A laicized cleric from Galway is putting a concrete definition of womanhood and free expression on the chopping block in Strasbourg as he settles into a role as one of Europe’s top human rights enforcers.

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LGBT rights activist and former man of the cloth, Michael O’Flaherty took up the gig of commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe in April 2024 and in his six year mandate already stepping on toes through an over-emphasis on the culture wars.

Not to be mistaken with a similar intergovernmental EU institution, the Council of Europe is a 46-nation human rights body designed to whip states who stray from the rules based global order.

The enforcer of the ECHR, O’Flaherty’s primary duty includes enforcing pan-European compliance with the Irish activist zoning in on supposed transphobia, online hate speech and the rise of illiberal populism across the Continent.

An UN employee throughout the 1990s before a stint in post-conflict Northern Ireland as a human rights commissioner O’Flaherty make it clear to rhetorically target gender critical feminists in the opening months of his tenure.

Putting a particular emphasis on establishing so-called guardrails against AI-driven hate at a speech given to the post-Paddy Cosgrave Web Summit in Lisbon last year O’Flaherty has had a small role injecting gender ideology into Europe’s response to the Ukrainian conflict.

O’Flaherty was clear to take a swipe at British feminists following the assertion of biological nature of womanhood by the UK Supreme Court this year. O’Flaherty kicked off his mandate not with a call to end war crimes or protect refugees, but by targeting so-called ‘transphobia’—because in Strasbourg, misgendering is now a greater sin than missile strikes

By embracing gender ideology under the banner of inclusivity, institutions like the Council of Europe have alienated the very feminists who built their legitimacy fracturing their coalitions to the delight of the right and draining public trust from parents horrified at the trans agenda.

O’Flaherty doesn’t enforce rights; he redefines them turning free expression into a conditional privilege and disagreement into digital sin. Only in today’s Europe could a man who can’t define a woman be trusted to define human rights for 700 million people.

His Ukraine memorandum paid lip service to peace and justice but not before scolding society for insufficient gender sensitivity during wartime, as if frontline soldiers need pronoun briefings. If Kyiv survives the Muscovite onslaught it will have to face European-enforced gender madness as it tries to secure its national future.

Today’s rights regime under the tutelage of  O’Flarety protects everything except dissent; it defends the marginalised, unless they’re unfashionably female, unfunded, or unconvinced by gender theory

With war on Europe’s borders and democracy under pressure, O’Flaherty’s priority is clear: policing pronouns. The real crisis isn’t populism or digital hate it’s the collapse of moral legitimacy among those who hijacked human rights to serve cultural revolution.

Through the European Court of Human Rights and its expansive interpretations of the European Convention, the Council of Europe and O’Flaherty coervicely create de facto legal obligations that override national parliament and democratic consent.

The Council operates symbiotically with EU-funded NGOs, creating a rights-industrial complex where activist language is laundered into policy through reports and resolutions then enforced through courts and diplomatic pressure.

In a largely disarmed and greying Europe the Council is a disciplinary tool against citizens and wayward governments and one that is slowly running out of steam as it expands past its remit and the liberal consensus breaks.

Under O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe doubles down on liberal orthodoxy particularly on gender at a time when Europe itself is fracturing. O’Flaherty’s Council enforces norms no one voted for, in the name of values no one agreed on, through institutions no one can remove.

O’Flaherty and the Council’s embrace of gender ideology isn’t just mission drift it’s a warning sign that post-war liberal institutions are no longer anchored in consensus or restraint, but increasingly vulnerable to activist capture.

As the former priest may appreciate, human rights as  a concept originated not just at Calvary but by the specific civilizational synthetic Euro-Christian society afforded in the post-WW2 era to protect the weak. It is this very civilization O’Flaherty now sets himself against.

Rights-based approach’ is the new clericalism cynically deployed only against regimes or citizens out of ideological favour. Europe’s and O’Flaherty’s human rights regime is no longer about protecting the individual from the state it’s about protecting ideology from the individual and the world is starting to wake up.

While other small states hedge and adapt in a multipolar world, Ireland still believes in a ‘rules-based order’ that increasingly resembles a LGBT-run bureaucracy without brakes. In championing universalism without discretion, Ireland has lost control over what is done in its name ceding ground not just to Brussels and Strasbourg, but to ideology unmoored from consent

The Strasbourg of today governed by the likes of O’Flaherty no longer guards rights, manufactures them, weaponises them, and turns them against the traditional European Christian societies that once created the institution. With O’Flaherty at the helm, the Council is not just out of touch it’s in open conflict with national democratic instincts of much of Europe. Something is gonna give.

Original article: theburkean.ie