Year: 2007

This is a very Dutch item. Last Friday, Jos Brink breathed his last. He was only 65 and succumbed to cancer. He was a lay preacher and a TV presenter. He was an actor and columnist. He was a producer of musicals and he was gay, married to his husband Frank Sanders. He was, I think it is fair to say, much loved by many Dutch folk. So far, over 20,000 people have left messages on the internet site for condolences. I don’t believe it is a stretch to say that he paved the way to acceptance of gays (and not simply mealy-mouthed tolerance) as just another intrinsic part of Dutch society.

 

Before his funeral on Thursday, he will lie, in state as it were, in the Amsterdam Carré Theatre. I can’t help but feel that he will have a terrific send-off on that day. He deserves nothing less. 

Robin, over at Dharma Bums, writes about an epiphany that she had when she was eleven or twelve, and asks the rest of us whether we’ve had a moment that turned on the light switch to the world. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a profound moment (at least not one that’s left such a lasting impression), but I do recall a minor epiphany very clearly. I must have been a similar age, as it was the first time I had come across quadratic equations. I can still remember sitting in the science lab when I grokked the technique of solving them. I was absolutely elated. 

Radio Netherlands carries a story on one response to the growing number of reported attacks on gay men in the Netherlands: the setting up of a self-defence course for gays.  

Children’s books have had a long history of being a means to bring moral instruction to the young. Some do it well, but others are so bad that they beggar belief. A case in point is Alfie’s Home, written by Richard A. Cohen and self-published by his woefully misnamed (at least going by the evidence of this book) organisation: the International Healing Foundation.

 

The book was originally published back in 1993, but the content has only recently appeared on the internet, with the result that lots of people are now realising just how ridiculous and misconceived the book is. It attempts to deal with a serious issue, childhood sexual abuse, but does so in a totally inadequate way. What’s worse, it posits the false theory that this is what causes a person to be gay. It’s a favourite theory of organisations that seek to turn gay people straight. Some of the people involved in such organisations appear to believe, against all evidence, that all gay people have been sexually abused, and this is the primary cause of their being gay. Needless to say, this is cod psychology at its worst.

Continuing on the theme of the enemies of reason, here’s a good article by David Colquhoun that points out the evidence that woo is on the rise: the age of endarkenment. Essential reading. 

Today marks the 60th anniversary since the Partition of India. Last night I watched a documentary on BBC 2 about it: Partition: The Day India Burned. It’s worth seeing. Yes, it had the curse of drama reconstructions laid upon it, but those moments were thankfully outweighed by plenty of archive footage, and most importantly, eye-witness accounts told by Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and the British who were caught up in this terrible event. I hadn’t appreciated before that up to 15 million people were made homeless by the redrawing of the boundaries, and up to a million people were slaughtered. 

 

There were terrible moments relived by the eye-witnesses. One old man (who just before partition had been in jail for assault) was completely unrepentant about the fact that he had lost count of how many people he had killed with his sword, after all "they were trying to kill us". But for me the most dreadful part was when an elderly Sikh broke down as he told of the moment when, as a teenage boy, he watched his father behead his own sister to prevent her from being captured and raped by Muslims (such rapings, practised by all sides, were common). And his sister was not the only woman to be executed – all the womenfolk in his village were killed by their menfolk, and there were no struggles. The women went to their deaths quietly.

 

The last word was given to another Sikh, whose grandfather had tried to persuade, unsuccessfully, the authorities to let Muslims continue living in harmony in their village. He said that as a young boy, who couldn’t understand why his boyhood friends had to leave, and neither did they. He said he asked "why" at the time, and now, 60 years later, he still asks the same question: "why?".

It’s the only one you’ve got. Grab life while you can – like Linda.