some words (or, margaret beckett causes violent radicalism?)

I might be busy, but not so busy that I can't pause to marvel at the desperate egotism and threats that currently passes for government:

Downing Street has warned of "very real consequences" for British troops in Iraq if MPs defeat the government over calls for an inquiry into the war. [...] Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett will speak in the debate, which starts at 1540 GMT, which is the first full Commons debate on Iraq since July 2004.

You see, up until this point the consequences for British troops in Iraq have been metaphorical, allegorical, and occasionally plain rhetorical - marked throughout by tea and whimsy. The very act of questioning Blair will, of course, transform these esoteric doilies of procedure into a bloodbath. I'm suddenly imagining a crowded room full of Iraqis watching BBC Parliament where one jumps up shouting, 'Margaret Beckett is defeated! This truly is a holy sign that I must join the violent struggle against the occupying forces!'

This is, as should be fairly obvious, a wilful exaggeration. The defeat of Margaret Beckett in debate is actually a very positive and non-violent omen, right up there with 'Puppy rescued from well' and 'Well water not poisoned by puppy urine.'

Fuck you, 'Mr Blair's official spokesman,' fuck you right in your insipid craw. Please take time out from suggesting your boss's critics are automatically and recklessly endangering the troops to kick yourself heartily in the balls until the number of fingers I'm holding up is four again.

scottish prostitution law reforms flawed?

I am painfully busy with teaching at the moment, so little to no blogging. I did, however, want to point towards this report which argues that the change in Scottish law to allow the prosecution of men who buy sex (and not just the women who sell it, as has been the case) will be virtually ineffective.

It's partnered by this story in The Scotsman which covers an academic who's arguing that the proposed changes may actually increase prostitution in Scotland and force women who sell sex to take more risks:

Dr Teela Sanders, who has spent eight years researching the sex industry, said heavier policing to enforce the new law would mean a drop in customers and a fall in prices, leading prostitutes to seek more encounters to maintain their income. [...]

She said: "Not only does geographical dispersal reduce the protection that women are afforded by working together, but women increasingly change their strategies of safety. They work in dark, unlit areas away from places of visibility that can be of assistance if attacked, and often work later into the night.

"They are keen to find a customer and move from the public street as quickly as possible for fear of arrest. This means that the stringent screening strategies women apply to judge whether the potential customer will be trustworthy are abandoned as women jump into strangers' cars without checking for vital signs.

"Equally, where there is visible policing there are less customers because of the fear of arrest. This increases competition, drives down prices and encourages women to sell sex unsafely and have encounters with more men to make the same amount of money."

It's very much worth clicking through to the story to read her extended argument, not least because it accurately frames the reforms in terms of addressing public nuisance rather than - in any way - concern for the welfare of sex-workers or assisting those who want to leave prostitution. Oh, and stay out of the comment section at scotsman.com unless you like your idiots thickly spread.

fact check: no evidence that morning-after pill being used as regular contraception

I'm very confused. I've been reading for months now that we live in a sex-mad society with no sense of propriety or traditional values, only to discover that:

One in eight women between the ages of 16 and 50 had no sex in the past year while the vast majority had only one partner, says a new report which paints Britain as a largely monogamous if not "sexless" society. [...] According to the ONS survey, one in six men under 70 had no sexual partners in the past year, while 73 per cent had only one partner and 12 per cent had more than one. For women, seven per cent had more than one.

There is one bit of very bad writing in The Telegraph that needs to be kicked apart:

Figures also showed that more than one in four women used the "morning-after" pill after forgetting to take the contraceptive pill, suggesting that the "morning-after" pill is increasingly used as a method of contraception despite medical concerns about women taking it frequently.

Wronggg. The ONS (Office of National Statistics) actually says (pdf) that 5% of women had used emergency hormonal contraception in the year preceding the interview - and of those, 22% said it was because they had forgotten to take the pill. So that's 22% of 5% of women using the morning after pill because they forgot to take the pill, or less than 0.5% of all women - and most certainly not "more than one in four women."

There's also no indication in these figures that such women are using the morning after pill on a regular basis, or as a routine complement to other forms of contraception. To jump to the idea that the morning-after pill is increasingly being used as a form of contraception is highly misleading. If such a trend were shown to exist, it would only apply to a tiny number of sexually active women. A far greater number of women take emergency contraception because of condom failure.

Now, let's see if anyone else makes the same false claim.

on reporting rape

Go and read this - If I were raped today, I would not report it. Here's a sample of the author's reasoning:

[G]iven the current media fixation on women bringing "false allegations", it would be easy to assume our prisons were full of innocent men. In fact, the conviction rate for rape is at an all-time low. In 1985, 1,800 complaints of rape were made and one in four men convicted. In 2003, 13,000 complaints were made but only one in 20 was convicted. [...]

