The last few weeks have been tough for some religious fundamentalists.
They have been forced to back down over their ban on gay adoption by the Human Rights Commission; they have been ridiculed for banning a play, and then forced by public embarrassment to show it anyhow. On top of this, a new poll shows that 57% of people in Northern Ireland support equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples and now the Northern Ireland football team will play football on a Sunday!
With the papers dominated by concerns over ecological disasters, mismanagement of A&E units across the country, outsourcing of Belfast’s leisure centres, the local politicians have at last been provoked into action. Some politicians are enraged that the gates of hell are opening and we are all on our way to meet Lucifer, not however because we may be poisoning the country with fracking, not because people are dying in our A&E units, not because we are proposing to privatise leisure centres to friends and family, but because of a football match on a Sunday.
The good news however is that 74% of people polled recently thought it was OK for the game to go ahead. Once again the majority of people in Northern Ireland have shown that they don’t want a return to the days when children’s swings where chained up on a Sunday, unlike many of the supposed leaders who insist on mixing politics and religion at any opportunity. Hurray for that!
The sinking of the Titanic on 15 April 1912 during its maiden voyage, with the loss of over 1,500 lives, remains one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters. The 100th anniversary of the disaster will be marked by many events most of which will hide the real picture of the society it exposed.