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My speech to the Constitutional Convention on Marriage Equality

04 13 13'

Written by Conor Pendergrast

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Here’s my speech to the Constitutional Convention on 13th April 2013:

My name is Conor Pendergrast. I’d like to talk to you briefly about my family. There’s me, my brother Daragh and our two mums Ann and Bernadette.
My brother and I were both born in London. In 1995, our family moved to Ireland, where we lived in Co. Kildare. We settled in and made a life here.
Both my brother and I have been through primary and secondary school here, and I’ve gone on to university, where I studied an undergraduate and master’s degree in psychology.
Daragh has since moved to New Zealand to work and study there, where our remaining grandparents live, along with cousins, aunt and uncle.
We are a family, like any other. We love and support each other.
What differentiates us, though, is how we are treated by the Irish State. Unlike other families, we don’t have the legal protection of being a fully-recognised family.
What this means in reality is that I only have a legal relationship to my mum who gave birth to me. My other mum is a stranger to me in the eyes of the law.
When I was little she couldn’t give legal consent to anything on my behalf.
Although we were blissfully unaware of it, that left me and my brother in a legal vacuum, with less rights and protections than other children.
I don’t want to face a future when my mum is older, where the caring shoe is on the other foot, where I am not recognised as her son, as her legal next of kin.
I’m lucky enough to now be engaged myself, which for me is obviously wonderful, but is still a little bitter-sweet.
I’ve been with my girlfriend for 6 years, but my parents have been together for 32 or so.
Yet, they can’t have their love recognised through marriage, but I can.
That’s what marriage is for really: Recognising love.
My parents having the opportunity to get married doesn’t devalue my relationship, it strengthens it.
By getting marriage equality discussed on a public, national platform in Ireland, you’re going to help to protect and respect families like mine.
I thank you for the opportunity to share my story in-person.
For my parents, my family, my friends and all of the other lesbian and gay people in Ireland, I am asking you to recommend to the Government to provide for ‘same-sex marriage’.
Thank you

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Same-Sex/ LGBT stuff

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My submission on marriage equality for the Constitutional Convention

03 25 13'

Written by Conor Pendergrast

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I submitted the following to the Constitutional Convention. Hope everyone else wrote in with something.

My name is Conor Pendergrast and thanks for your time. I’d like to talk to you briefly about my family (Ann Pendergrast, Bernadette Manning, Daragh Pendergrast-Manning and myself). As a young man, raised by two mothers, it’s a pleasure to share my experience of growing up with same-sex parents with the constitutional convention. I was born in London in 1986, with my brother also being born there in 1989. In 1995, we moved to Ireland, where we lived in Co. Kildare. We settled in and made a life here. Both my brother and I have been through primary and secondary school here, and I’ve gone on to university. Daragh has moved to New Zealand now to work and study there, where we have more family.

We’ve had cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, fish, horses, ponies and other pets, all part of our family. We are a family, like any other. We love and support each other. What differentiates us, though, is how we are treated by the Irish State. Unlike other families, we don’t have the legal protection of being a fully-recognised family. While the Civil Partnership Act went some way to improving this, there are still 160-odd differences between civil partnership and marriage. That’s 160 ways in which our family is considered less legitimate by the State. That’s 160 ways in which our family is vulnerable.

By getting marriage equality discussed on a public, national platform in Ireland, you’re going to help to protect and respect families like mine. I would really welcome the opportunity to share my story in-person and to answer any questions you might have about growing up in a family with same-sex parents.

Thank you again for your time in reading this. I hope that you see that we need to put the issue of marriage equality to a referendum and let the Irish people decide for themselves whether or not they support marriage equality.

Conor Pendergrast

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What do we do about the people shooting up behind our apartment?

07 24 12'

Written by Conor Pendergrast

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Here’s a weird question. There are people who shoot up down the alley that’s behind our apartment. It’s an alley that’s off an alley, which means it’s pretty hidden alright. So, yesterday for example, 5 people shot up in the evening. Calling the Gardaí doesn’t really do anything, and shouting at them has very little impact (usually we just remind them to take their stuff with them. So, in the spirit of Dublin City Council Beta Projects what do you think could be done with this space to discourage people from shooting up there? Here’s a few of my own ideas, what do you think?

  • Re-paint the walls with something cute and funny
  • Use an Arduino board to Rickroll them
  • Put a walkie-talkie on the wall so that we can chat to them

 

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Misc.

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Marriage is just a label

07 12 12'

Written by Conor Pendergrast

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Another Quinn-ism that is oft repeated (by himself and other opponents of same-sex marriage) is the notion of marriage being the best place for children. There’s a couple of faults in the logic here, which I’ll take in turn.

