Same sex attraction, homophobic bullying and mental health of young people in Northern Ireland

This article reports on the relationship between same-sex attraction, experience of bullying in school and mental health measured using the 12-item version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ12). A random sample of 16 year olds, drawn from the Child Benefit Register, was invited to take part in the 2005 Young Life and Times survey, which is a postal survey carried out in Northern Ireland every year. Eight hundred and nineteen 16 year olds responded, which represented a return rate of 40%. The results of the survey showed that respondents who said they had been attracted to a person of the same sex at least once were significantly more likely to report experiences of school bullying. Same-sex-attracted 16 year olds were significantly less likely than those attracted to persons of the opposite sex only to say that their school provided real help to those who are being bullied. The 2005 Young Life and Times data also indicated that same-sex-attracted respondents were more than twice as likely as respondents who were only attracted to people of the opposite sex to have higher levels of psychiatric disorder. (Contains 5 tables.)

A Shared Future? Exclusion, Stigmatization, and Mental Health of Same-Sex-Attracted Young People in Northern Ireland

For more than a decade the Peace Process has fundamentally changed Northern Irish society. However, although socioreligious integration and ethnic mixing are high on the political agenda in Northern Ireland, the Peace Process has so far failed to address the needs of some of the most vulnerable young people, for example, those who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Public debates in Northern Ireland remain hostile to same-sex-attracted people. Empirical evidence from the annual Young Life and Times (YLT) survey of 16-year-olds undertaken by ARK shows that same-sex-attracted young people report worse experiences in the education sector (e.g., sex education, school bullying), suffer from poorer mental health, experience higher social pressures to engage in health-adverse behavior, and are more likely to say that they will leave Northern Ireland and not return. Equality legislation and peace process have done little to address the heteronormativity in Northern Ireland.

Understanding Human Dignity

“Understanding Human Dignity” aims to help the reader make sense of current debates about the meaning and implications of the idea of “human dignity.” The concept of human dignity has probably never been so omni-present in everyday speech, or so deeply embedded in political and legal discourse. In debates on torture, abortion, same-sex marriage, and welfare reform, appeals to dignity are seldom hard to find. The concept of dignity is not only a prominent feature of political debate, but also, and increasingly, of legal argument. Indeed, courts tell us that human dignity is the foundation of all human rights. But the more important it is, the more contested it seems to have become. There has, as a result, been an extraordinary explosion of scholarly writing about the concept of human dignity in law, political philosophy, and theology. This book aims to reflect on these intra-disciplinary debates about dignity in law, philosophy, history, politics, and theology, through a series of edited essays from specialists in these fields, explored the contested concept in its full richness and complexity.

Reva Siegel and the Role of Religion in Constructing the Meaning of ‘Human Dignity

The “religious understanding” of dignity is a topic of considerable complexity and is the subject of extensive scholarship. In this paper, I consider understandings of dignity that are currently under discussion in Roman Catholic circles, not least because Catholic discussions of dignity are often seen as influential in public policy and legal interpretation, directly and indirectly. I shall focus on one relatively neglected issue in legal scholarship: how scholars go about the task of identifying what a particular religion’s understanding of human dignity involves.
To illustrate the methodological problems that such an enterprise raises, I shall take one attempt by a scholar writing in the field of secular legal scholarship to describe Catholic understandings of dignity in the context of abortion and same-sex marriage. The discussion is that of Reva Siegel, an academic lawyer at Yale University; her recent analysis of differing understandings of dignity illustrates some of the issues that arise when the secular scholarly community addresses religious understandings of dignity.

Queering the Family: Attitudes towards Lesbian and Gay Relationships and Families in Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland Life andTimes (NILT) Survey has asked questions on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues since 1998. To date survey data have focused primarily on issues relating to prejudice, discrimination and tolerance. In 2012 a range of questions focussing more specifically on LGBT1 issues was included. This collected information on knowledge and perceptions of the LGBT population; personal prejudice; attitudes on equality issues; the visibility of LGBT people and family-related issues.