Despite improvements, there remains a culture within the police that assumes that women who report rape are lying. One study found that a third of police assumed that at least a quarter of all reports were false. Research actually suggests, though, that numbers of false allegations of rape are no higher than for any other crime. Assumptions of false allegations are plainly dangerous.

EDIT - DK jumps to the conclusion that Julie Bindel assumes that the other 19 accused ("only one in twenty was convicted") are guilty of rape. Wrong, just plain wrong. While you might reasonably assume that Bindel thinks that more than one out of every twenty taken to court were guilty, nowhere does she argue that every man tried for rape is guilty of rape.

There is abundant evidence to suggest that the prosecution of rape cases is incredibly flawed - to the detriment of victims and the accused - but pointing that out (alongside the tiny conviction rate) is not some kind of bullshit imaginary argument for a "quota" for rape convictions.

keep your enemies close but your parliamentary spokesman closer

Ack - this should have posted first thing yesterday before the Bishop of Motherwell story..

Rather intriguingly, the Catholic Church's Scottish press office has released a statement declaring that "the Parliamentary Officer of the Bishops' Conference of Scotland Mr John Deighan enjoys the full support of the Conference to whom he continues to provide an informed and valuable service."

Anyone have any idea what has happened - or is about to happen - that would require the Church to rush out such an unexpected message of support? It's almost as though there's a reason why we might expect Deighan to be suddenly hung out to dry..

Which explains my slightly abrupt interest in John Deighan.

doh

Blogging by email seems to be posting entries out of order - apologies for any confusion until I can shuffle them around.

bishop of motherwell special: the error in appeasing the godless.. uh.. scottish executive

The most recent press presence of Deighan seems to have been in a letter to The Herald from the Bishop of Motherwell bemoaning the poor relationship between church and state.

John Deighan, political liaison officer for the Catholic Church at the Holyrood parliament, set the tone. "It seems odd," he said, "for Tony Blair to praise the churches for standing up for family values when he is a member of a Labour Party which has presided over the most anti-family legislation this country has ever seen."

Cardinal O'Brien, expressing serious doubts whether it was even worth the effort to be involved in consultation exercises with this Scottish Executive, gave a lead in the homosexual adoption debate, describing Labour's proposals as "gravely immoral", and warned: "Scotland's adopted children must not become guinea pigs in some distorted social experiment."

Contrary to the preferred course of action of our political liaison officer and others, I refused to be silent in the public debate over the Adoption Bill. They feared there would be a serious risk of the executive reneging on its intimation to exempt the two Scottish Catholic adoption agencies from the requirements of the Adoption Bill, should the Church put the executive on the rack in the media. But I was not prepared to be party to this policy of appeasement.

So that's the Bishop of Motherwell accusing Deighan of appeasement and blaming him for the waning power of the Catholic Church, rather than the Church's (i.e the Bishop of Motherwell and Cardinal O'Briens') dogged pursuit of anachronistic dogma.

It seems clear that Deighan's advice was to keep quiet in the hope of retaining religious exemptions from the adoption bill; while reasonable and pragmatic, it didn't meet the hard-line demands of the modern.. uh.. caring.. uh.. something.. Church. It would be more than a little entertaining if O'Brien and the Bishop of Motherwell have 'done a Samson' and brought the whole issue down on top of them. Tee and indeed hee.

daily mail: actually it turns out cancer is bad after all

Having spent months arguing that a vaccine for cervical cancer would only encourage junior sluts, the Daily Mail has switched tracks to suggest the government isn't doing enough to make this wondrous drug available to all:

Hollie Anderson's mother, Lisa, paid £450 for her to have the jab privately after seeing her own mother battle against cancer.

The vaccine, Gardasil, launched in Britain last week, protects against the main viruses that cause the cancer but the Government has not yet issued guidance on which groups will be routinely immunised.

The confusion means mothers are taking their daughters to private clinics instead.

Golly, I can't possibly imagine why the public might be confused.

Could it have anything to do with the socially conservative "pro-family" campaigners who leapt at every chance to be interviewed and argue that access to the vaccine was immoral because it would encourage underage sex? Could it be the parallel pronouncements in the Scottish conservative press on behalf of the Catholic Church, perhaps? We may never know.

Heaving hypocrisy aside, the sooner the government issues guidance on immunisation and actually gets the programme started, the better.

hiatus

My computer died in a fairly terminal way on Sunday morning, so posting will be light until the replacement arrives and the old hard-drive is scraped for surviving files.

