http://www.herald.ie/lifestyle/parents/growing-up-with-my-lesbian-parents-1444757.html

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/lsquoi-was-never-picked-on-for-being-the-son-of-lesbians–just-for-having-an-english-accentrsquo-1445345.html

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/relationships/me-and-my-mums-1445343.html

I’m not entirely convinced about all that though. One of the things that hugely worries me is that Taxation and Social Welfare will not be in this bill but separately in a finance bill presented at the budget – this worries me because – the goverment could potentially give something this way but they could just as easily take it away this way.

In a sense what I am trying to say is I do not believe that these proposal amount to “full civil partnership” as proposed by Colley

Neil has blogged (more articulately) here about what I am trying to say

http://www.neilward.ie/?p=20

What annoys me a lot is that ALL of the activist organisations have not tried to engage grassroots, to inform or educate before coming up with their position.

An example of this would be – is the LGBT community aware that the proposed bill will not include taxation and social welfare provisions – is there any group actually trying to inform or educate. Unfortunately in my opinion the answer is no!

Yep the letter in the I/T, from the now adult offspring of a lesbian couple, was great as an exemplar of how politics can be ‘done’ in the public sphere. But why did we like it?

It exemplied that what is needed – in GBLT politics and in wider sexual politics – is a connection with embodied practices and dilemmas about how we can/cannot live our lives as sexual citizens.

While establishing policies on sexuality are all very well (and necessary!), policy and policy-making processes tend to alienate citizens as a matter of course and to often neglect the impact of sexual traditions. I’m not sure that citizens are that “unwelcome” in policy making, but they complicate processes as citizens don’t generally bring a policy-maker’s gaze to bear on issues. Citizens want to tell their stories, dilemmas, etc. Hence, we really like the Irish Times letter as it sheds light, in a partial, but embodied way, on how we want to live. Perhaps the other ‘ferret in the woodshed’ for our generation – at least for men – is the legacy of gender roles in Irish culture, which constrains many people:
(cf. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/newsfeatures/2008/0726/1216917595898.html)

Sexual politics would “do” more for us if we started to acknowledge and work these tensions as a productive way of theorising, but for now we’ve got another instance of don’t ask, don’t tell (or at least do it quietly).