I read in Thursday’s Irish Times that Eileen Flynn has passed away. I was especially saddened to hear of the news, because everything she fought for and lost in 1982 remains lost today.

Eileen Flynn was dismissed from her job as a teacher in the early 1980s, after it was discovered that she was in a relationship with a man who was separated from his wife.

The High Court ruled that the school was right to do so, and the Court relied on now defunct Canadian law to justify its decision.

When I say “defunct”, I mean that the interpretation of the law was since overturned in Canada; in Ireland, however, that law still holds.

What happened?

Ms Flynn had begun a relationship with a married man, whose wife had left him not long before. Now, remember, kids: this was 1980s Ireland, so divorce wasn’t an option for Flynn’s love interest; moreover, their relationship was a private and personal matter, not related to Flynn’s professional life, as a teacher.

Oh, but that didn’t matter a whit to the religious who ran her school, nor to the busy-bodies of her town who made formal complaints about her personal life to the school principal. They threatened her with being sacked unless – as the High Court later put it – “a remarkable improvement in the unhappy situation took place”. Flynn was eventually sacked, and every appeal by her was rejected: by the Employment Appeals Tribunal, by the Circuit Court, and ultimately by the High Court.

The decision of the High Court was never appealed, and has not been overturned by any High Court or Supreme Court judgement since.

The fact, then, is that schools of a religious ethos can to this day rely on the High Court’s decision in this case to justify sacking anyone they regard as contrary to their ethos. In theory, that could be anyone who so much as “lives in sin” with their partner, let alone the queers.

The Times quotes in their article one Sr. Rosemary Duffy of the Holy Faith Order – which ran Flynn’s school – who wrote to them in 1995:

“Eileen Flynn was dismissed because in the town where most of the pupils and parents of the school lived she openly and despite warnings to the contrary continued to live a lifestyle flagrantly in conflict with the norms which the school sought to promote.”

1995. And don’t her words echo the kind of attitudes so frequently thrown at gays, lesbians, bis, and trans people?

It remains to be seen whether the courts in Ireland would overturn the 1985 decision. But just in case they did, Bertie Ahern’s government saw to it to ensure that a religious ethos clause, in respect of any institution, was inserted into equality legislation. Oh, and religious leaders have secured a similar proviso in EU equality laws, too, so the hurdles for equality and fairness are pretty high. Who needs Shariah law, when we already have Canon law right here and now?

One heartening point in Flynn’s story exists, however, that she eventually married and had a fulfilled life with her partner and children:

Eileen Flynn went on to marry Richie Roche over a decade ago. She … is survived by her husband and their five children.

And for that, I am glad.

Eileen Flynn: RIP.

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Other blogs discussing this topic:
- Bock the Robber
- Maman Poulet
- The Anti-Room
- An Fear Rua
- Cllr Joe Ryan

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