In the meantime, why not check out the latest Scottish Blogging Roundup?

putin: rape still a joking matter

The official defence offered for Putin - overheard joking that accusations of multiple rape made against the Israeli president were to be envied - is that the joke was misunderstood and not meant to be heard anyway. Well, that's alright then:

A Kremlin spokesman admitted Mr Putin made a joke, but said it was not meant to be overheard. [...]

"The president was joking," he told the BBC's World Today radio programme. "Russian is a very complicated language, sometimes it is very sensitive from the point of view of phrasing.

"I don't think that the proper translation is able to reflect the meaning of the joke."

I see - so it's not that he wasn't joking about rape but that difficulties of translation make it hard to understand why it was funny: rape is still a joking matter, after all. The confusion arose because someone used the "proper" translation - an easy mistake to make, I'm sure.

Anyone about to raise the "it's just irony" defence should remember that it doesn't stop his comments from being both insensitive and derogatory.

more manufactured outrage

If you're scaremongering, it helps to try and keep the story straight less you be revealed as a posturing idiot:

Primary school teachers may be required by new "sexual orientation" laws to make gay rights books available in class, a Christian group claimed yesterday.

Children would have to read books such as Hello Sailor, The Sissy Duckling and Daddy's New Roommate, which are on a Government-recommended reading list for challenging "homophobia".

Not quite sure why homphobia is in inverted commas - are we disputing that it exists?

More importantly, are children going to be forced to read these books or will they merely be in the room? Do they have to read the books or will the books merely be available? Hey, why not avoid that question entirely and go for some loosely worded bluster?

Colin Hart, director of The Christian Institute, said: "The thought that new regulations could make these books compulsory is outrageous."

Fortunately for the real world, that thought only exists in the mind of Colin Hart. While a lot of things might be theoretically outrageous ("the thought that Thursday could become compulsory nude day is outrageous") it's probably better to worry about the things that are actually true and actually happening - instead of things you've made up as a way of saying "gays are icky."

The Telegraph should be ashamed for printing such speculative nonsense; besides, the manufacture of shrill and baseless outrage is what we have the Daily Mail for.

presenting... the gingerbread abbas man

Having learnt of the dire threat of political correctness to children's sense of gendered identity - oh yes - I spring to the rescue. May I present the Gingerbread Abbas Man?

This delightful treat is based on the famous Cerne Abbas Man - so families can avoid the gender-stripping curse of political correctness and learn something about our national heritage at the same time.

Apologies to everyone involved for the quality of the artist's impression.

the cliff notes to religion in secular society

For anyone trying to keep up with the role of religion in a secular society, remember this - being asked to cover up your crucifix is abhorrent , but refusing take off your veil is an affront to an open and modern society.

If Blair thinks that being able to see his face makes him less of a weasel and more comfortable to be around, he should probably stop saying things like this:

"No one wants to say that people don't have the right to do this [wear the veil]. That is to take it too far. But I think we need to confront this issue about how we integrate people properly into our society." [...]

Mr Blair was asked whether he specifically backed the suspension of a teaching assistant Aishah Azmi at Headfield Church of England Junior School in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, for wearing a veil in the classroom."I simply say that I back their handling of the case. I can see the reason why they came to the decision they did," he said.

I see: a person has the "right" to wear a veil, so long as they don't actually exercise it because it makes people some other feel uncomfortable. This is then called "integration." Okay?

If we are going down this particular path of "logic", I'd like to add that I find beards to an affront to modern society as I am unable to see the full expression on a person's face - which makes me feel uncomfortable. As everyone knows - and to quote Bill Bailey - the chin is the window to the soul.

customer service

Just spoke to someone on the phone who was angry because the first person he'd spoken to couldn't understand what he wanted. After three or four questions, I found out and gave the man a very specific address. He then called the first person he'd spoken to a "silly cow" and told be me to fuck off back to England. He then seemed strangely offended when I didn't react.

Have I mentioned how much I love working in the public sector?

melanie phillips: weren't they on to something with the crusades?

Ah, Melanie Phillips. Let's see if a little editing can illustrate just how gross and misleading her generalisations can be:

Those who defend [the crucifix] are grossly misreading the situation. It is not some picturesque religious [icon] equivalent to the often curious attire worn by members of other religions.

It is associated instead with the most extreme version of [Christianity], which holds that [Christian] values must take precedence over the secular state. Only a small minority of [British Christian] women choose to wear [the cross].