This update provides an overview of some of the information emerging from this data. It discusses attitudes towards same-sex relations and notable changes over time. Given recent political debate the primary focus of this paper is on attitudes relating to ‘queer’ marriage, family and parenting. We use the term ‘queer’ here to refer to ‘the diverse family structures formed by those with non-normative gender behaviours or sexual orientations’ (Bernstein and Reimann, 2001: 3). As previous updates have noted, there have been significant legislative and policy changes in this area (Jarman, 2010) and this continues with ongoing discussions regarding the development of a Sexual Orientation Strategy for Northern Ireland (Gray et al, 2013).

Key issues in the study of new and alternative social movements in Spain: The Left, Identity and Globalizing Processes

This article highlights the importance of dedicating a whole special issue on New and Alternative Social movements in Spain. It sets the basis for this endeavour by emphasizing the importance of the 2004, unexpected, electoral victory of the Spanish socialists, and the subsequent satisfaction of the important demands promoted by certain social movements actors and Spanish society in general (the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq, the cancellation of the National Hydrological Plan and the Legalization of same sex marriages. The view supported is that these developments signify the end of a protest cycle, which could have the same effect with the early 1980s socialist victory. After a discussion around the low associationalism that characterizes Spanish society and recent experience of authoritarianism, it is suggested that it is time for the study of new and alternative social movements in Spain and other south European societies to move beyond the emphasis on exceptionality but appreciate differences by focusing on the available political opportunities and the identity of social movement actors. The remainder of the article is dedicated to introducing the contributing articles.

Exploring Children's Stereotypes Through Drawings: The Case of Musical Performance

Drawings of 'a person' and of 'a person playing music' were collected from children aged seven to eight years and 10-11 years to discover whether children's musical representations would reflect gender differences evident in musical learning and performance, and the increased gender rigidity with age found in instrument preferences. As in previous drawing studies, same sex figures were overwhelmingly portrayed, although older girls drew more opposite sex figures than the other children. All except the older girls overwhelmingly drew same sex musicians irrespective of the gender stereotype of the instrument portrayed. The older girls drew similar numbers of male and female figures playing masculine instruments. Fewer feminine instruments were drawn by older than by younger boys. The increased gender rigidity with age accords with the results of the preference studies, but gender stereotyping was much weaker. This is discussed in relation to what the different methodologies measure.

Contribution of genetic and environmental effects on lens thickness: the Guangzhou Twin Eye study.

PURPOSE:

This study investigated the heritability of lens thickness (LT) and relative lens thickness (LT/axial length, rLT) measured by Lenstar among Chinese children and adolescents in the Guangzhou Twin Eye study.

METHODS:

Twins aged 8 to 22 years were enrolled from the Guangzhou Twin Registry. A series of LT and axial length (AL) measurements using the Lenstar were taken for each twin. Zygosity was confirmed by genotyping in all same-sex twin pairs. Heritability was assessed by structural variance component genetic modeling, after adjustment for age and sex with the Mx program.

RESULTS:

Seven hundred sixty-eight twin pairs (482 monozygotic [MZ] and 286 dizygotic [DZ] twins) were available for data analysis. The mean (standard deviation) LT and rLT were 3.45 (0.18) mm and 0.142 (0.01), respectively. The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for LT were 0.90 for the MZ and 0.39 for the DZ twins; and those for rLT were 0.90 for the MZ and 0.40 for the DZ twins, respectively. The best-fitting model yielded 89.5% (95% CI: 87.8%-91.0%) of additive genetic effects and 10.5% (95% CI: 9.0%-12.2%) of unique environmental effects for LT, and 89.3% (95% CI: 89.2%-89.3%) of additive genetic effects and 10.7% (95% CI: 10.7%-11.4%) of unique environmental effects for rLT.

CONCLUSIONS:

This study confirms that the LT in young healthy subjects may be mainly affected by additive genetic factors. High heritability remains even when the data are corrected for the influence of AL with the use of rLT.

