Millions of American Dollars Fund Pro-Gay Side of Irish Referendum on Same-Sex Marriage

Aleteia ^ | May 21, 2015 | MICHAEL COOK

[NYer]

As Friday’s referendum on same-sex marriage in Ireland approaches, attention has turned to the funding behind the Yes campaign.

A petition has been launched which says that “this push for same-sex marriage in Ireland has not at all been a ‘home-grown’ phenomenon, but, rather, a carefully-orchestrated and massively well-funded assault on the natural family, coming from private American funding”.

In most countries funding local politics with overseas money would be as popular with voters as barbecuing puppydogs at a school fair. But not, apparently, in Ireland.

A charity founded by Irish-American businessman Chuck Feeney, Atlantic Philanthropies, cheerfully acknowledges that it has poured about US $28 million over the past 13 years into strategic LGBT campaigns in Ireland.

A columnist for the Irish Times, Breda O’Brien, was seething with rage this week at the thought of American dollars buying Irish votes:

This is not Atlantic Philanthropies funding a hospital or school. This is foreign money being systematically invested to change public opinion, to deliver seamlessly a Yes in a referendum that has enormous consequences for family law for generations. All the while soothing us by spinning it as just ‘seventeen little words’. Can American money buy an Irish referendum? Let’s wait and see. What has Atlantic Philanthropies achieved? Quite a lot. Even Friday’s referendum, it turns out, has its fingerprints all over it. Another columnist,  Bruce Arnold, says, "In my opinion, The Atlantic Philanthropies has bought this referendum."
 

Atlantic has funded four influential organisations: the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN), Marriage Equality, the Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI), and LGBT Diversity. Its report on a decade of funding claims credit for LGBT political victories:
 

GLEN had extensive lobbying and public policy experience but their multi-year grant from Atlantic enabled them to ramp up their work into a full-time highly professionalized lobbying machine. It works ‘inside’ the machinery of government where it uses a ‘principled pragmatist’ model in which it consolidates support, wins over the doubtful and pacifies those who are opposed. Most Irish voters are unaware that foreign money is being used to boost the Yes campaign. As Breda O’Brien says, “Groupthink has been exalted to an Irish sacrament. While journalists were targeting tiny bootstrap conservative organisations and accusing them of being American-funded, GLEN, the most successful lobby group in Irish history, was swimming in greenbacks.”   
 

She didn't need investigative journalists to reach this conclusion. The funded groups themselves acknowledge it (see the video above). 

The director of GLEN, Brian Sheehan, admits that Atlantic’s money was critical in lobbying politicians:
 

Atlantic’s commitment to GLEN allowed GLEN to follow its strategy of building a majority from a minority and delivering transformative change for lesbian and gay people in Ireland. We did that by engaging really good professionals, by building very strong relationships with politicians, with TDs, with senators, with senior decision-makers in departments all across a whole range of areas, and enabling the to deliver on change for lesbian and gay people.

Broden Giambrone, director of TENI, the transgender group, admits that Atlantic’s money gave it organizational clout:
 

Atlantic’s multi-year commitment allows for TENI to employ core staff, which was unprecedented in the trans community.
 

 

Marriage Equality Chairwoman Gráinne Healy admits that Atlantic’s support was vital for political change in Ireland:
 

The Atlantic support … has been a support for the vision of marriage equality. In some ways, we’ve done two things: we have unleashed that potential and that passion that the supporters of marriage equality have, but more than that we’ve been able to channel it into political change.

“Money can't buy me love,” sang the Beatles. Atlantic Philanthropies has bet $28 million that they were wrong.

[NYer]

Catalysing LGBT Equality and Visibility in Ireland YouTube Video

[NYer]

American gay lobby exerts its influence in Catholic Ireland

Catholic ping!

[miserare]

I’ll eat my pot of shamrocks if this abomination passes.

[Obadiah]

I am ashamed of my country.

[marktwain]

This is much like Bloomberg buying the gun control referendum in Washington state.

Tell enough lies, spend enough money, and you can get people to buy into things that they otherwise would not.

[bboop]

MY tax dollars? Well I’ll just be horn-swaggled. Those buzzards!

[miserare]

It didn’t wotk recently in Great Britain, where Axelrod and Co. lost the election to Cameron.

[miserare]

It didn’t WORK.

The Irish are fiercely independent and do not kowtow to the Yanks.

[familyop]

The big government and global corporate bucks are behind buggering.

Vatican appointee says gay sex can express Christ’s ‘self-gift’
lifesitenews.com ^ | May 19, 2015 | Lisa Bourne
ROME, May 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Pope Francis has appointed radically liberal, pro-homosexual Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe as a consultor for the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace..."

[greene66]

It’s bad enough that America itself has become a culturally depraved sewer, but we now have to export our depravity to other places around the globe.

Libs used to decry cultural imperialism when we promoted things like capitalism and democracy throughout the world. But now it’s all perfectly fine, when the export is their adored sacrament of homosex.

[marktwain]

In Washington state, the second amendment forces were outspent about 10-20 to 1, depending on how you count it. In Ireland, I do not know if there is an organized resistance to this effort. I have even heard of priests giving it their approval.

In Great Britian, it was major parties duking it out, an entirely different thing.

[GeronL]

It should be illegal in every country for outside $$ to get involved in politics

[Salvation]

Courage and Encourage [spiritual support for persons w/ same-sex attraction who are striving...

[eater-of-toast]

Perhaps not the best counterexample to offer, since Cameron engineered a victory for homosexual marriage in the UK.

[eater-of-toast]

Perhaps not the best counterexample to offer, since Cameron engineered a victory for homosexual marriage in the UK.