Inaccurate, over-generalising and ignorant: it's almost as though she wrote it herself. Phillips was - of course - originally berating women who wear veils, regardless of why or where a woman might where one. While Phillips would scream blue murder at any suggestion to ban the crucifix because it has direct and indirect links to Christian fundamentalism, she's unwilling to extend any kind of leeway to Islam. All veils are not only bad news, but dangerous as well.

It's also the highest pinacle of hypocrisy to criticise one religion for arguing their values take precedence over the secular state when you have spent months - if not years - arguing that Britain is a dominantly Christian culture which cannot entertain the possibility of - amongst other things - gay marriage. Apparently, some minority religious beliefs are more equal than other minority religious beliefs.

If I'm being unfair and Phillips does indeed think that religious values should not take precedence over the secular state, I expect to see her call for the resignation of Ruth "Opus Dei" Kelly over the issue of gay rights - and for Blair to renounce his Catholicism to boot. It's probably unneccesary but Phillips clearly feels that irrational religious beliefs are a danger to us all, so it's better to be on the safe side.

As ever, the main problem here is that Phillips is unable to understand anything other than the most extreme and cartoonish version of events, unable to see how she participates in the very thing she claims to decry:

Certainly, it is vital to prevent the demonisation of all Muslims.

While at the same time claiming that all forms of Islam are a threat to every part of our life as we know it, apparently.

But the fact is that the persistent failure to tackle such extremism [Islamic fundamentalism, presumably, not her columns] is providing fertile territory for white racists to exploit.

Hey, you know what else provides fertile territory for white racists? Eliminationist rhetoric like this:

This is not about prejudice or discrimination. It is about cultural survival.

which also happens to be the conclusion to Phillips' column.

I can see into the future (of the daily mail)

Having predicted a fresh wave of bigotry less than twelve hours ago, it's with mixed emotions I note that this morning's Daily Mail does its best to suggest gay people will have the "right" to access pornography at work, mainly by describing any website designed for a gay audience as "lurid" and "explicit."

While I'm looking forward to cheap thrills on this and many other seemingly tame websites in the near future, it would be nicer if such casual hate-mongering wasn't quite so easy to predict.

all that stands between civilized society and a same-sex orgy in our schools is a convincing advertising campaign

Looks like we're about to hit another round of "who will rid me of these turbulent queers" style journalism, so it's time to check in with the obvious arguments.

First off, the problem with Ruth Kelly isn't that she's a Catholic, but that her specific beliefs are incompatible with the demands of her job. Someone who doesn't like gay people isn't the best choice to be advancing their interests unless we've developed a marvellous sense of irony and found that personal hypocrisy is the best measure of the professional politician.

So it's refreshing to hear this:

Lorely Burt, Lib Dem equality spokeswoman, said: "We had always feared Ruth Kelly's personal beliefs would make her unsuitable to be a champion of gay rights. Unfortunately these fears have become reality and she should now stand down."

Meanwhile the tired old claim of "promoting homosexuality" through sex education is hauled out by the Mail, though they do get style points for using the phrase "conjugal love of married heterosexuals," an impressively po-faced description of married sex. I personally would have added "where a penis is placed into a vagina to mutual disappointment" to rule out the chance - gasp - that anyone think that sex might just be fun sometimes.

It almost makes a person feel sorry for anyone missing out on the free-form unmarried sex happening next door (and in every class room, one presumes). Yes, I admit, I'm having far too much fun with this: there's little you can do when people are effectively arguing that all that stands between supposedly civilized society and a same-sex orgy is a convincing advertising campaign.

This is - as regular readers will have noticed - a repeat of the circular argument that "men have become too weak to resist becoming feminised." Here, despite being the "natural order" of things, heterosexuality is too frail to resist being made a frail and distorted verson of itself. This is, by the by, an extension of the immense power of two peni touching (theorised over here as the basis of a future form of time travel).

Finally, there's an uncomfortably terse report as The Telegraph notes "Homosexual group to help the Tories." Sadly, it's only campaign managers who will take part in gay rights awareness training: oh, to be a fly on the wall for the same session with Anne Widdecombe.

the veil in a liberal society

Dave Hill manages a balanced response lacking in most of the commentary I've read so far:

My position on the veil is that it needs to be addressed on two levels. I passionately believe that the less sectarian a society is about the sexes, the better in the end for men and women alike: the more relaxed we are about their social and cultural territories overlapping, the better. In that sense I do not welcome the veil, because it is the outward mark of a sharp boundary between the sexes which some readings of Islam insist on.

At the same time, though, it is absolutely basic that those who wear the veil should not be ticked off from on high for doing so if wearing it is their free choice. Plainly, if they are forced to do so by men or anyone else, or if they fear that not doing so will result in ostracism or worse by fellow Muslims, that is wrong.