  1. Marriage isn’t just for breeding - People don’t get married to have children – they get married as part of  relationship. Marriage is about love and stating (most of the time within the sight of friends and family) that there is a long-term commitment there. You don’t need children to have a marriage and you don’t need to be planning to have children to get married.
  2. Breeding isn’t just in marriage – People don’t have to be married to have children – this can happen both in and out of a marriage.
  3. Long-term, committed and loving relationships are the best environments to raise children – There’s no argument from me around that. That’s a simple notion.
  4. Marriage is just a label – The real fallacy that opponents of same-sex marriage commit, though, is confusing marriage with something magical. Marriage is a label and a social and legal institution to recognise long-term relationships. It’s not pixie dust that is sprinkled on people when they get hitched, that suddenly makes them good parents. Married people can be good parents because they are in long-term, committed and loving relationships, not because they are married. It’s an incredibly strange notion, which I also have difficulty understanding.

So, here’s the point that’s being missed:

Same-sex couples can also be in long-term, committed and loving relationships, which are the ideal environment for raising children.

Making sense?

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Same-Sex/ LGBT stuff

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I don’t understand ‘sexual complimentarity’

07 10 12'

Written by Conor Pendergrast

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I have a confession: I don’t have a clue what ‘sexual complimentarity’ is. I honestly don’t. I was listening to Ivana Bacik and David Quinn discussing same-sex marriage this morning on ‘Today with Pat Kenny‘ on RTÉ Radio 1 yesterday morning and Quinn said the phrase, frequently and, as far as I’m aware without actually explaining it. I don’t understand it. Neither can I recall hearing it in the 5 or so years I spent studying psychology in university. It seems, in my mind, to be a weird and somewhat archaic phrase, that states that men need women and women need men – that one gender cannot function without the other. This seems unbelievably simplistic and built on stereotyped gender roles, ones which I would hope that we’re moving away from. There are, obviously, some biological tasks (such as, well, pregnancy) which do necessitate a specific gender, but I think Quinn is selling both genders short. What things can a man do that a woman cannot? What things can a woman do that a man cannot? Beyond infancy, I really can’t think of something that a same-sex couple could not do equally well as an opposite-sex couple.

Quinn also made the incredible bizarre attempt to conflate the topic of gender quotas with parenthood, as if they were the same notion, by suggesting that Bacik was being a hypocrite by supporting gender quotas in politics while also trying to get marriage recognition for same-sex couples. How Quinn missed the lack of logic is beyond me: Gender quotas are being suggested because women are drastically under-represented in politics (and they’re usually only suggested as a short-term method, until a more representative level is reached). I’m still baffled by the comparison.

Anyway, if you have a comment, leave it below. Next time, I’ll be talking about another amazing Quinn Quote: “Do we want to keep marriage as primarily a child-rearing institution” (Well, I might talk about it, or maybe not)

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Installing ThinkUp App on Blacknight

11 18 11'

Written by Conor Pendergrast

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I’m a big fan of Blacknight for hosting and domains (not so much for mail in the last while, but they’ve making big changes to make it more reliable – it’s also free with the shared hosting packages). I’m also a big fan of the TWiT network and TWiG (This Week in Google) in particular. So, having held off for a while on starting to use Gina Trapani‘s rather brilliant looking ThinkUp App (which lets you aggregate your social activity in a database that you control) I was pleased to see it hit version 1.0 on Thursday.  Having head about it on three shows, I took the plunge (actually, I tried to install it on my Mac first, but gave up after realising that would be difficult and silly). I’ve used my Minimus hosting package to host the application on Blacknight, which is a damn cheap way to do it. So, here’s the actual process in short form. If you need more help with more specific steps, just give me a shout (I really wish I’d recorded the install process now). It takes only the tiniest bit of know-how, so you should be fine really.

The steps are:

  • Create a new domain/ subdomain
  • Set up FTP and a database
  • Transfer the files
  • Set up the ThinkUp app

Before you begin, a disclaimer: I am not liable for anything breaking in this process. I did this twice using Blacknight and it worked fine both times. Back up the data on your web servers before you do this – don’t regret it later if something goes wrong. Please, if you see a mistake let me know in the comments below.

With a Blacknight hosting package, log in to the control panel.

