SpunOut.ie, a cross-border charity providing mental health and sexual advice to young adults aged 16-25 has become the latest source of outrage for Fine Gael TD for Mayo, Michelle Mulherin. Her focus is one, of about 3000 articles on the SpunOut.ie website, which concerns threesomes. It offers advice on how to deal with the issue if it arises in a relationship and, if you decide to proceed with it:
A threesome involves getting sexually intimate with two people rather than just one person. Threesomes can involve any combination of guys and gals. They often consist of a couple experimenting with another person outside of their relationship. Some people find threesomes to be enjoyable, for others it is an uncomfortable or upsetting experience.
You may feel under pressure by your partner to have a threesome because your other half has seen them on porn, films, or television.
However, you should never feel pressured into doing something that you don’t want to do.
However, in yesterday’s Sindo, Mulherin takes a particular reading of this and is quoted as saying:
“The idea that people are dispensable and that you can objectify them for your own sexual gratification is incredibly regressive. And that this has been given the State seal of approval is very worrying,” she said.
“There is nothing right about this. I will be raising the issue with Minister for Health James Reilly as to why he is putting taxpayers’ money towards this. It is totally inappropriate. It goes against the common good which is what the Government should be trying to achieve in society.
“Every relationship has an emotional consequence, there is no such thing as a meaningless relationship. Teenagers are very impressionable and this is normalising this type of behaviour.”
SpunOut’s response has been quick to highlight the fact that it provides advice:
We do not promote threesomes, we arm young people with the facts about them. We advise young people not to be coerced or pressured into having any form of sex.
Pretty clear message there.
Yet her Fine Gael party colleague Health Minister James Reilly is to get the HSE to review it’s funding of the website, while Young Fine Gael have come out in support of SpunOut.ie. Being interviewed on Newstalk this morning, Michelle Mulherin continued in her moral outrage.
Mulherin is the TD who caused a stir when she raised the issue of ‘fornication’ during an Oireachtas debate last year.
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