May 06, 2003
Misconceptions
It seems like the entire staff of the Sunday Independent are auditioning for a Daily Telegraph writing gig. Eilis O'Hanlon is the latest 'voice of reason'. Commenting on the fact that two out of five Traveller marriages are between cousins, she asks
What next? Are we going to legitimise sex with farm animals too on the grounds that it is an essential part of rural culture… …Or sex between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, grandparents and grandchildren? If everything is relative and depends only on one's culture or opinion, then surely nothing is wrong, anything goes?
Ah yes, the oldest trick in the book, and the most cynical. Mention something you don't like in the same sentence as something that appals everyone, and hope that enough people make an association. Of course she is being facetiousness, but there's nothing like sneaking bestiality and incest into the discussion. Funnily enough, a Senator the US who tried a similar tactic (by mentioning homosexuality in the same sentence as bestiality and incest) got a roasting in the media there.
O'Hanlon's tactics cannot hide the paucity of her argument. Travellers suffer from many health problems and a scandalously low life expectancy, based on their living standards, but there is no evidence that intermarrying has anything to do with it. The fact that cousins marrying was a fairly normal part of rural life for settled people in Ireland until the latter half of the 20th century seems to have escaped Eilis completely. No surprise there.
There is an issue in the Travelling Community that doesn't get the attention it deserves; that of domestic violence. It will take a better journalist that Ms O'Hanlon to cover it.
By coincidence, an article on incest that actually looks like it was written by a journalist could be found in another newspaper last Sunday, in the Observer.