  1. You need to use a web space, so either use a new domain or a subdomain (I went for a subdomain). Let’s pretend you’re creating thinkupapp.janesblog.com – Hit ‘Add New Subdomain’ from the ‘Sites & Domains’ part of ‘Web Hosting’. Enter your subdomain (thinkupapp), then select your domain (janesblog.com). From ‘Hosting’, select ‘Website (Apache)’. When the page does a quick refresh, check that the subscription is correct, then click ‘Next’ (you don’t need mail hosting). Change the radio button to select ‘Create a new webspace’, unless you have a spare webspace, in which case be very, very careful that you don’t over-write what’s already there! Click ‘Next’. Check that you’ve selected the correct subscription and click ‘Next’. On the next page, select ‘Run as an Apache module’ under ‘PHP5 support’ then click ‘Next’, then ‘Next’, then ‘Finish’. Your domain/ subdomain will now wirr away syncing for a little bit, once it’s finished move on to the next step.
  2. On the left-hand side on the ‘Web Hosting’ page, click ‘Web Space’, then click ‘Webspaces in the sub-menu that appears. Find your domain/ subdomain, then click ‘Select’. On the left-hand menu, click ‘FTP Access’. Enter a new FTP login name and either generate a new password, or use an existing one, then click next. Click on ‘FTP Access’ on the left-hand side again and you’ll see the details for your FTP access appear. Note the FTP server and document root, as well as keeping your login name and password.
  3. Look back on the left-hand side of the panel and click ‘Databases’. Click ‘Add New Database’ and make sure ‘MySQL (MySQL5 Database)’ is selected, then click ‘Next’. Type in a database name (leave the ‘External Hosts’ button unticked) then type in a username and password. Note all of this information, including the d******_ and u*******_ parts of the username and database name, then press ‘Next’ then ‘Finish’.
  4. That’s the hard parts done (more or less). Download the latest version of the ThinkUp app and unzip it. Now, open up your favourite FTP client (I use Filezilla). In ‘Host’, use the ‘FTP Server’ you noted earlier and port 21, selecting ‘Normal’ authentication and using the FTP login name and password that you created earlier. Click in to ‘webspace’, then ‘httpdocs’. If you’re using Filezilla, find the directory you extracted the ‘thinkup’ folder in to, then drag it over to the web space, so that the ‘thinkup’ directory is transferred. Go grab a beer, or something, then come back when it’s done.
  5. Now, use your favourite browser to go to your subdomain.TLD/thinkup, e.g.: http://thinkupapp.janesblog.com/thinkup If you’re process went like mien, here you’ll get an error about incorrect folder permissions. There are instructions on that page that describe what to do, but in case you can’t tell, what I did was open up Terminal on my Mac and type FTP (there’s probably a way of doing this via FileZilla, but it hasn’t worked great for me before with changing folder permissions). At the FTP prompt, type open then your FTP server, then type in your FTP username, press return and enter your password. Type ls to list the files and folders in your directory, then type cd webspace and press return, then cd httpdocs and return, then cd thinkup and return, then cd _lib (there’s a space between ‘cd’ and the underscore) and return, then finally cd view. Now, type in chmod 777 compiled_view and press return. This sets permissions for this directory (folder). Now, go back to your browser and refresh the page. This should bring you to a page with a link to install ThinkUp – click that link.
  6. Now, enter a name, username and password for the ThinkUp app and choose your time zone. Enter your ‘Database Host’, which for Blacknight is your database’s ‘Internal hostname’ – probably something.cp.blacknight.com and the database name, username and password that you created earlier. Again, you’ll probably get an error here saying ‘ThinkUp couldn’t write the config.inc.php file.’. So, take the chunk of text in the box and paste it into TextEdit. Save this file as a plan text file on your desktop as ‘config.inc.php’. Open FireZilla again, connect to your FTP access for ThinkUp and click on ‘webspace’, then ‘httpdocs’, then ‘thinkup’. Transfer the file you just created to this directory, then go back to your web browser and press ‘Next Step’. Boom – you’re done! Check for your activation email, click the link in there and sign in. You gave ThinkUp running! That’s the hard work done.

The rest of the process (of setting up the Twitter, Google+ and Facebook APIs) is very well-documented, so I won’t bother going in to that.

So, there we go – the ThinkUp app on Blacknight, in no time at all. Feel free to spread this information around and re-write it, so long as you clearly attribute it to me by name and with a link to this blog post.

You’ll find me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. I’ll be posting more stuff in future, more tech stuff hopefully, like that map of free Wifi hotspots in Dublin from two years ago that really needs to be updated.

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Celebrating Death

10 21 11'

Written by Conor Pendergrast

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The notion that images of  a dead guy will be appearing on the front page of newspapers around the world today sickens me. It doesn’t matter who someone is, or what they did, celebrating death is pathetic and sickening. Remember how there were images of celebration after the September the 11th attacks? Remember how sick that made you feel? Well, celebrating the death of one person is just as horrific. How have we not progressed from “horrid, medieval behaviour” (A quote from Sharon)? How are we still joyous when someone is killed, regardless of who they are?

 

Fuck, I worry sometimes.

