Name David Quinn Role Commentator | ||
Organizations founded Iona Institute | ||
David Quinn is an Irish social and religious commentator who freelances and contributes weekly columns to The Irish Catholic and Irish Independent. He often appears on Irish current affairs broadcasts. Known for supporting pro-life, anti-euthanasia, and anti-same-sex marriage views in his writings and media contributions.
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For over six years, he was editor of The Irish Catholic and has written weekly opinion pieces for newspapers like The Sunday Times, The Sunday Business Post and the Irish Daily Mail. He has contributed to First Things, The Human Life Review and The Wall Street Journal's Europe edition.
Quinn is a director of the Dublin chapter of Legatus, which promotes Roman Catholicism in corporate business, for those who meet stringent qualification criteria.
Educated at St. Paul's College, Raheny, Quinn studied at Dublin City University (then NIHE Dublin) graduating with a degree in Business Studies.
Iona Institute
In January 2007, Quinn founded the self-styled Iona Institute, a Roman Catholic pressure group promoting families based on heterosexual marriage and the practice of religion. He is the current director of the Iona Institute.
Anti-Abortion campaigning
David Quinn supports the Ireland's near total ban on abortion, and has appeared many times in popular debates on the topic of abortion in Ireland, to defend the Eighth Amendment.
Euthanasia
David Quinn campaigns against the legalisation of euthanasia.
Anti-LGBT Campaigning
In 2010, he was opposed to legal recognition of same-sex in the form of Civil Partnerships.
He campaigned for a No vote in the 2015 same-sex marriage referendum
In the course of the referendum campaign, Professor John A Murphy, a noted Irish historian, wrote to the Irish Times. In his letter, he described the constitutional amendment, which permitted same sex marriage and extended constitutional protection to families based on such marriages, as "grotesque nonsense.". Following this, Mr Quinn tweeted "Proposed change to marriage 'grotesque nonsense' Mr Quinn was criticised for this tweet by LGBT rights activist Panti, who wrote: "I can think of lots of things that are grotesque. Extending constitutional protection to all families is not one of them... I would call it 'fair', 'reasonable', 'compassionate', 'considerate', 'respectful', or even 'the very least we can do'. But not 'grotesque'."