Category: LGBT Politics

I see that Cardinal Keith O’Brien has been awarded the “Bigot of the Year” award by Stonewall. Naturally, he and other members of the Catholic hierarchy aren’t best pleased. On the other hand, if the cap fits…

To quote from the article:

Colin Macfarlane, the director of Stonewall Scotland, said: “We’ve never called anyone a bigot just because they don’t agree with us. But in just the past 12 months, the cardinal has gone well beyond what any normal person would call a decent level of public discourse.”

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, Macfarlane added: “The people that were nominated for bigot of the year have this year called gay people Nazis, they have compared them to bestialists and to paedophiles, and one of the nominees suggested that gay people should be put in front of a firing squad and shot dead.

“So I think what we are doing is highlighting the very cruel, very nasty, very pernicious language that is being used by some people – and in particular by the cardinal, who won.

The opposing view was expressed by Ruth Davidson:

Stonewall’s decision was criticised, however, by the Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson as she picked up her own award as politician of the year at the prize ceremony at the Victoria and Albert museum in London on Thursday evening.

Davidson, the first openly gay leader of a major political party in the UK, was booed when she said it was “simply wrong” to call people names like bigot. “The case for equality is far better made by demonstrating the sort of generosity, tolerance and love we would wish to see more of in this world,” she said.

“There are many voices in this debate and just as I respectfully express my sincerely held belief that we should extend marriage to same-sex couples, I will also respect those who hold a different view.”

To my way of thinking, respect is something that is earned, not automatically given. And holding different views is one thing, but to hear powerful religious figures such as the Cardinal, and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, spout the cruel, nasty, pernicious language that they regularly use about us is something that I will not countenance.

I have no hesitation whatsoever in calling the Cardinal a bigot, because that is what he is. He has earned himself a well-deserved award.

Update: and now, of course, he has shown himself to be a hypocrite. Hoist by his own petard. Just desserts.

I drew your attention to John Sentamu’s piece on why he does not support same-sex marriage a few days ago. One thing I missed in that farrago is that His Grace was being economical with the truth. He stated that the bishops in the House of Lords supported civil partnerships when the bill was debated.

Strange that, if one checks Hansard, as Iain McLean has done, that is not what you will find:

The main Lords debate on the civil partnership bill took place in June 2004. Richard Harries, then bishop of Oxford, did indeed signal Church of England support for civil partnerships. But his efforts were contradicted by the five conservative bishops who spoke on the other side. Going by the bishops’ contributions to debate, the score is 5/3 against. Going by the bishops’ votes, it is 6/1 against. Six bishops voted for a successful wrecking amendment in the name of Lady O’Cathain, which made the bill unworkable. Only the Commons’ insistence on rejecting the O’Cathain amendment made it possible to enact civil partnerships.

His Grace tells porkies. What a surprise. 

A tip of the hat to Eric McDonald for drawing my attention to this doubtless unintended failure of His Grace to recall facts correctly when it suits him to do so.

…Or, a bigot begs the question. John Sentamu explains why he objects to same-sex marriage. It’s a staggering piece, chock-full of circular arguments and some breathtaking disingenuousness. A prime example of the latter is his opening:

I will be the first to accept that homosexual people have suffered discrimination and sometimes worse through the decades and that the churches have, at times, been complicit in this.

Er, at times the churches have been complicit in this? Dear God, Sentamu, your Christian church has our blood on its hands. It has been the powerhouse of discrimination and violence against us for centuries, and remains so in many cases, the Roman Catholic Church and the African Anglican churches to name but two.

I think it’s instructive, as one of the commenters on this piece has done, to use Sentamu’s opening words and replace the targets of his piece. It throws into sharp relief Senatmu’s bigotry:

I will be the first to accept that slaves have suffered discrimination and sometimes worse through the decades and that the churches have, at times, been complicit in this. There is much penance to be done before we can look our enslaved brothers and sisters in the eye. But that baleful history does not diminish the need to speak the truth in love.

I firmly believe that redefining society to embrace emancipation would mean diminishing the meaning of life for most people, with very little if anything gained for black people. If I am right, in the long term we would all be losers.

Of course, if someone should ask, “how will my household be affected if servants can be free to come and go as they please?”, the answer is: not at all. But let me put the question another way: what sort of a society would we have if we came to see all social relations primarily in terms of equal rights? Society is designed to meet the different needs of its different members in different ways. It is the model of the just society that responds intelligently to differences rather than treating everyone the same.