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Media, Misc.

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Dead Tree Bookstore

10 15 11'

Written by Conor Pendergrast

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I was in a dead-tree bookstore today and noticed two things: First, practically all of the shelves were labelled “Bargain”, which immediately turned me off the contents of pretty much 90% of the shop. “Bargain” to me doesn’t scream “Good value”, it screams “Out-of-date content”. I got the feeling, looking at the books, that a lot of the information that they contained would be irrelevant. I saw an iPhone development book for dummies in there, which I presume (given that iOS5 and iPhone 4S are only just out) is at least one generation behind the times. I was hoping to pick up a few books for work (mostly about SharePoint Online 2010), but looking at the shelves I just thought “I’m not gonna find anything relevant or useful at all”.

The other thing I noticed happened when I was reading a recommendation for ‘Freakonomics‘, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. I happen to really like that book and agreed with the recommendation. I wanted a ‘Like’ button, or a ‘+1′ button, so that I could agree with it! Ah, alas the meatspace is not as interactive as digital space. (Here’s a free recommendation: go and enjoy the Freakonomics podcast, it’s really good and one of my favourites).

Anyway, in the end we had a €5 off voucher for purchases over €25, so we got a few things and I got ‘What Would Google Do‘ by Jeff Jarvis. I’ve started his newer book, ‘Public Parts‘ and, while I don’t really agree with everything he has to say, it’s good so far.

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Misc., Personal

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The Civil Partnership Bill: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Gay Marriage

07 03 11'

Written by Conor Pendergrast

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A friend of mine, Gavin Carton, has produced a short documentary about the gay marriage/ civil partnership debate. It includes interviews with Brian Finnegan (editor of Gay Community News), Senator David Norris (2011 Irish presidential candidate), Max Krzyzanowski (LGBT Noise spokesperson) and two delightful and wonderful women: Bernadette Manning and Ann Pendergrast. Oh, those two! I know them. They’re my mums. Here’s the documentary, in two parts, embedded below:

 

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The End Wasn’t Really Nigh After All

05 22 11'

Written by Conor Pendergrast

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As many people will have noticed, in spite of the media hype surrounding FamilyRadio.com’s prediction of Judgement Day, no such thing seems to have happened. It’s just another day with a total lack of surprise about nothing happening. There were jokes aplenty on Twitter and Facebook and some great examples of people jumping on the post-rapture clothes pile meme (Check out this one for example). Chatting about it in the pub on Saturday night, a few different ideas came up. The first was that the idea of the Rapture or Judgement Day isn’t actually much more different or less, well, stupid than the vast majority of the central tenants of other religions. The idea of a virgin birth, eating the literal flesh of Christ in Communion, the creation of the universe 6,000 or 10,000 years ago, a great flood and that bloke Noah with the boat that picked up two of every animal (after killing one of every “clean” animal in a sacrifice, planting a vineyard and getting drunk and naked. Oh and Noah was 500 years old), or the story of Adam and Eve, or a plague of frogs, or God making all of life, or bringing people back to life, or the insane misogyny of it all, are all bizarre ideas and yet people thing they are literally true. I met the FamilyRadio.com folks back in January in Edinburgh (read more here) and, to be honest their arguments were based on the presumption of the absolute truth of the Bible, which is clearly bonkers – check out this page on the Skeptics Annotated Bible for 456 examples of contradictions in the Bible.

I’ll put it this way: If you believe in a religion and you do so because of faith in the Bible, what’s the difference between you and the Family Radio people? Camping extrapolated from the Bible and did some funky calculations, then decided he was right (He also did the same in 1994). Taking holy books out of context, ignoring the contradictions and only obeying and enforcing the rules you like are all mainstays of religions. If you prefer to hear about Islam or the Mormons check out the Skeptics Annotated Quran or Book of Mormon.

In addition to this, Christianity subscribes to the notion of Judgement Day and the end of the world. The difference is that, well, we don’t know when it will happen. This is rather convenient, as it means that if it does happen at any point in the future, a Christian can say “Look, I told you so”.

What I don’t understand is why people who don’t believe in the virgin birth, or the flood, or women being inferior to men, or gays being abominations, or the Communion being the literal flesh of Jesus, or any other daft idea still call themselves Christians. What’s the point? The community? Emotional blackmail from your family? Being a Christian necessitates an acceptance and an endorsement of Christianity and the mad stuff it brings with it.

Also, if you think that religion is a topic that shouldn’t be critically discussed then, well, you’re wrong. Everything needs critical discussion.


I retweeted that because it’s funny. You don’t have the right to not be offended. Sacred cows need the most mocking.less than a minute ago via TweetList Pro Favorite Retweet ReplyTracy King
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Religion

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