Province’s controversial first lady has really rocked the boat

By Derek Lord

Published:

ACROSS the Irish Sea, the good people of the Six Counties can rest easy in their beds, but the bad people are in for a rough ride now that the reins of power have been passed over from big Ian Paisley to Peter Robinson and his born-again Christian wife, Iris.

Iris Robinson, who just happens to be chairwoman of Northern Ireland’s health committee, caused a right stushie recently when she declared on a BBC Northern Ireland radio programme that homosexuality was an “abomination” and that she felt “nauseous” just thinking about it.

Needless to say, the gay community did not take kindly to her remarks. Indeed, a complaint was made to the police on the grounds that Mrs Robinson’s comments constituted a crime in that she was fanning the flames of homophobic hatred in a part of the UK that is already a lot more homophobic than most.

The province’s first lady was unrepentant and produced the following statement to justify her remarks: “I am defending the word of God. I think at the moment there is a “witch-hunt” to curb or actually stop or prevent Christians speaking out and I make no apology for what I said because it is the word of God. But at the same time, I was very careful in saying I have nothing against any homosexual. I love them; that is what the Lord tells me – to love the sinner and not the sin. And, just as a murderer can be redeemed by the blood of Christ, so can a homosexual.”

The gays that she loves so much were understandably miffed at being lumped in with murderers. Diplomacy is obviously not one of Iris’s strong points. She went on to say that she knew a lovely psychiatrist who, through counselling and therapy, had managed to straighten out several people who were of the gay persuasion and who are now happily married to members of the opposite sex.

Again she put her foot in her runaway mouth by inferring that people who were attracted to members of their own sex were mentally ill. This has since been refuted by the Royal College of Psychiatry. I haven’t had a lot to do with psychiatrists, but I wasn’t surprised to learn that they did not regard homosexuals as being sick in the head.

Many years ago, when I was working at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, a young English actor approached the late Patrick Pearse O’Malley, one of Ulster’s leading psychiatrists and the husband of the theatre’s founder. The chap told Dr O’Malley that he was concerned because he found himself attracted to other men and wondered if he was homosexual. The good doctor told him there was no such thing as homosexuality. It was just a filthy perversion and the sooner he pulled himself together the better. The young actor ran off in tears.

Sinn Fein was also quick to put the boot into the DUP’s leading lady. Their spokeswoman, Martina Anderson, said that “such an outrageous comment” from Mrs Robinson has put her position as chairwoman of the assembly’s health committee in question. I can’t help thinking that Ms Anderson has a point there, but her call for Iris’s resignation has fallen on deaf ears. Iris has God on her side and she is not about to be stopped in her crusade against the forces of evil.

Now, you would think that Iris would steer clear of making any more public statements that might rock the DUP’s boat for a while but, no, she was back on the same radio programme yesterday morning giving her views on abortion. As you might expect, Iris is firmly on the side of the pro-lifers.

She justified her stance by saying that “the government’s job is to uphold God’s laws”. She added that “the government is there to represent the morals of the scriptures”.

She finished by declaring that there “should not be any law to allow abortion to occur”.

On that note, Iris disappeared from the airwaves and despite the BBC presenter’s best efforts to get her back to defend her position, that was the last we heard from her.

If she listened to the rest of the programme, however, she would have felt largely justified in her Christian fundamentalist declaration. A succession of like-minded callers phoned in to back her, quoting long tracts of the Bible as they did so.

Her intention to hand over control of Ulster’s law-making to Jehovah was even backed by an SDLP politician. For those of you not familiar with the province’s political parties, the SDLP are the Irish nationalists who were opposed to violence during Sinn Fein’s armed struggle in the latter third of the 20th century.

In fact, one of the very few callers to object to Mrs Robinson’s plans for a Christian fundamentalist state was a DUP voter who told the presenter that he had voted for the Robinsons because he was a unionist but, as an atheist, he wouldn’t be voting for them again. He said he didn’t want to open the door to a society that stoned adulterers to death and chopped off shoplifters’ hands.

Strangely enough, there were no gay callers, but then perhaps they were afraid that God would strike them down with a thunderbolt or two if they put their heads above the parapet.

Or they might have been afraid that the call would be traced back to them and the men in white coats would drag them off to the nearest asylum.

Iris Robinson has already been described as the woman who put mentalist into the word fundamentalist. It will be interesting to see where she goes from here.

If her political career should founder, I’m sure there are plenty of churches on this side of the water that would be only too happy to offer her a pulpit.