Jack Straw's response to veil-wearing constituents is - in contrast - entirely focussed on his own discomfort, regardless of the life of the woman behind the veil. It's the same self-centred anxiety that emerged in a Matthew Parris column I fisked last August. Parris wrote, on observing a veiled woman in down-town Sydney:

Now, for all I knew, the woman had chosen to go out like this and would not have wanted to uncover her face; but still I felt it was not right in Sydney: not right for her and not right for the open society of which she was part. Whether or not she felt oppressed, the condition oppressed her and it should not be seen in the streets of a modern, liberal country.

It's quite beautiful irony to have someone proclaiming that a person shouldn't be able to choose their appearance in the name of "liberal" culture.

Back to Hill:

[If] they wish to wear the veil and draw personal and spiritual strength from wearing the veil, that is their decision in a liberal society: a decision they should not be harrassed for making by Phil Woolas, Tessa Jowell or Jack Straw on the spurious, not say grossly insulting grounds, that they are colluding in the oppression of women or posing some kind of threat to social stability.

Also see feministe and feministing

gay rights and selective libertarians

Jo Salmon responds to a post by Tim Worstall on upcoming gay civil rights legislation that I hadn't had time to chase.

Worstall's original question was why private citizens shouldn't be able to dispose of their goods and services as they see fit. The answer is fairly obvious: it's because those private decisions have social consequences and personal autonomy is always negotiated in that context. That's not a moral position so much as a political reality.

To follow Worstall into absurdiam reductions, a person might as well ask why he can't sell the products derived from a cocoa plant he raised and harvested himself, or why she can't manufacture and sell rifles to whoever she pleases.

Such restrictions and negotiations (most of which are far, far less severe or life-threatening) are accepted as part of living in a civil society where, amongst other things, we attempt to ensure that - to quote Jo - "the values of equality and sheer bloody decency to other human beings [is] a common feature of life throughout the country."

The real question here is whether you think gay people are part of that civil society, or not.

Finally, if this isn't about a rather specific problem with gay people but a broader libertarian issue, then I expect to see 90% of all standing law challenged by the end of the week. Anything else smacks of rather - ahem - selective libertarianism.

the problem isn't sex, the problem is ignorance

Given the hornet's nest that was stirred the last time I argued in favour of comprehensive sex education, it's helpful to hear the Family Planning Association speak out on the true nature of sex education in the UK:

The Family Planning Association said: "We do not have mandatory sex and relationship education in schools and what does get taught is part of science. But it is not good enough just to talk about biology. Young people need to be taught how to negotiate using a condom."

At this stage - where 22 per cent think that Aids can be caught by kissing - arguing for less education rather than more is almost criminally negligent. It's also more than an issue of underage sex (which comprehensive sex education has been show to reduce) when large sections of the adult population are chronically misinformed:

Only 56 per cent of Britons surveyed knew that Aids could not be caught by sharing a beer glass, down 6 percentage points on 2002, and 76 per cent knew that HIV could not be passed on by a meal cooked by someone with the virus, a drop of 7 percentage points.

This level of ignorance is about one step removed from thinking you can get pregnant by sitting in a chair that has only recently been vacated by a man. It's intolerable, not least because there's no excuse for it.

janet daley: the responsibilities of victorian prostitutes

Let's see if we can spot the key omission from Janet
Daley's analysis:

The Government wants women who were too drunk to remember whether they consented to sex or not to be believed when they accuse a man of rape.

Instead of being told that they must accept responsibility for putting themselves at risk by getting insensibly inebriated, young women are to be shielded from the consequences of their own recklessness. This is what counts as a solution to the problem of female "binge drinking".

Ah, no. No-one is arguing that it's a solution to binge-drinking: that's a wholly fabricated, straw-woman argument.

Aside from the chronic misrepresentation of the proposed change in law - which will allow juries to consider whether someone was reasonably sober enough to give consent - this particular lecture on female responsibility seems to assume that the human penis has an independent life of its own.

It might be a nice idea to point out a concurrent male responsibility to not have sex - or to ask to have sex - with people who appear to be heavily intoxicated. It helps to remember that sex with drunk girls is not an inalienable right; while waiting until your partner is sober might lead to less sex, it's not an outrageous imposition against manliness.

Any residual support I had for Daley's gloriously one-sided argument evaporated around the point she compares women who drink to Victorian whores:

The drunken prostitutes who walked the streets of the Victorian East End were probably about the same age as those grinning girls who may end up bringing rape charges today.

You see? They're grinning! They postitively get off on false rape claims, y'see?

