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EVAN YOUNG WAS named class valedictorian at Twin Peaks Charter Academy High School in Longmont Colorado.
As part of the speech he was due to give, Young planned to announce he is gay.
But when that was discovered, the school appealed for him not to give his speech. He was not allowed give the full speech, says Democracy Now, which also says Young wasn’t recognised as valedictorian.
He did eventually manage to give his speech – not at the school, but at somewhere more welcoming, in front of hundreds of people.
Here’s what he had to say:
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Lowry won’t like this.
Depressing thing is that Lowry would probably pass such a test. Nonetheless an excellent motion, no surprise that Sinn Féin are opposing it.
What have they got to hide?
Would Nelson Mandela have got past Police vetting in South Africa ?
He still wouldn’t have been prevented from running.
We know that certain politicians have past convictions, we know that others have been found against by tribunals, we know that others have been up to endless no good, yet we vote for them anyway.
We should at least have the right information. If we still believe that a candidate is worth voting for, despite failing their Garda vetting, we can still go ahead and vote for them.
All the examples shown (teachers, healthcare, Gaa etc…) are Garda vetted because the work with children. If the level of vetting is to identify a risk to the public, then so be it, but these politicians don’t really have a position of trust, so this is a bit pointless. Introduce vetting for “patrons” of primary schools and you have a vote.
they gotta hide bodies, peados, northern bank money, the off spill from Diesel laundering,and most of all they have to hide from the truth,
Will never come to pass, a counter objective being the sacking of the former commissioner by this government, the corruption of F/F F/G , Bankers , Developers, Former Leaders, Jeez Sinn Fein are like choir boys to that lot . Guards need to vet themselves but won’t . Welcome to justice Ire. a great little country to do business. Lock it all away for 30 yrs, Ha. Its a wonder Irish water are not sending demand letters in brown envelopes.
They are trusted with running our country therefore I would consider that a position of trust
Would prefer to see the TD’s vetted by revenue every 6 months.
A tax clearance certificate is required to run for election. Why not Garda vetting?
At the very least let it be known that the above have not been obtained by candidates. Print it on the ballot paper.
Can’t recall Nelson Mandela shooting and blowing up people………u absolute clown. Never mind diesel laundering, racketeering drugs, cigarette smuggling……….
Mandela was responsible for 100′s of deaths although not directly. but he did give the orders. Manly bombings. That is why he was tried and found guilty, and spent all those years in prison.
Your some dummy
Just because you can’t remember something doesn’t mean it did not happen. We have books you can read if you want to learn and educate yourself. You are the dummy.
Someyear, Have you read much about Mandela, other than watching invictus of course?
There are no Nelson Mandelas in Sinn Fein believe me
That’s news to me, Alien8! And there was me thinking that we give them our trust to run the country and look after our welfare. Not that any of them have been doing any sort of a halfway decent job of it since at least the early 80s.
Sinn Féin members never broke the laws of a state they recognised.
Council employees are Garda vetted so councillors should be too
Councillors are vetted by their constituents every 5 years. Unlike council employees.
You can do a lot of damage in 5 mins Colin, never mind 5 yesrs , did you get in the last time?
Councillors meet with desperate people and their families, vulnerable people including children facing homelessness. They are in a position of power. Little johnny’s family is on the verge of homelessness so he and his mammy go to see the local councillor for help. The councillor meets little Johnny another day when his mammy isn’t there and says “together we can solve the problem, but it has to be our secret”. Without garda vetting, you can’t know the past of anyone. For this reason, anyone who is employed by the state and deals with vulnerable people or children should have to be vetted.
Colin if you want true equality in that respect, a sizeable proportion of councillors should be on short term contracts that get progressively shorter and shorter until they’re down to three months, until they’re all “let go”, but they don’t count as redundancies because their contracts had ended. As happened to lots of public servants, myself include, at the beginning of the collapse.
In the example above, if the councillor has a criminal history as a sex pest, then that would already be publicly accessible information. If not, then Garda vetting wouldn’t pick it up. If you want politicians to be completely beholden to an unelected police force (what could possibly go wrong!) then you don’t have much respect for your own democratic rights.
@ Colin. …let’s face it Garda vetting isn’t worth the paper it’s not written, unless the person has lived in one or two addresses in ROB, if you lived abroad in a bedsit or some flat in London or imagine trying to vet someone who arrived from Africa, Asia and burned their ID papers.
Mind you a polygraph might help sort out SOME of the problems! ( Yes!I do know it can be beaten!)
Zero hour contracts, preferably, for most of them1
By psychopathsand sociopaths. The profile of whom, as we know, many politicians fit nicely.
Politicians won’t accept cheques only cash
Their staff should also be vetted. Like Kathleen Lynches husband.
“We have all manner of checks in relation to the finances of politicians”
lol
and that just might work, if only white collar criminals were subject to the law, like the rest of us..
