He told the court that he thought the girl was “17 going on 18”. In other words, a then 20 year old man thought he was having sex with a 17-year-old woman. There was evidence from others that the girl in question easily passed as much older than she was. She said that she knew exactly what she was doing. The jury accepted his defence that he made an “honest mistake”.
The dogs have scarcely stopped barking since. The lunk-heads in Fine Gael, as well as various children’s rights and rape counselling services, have called for the introduction of an “absolute offence” of having sexual intercourse with a child. They don’t trust juries, do they?
Thankfully, small but important numbers of individuals and organisations are kicking back. Diarmuid Doyle in the Sunday Tribune has argued forcefully and effectively against the knee-jerk curtailment of the honest mistake defence. So too has the Ombudsman for Children, Emily Logan, and the Children at Risk in Ireland Foundation (CARI).
Two simple points underpin their dissent from the current blind ‘moral’ surge. The first is fundamental: that a person is entitled to be presumed innocent until found guilty, that juries are generally perceptive in discharging their responsibilities in this regard, and that the kind of legislation urged by Fine Gael and others would remove this right to due process.
The second is that teenagers are teenagers. They engage in consensual sexual congress. They shouldn’t be criminalised for doing so. At the end of the day, in the real world, people have lives to live. Even where there are the best of intentions, things can go awry. There is such a thing as a genuine mistake. Legitimate fears for adolescents shouldn’t undermine the core, essential principle of justice: innocent until proven guilty.
Leave it to the juries. They’ve done well so far. Why wouldn’t they continue to do so?