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Iris Robinson: Another One Bites the Dust (Updated)

If you cast your mind to 2008, you may remember that the wife of Northern Ireland's first minister, Iris Robinson, said that homosexuality was "comparable" to paedophilia and a mental illness that could be "cured".

Last month, she announced that she was retiring from politics, adding that she indeed knew about mental illness, since she was a sufferer herself. And yesterday, she revealed she tried to kill herself while suffering depression after an extra-marital affair.

As Newton Emerson, columnist and satirist for the Irish News, who was discussing this sorry business on Thursday morning (scroll down to 0722) on Radio4's Today, had warned us, there was more to come.

The story apparently broke after a BBC investigation on the Robinson couple. The BBC Northern Ireland show, called Spotlight, revealed (iPlayer till 15 january) that Mrs "are you trying to seduce me?" Robinson got sexually involved with a 19 year old man right about the time when she was attacking gay people.

As reported in Pinknews, she then "allegedly solicited £50,000 from two property developers to help her lover set up a business.

The Northern Ireland MP broke parliamentary rules by not declaring her interest in the business, despite sitting on the council which awarded the money to Kirk McCambley, it was claimed.

According to the BBC programme, Mrs Robinson, 60, also demanded a £5,000 kickback from Mr McCambley for helping arrange the transaction." She apparently later asked for the whole money back.

See also the BBC News article here.

The issue here is that the woman is a holier-than-thou hypocrite. Just imagine her loud righteous cries of youth perversion should a prominent gay politician have been revealed to have an affair with a man 40 years younger!

She is a member of a very conservative party. Indeed some of the supporters of the DUP are puritans. She claims to be a devout Christian, guided by god and she went out publicly spouting out some rubbish about gays and claiming to speak the word of god.

But how many of the commandments of her god has she possibly broken exactly?
  • adultery (one of the Ten Commandments)

  • suicide attempt (which is also killing - another of the Ten Commandments)

  • dodgy financial dealings

  • lying

  • taking the name of god in vain (which is also probably a sign of Pride, one of the seven deadly sins)


There is also now fears that whole story may destroy or at least seriously impair the peace process in Northern Ireland. I would like to ask Mrs Robinson how many of those dreaded gay relationships could claim to such import? How many gay people whom she was prepare to vilify in the media would behave as badly as it is alleged she has?

In the end that's another name to add to the long list of gay-bashing Christians who practise double standard, those brave souls that do not fear casting the first stone.

In fact there are so many of them that one could be forgiven to think that those people use their loud vituperations as a smoke screen for their otherwise shady and highly unchristian activities. A sort of badge of righteousness that distract the public and the people they are trying to ascertain power over to look too closely are their persona.

This post was first published on 07/01/10 in a slightly shorter version when the story was still breaking.

Comments

  1. Emerson was right, there was more - the lad was nineteen, less than a third her age.

    ReplyDelete

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