By Hilary White
(LifeSite)

One day after Irish President Mary McAleese signed a civil partnerships bill into law, the government announced a full-scale campaign to promote homosexuality and the homosexualist ideology, particularly in rural areas where Catholicism remains a strong guiding force.

Pat Carey, the minister for Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs, announced on Monday that the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Diversity program will counter the “isolation” felt by homosexuals living in the countryside.

The program, which intends to “build LGBT communities” in rural areas, is jointly sponsored by the government and nine homosexualist lobbying organizations, including BeLonG To, a group that focuses on young people aged between 14 and 23.

The program . . . “will facilitate LGBT organisations and activists
to collectively mobilise and engage with the wider community
in order to advocate strategically and effectively on gender
and sexuality issues."

The program website says it “will facilitate LGBT organisations and activists to collectively mobilise and engage with the wider community in order to advocate strategically and effectively on gender and sexuality issues.

“The ultimate aim of the Programme is to promote an Ireland that celebrates diversity, where LGBT people are an integral part of society - at all levels - and are afforded all the rights and responsibilities enjoyed by Irish citizens.”

Carey said he believed the program “would be instrumental in ensuring that LGBT people were fully accepted within their communities, wherever they may be.”

Program manager Derek McDonnell said the initiative will counter the “lack of recognition that all communities are made up of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.”

But not everyone is as enthusiastic. Roger Eldridge, chairman of the National Men's Council of Ireland and Executive Director of the Family Rights and Responsibilities Institute of Ireland, said the government is engaging in a social engineering project designed to destroy traditional Irish culture.

To Pat Carey, Eldridge said, ordinary Irish rural people are nothing more than “nests of right-wing fundamentalist Christian bigots whom he obviously feels need to be socially re-engineered to accept same-sex attraction and addiction as being normal and healthy.”

Eldridge also warns that the program is the beginning of a movement that will see the criminalization of anyone who disagrees with the legitimacy of the homosexualist ideology. The new Civil Partnerships law, which is expected to come into effect in January, contains provisions allowing criminal prosecution, and up to 6 months in prison, for marriage registrars who refuse to conduct the ceremonies.

The program is funded by a group called Atlantic Philanthropies, a private organization founded by U.S. billionaire Charles F. Feeney, that funds “health and social projects” in Australia, Bermuda, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, the U.S. and Viet Nam.

Atlantic Philanthropies is a major player in Irish political life, having spent over U.S. $1 billion on education supporting Irish universities through the 1990s and is credited by some as being a key factor in the Irish economic boom.

Since 2007, the organization has focused on its “Reconciliation & Human Rights Programmes” that are intended to “strengthen the central human rights infrastructure and to improve access to justice and services for immigrants, people with disabilities and the LGBTI community,” and has donated €80 million in 2009 alone to fund “human rights” projects.

In reference to Atlantic Philanthropies’ involvement, Roger Eldridge asked, “Do the people of Ireland want their society re-engineered by hidden foreign influences with lots of money?”

Website Editor's Note:
Last October, we ran a series of reports from the Synod of African Bishops in Rome, which highlighted the issue above and stated Catholic teaching on the matter.

Here, in sequence, are the  links to those articles: