Unmarried fathers will lose all access rights to offspring if a recent High Court judgments stands, writes JOHN WATERS.
A SHORT month ago there was immense media interest in the judgment in a case in which a gay man sought custody and access rights in respect of his child, born following a "sperm donor" agreement between him and a lesbian couple. The man's application was denied.
Last week, there was another development, when costs were awarded against the applicant, but the media showed no interest at all.
This provides further proof, if such were required, that media nowadays are interested in neither facts nor justice - all that matters is the promotion of fashionable causes. This case was "newsworthy" because it advanced the objective of lesbian parenting.
The profound implications for father and child - not to mention society in general - were glossed over. This case illustrates rather better than usual that we no longer have news organisations, but machines of social agitation driven by a neurotic and aggressive ideology employing certain social issues as battering rams to demolish existing norms and instal extremist solutions at the centre of reality.
Normally, in pursuing its agendas, the media affects a concern for the marginalised, the dispossessed and the rejected, suggesting its interest in gay rights, for example, is motivated by a desire for a more "tolerant" and "compassionate" society. But the man in this case is gay and yet cannot call on the support or interest of the media.
Why? Because all this talk about tolerance is just talk. What is useful about the gay issue is that it makes an excellent battering ram. Individual gay people are of no consequence. All that matters is the furtherance of the demolition agenda.
Since costs in this case will likely exceed €400,000, last week's decision will probably result in this man being bankrupted, losing his home and having to begin again in middle age, cast out of the life of his son unless the triumphant lesbian couple decide otherwise.
Consider this in the light of the oft-repeated assertions by figures of authority and influence that fathers must face their responsibilities.
Here was a father who faced his responsibilities with courage and determination, and as a result faces financial ruin.
Of course, such rhetoric is not to be taken literally, but as evidence of the dysfunction of a society which has ceased to perceive things in the light of justice but understands only victimologies arising from the ideology of demolition.
Our central ethical system hinges not on right, or good, but on the inverted meritocracy created by the ideology. This pursues its logic by means of an unacknowledged point system, in which PC ratings are extended to categories of designated victim. Thus, the ideology can be identified in terms of iron laws of omnipotent victimhood.
Victims in this context are defined not so much by their objective circumstances as by the identity of their alleged "oppressor". Any kind of female victim trumps any kind of male.
Females can only become oppressors if their victims are lower down the chain. A black lesbian disabled Traveller would have an almost 100 per cent victim rating. A straight, white, middle-class male close to a zero rating. And so forth. The man in this case may be gay - normally a strong card - but his gayness is a weak trump against the all-powerful claim of two lesbians seeking to force through a new norm.
This unacknowledged rating system decides in advance the outcome of most critical discussions, because only the brave will dare to confront its logic. Thus, only groups with the full backing of the ideology's defenders have any hope of being listened to. For example, although the denial of human rights to single fathers has been in the ether for more than a decade, every significant move is to make things worse.
Because politicians run scared of any reforms which might risk the disfavour of the ideology, politics has become socially irrelevant, and social change is mainly brought about not by those employed for this purpose but by judges acting in cases taken by individual citizens at enormous risk to themselves. And even when citizens are forced into the role which should properly be undertaken by legislators, they are punished for failure in a manner indistinguishable from deliberate deterrence.
Much rides, then, on the resolve and pocket of the man at the centre of this so-called "sperm donor" case. If the High Court judgment stands, in my view all unmarried fathers must accept that their entitlement to a relationship with their children is to be set at zero and that henceforth any such relationships will exist purely on a provisional basis, by the grace and favour of mothers.
The resources of one father now stand between us and the end of any absolute sense of fatherhood. The man has about nine working days to lodge notice of an appeal to the Supreme Court, with all the risks this implies. For his own sake, for his son's sake, for the sake of justice and the continuation of human society in Ireland, I hope he can find the courage and resources to do what he should not have to do.