Conservatism and melancholia

Over the last couple of days I've been watching the videos from the INTO Equality conference held in February, not long before the schools closed.

The keynote speaker, Elly Barnes who has an organisation "Educate and Celebrate" to help make schools LGBTQ friendly, was firing the teachers up to go back to the classroom and make a change. No more "boys and girls" - it's "everyone" now and no need to write out to parents because parents want the teachers to talk to their children about sex education.
And if people say it's against their religion, tell them it's not. If other teachers on the staff can't be inclusive let them get another job outside of teaching, because all schools will be in solidarity with this inclusive new way. She said that LGBT teachers have a "gaydar" for spotting the queer children in the class and later in her speech she said that 46% of young people don't identify as heterosexual, so she said that must be the same for all ages, and gender identity and sexuality are flexible.

To me she seemed a bit silly.

Then this morning I was watching the RTE coverage of the Eid Muslim celebration in Croke Park and online videos of the protests outside. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, I think, wants to be inclusive but it must have been hard for him to hear Jesus mentioned as "one of the prophets" and to hear how St Patrick came from Wales to Ireland and the Irish fell in with him enthusiastically because they are so welcoming.

There are strands in Irish society that won't gel too well and hopefully more people will come to appreciate what we had and we will all get courage.