Despite howling condemnations of these reforms to the contrary (today's Mail being notable for the invention of a radical feminist cabal within The Law Society) the proposed change in law is not, resolutely not, a free pass for women to have sex after drinking and then regretfully claim rape the following morning. Any discussion of the potential problems and benefits of the proposed changes that starts from that point is a discussion based in a lie.

negotiated freedom

Please someone save me from libertarian purists, because technically yes, a reductionist argument will show that having any law at all is hopelessly illiberal. The pragmatic question is - and will always be - whether laws that infringe on our ability to behave with absolute autonomy are tolerable because they have a positive impact on our individual lives, our communities or society as a whole: what do we get in return, or what are we willing to surrender in the name of a greater perceived good?

Similarly, anyone protesting the use of law as a form of social engineering had better tell me exactly which laws they want to retain, given that all law is a form of (literal) cultural policing.

ID card news: an enormous suprise..

..of unprecedented size:

The official appointed to oversee the Government's controversial identity card scheme has already played a central role in a public-sector computer disaster.

James Hall, who began work last week as chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), was previously a partner at the consultancy firm Accenture.

His last job was running a £2 billion contract under which Accenture was to build a database of medical records for the NHS. But the project has fallen three years behind schedule. Accenture pulled out last month, blaming "significant delays" and writing off £260 million.

Actually, I can't imagine the government hiring anyone else.

ruth kelly: privileged prejudice

Well, that didn't take very long. Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly seem determined to illustrate just how far tolerance doesn't go:

The cabinet is in open warfare over new gay rights legislation after Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, who is a devout Catholic, blocked the plans following protests from religious organisations. [...]

The battle between what is being dubbed the government's 'Catholic tendency' and their more liberal colleagues centres on proposals to stop schools, companies and other agencies refusing services to people purely because of their sexuality.

Are there any other laws from which the faithful would like to be exempt, purely because of dogma? Or is this only open season on the queers? People wearing clothes made from more than one kind of thread need to know.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out those who opposed Ruth Kelly's appointment - and who were chided for religious prejudice and unfairly pre-judging her - have just been proven right. Kelly has proven herself unable to separate her personal religious beliefs from the job she has been set. As I said back in May:

To make that claim [that this criticism is about prejudice towards Christians] means completely failing to recognise the doublethink at work here.

If a person is seemingly confirmed in certain prejudices and has made no attempt to recant them, is it not in the slightest bit odd that the same person would be put in charge of challenging those very same prejudices?

And so the woman in charge of advancing and protecting the rights of gay people is actually more interested in protecting the interests of religious groups who hate gay people.

What's clear now is that Kelly's original appointment also served Blair's own religious anxiety - giving him an ally and some much needed political cover. I'll say it again: are there any other laws that the religious (Christian, Muslim, Pagan, Jedi) feel they don't need to obey because of the teachings of their faith? And will the Blair government be altering legislation to reflect that?

Also see Ruth Kelly's doublethink and Ruth Kelly is going to hell.

pharmacy ethics and emergency contraception in the uk

Tipped off to the story of a UK woman refused the morning after pill because a pharmacist felt it was against his religious beliefs, I've gone looking for the relevant code of ethics. For those of you playing catch-up:

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain's code allows a pharmacist to refuse to sell or dispense drugs because of their religious or moral beliefs.

Ms Thomas was referred to her GP by the pharmacist who refused to sell her the pill.

She said: "If I had not been able to get it and I had got pregnant, would an abortion have suited him better?

The "Code of Ethics and Standards" of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society can be found here (pdf) and it's evident that the "right" of a pharmacist to refuse sale is directly in conflict with that pharmacist's ethical responsiblities to the public.

From the section headed "key responsibilities of a pharmacist":

At all times pharmacists must act in the interests of patients and other members of the public, and seek to provide the best possible health care for the community in partnership with other health professions. [...] Pharmacists must respect patients' rights to participate in decisions about their care and must provide information in a way in which it can be understood.

The refusal to dispense would appear to be an overriding decision about a patient's care, made regardless of whether that patient had been referred by a GP or had sought an over-the-counter drug without prompting.

While a pharmacist must disclose to their employer "any factors which may affect their ability to provide services," no commitment is made to pre-warning members of the public that a particular pharmacy will be selective in the drugs on offer.

It's also important to note that the only place in which this issue arises is in the section describing the conduct of pharmacists about to accept employment. The disclosure of personal or religious factors is held primarily as an ethical commitment of disclosure to an employer, not a commitment to inform (or serve) the public.

There is - as far as I can detect - no commitment to finding another pharmacist who would be willing to prescribe a particular drug, only an agreement to refer a patient to another "health care professional." This would seem, to me at least, a rather odd exclusion given that the primary group of health care professionals able to dispense emergency hormonal contraception are pharmacists. Going back to a doctor is not going to get you direct access to the morning after pill.

