Ireland's Journey towards LGBT Equality - An evening with Mary McAleese
Ireland's Journey towards LGBT Equality - An evening with Mary McAleese
LGBT History Month
Date: Wednesday 06 February 2019
Time: 17:15
Venue: Senate Room
Category: Academic events
Speaker: Professor Mary McAleese
Website: event.bookitbee.com/21143/lgbt-history-month-a-conversation-with-mary-mcalee
EVENT ONLY OPEN TO UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW STAFF AND STUDENTS
The University of Glasgow is delighted to host Professor Mary McAleese to discuss Ireland’s progress towards LGBT equality.
The event will be hosted by Professor Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh, Gender and Sexual Diversity Champion, Vice Principal and Head of the College of Arts and Professor Deirdre Heddon, James Arnott Chair in Drama.
Professor Mary McAleese Profile
Professor McAleese graduated in Law from Queen's University Belfast. In 1975, she was appointed Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College, Dublin and in 1987, she returned to her alma mater, Queen's, to become director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies. In 1994, she became the first female pro-vice-chancellor of Queen's University. She worked as a barrister and as a journalist with RTÉ. She was the eighth President of Ireland from 1997 - 2011.
For many years prior to her presidency, she was involved in social justice campaigning. In 1975 she was the first legal adviser to the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform in Ireland, an organisation established to decriminalise homosexuality in Ireland. She was a co-founder of Belfast Women's Aid, the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas and Co-Chair of the Working Party on Sectarianism set up by the Irish Council of Churches and the Catholic Church.
She is the author of Reconciled being: Love in chaos (1997), Building Bridges (2011), Collegiality in the Code of Canon Law (2014).
In May 2015, in light of the marriage equality referendum, Prof McAleese described same-sex marriage as a "human rights issue" as she called for a Yes vote in the upcoming referendum. In her first public comments on the issue, Prof McAleese said the vote next month is "about Ireland's children, gay children" and said passing the referendum would help dismantle the "architecture of homophobia". She also highlighted the problems in Ireland of suicide among young males. "We now know from the evidence that one of the risk groups within that age cohort of 15–25 is the young male homosexual. We owe those children a huge debt as adults who have opportunities to make choices that impact their lives, to make the right choices, choices that will allow their lives grow organically and to give them the joy of being full citizens in their own country.”
In 2018, Prof McAleese launched a research project by an international Catholic think tank, to challenge the theological evidence for church teaching that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered”.
“I am hoping the project will advance an intelligent and scholarly debate about the warped, damaging, unchristian, unscientific, fake gender ideology which currently underpins Catholic teaching on LGBTI issues,” McAleese told The Sunday Times.
Mary McAleese is Professor of Children, Law and Religion in the College of Arts and the College of Social Sciences.
The event will be held at a University of Glasgow venue on the GilmorehIll Campus. Full details will be provided on booking.