While I am a strong supporter of justice and equality of opportunity for all people, I want to insist that with those rights go our responsibilities to one another. These are enshrined, I believe, in our legal definition of human property. Would we be a better society if we made the master-servant relation simply a private contract between two individuals, with no wider implications of society and property rights? I do not believe that we would. The issue is not the implication for any existing household,  but the implication for people in the future, when the social meaning of bondage has been changed and, in my view, diminished.

Drawing parallels between the proposed emancipation and the introduction of same-sex marriage ignores the fact that there is more than one paradigm of equality. For me, sexual equality rests on the doctrine that there is only one dominant race – the white race – and any difference of treatment on sexual grounds is therefore unjustifiable. But there is another view, based on the complementary nature of blacks and whites. In short, should there be equality between the races because a black man  can do anything a white man can do or because a good society needs the different perspectives of blacks and whites equally?

We’ve moved on from the days when people, including influential churchmen (they’re always men), could say something like the above in polite society. Sentamu may well believe that he is speaking the truth in love, but he is not. He is preaching the same old hatreds that have bedevilled humanity down the centuries.

Sentamu is likely to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. I’m glad I’m no longer a Christian.

I noticed on the web site of the European Parliament’s Intergroup on LGBT Rights an item about the fact that members of the European Parliament have welcomed a new survey into the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the European Union and Croatia.

The survey asks a range of questions about LGBT people’s experiences including:

• Personal circumstances
• Public perceptions and responses to homophobia and/or transphobia
• Discrimination
• Rights awareness
• Safe environment
• Violence and harassment
• The social context of being an LGBT person

The survey has been drawn up on behalf of the the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in order to gather data in support of equal treatment legislation and policy making.

I’ve just filled in my response. If you are an LGBT person living in the EU (or Croatia), I urge you to do the same.

That revered institution, the Thought For The Day on BBC Radio 4, is still carrying on churning out platitudes. I always read the Rev. Dr. Peter Hearty’s merciless skewering of the Thoughts. Yesterday, we had Canon Angela Tilby’s thoughts on gay marriage.

The poor woman was a bit caught in the middle, as she likes to think of herself as a liberal, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say that the Churches had got it wrong.

I particularly liked the moment when she actually said:

The point about sacraments is that they can’t be made up…

Ah, but Canon Tilby, the whole point is that they are made up. Humanity has created its gods, not the other way around, however much you might want to believe that.

Meanwhile, I suppose we are into hearing more of the same from churchmen (and women) saying that same-sex marriage is simply wrong. The UK has clearly got some distance to travel before they arrive at the point that we enjoy here in The Netherlands. As a commentator (who lives in The Netherlands) wrote in response to Canon Tilby’s piece:

It’s obvious from the pronouncements from a variety of god-botherers over the last week or so, that they still think their Church, (whichever one it happens to be), still owns marriage, and consequently they have the right to decide who may or may not get married. But marriage, in this country [the Netherlands] at least, is not a religious institution, but a social and legally binding secular contract. Although couples may choose to have a religious ceremony, the marriage still has to be registered with secular authorities in order to be valid. Weddings not so validated, as sometimes happens with ones carried out according to Islamic rites, are not recognised in law, and the couples do not have the rights of married couples regarding property, custody of children, inheritance, etc.

As I understand it, there is no suggestion that any church or religious institution will be forced to conduct gay marriages, but equally they should have no right to dictate who should or should not be allowed to marry outside of religious buildings.

Quite.

Here, couples who are religious will always have their civil marriage ceremony in the local Townhall first, before trooping across the market square into the church for the religious marriage ceremony. Even Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Máxima did the same. They were married, by Amsterdam’s Mayor at the time, Job Cohen, on the 2nd February 2002 in a civil ceremony in the Great Hall of the Beurs van Belage, before going to the Nieuwe Kerk (the New Church) for the religious ceremony.

After Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s very unpleasant outburst on the possibility of the UK’s legalising same-sex marriage, it comes as something of a relief to be able to point to a voice of sanity on the subject. It belongs to the philosopher Norman Geras.

Actually, he has two blog posts on the subject. The first is a reaction to the Cardinal directly, in which Geras notes how feeble the arguments put forward by the Cardinal are.