And finally, we hit the finer detail of what the society defines as the working life of a pharmacist. How about this?

[Pharmacists] only accept work where they have the requisite skills and fitness for the tasks to be performed.

Excluding, one assumes, where that fitness relates to personal or religious beliefs. A rather large ethical black hole.

ways to get internet traffic no. 94

My page counter tells me that picking a fight with Jamie Oliver is a particularly fine way to get readers. Bonus points for noticing that I don't particularly have a problem with Jamie Oliver - and that to focus on him would be an equally fine way to miss the point. Ah, well..

foley and the republicans: confusing tolerance with hypocrisy

The Times - reporting on ex-Congressman Mark Foley - seems unable to tell the difference between tolerance and hypocrisy:

The Republican leadership has always been remarkably tolerant of homosexuality in private, despite its public exploitation of voters' fears on issues such as gay marriage to mobilise its base support during elections. Even Senator Santorum, who once compared gay sex to bestiality, incest and polygamy, employs the openly gay Robert Traynham as his communications director.

Correspondingly, the ability of closeted Republicans to internalise such barely concealed hatred of "teh queer" translates into the accusation that anyone who points out such hypocrisy is the real bigot:

Daniel Blatt, who helps to run a website called Gay Patriot, said that he had rarely encountered any prejudice within the party.

"It's harder to be a gay Republican in gay circles than it is to be a gay in Republican circles — gay activists are the most intolerant SOBs I've ever come across."

Yes, it's so very difficult to understand why some would object to support for a party determined to demonise a minority from a member of that same minority.

The standard response described here is that homo-liberals insist unfairly that there can be no separation between sexuality and the rest of your life: that it's okay for a gay person to vote against equal rights for gay people because his or her whole life doesn't have to be about being gay.

The major problem with this argument is that the inseparability of sexuality and the rest of your life has been the traditional cudgel with which social conservatives have sought to bludgeon queers: you can't be a teacher or join the army for fear of same-sex desire disrupting or destroying those around you.

It's also hard to make the argument for political pragmatism - that you'll put up with certain social values because you like a particular economic and political model - when those models are being designed to deliberately exclude you and those like you.

dogmatism, meet pragmatism

Score one for the progressive body of the C of E:

The Church of England yesterday backed proposals to give millions of unmarried couples who are "living in sin" similar legal rights to their married counterparts.

Risking accusations that it was undermining marriage, the Church said that cohabiting couples with children should be granted significant legal protection if they split up.

It also argued that those rights should be extended to unmarried couples without children if one of the ex-partners was at risk of suffering a substantial injustice when they separated. [...]

The Church of England's stance also contrasts with that of the Roman Catholic Church, which issued a warning that the [Law Commission's] proposals would "fundamentally change the legal basis of family life in this country."

It's rather odd that the Catholic Church would object to a change in legal basis when the argument in favour of marriage - and against sin - has been a moral one. It sounds like an attempt to make the Catholic support for marriage pragmatic, disguising a rather older and more heartfelt belief that any (sexual) relationship outside of marriage was sinful and likely to send everyone involved to hell.

Less bound by such theology - and less convinced by the existence of the eternal fires of hell - the C f E seems to have a better grasp on pragmatism:

Bishop Butler, who heads the [Anglican] Church's mission and public affairs council, said the General Synod had decided two years ago that there could be new legal rights for those in unmarried relationships.

"We recognise that society has a duty to protect children, whatever family structures they find themselves in," he said.

The Church was therefore "sympathetic to reform that addresses the effect of relationship breakdown on children and those who make sacrifices to care for them."

fay wheldon: a little irony goes a long way

From the hustings of Fay Wheldon's book tour:

Weldon's new book What Makes Women Happy has outraged feminists because of its suggestion that women should fake orgasms to keep their men content.

Commentators pilloried her for encouraging women to accept submissiveness in the most intimate area of their relationships. But Weldon believes that sex is the area where men and women come closest to making a sincere emotional connection.

Sex is the area where men and women come closest to making a sincere connection, and therefore it should be the most riddled with deception and insincerity? Oookay.

We also have an answer to the question posed in the book's title - what makes women happy? Nothing, nothing at all:

Happiness, her experiences have taught her, is about aspiring to virtue. Shopping, chocolate and the other "consolations" that women comfort themselves with are frivolous but valuable diversions.

"Nothing makes a woman happy for more than ten minutes at a time because after that the doubts and anxieties arrive. You can't help it as a woman."