Get them psychologically assessed also to detect the narcissistic pathological liars.
They should be checked for a backbone, aye Edna !
I switched off after “says politician”
Of course the Shinners are against being Garda checked. We could all have predicted that one.
There’d be none of them left.
Mary-Lou would be the only one left standing if SF/IRA were vetted. All those bombings, murders, kidnappings and bank robberies swept out from under the carpet……
She still would believe Gerry.
She’d say that he was holding the arms and balaclava for a friend.
Of course they should be vetted in every since of the word, Suspect quite a lot would Fáil an aptitude test
Get out.
No surprise the Shinners are against it.
This should be fun ( if it happens ) the s..t that will hit the fan will be enormous.
This is very unfair to bombers, bank robbers and murderers in general.
Labour will be against this so….no more hiding from their IRA past or hiring husbands with history.
who vets the gardai
It is essential that politicians meet the same standards that they are imposing on others, we should remember that Liam Adams was nominated to run for Sinn Fein when senior members of that party knew he was a child rapist and is now serving 15 years for those crimes against his 4 year old daughter, Liam Adams was not the only one, there can be no place in politics for those who have committed heinous crimes or those who have concealed or facilitated those crimes…
Liam Adams sought a nomination but failed. Even if he had got a nomination a Garda background check would have produced nothing as he hadn’t been convicted of a crime up until then as far as I know and certainly none of a nature of what he was eventually convicted of.
What a great idea. Give the police a chance to determine who the people can vote for. Why did no one think of this before. Genius.
there are sitting members in the English Parliament and House of Commons that are know pedophiles
Seems sensible for all parliamentarians including our own.
Totally Naziism.
The people elect politicians. What democracy would allow the police to decide who is allowed represent the people?
I’m sure they don;t mean themselves or their party friends, who defrauded the public out of billions, more like the politicians who get arrested, protesting with the people, fighting for decent living conditions for us all to live a peaceful and dignified life Rory…
The people dont do a very good job in this case .
I suspect you are right Nemesis.
imagine someone like martin ferris looking for gardai vetting
Imagine everybody knowing about Martin Ferris’s past and still electing him.
Most elected officials are seriously vetted opposing candidates and by our news media during elections.
I doubt that Garda vetting would be any more informative.
Fascists.
Garda vetting is required for those who work in proximity to children, and if carried out correctly, provides a useful screening.
That said, a politicians responsibility is to their electorate, all of whom are over 18.
The point of living in a democracy is that anyone who wishes to run for office can. These cretins wish to change that which gives us a clear indication of what they actually think about democracy.
….politicians have no responsibility to people under 18?
Paul – do they not have access to under 18′s either?
My understanding is that minors are the responsibility of their parents.
Unless of course that has changed as a result of the Childrens Rights Amendment.
But I’m at a loss as to why anybody would think that a politician should have an expectation of access minors.
* access to
And Councillors are responsible for those over 18??
They have a responsibility to, not for those over 18, Tommy.
Try to remember when you became an adult and didn’t have to ask for permission to do anything because you had reached the age of majority and you lived in a democracy.
Not only that, politicians should, just like many professionals, have their own code of conduct. Breaching this code should incur sanctions including barring people from running for office again. As Nurses, we have these responsibilities to the general public and our statutory body and we only have it our power to do a tiny fraction of the damage that politicians have done to this country, up to and including loss of life.
Politicians are subject to codes of conduct set out in legislation and governed by the Standards in Public Office Commission.
www. sipo.gov.ie/en/Codes-of-Conduct/
That police state is getting closer.
The only requirement to be an elected representative should be garnering enough votes from your electorate. If we move to exclude certain people because of past legal indiscretions then people could potentially be targeted to ensure they can never enter politics. Perhaps criminal records should be made available to the electorate prior to voting, but nothing more.
How much would it cost to vet a vet nett of vat?
@Philip..a vat load of net.
This is very unfair to your average bomber, bank robber, rapist and murderers in general.
Labour will suffer, no more handy jobs for certain husbands.
Sure the official IRA/workers party/DL/labour never did any of that…!
Lol at Shinners ####ing themselves over this, pack of crooks…..
All elected officials/candidates should be vetted and their records made public only if they are elected. No person should be barred from running for any public office; it’s the people’s choice. Transparency is the key.
Stupid idea … Really stupid !… FG looking for political policing…, mind boggles.
How is it a stupid idea. Are you a criminal? Well you don’t get to run the country. Please point out the flaw in this plan.
It shpuld go way further than that. Election promises should be in a form of contract where the public would enter into the contract by voting for them.
Penalties for liez, not coming through with the promises, failed targets etc should be salary cuts, fines, job loss etc.
That makes no sense when for the last quarter century every government has been a coalition made up of parties with differing manifestos.
Every government is based on compromise.
