And while today we celebrate the fact that 50 years ago a committee reached a sensible decision (with one out of the thirteen members being the exception), it is perhaps only right to point out that even today, in certain places, falsehoods abound. This is what I call corruption of children.
Category: Society
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It Was 50 Years Ago Today…
… That the Wolfenden Report on homosexual offences and prostitution was published in Britain*. While it recommended that homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence, it was to be a further ten years before the law was changed to reflect this. I see that the BBC is commemorating the anniversary with a week of broadcasts relating to gay lives. On Wednesday, for example, BBC Four will be broadcasting Consenting Adults, a play about the Wolfenden Report and the people involved in it. Should be worth watching. Today’s Guardian also has an article by the playwright about it.* Some sources quote the date of publication as 4th September 1957. -
Real India and Gated Villas
A news story with Ballardian overtones in today’s Observer about members of India’s professional class protesting over the fact that the dust, heat and squalor of India is seeping into their gated communities. Some typically Ballardian motifs are on display: the empty swimming pool, residents taking militant action; life is imitating art. Some unconscious irony as well:‘Many of the people who live here work for the finest international companies in the world. We will not be held to ransom by unscrupulous builders. This was supposed to be a luxury condominium, not a government building. We paid a lot to live here,’ he said.As you can see, I have a weakness for schadenfreude. -
Science and the Islamic World
That’s the main title of an excellent article, written by Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, in Physics Today. He is chair and professor in the department of physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he has taught for 34 years, and he makes some telling points in his article. Go and read it. -
RIP Jos Brink
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. -
Epiphanies
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. -
Self Defence
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. -
Cod Psychology
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. -
The Age of Endarkenment
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. -
Why?
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?". -
Neighbourhood Bike Ride
Yesterday, Martin and I went out on a 40 Km bike ride with forty other neighbours, young and old. It’s an annual event organised by three of our neighbours, who plan the route, including stops at cafés along the way, and who shepherd their flock safely throughout. It’s a great day out, a chance to socialise with the neighbours while enjoying pleasant scenery along the way.
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The Unlightenment
Charlie Brooker has a real talent for rants. His latest on Woo is a masterpiece…Welcome to a dangerous new era – the Unlightenment – in which centuries of rational thought are overturned by idiots. Superstitious idiots. They’re everywhere – reading horoscopes, buying homeopathic remedies, consulting psychics, babbling about "chakras" and "healing energies", praying to imaginary gods, and rejecting science in favour of soft-headed bunkum. But instead of slapping these people round the face till they behave like adults, we encourage them. We’ve got to respect their beliefs, apparently.Well I don’t. "Spirituality" is what cretins have in place of imagination. If you’ve ever described yourself as "quite spiritual", do civilisation a favour and punch yourself in the throat until you’re incapable of speaking aloud ever again. Why should your outmoded codswallop be treated with anything other than the contemptuous mockery it deserves?Preach it, Charlie, my boy! -
Meat Paste Sandwiches
Clearly, I’m approaching my sell-by date. I am old enough to recall those little glass pots of meat paste, and I honestly did enjoy levering up the little tongue of metal that released the metal seal around the top, before levering off the lid to expose the full glory of the meat paste waiting to be spread on my sarnies.Not so, Harry Pearson. To him, the glories and subtleties of meat paste remind him of the stuff ‘made from the bits dog food manufacturers reject because it is "a tad too stinky"’.What a fool. Clearly he is a young whippersnapper, unable to appreciate what we went through in our youth. -
Out of Jail
A couple of months back, I blogged about the news that biologist Marc van Roosmalen had been jailed by the Brazilian authorities for 16 years for allegedly failing to apply for a license to keep 28 monkeys at his home. Well, there’s some good news; he’s apparently been freed from jail while awaiting his appeal to come to trial.I still think that there is something odd going on. Van Roosmalen doesn’t deny that he was looking after the 28 monkeys, but he claims that it was the Brazilian authorities themselves who asked him to do so after they had been confiscated from poachers… I also notice that the Dutch authorities are claiming that because van Roosmalen has been naturalised as a Brazilian citizen, they can’t do anything for him. Odd, since van Roosmalen still holds a valid Dutch passport, and a Brazilian living in the Netherlands can hold dual Dutch and Brazilian nationality… -
Human Stories
Chris Abani perfectly illustrates the power of stories to make us reflect on our humaness. -
Apostate Attacked
Hopefully this is not a portent of things to come, but the news that ex-Muslim Eshan Jami was attacked outside a supermarket near his home last Saturday does not leave me feeling particularly confident about the future. I’ve just got a copy of Paul Sniderman and Louk Hagendoorn’s When Ways of Life Collide, an examination of multiculturalism and its discontents in The Netherlands. The thesis is that the Dutch social policies that were designed to protect the distinct way of life of Muslim immigrants and promote tolerance are in fact breeding intolerance on both sides.Time will tell. -
Amsterdam Canal Parade 2007
As promised, here’s my impressions of the 12th annual Canal Parade, held last Saturday in Amsterdam. For the first time I can recall, the weather was perfect. Most years that I’ve been present, we’ve had occasional showers, but this year there was not a cloud in the sky. That may have helped with the record-breaking turnout as well, there were 400,000 spectators lining the canals, according to police estimates. And there were 70 boats in the parade, the highest number ever.
A number of the boats had a serious message. There appears to be an increasing number of anti-gay incidents occurring in Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands. Last weekend, for example, a 34-year old Irishman had his jaw and nose broken, an American gay couple were sprayed with pepper-spray or teargas and then beaten, and another couple were spat upon by a pair on motor scooters. So the unofficial motto of the Canal Parade could be said to be that emblazoned on the side of the Mr. B boat: "So you’re intolerant? – Piss off!!"
The figurehead of the boat also rather impressively underscored the message:
The rise in anti-gay violence was the theme of the Trut dance club boat, which was decorated with newspaper reports on the rise:
Then there was the "Pink Police" boat, with its motto: "to serve and protect Gay Amsterdam":
There was even a Hetero Boat, entered in the Parade to show solidarity, with the motto: "Samen anders, samen één" (different together, one together):
There were a couple of notable firsts in this year’s Parade. There was "Danny’s Boat" – a boat of LGBT children and their parents. This was the initiative of 14-year old Danny Hoekzema. When he first mooted the idea, the Mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, rejected it, expressing doubts about involving "that vulnerable group" in the procession. He later relented, and gave his permission. In the event, you have to wonder what all the fuss was about. It was great to see the boat:
The other first was a boat sponsored by the care organisation Cordaan. It carried gay people who happened to also be mentally handicapped:
As I wrote last week, Shell didn’t have a boat in the parade this year, but there were a number of other multinationals represented, among them TNT, ING Bank and the ABN-AMRO bank:
This guy in the centre of the ING picture was giving it all that he had. Clearly a thwarted thespian who seized the chance to belt out a song and dance routine:
And of course, being a gay parade, we had the usual assortment of drag queens and muscle marys. Gawd bless ’em all:
The other 617(!) photos that I took that day can be seen in the complete photoset up on Flickr.
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While You’re Waiting…
While you’re waiting for my report and photos on the Amsterdam Canal Parade, may I just refer you to this report on the event, which seems to touch quite well on the influences and pressure points that I feel also.
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