Iris Robinson, parliament and the Standards Board

Jock — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:49 +0000

If a councillor almost anywhere in England at least made the sort of statements Iris Robinson's been coming out with about homosexuality, I would have thought that a complaint to the Standards Board would at least be entertained and investigated. Even her "retraction" is disgusting and compounds her guilt:

MP backtracks on gay comment | Politics | The Guardian

Democratic Unionist MP Iris Robinson issued a statement yesterday denying that she thought gay sex was worse than paedophilia. She was reacting to a Hansard report of her comments in the Commons when she said during a debate on managing sex offenders: "There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing children." Through the DUP's press office, Robinson later said: "I clearly intended to say that child abuse was worse than even homosexuality and sodomy ... At no point have I set out to suggest homosexuality was worse than child sex abuse."

When the Good Friday agreement was developed into a constitution for Northern Ireland, it had, I seem to remember, quite exemplary equalities provisions. Northern Ireland was, for example, as a result, the first place in the UK to equalize the age of consent for gay and straight sex.

I realise she has parliamentary privilege when in the House of Commons, but her last outburst was on the public radio in Northern Ireland and should have landed her in trouble in my opinion. If a similar remark had been made in the commons about almost any other minority (I suspect not if it were "immigrants"), I'm sure it would have engendered a formal censure of some kind.

I am sure she does indeed represent some religious bigots in her constituency, but I am equally sure that not everyone who has voted for her can be tarred with that same brush. I do believe in democracy, so I am not calling for some interfering twerp from some QUANGO investigating her remarks - that's her consitutents' job when she next runs for office. But people should know that she's an evil bigoted bitch whose personal conviction renders her unable to represent her constituents properly.

UPDATE: As "Scribo Ergo Sum " reminds us, our psychopathic unelected "leader" Gordon Brown prefers to do business with her and her party than his own revolting members. Iris would no doubt love the idea of locking up homosexuals for 42 days without charge or reason. read more »