All prospective politicians should be expected to go through psychological testing especially for sociopathy, and their profiles should be made public via the Internet. Yes, this is a wee bit intrusive, but it’s a price that they should be expected to pay considering the importance of their positions.
Labour will be worried.
I fully support Noel Rock and his Dublin City Council motion to ensure all Councillors are vetted by An Garda Síochána
In the best interests of protecting the safety of the most vulnerable members of a community, It is imperative that democratically elected office holders such as Cllrs are scrutinized adequately by our national law enforcement agency.
I do not think it is right, fair or just that other stakeholders in our society such as teachers are vetted, when Councillors are not – this has to change.
http://www.volunteer.ie defines Garda Vetting as the following:
- “Garda Vetting is a vital step in the safety and protection of children and vulnerable adults. In addition, it helps protect organisations, their assets and other personnel who provide services to children and vulnerable adults. All individuals who have unsupervised or sustained access to children and/or vulnerable adults should undergo Garda Vetting.”
Councillors should NEVER be exempt from this.
This is not a right wing attitude, it is a common sense attitude – it is the right thing to do!
Andrew, unless I am mistaken councillors are elected to run councils and not creches. If there was a sex offence conviction against a member of any candidate running for any party you can be sure that it would be made known at canvassing time. The next time you meet Enda why don’t you ask him as to why a party that is so keen on Garda vetting is not so keen on producing the report on the reasons for the Garda Commissioner “resigning”. You might also ask him if some of his party members should lead by example in setting standards of behaviour in dealing with members of the opposite sex.
He is 100% right of course, but wont ever happen, they think they are above all that .
Has he not heard of democracy? The people elect their leaders, they aren’t chosen by the Gardai.
Yet again Hugh, your biased views shine through. The article is about FG councilors wanting to push for vetting in political circles and second to that is SF’s objection to it. Your headline starts with the latter of course. I knew it was your article before I got down to the end.
About time
Another party political podcast by Hugh boy.. highlight SF’s opposition to this undemocratic motion rather than the attempt to further politicise policing. .
Yes because we’re all just conspiring against the terrorists. It’s nothing to do with the fact that they’re actually terrorists. Your past is haunting you, not the opposition.
Yes why not,
Would hate to be going to an elected Representative and find out that he was a paedaphile.
The protection of children shouldn’t be some toy to be used to score political points with. If the politicians are going to have unsupervised access to children, then obviously they should be vetted, same as anyone else. If they don’t, then there is no reason to require it of them.
I don’t know which camp councillors fall into, though I suspect it is the latter.
As part of the Garda vetting, they should ask Pearse Doherty what the elasticity of demand is, the Laffer Curve and how did Keynes and Smith differ?
Just to ensure he is the real Pearse ‘Economics Rockstar’ Doherty, and not some imposter who looks like him.
Some of the politicians including local councilors who have promised to carry out their election manifestos ,a few i know are independent ,who have done a complete u- turn on their promises ,,Dont think they can be charged with any court ,and waiting years to confront them is a long time ,,If there was a law against liars they would be very few in the dail or local councils ,,,
there goes everybody in fg then all a load of crooks and whos going to be the person to administer the vetting in the government would have to be someone completely non political
I wonder what she’s done…
Gardai vetting doesn’t prove their ability or qualifications to do the jobs their applying for which is more important so waste of time
This is just a strategy in political battle, FG want to use the mud they obtained (illegally probably) already to sling without the ramifications. Young SF members should really think before condemning an action that on the front looks like it in the interest of the people or “will somebody think of the children” politics.
I hate SF but I don’t agree with this I rubbish , the people decide who gets elected , they’re should be no criteria. Once again democracy is under attack , this is an attempt to stop anti water protesters from running for election
Garda vetting is primarily for people who work in an area where they may have unsupervised access to children or vulnerable people. It is aimed primarily at sex offenders. You can be guaranteed that if someone was running for a council or Dail seat and they were convicted of a sex offence that their opponents wouldn’t be long letting everyone know.
If these 2 FG councillors are worried about the sexual antics of elected representatives they could find that they have opened a Pandoras Box. Now I suppose it is in the lap of the Gods.
I believe this is a step in the right direction. Anyone who works with the public should have to go through this process and if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to be scared of.
Shop workers work with the public, should they be vetted? Postal delivery people, milkmen and women etc. Yera lets just vet everyone while at it.
SF opposing basic checks of decency…no surprise.
This is wrong. This will lead to a list of approved candidates only. It’s a political stunt and should be defeated.
Sinn Fein don’t want politicans to be garda vetted. Hahahahaha. Of course they don’t. Bahahahahah. They’re the modern day irish mafia. Now this article made me laugh.
The start of a slippery slope to trouble.
How convenient for them!
I would have assumed that politicians, both local and governmental, were Garda vetted – can’t believe they’re not!
have your say