Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Society

  • It’s Not Unusual…

    …But of course, in some places, being a gay couple is not only unusual, but positively dangerous. Here’s Kamran and Kaveh in Iran:
    What is the problem of an Iranian homosexual?
    Kaveh: The first is that we cannot discuss any of our problems. We have a problem with the government due to our sexual orientation; the Islamic government does not accept us and we are condemned to hanging and stoning. In comparison the rest of the problems are minor.
    How do you describe life as a homosexual in Iran?
    Kamran: Very easy; one cannot work, cannot have fun, and cannot go out. You cannot go out with your partner because everybody will look at you as if you are abnormal. The way we are looked at is a source of torment for us. Even though physically we are not any different from them they discriminate against us. This makes our lives extremely difficult. I don’t think there is any problem greater than being labeled abnormal in society when you are certain nothing is wrong with you. If someone abuses you, you cannot issue a complaint to any organization or report to the police, because you’ll create more problems for yourself.
    It’s heartrending.
    Kaveh: We do not ask for much in life. I want to have a 40 meter apartment in Iran where I can live with my partner, the person I love. Get up in the morning and go to work, work, and feel at peace when I return home. That’s it. Just a quiet life with my boyfriend. I’d like to reach this dream and not be hanged or stoned for loving someone.  
    Heartrending.

  • Et Tu, Brute?

    Recently I mentioned my exasperation at some of the nonsense being written about atheism and atheists by believers. Well, blow me down with a feather, now some atheists are doing the same when writing about their fellow atheists. Here’s a prime example by Magnus Linklater. 
     
    I find it really annoying that he too stoops to ad hominem attacks on Dawkins, and misrepresenting Dakwins’ positions. A typical example in his article is where he states:
    I cannot, like* Professor Dawkins, think the less of anyone who takes pleasure from a familiar liturgy, nor deride those who fall back on a Church whose central tenets they reject. 
    Even though he appears to have read The God Delusion, he still, unconsciously or disingenuously, misrepresents Dawkins. I have never found an instance where Dawkins derides "those who fall back". And as for liturgy, Linklater appears to have missed this closing passage in The God Delusion in the section on religious education as a part of literary culture:
    I have probably said enough to convince at least my older readers that an atheistic world-view provides no justification for cutting the Bible, and other sacred books, out of our education. And of course we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary traditions of, say, Judaism, Anglicanism or Islam, and even participate in religious rituals such as marriages and funerals, without buying into the supernatural beliefs that historically went along with those traditions. We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage. 
    * Although Linklater uses "like" here, from the context, I take it to mean that he actually means "unlike". His whole thrust in the article is that he (Linklater) is actually a much more caring and reasonable person than those meanies Dawkins and Toynbee…

  • From Pillar To Post

    Karima Tieleman has not had an easy life. I’m not sure that it’s all going to be plain sailing from here on in, either. Still it’s her choice. I don’t know which depressed me more – reading about what she has to put up with or reading some of the comments on this story. 

  • What Do These Religionists Understand Of Atheism?

    Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has a regular column in the Independent newspaper. This week, it was titled: What Do These Atheists Understand Of Religion? I must say, after reading it, and counting to ten several times over, that I really think the title should have been reversed. Ms. Alibhai-Brown seems to have no understanding of what atheism is, and constructs a series of strawmen in an attempt to prove her case. And I do get tired of ad hominem attacks of Dawkins when it is seems clear that the attackers, such as Alibhai-Brown, appear either not to have read his books or continually mis-state his positions. I felt like banging my head on my keyboard when I read the climax of her piece with yet another appearance of the nonsense trope: "Fundamentalist atheists want to replace old religions with their own". 
     
    Her nonsense has been thoroughly dissected by the comments here. I particularly like this one – a measured response to Alibhai-Brown’s fevered rhetoric. And of course, the ever-dependable Ophelia Benson has comments of her own on the piece. I do like her summary of one of Alibhai-Brown’s more stupid propositions as a piece of kack. A good old-fashioned slang word correctly used to describe the argument as the great big steaming pile of ordure that it is.

  • Virtual Life

    I’ve just come across a reference (on Virtual Philosopher) to a recent discussion on BBC Radio between Professor Susan Greenfield and Ren Reynolds about the rise of virtual social interaction sites such as Facebook and SecondLife. There’s also a link to the MP3 of the discussion. I must have a listen. Like Professor Greenfield, I worry whether people who lead virtual lives impact their capability for real-world interpersonal relationships. The other side of the coin, as Nigel of Virtual Philosopher says, is that people like me who don’t participate in these virtual worlds will increasingly be seen as the odd ones. Move over, dinosaurs, here I come. 

  • Some Things Never Change

    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. 

  • 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.

  • I Weep

    Oh, Education, where art thou?
     
     
    (hat tip to A Gentleman’s C for the link) 

  • 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?".

  • Live Life

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

  • 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.
     
    20070813-1356-36 
     
    20070813-1358-33 
     
    20070813-1359-28 

  • 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.