Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
October 08, 2024, 08:57:47 am

Login with username, password and session length


Members
Stats
  • Total Posts: 774989
  • Total Topics: 66544
  • Online Today: 943
  • Online Ever: 5484
  • (June 18, 2021, 11:15:29 pm)
Users Online
Users: 0
Guests: 851
Total: 851

Welcome


Welcome to the POZ Community Forums, a round-the-clock discussion area for people with HIV/AIDS, their friends/family/caregivers, and others concerned about HIV/AIDS.  Click on the links below to browse our various forums; scroll down for a glance at the most recent posts; or join in the conversation yourself by registering on the left side of this page.

Privacy Warning:  Please realize that these forums are open to all, and are fully searchable via Google and other search engines. If you are HIV positive and disclose this in our forums, then it is almost the same thing as telling the whole world (or at least the World Wide Web). If this concerns you, then do not use a username or avatar that are self-identifying in any way. We do not allow the deletion of anything you post in these forums, so think before you post.

  • The information shared in these forums, by moderators and members, is designed to complement, not replace, the relationship between an individual and his/her own physician.

  • All members of these forums are, by default, not considered to be licensed medical providers. If otherwise, users must clearly define themselves as such.

  • Forums members must behave at all times with respect and honesty. Posting guidelines, including time-out and banning policies, have been established by the moderators of these forums. Click here for “Do I Have HIV?” posting guidelines. Click here for posting guidelines pertaining to all other POZ community forums.

  • We ask all forums members to provide references for health/medical/scientific information they provide, when it is not a personal experience being discussed. Please provide hyperlinks with full URLs or full citations of published works not available via the Internet. Additionally, all forums members must post information which are true and correct to their knowledge.

  • Product advertisement—including links; banners; editorial content; and clinical trial, study or survey participation—is strictly prohibited by forums members unless permission has been secured from POZ.

To change forums navigation language settings, click here (members only), Register now

Para cambiar sus preferencias de los foros en español, haz clic aquí (sólo miembros), Regístrate ahora

Finished Reading This? You can collapse this or any other box on this page by clicking the symbol in each box.

Author Topic: Irish - Considered using HIV epidemic to defend criminalisation of homosexuality  (Read 4755 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Jim Allen

  • Administrator
  • Member
  • Posts: 23,028
  • Threads: @jim16309
    • Social Media: Threads
In 1993, Ireland officially decriminalised homosexuality.

Newly-released papers reveal the lengths they went through in the 1980s to defend the criminalisation of homosexuality, including considering using the HIV epidemic.

Tuesday 22 August 2023 By Lauren Boland, The Journal.
https://www.thejournal.ie/lawyers-for-state-wanted-to-use-aids-crisis-to-defend-irelands-ban-on-same-sex-relationships-6145373-Aug2023/

In Brief:

Quote
Lawyers for State wanted to use AIDS crisis to defend Ireland's ban on same-sex relationships

THE STATE’S LEGAL team that defended Ireland’s criminal ban on sexual relationships between men in the 1980s wanted to use the HIV/AIDS crisis to argue its case in Europe.

Decades-old files newly released by the Department of Justice to the National Archives show the lengths the State went to in order to try to preserve legislation that criminalised homosexuality.

Ireland was brought to the European Commission of Human Rights and later the European Court of Human Rights by now-Senator David Norris, who argued that the ban violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

In 1983, it initially discounted the idea of arguing that a ban on homosexuality was necessary on health grounds, deciding that there was no evidence on which it could build that argument.

However, the matter was raised again two years later in 1985, when at least two members of the State’s legal team were in favour of using the HIV/AIDS crisis to try to defend the ban.

Acting on their advice, then-Minister for Foreign Affairs Peter Barry brought a memo to a Cabinet meeting asking the Government to authorise the legal team to raise AIDS in its defence.

Attorney General John Rogers, Chief Medical Officer Dr Brendan O’Donnell, and the Departments of Health and Justice took positions against the proposal, which was ultimately dropped once again.


A lawyer for the State had prepared a report, dated 25 September 1985, that urged the government to argue that the emergence of AIDS should permit Ireland to keep its ban on gay relationships.

In his report, the lawyer described holding meetings with several doctors working in hospitals in London, who gave “various views on the appropriateness of raising AIDS” to defend the legislation – one of the doctors strongly supported it, another was less inclined toward the idea, and a final doctor fell somewhere in the middle.

The lawyer said: “In my view [...] to require a country to change its law and to relax criminal sanctions on homosexuality would most probably have the result of increasing the level of such activity in the society concerned.

In the light of the present knowledge of AIDS, that is a risk which no State should be forced to take.”

His official advice was: “I am of the opinion that the issue of AIDS should be raised squarely in the pleading to be filed on behalf of Ireland. It is a matter of policy as to the manner in which the disease is raised.”

Norris won his case before the European Court of Human Rights and Ireland passed legislation that decriminalised homosexuality on 24 June 1993.

« Last Edit: August 22, 2023, 10:42:04 am by Jim Allen »
HIV 101 - Everything you need to know
HIV 101
Read more about Testing here:
HIV Testing
Read about Treatment-as-Prevention (TasP) here:
HIV TasP
You can read about HIV prevention here:
HIV prevention
Read about PEP and PrEP here
PEP and PrEP

My Instagram
Threads

 


Terms of Membership for these forums
 

© 2024 Smart + Strong. All Rights Reserved.   terms of use and your privacy
Smart + Strong® is a registered trademark of CDM Publishing, LLC.