The wreathed whispers of the sisterhood are issuing forth for Bob Geldof since he assumed advocacy of the least PC human rights issue on Earth, writes John Waters
I wondered if they would. He is, after all, the man who saved the world, put charisma into charity and gave rock'n'roll back its conscience.
In an essay, "The Real Love that Dare Not Speak its Name", for a University of Cambridge book, Children and Their Families: Contact, Rights and Welfare, Geldof has attacked the bias in society's systems and culture which marginalises fathers and damages children.
"The law," he wrote, "is creating vast wells of misery, massive discontent, an unstable society of feral children and feckless adolescents who have no understanding of authority, no knowledge of a man's love and how different but equal it is to a woman's."
The standard response to such interventions is to depict whoever has made them as hating women and misusing children in the interests of power, ego and revenge. Geldof is already being targeted with both barrels.
This, he is told in the style of a nun discoursing on the Immaculate Conception, is not a gender issue and should not be turned into one. How an issue defined by the transfer of the natural rights of one person to the whim of another can be discussed without reference to the distinguishing characteristics of the respective parties is never explained.
Similarly, a charge that men pursuing their right to parent is a misuse of children is levelled without any acknowledgment that the denial of fundamental human rights of both fathers and children is at least as damaging to children as to fathers.
Inevitably, someone mentions Solomon. Geldof was the subject of one velvet-gloved assassination attempt in a Sunday newspaper last week, when a female psychologist lectured him thus: "In the Old Testament tale about the judgment of King Solomon, two women claimed equal right to a baby. Solomon revealed the true parent when he called for his sword to cut the living child in two and give one half to one and half to the other - out of love for the child, the real mother relinquished her rights."
Too many children, she concluded, have already been sacrificed on the sword of inalienable "rights".
Two subtexts are detectable:
1. Mothers are "real" parents; fathers are not.
2. If fathers want to be seen as "real" parents, they should walk away from their children if that is what mothers decide.
Those who seek to deflect criticism of the moral corruption of family law are remarkably fond of this story, which in truth indicts precisely that which they defend. If mothers always behaved as implied, incidences of children being sacrificed on the sword of inalienable rights would be rare.
It is women, overwhelmingly, who make applications to the family courts, for the simple and rational reason that family law is incentivised in their favour.
Fathers respond, often because they have no choice; and usually they do so in pursuit of minimal concessions (not rights), which, even when extended by a court, are rarely enforced.
Within days of Geldof's recent appearance on the Pat Kenny Show to expand on his essay, the Government told the UN that it does not believe men should have the same rights as women in relation to guardianship, adoption and custody of children. Fulfilling the objectives of UN conventions, it stated, "does not necessitate the extension to men of rights identical to those accorded by law to women".
If the Government gave notice of its intention to discriminate against any other sub-group, uproar would ensue. The woman from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties would be on radio and TV from morning till night. An editorial in The Irish Times would thunder about, possibly, the wickedness of splitting the atom of equality. I do not note the absence of such responses in surprise, but simply observe that the hypocritical silence of Ireland's mouthpieces of liberal and moral indignation is the measure of what Geldof has taken on.
Thus far, one gathers he believes the injustices he has noted are simply oversights. It appears not to occur to him that what he is describing is well known to those in power, and precisely as they intend. "Equality", he should be aware, comes in liberal society with the quotation marks attached, and removing these is more challenging than feeding the world.
His decision to bring his considerable moral authority to this issue is already causing massive consternation in quarters which resist with extreme prejudice any challenge to their liberal gloss. If he persists, many who once spoke his name in awe will shake their heads and say what a pity it is that such a champion of the underdog has been embittered by personal experience.