The second is his reaction to the text of a letter co-signed by the Archbishop of Westminster and the Archbishop of Southwark on the subject of same-sex marriage that will be read out 2,500 Catholic churches in the UK next Sunday. As Geras says:

I make no attempt to judge these remarks in the light of Catholic teaching, since I’m not competent to do so. But if we measure them against the more general understanding of marriage in our society, the exercise suggests that what the two Archbishops define as the true meaning of marriage is an insult to many people’s marriages.

By the way, I found it instructive to read the comments on the article in the Catholic Herald that gave the text of the letter. It was mostly a singularly unpleasant experience. Clearly there are plenty of Catholics who align themselves with Cardinal O’Brien. Bigotry is alive and well.

There are times when the law goes beyond being “a ass” as Dickens’ Mr Bumble famously said, into realms where the law is simply anti-human.

I was amazed to learn this week that Sweden requires, under force of law, that its transgender citizens be sterilised. I was prepared, at first, to think that, OK, it’s a quirk of the law that no-one could foresee, but now that we are in the 21st Century, it will be changed tout suite.

Not a bit of it.

The Christian Democratic party in the Swedish Parliament, being key to the coalition, are against any change to the law. As an aside, I am really not surprised that it’s a political party with religious roots that is insisting on this barbarism – ‘twas ever thus.  However…

As the Human Rights Watch organisation states:

The Swedish transgender law stems from 1972 and is out of step with current international best practice and understandings of Swedish obligations under international human rights law.

In July 2009 Thomas Hammarberg, the commissioner for human rights of the Council of Europe, made the observation about the forced sterilization requirement that in reality the state prescribes medical treatment for legal purposes, “a requirement which clearly runs against principles of human rights and human dignity.” This was followed up in the extensive report on human rights for LGBT people in Europe that the commissioner published this summer. The commissioner there recommends Council of Europe member states to do away with all physical requirements for people who want to change their legal gender.

In March 2010 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recommended to member states, including Sweden, that requirements, including changes of a physical nature, for legal recognition of a gender reassignment, should be reviewed in order to remove abusive elements. The Committee recommended that member states should take appropriate measures “to guarantee the full recognition of a person’s gender reassignment in all areas of life, in particular by making possible the change of name and gender in official documents in a quick, transparent and accessible way.”

I am mindful that the situation here in the Netherlands is not so far in advance of that in Sweden; however, the Dutch government, a coalition of the conservative Liberal Party and the Christian-Democratic party, has publicly acknowledged that its transgender law violates international human rights law and has published a law proposal which does away with the forced sterilisation requirement.

Here’s Georg Elfvelin asking for your support to help change the Swedish law:

And here’s where you can sign a petition to Sweden’s Prime Minister. I hope that you will.

I missed hearing or reading about this speech that the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, gave to an audience of diplomats at the United Nations in Geneva on the 6th December. It is quite remarkable. I’ve put some extracts below. The full transcript is here, and it is well worth reading.

“It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives. And it is a violation of human rights when life-saving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay. No matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we are, we are all equally entitled to our human rights and dignity.

“The second issue is a question of whether homosexuality arises from a particular part of the world. Some seem to believe it is a Western phenomenon, and therefore people outside the West have grounds to reject it. Well, in reality, gay people are born into and belong to every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths; they are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes; and whether we know it, or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors.

“Being gay is not a Western invention; it is a human reality. And protecting the human rights of all people, gay or straight, is not something that only Western governments do. South Africa’s constitution, written in the aftermath of Apartheid, protects the equality of all citizens, including gay people. In Colombia and Argentina, the rights of gays are also legally protected. In Nepal, the supreme court has ruled that equal rights apply to LGBT citizens. The government of Mongolia has committed to pursue new legislation that will tackle anti-gay discrimination.

…

“The third, and perhaps most challenging, issue arises when people cite religious or cultural values as a reason to violate or not to protect the human rights of LGBT citizens. This is not unlike the justification offered for violent practices towards women like honor killings, widow burning or female genital mutilation. Some people still defend those practices as part of a cultural tradition. But violence toward women isn’t cultural; it’s criminal. Likewise with slavery, what was once justified as sanctioned by God is now properly reviled as an unconscionable violation of human rights.

…

“The fourth issue is what history teaches us about how we make progress towards rights for all. Progress starts with honest discussion. Now, there are some who say and believe that all gay people are pedophiles, that homosexuality is a disease that can be caught or cured, or that gays recruit others to become gay. Well, these notions are simply not true. They are also unlikely to disappear if those who promote or accept them are dismissed out of hand rather than invited to share their fears and concerns. No one has ever abandoned a belief because he was forced to do so.

