Sir, – I refer to Dave Lordan’s letter (July 30th) which claims, on the one hand that the both the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland are “institutionally homophobic”, and on the other that Educate Together and Wicklow VEC are secular alternatives to denominational schools in the Greystones area.
Taking his second point first, both Educate Together and Wicklow are multi-denominational providers of education – that is, they are not secular at all. So a vote for either one of these is definitely not a vote for secular education, as asserted in his letter, but is rather a vote for multi-denominational education. As for the selection by the Minister for Education of the Church of Ireland (rather than Wicklow VEC) as the patron of the new secondary school, the following facts bear out his choice.
There are five well-respected single denominational primary schools in the area, three Catholic and two Church of Ireland, and there are two new multi-denominational primary schools, one Educate Together and one Gaelscoil. Then there is one existing Catholic secondary school in Greystones and one new VEC secondary school in nearby Kilcoole. The share of primary school enrolments, according to the Department. of Education, is as follows: Catholic 71 per cent; Church of Ireland 21 per cent; Educate Together 4.7 per cent; and the Gaelscoil 3.3 per cent.
The selection of the Church of Ireland, to which Mr Lordan objects, as a secondary school patron is not unreasonable given these statistics.
Incidentally, the recently opened Kilcoole secondary VEC school is as near to Mr Lordan’s stated address, as are the Greystones schools. So if he thinks (wrongly but never mind) that a VEC school is secular he need go no further.
The accusation of “institutional homophobia” made against the five single denominational Christian primary schools and the sole Catholic secondary school is hard to stomach. Coretta Scott King, a civil rights activist, said in a 1998 address that “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanise a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.” My wife and I have reared four children in Greystones, all of whom attended the primary schools in the town, and we, and more importantly, they, have never experienced any anti-homosexual bias in the primary schools. We recognise nothing in the above definition as being true of Greystones people and their schools. – Yours, etc,