Ireland’s national public service broadcaster RTÉ recently interviewed gay rights activist Rory O’Neill, aka Panti Bliss. They asked Rory about homophobic people in Irish society, and obviously the Iona Institute came up, because they’re the most homophobic people in Irish society. They’re a mercenarily homophobic private company dedicated solely to removing rights from homosexual Irish people. Homophobia is their cúis aige chun a beith (a very Irish raison d’être altogether). The Institute made a legal threat to Ireland’s semi-state voice of public discussion, and that voice immediately squealed “I surrender”, censored its own interviews, and paid them eighty-five thousand euros of public money.

This was so horrifying that even TDs were able to see it was stupid, complaining about the payment in Oireachtas, and enabling the stupid waste of vast sums of money has been the Oirechtas’ sole function for over a decade. The resulting investigation has revealed several other problematic  payments and guidelines issued by RTÉ:

• RTÉ publicly apologized to world terrorist organizations for their portrayal in the Die Hard movies.
• Footage of the Berlin Book Burnings is now overdubbed with “Here we see our friends the Jolly Germans trying to keep warm over a particularly cold winter!“
• Reporters in the Ukraine must state that “everyone on both sides look like a grand shower of lads, I’m sure everybody’s right, I wonder if they’d like some free money.“
• Any lawyer who even looks at the RTÉ buildings receives ten thousand euros. And the stench of urine-soaked trousers if they’re standing downwind.
• Forty thousand euros were sent to the hyena enclosure at Dublin Zoo after a broadcast of the Lion King. On being told Dublin Zoo doesn’t have a hyena enclosure, RTÉ officials hissed “sshhhhhhhh, they might hear you say that!” and threw other people’s money at the hyena-expert until she went away.
• Excuse me, I’ve just received twenty thousand euros from RTÉ because I’m writing official-sounding mean things about them. I must ponder whether this will make me — and everyone else in the world — more or less likely to legally threaten them in future.
• It’s expected that Ireland will have to raise taxes when the last surviving Nazi official finds out about all the World War 2 movies they’ve been showing. But at least not standing up against goddamn fascists is something Ireland has experience in, so RTÉ’s current behaviour is detestably understandable.

More dickhaters in The IONA Institute: In Our Nice Arseholes? and The Sixth Reason Homophobia Is Unmanly.