“Universal human rights include freedom of expression and freedom of belief, even if our words or beliefs denigrate the humanity of others. Yet, while we are each free to believe whatever we choose, we cannot do whatever we choose, not in a world where we protect the human rights of all.

“Reaching understanding of these issues takes more than speech. It does take a conversation. In fact, it takes a constellation of conversations in places big and small. And it takes a willingness to see stark differences in belief as a reason to begin the conversation, not to avoid it.

Life, dating, love, tears – and a marriage proposal; all in a little film that lasts under two minutes. What on earth could be wrong with that?

Well, judging from the comments on YouTube, and the fact that it was necessary to make the film in the first place, some people obviously do have problems with two people wanting to share their life together and having their friends and relations bear witness to their commitment.

I’ve never understood their objections.

The appalling David Bahati is still pushing on with his abhorrent piece of anti-gay legislation in the Ugandan parliament. It would seem that it is now reaching a crucial point. This travesty has been going on since 2009. Perhaps it’s always useful to have scapegoats ready in order to deflect the population from the real problems at hand.

Update 14 May 2011: the current Ugandan parliament ran out of time to debate the bill, so it’s been shelved. Unfortunately, that probably means that Baharti will try and re-introduce it in the next parliament.

Via a post on PZ Myer’s blog, I have discovered the blog of a lesbian in Syria: A Gay Girl in Damascus.

She has courage, and a brave father. I hope that they both manage to come through the current troubles in that country.

Update 13 June 2011: Sigh, the internet strikes again. The lesbian in Damascus turns out to be a 40 year-old American married man studying in Scotland: Tom McMasters.

While I don’t like to be fooled, his idiotic actions have not helped genuine LGBT voices in the Middle East to be heard. Shame, shame on him.

Today’s title is a quote from Archbishop Silvano Tomasi. Apparently, according to Reuters,

People who criticise gay sexual relations for religious or moral reasons are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views, a Vatican diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said the Roman Catholic Church deeply believed that human sexuality was a gift reserved for married heterosexual couples. But those who express these views are faced with “a disturbing trend,” he said.

“People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behaviour between people of the same sex,” he told the current session of the Human Rights Council.

“When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature … they are stigmatised, and worse — they are vilified, and prosecuted.

“These attacks are violations of fundamental human rights and cannot be justified under any circumstances,” Tomasi said.

Oh, dear god, where to begin?

Well, perhaps with Russell Blackford:

The most important thing about this is its one small grain of truth: you should not be prosecuted for expressing such evil views as that engaging in consensual homosexual conduct makes you a “sinnner”, or “emotionally disordered”, or whatever else these bastards want to say. Freedom of speech should enable you to say, quite legally, all sorts of ugly, vicious things.

Freedom of speech also should enable others to point out that these are, in fact, ugly vicious things … and that only a vile person would say such things. When you say these things, it shows your true character.

Silvano wants his cronies to have freedom of speech. Fine. I agree. But he doesn’t want the rest of us to have it. He’s not only vile – he’s a hypocrite, like the rest of his kind.

And then, perhaps also Ophelia Benson has a point:

Or to put it another way, gay people are increasingly being attacked and vilified by reactionary religious fanatics who think they should have the power to tell everyone everywhere what to do down to the smallest detail.

But although I am disgusted by people such as Archbishop Silvano Tomani, I should perhaps take the line of Steve Zara, and laugh at Tomani:

I’m rather enjoying this, I have to say. I’m a relatively mild-mannered fellow who sort of muddles through life in a vague way, and now I’m becoming a threat to human rights and a source of evil. It’s all rather exciting. I need to think of an evil look. Perhaps I could wear sunglasses indoors or something like that. I have not put as much effort into being evil in the past as I might have.

Perhaps, when me and my partner had a civil partnership ceremony with our families and friends in attendance, we should have played the start of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor with evil laughter rather than Tales from Topographic Oceans as we signed the register. Our small house on the borders of Coventry looks rather meek and harmless. Perhaps we should attach some gargoyles and Satanic symbols. We have a gentle Labrador, when perhaps we should have got a white cat to stroke.

Yes, I know what you mean, Steve. Our Labradors bounce around rather too much, instead of snarling and showing their fangs. But, I suppose when you get down to the heart of it, Russell nailed it: what Archbishop Tomasi said was ugly and vicious. It shows his true character. I see you, Archbishop.

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