Hot on the heels of a recent, similarly-themed opinion piece by his friend Ronan Mullen, where couples living in sin were resoundly chided, David Quinn of the Iona Institute has spoken out against Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly’s call to end “unfair discrimination” against unmarried straight couples.

As the Irish government seeks figure out just why the electorate rejected the Lisbon Treaty, its post-referendum navel gazing has led it to appoint a religious conservative to the committee charged with considering the outcome of the vote. It looks like Ireland is far from separating Church from State.

Eileen Flynn passed away earlier this week. She had been dismissed in the 1980s from her job as a teacher in a religious-run school, and the courts in Ireland upheld the school’s decision. Following her death, the same conservatism exists in the Ireland of 2008.