Member's statement: Women and the Orange Order

Member's statement by Ms Diane Forsythe on 8 September 2026.

MLA: Ms Diane Forsythe
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 8 September 2026
Type: Member's statement
Business: Members' Statements
Heading: Women and the Orange Order
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5673775

Text

I rise today as a proud Orangewoman to push back and address the deeply offensive and baseless comments made by the Member for West Belfast Gerry Carroll in the House yesterday. Gerry Carroll stood in the Chamber and claimed that the Orange Order, as an organisation, despises women. He is fundamentally wrong, and his comments were an absolute insult to over 1,500 hard-working Orangewomen like me across Northern Ireland and a slight on the entire Orange family and community, in which women play a vital role, and on me personally. From the junior Orange, which I joined as a young girl under the strong leadership of women such as Nan Cassidy and Sally Newell, to the band that I joined, Ballymartin Pipe Band — I was there for some 30 years, joining in cultural celebrations — and now as a proud Orangewoman leading the junior Orange today, my experience is echoed thousands of times over by women who join the Orange family and share in the values of faith, hope and charity. Gerry's attack on the Orange Order was, frankly, disgraceful. He is not in his place today, but I will say all of this to him again: it is disgraceful from a man who celebrates and promotes values and cultures across the world where women are suppressed and forced to cover themselves and where they are beheaded. He should be ashamed of his position on the treatment of women. Let us be honest: he cannot even define what a woman is. I can: I am a woman and a proud Orangewoman at that. Following Gerry Carroll's disgraceful comments, the BBC ran his comments and lies on its highlight reel yesterday evening, spreading an anti-Orange agenda once again. Having scrapped its live broadcast coverage of the Twelfth celebrations, what does the BBC do instead for the Protestant, unionist and loyalist communities? It continuously amplifies divisive, anti-Orange sound bites, deliberately painting our culture in the worst possible light. It does not showcase our high-profile, excellent events, but it pushes out any slightly hostile story into people's feeds.
Gerry Carroll does not speak for the women of Northern Ireland. He does not understand the Orange Order. He does not understand the Orange family, our culture or our people, but we will not be silenced. I look forward to next year when the Orange Order and the people of unionism in West Belfast will speak back. Gerry Carroll will hear that loud and clear when Frank McCoubrey returns, makes history and takes a seat for West Belfast here in the House.

428 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Flagged Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations

Jev’s structured answers met every documented threshold for flagging as culture-war activity.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.90 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
Criteria met: Identity framing (0.97); Cultural grievance politics (0.95); Controversy escalation (0.92).
The text adopts the identity-based framing in its own voice (0.74).
Subject area: Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations.
All thresholds for flagging were met.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.97	Yes
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.25	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.95	Yes
Dog-whistle messaging	0.51	No
Controversy escalation	0.92	Yes
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.06	No
Overall judgement	0.90	Above flagging threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing	0.03
Reports or questions it	0.00
Criticises or condemns it	0.23
Adopts it (chosen)	0.74

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.56
Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups	0.31
Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues	0.08
Religion and belief (including people of no religion), churches, faith communities and religious prejudice (including antisemitism and anti-Muslim prejudice)	0.02
Another identity-related subject	0.02

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 16:17 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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