Explaining voting behaviour on free votes: Solely a matter of preference?

While studies examining free votes find MPs’ preferences influence their voting behaviour, most studies also show MPs tend to divide along party lines even after the whips have been withdrawn. Recent work offers a possible alternative explanation for this finding: this sustained party cohesion represents the impact of MPs’ party identification similar to party identification effects in the electorate. This argument is tested using a series of free votes on same-sex relations. Even after controlling for preferences using several direct measures, party continues to shape voting behaviour. Although indirect, this provides evidence in favour of the party-asidentification argument. 

Sex Education in Northern Ireland Schools: a Critical Evaluation.

To date there has been little research on young people and sexuality in Northern Ireland. This paper draws on the first major study in this area to analyse the delivery of formal sex education in schools. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to access young people's opinions about the quality of the sex education they had received at school. Overall, they reported high levels of dissatisfaction, with notable variations in relation to both gender and religious affiliation. In one sense their opinions mesh well with those of young people in other parts of these islands. At the same time the specificity of sexuality in Ireland plays a key role in producing the moral system that underlies much of formal sex education in schools. Underpinned by a particularly traditional and conservative strain of Christian morality, sex education in Northern Ireland schools is marked by conservatism and silence and by the avoidance of opportunities for informed choice in relation to sexuality on the part of young people.

Queen-worker conflict over male production and sex ratio in a facultatively polyandrous bumble bee, Bombus hypnorum: the consequences of nest usurpation.

Evolutionary conflicts among social hymenopteran nestmates are theoretically likely to arise over the production of males and the sex ratio. Analysis of these conflicts has become an important focus of research into the role of kin selection in shaping social traits of hymenopteran colonies. We employ microsatellite analysis of nestmates of one social hymenopteran, the primitively eusocial and monogynous bumblebee Bombus hypnorum, to evaluate these conflicts. In our 14 study colonies, B. hypnorum queens mated between one and six times (arithmetic mean 2.5). One male generally predominated, fathering most of the offspring, thus the effective number of matings was substantially lower (1–3.13; harmonic mean 1.26). In addition, microsatellite analysis allowed the detection of alien workers, those who could not have been the offspring of the queen, in approximately half the colonies. Alien workers within the same colony were probably sisters. Polyandry and alien workers resulted in high variation among colonies in their sociogenetic organization. Genetic data were consistent with the view that all males (n = 233 examined) were produced by a colony’s queen. Male parentage was therefore independent of the sociogenetic organization of the colony, suggesting that the queen, and not the workers, was in control of the laying of male-destined eggs. The population-wide sex ratio (fresh weight investment ratio) was weakly female biased. No evidence for colony-level adaptive sex ratio biasing could be detected.

Interleukin 3 and schizophrenia:the impact of sex and family history

Chromosome 5q21-33 has been implicated in harboring risk genes for schizophrenia. In this paper, we report evidence that multiple single nucleotide polymorphisms in and around interleukin 3 (IL3) are associated with the disease in the Irish Study of High-Density Schizophrenia Families (ISHDSF), the Irish Case-Control Study of Schizophrenia (ICCSS) and the Irish Trio Study of Schizophrenia (ITRIO). The associations are sex-specific and depend on the family history (FH) of schizophrenia. In all three samples, rs31400 shows female-specific and FH-dependent associations (P=0.0062, 0.0647 and 0.0284 for the ISHDSF, ICCSS and ITRIO, respectively). Several markers have similar associations in one or two of the three samples. In haplotype analyses, identical risk and protective haplotypes are identified in the ISHDSF and ITRIO samples in several multimarker combinations. For ICCSS, the same haplotypes are implicated; however, the risk haplotypes observed in the family samples become protective. Several significant markers, rs440970, rs31400 and rs2069803, are located in and around known estrogen response elements, promoter and enhancer of the IL3 gene. They may explain the sex-specific associations and be functional for the expression of IL3 gene.