So even if you're "virtuous," the female condition dictates that your happiness will only be fleeting? Given Wheldon's late conversion to Christianity, it would also be interesting to hear exactly what she thinks constitutes virtue.

So, anyone read the whole book? Failing that, anyone stood in a bookshop and flicked through the book?

new reading

Various additions to the blogroll: feminish, Arch Rights, Box Turtle Bulletin and towleroad.

clap like you almost mean it

Quite pleased that I wasn't the only one to notice the audience reaction to David Cameron's commitment to civil partnerships.

Oh, and from ConservativeHome's analysis of the speech:

Perfect AND THEORY CONSERVATISM. Clear commitment to marriage but also support for other stable relationships. A few conference delegates scanned by the BBC cameras looked unimpressed at the references to same-sex relationships.

Exactly.

EDITED TO ADD: It also quite nicely illustrates that political conservatives and social conservatives (lit. "retrosexuals") are not necessarily the same group of people.

memory lane

Yesterday, I said:

Finally, it's clear that Labour is intending to wrong-foot opponents of ID cards by placing them on the wrong side of the immigration debate - by claiming that ID cards will help control illegal immigration.

Rising to the bait today in The Mail:

The Government sought to relaunch its controversial ID card scheme yesterday by claiming the costly plans were the answer to the Home Office's immigration crisis. [...] Opponents poured scorn on Labour's latest efforts to sell the plans to the public as a "distraction," and insisted the multi-billion pound scheme would be a wasteful irrelevance in tackling illegal immigration or terrorism.

This will also be treated as a chance for the Tories to argue the case for a border police force - their personal resposne to the question "what would you do about illegal immigration if money was no object?"

It's worth noticing that this is one of the very, very few issues on which The Daily Mail, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and civil rights group Liberty are on the same side. Here's the Tories and Liberty making the same argument:

Shadow Immigration Minister, Damian Green, said: "First ministers claimed ID cards were needed to combat benefit fraud, then to guard us against terrorism, then to fight identity fraud. Having lost these arguments they now they claim they will be used to combat illegal immigration."

Director of civil rights group Liberty Shami Chakrabarti said: "Excuses for ID cards are like a many-headed Hydra - shoot one down and another one pops up, including everything from illegal immigration to anti-terrorism." "No doubt at some point ID cards will be the cure to obesity and global warming as well."

It's also the argument that I've been making for over six months - having realised that the first rule for selling the ID card policy was to continually change the topic. Here's me in January:

If the cost is criticised, talk about security; if security is criticised, talk about identity theft, if that doesn't work, switch to benefit benefit fraud, and then you're back round to talking about security of the state without ever addressing any specific criticisms.

As is becoming ever more obvious, this strategy only works in the long term if you add even more unconnected benefits to the list, the less specific the better. Here's hoping that enough people have caught on to stop these piss poor excuses for policy as anything other than misdirecton.

round-up round-up

I've been a bad community blogger and not mentioned the round-ups that various people have been nice enough to include me in. I'm thinking of the revitalised and spiffy Scottish bloggers round-up (where I seem to have surfaced two weeks in a row) and the continuous marvel that is the Carnival of the Feminists.

Thanks to those who nominated or thought to include me - and hello to any new readers who might have stuck around.

cheap at 5.4bn times the price?

We finally get a price for the ID card scheme - £5.4bn over ten years, not including the amount spent so far - and a raft of reasons why:

"ID cards will give us a powerful tool to combat identity fraud which underpins organised crime, terrorism and abuse of the immigration system.

"ID cards will also help transform the delivery of public services to the citizen, making interactions swifter, more reliable and more secure and helping to reduce costs by eliminating wasteful duplication of effort," said Mr Byrne.

Byrne's rhetorical turn stinks of truthiness: while identity fraud might assist organised crime and the rest, it does not "underpin" it; it is not the lynch-pin on which all major crime rests. As recent terror cases have illustrated, you can plan and commit any number of crimes using your own name and address.

Someone - rather urgently - needs to ask for a concrete example of a public service that will be made "swifter, more reliable and more secure" so that this claim of a universal public panacea can be nipped in the bud.

Will ID cards reduce waiting lists? Will they reduce the car crash of the tax credits system? Make benefits easier to claim? If so, how? Or is it strangely likely that they will introduce a new glossy layer of management to public services that need rather more fundamental, local reform?

I'd settle for someone asking for an example of a public service where a lack of security is a pressing and intractable problem. Conspicuous by its absence is the claim that credit card fraud will be meaningfully reduced - a central claim that seems to have been dropped under the weight of evidence that no such thing would happen. Also strangely absent is the claim that the ID card system will save us money - probably because it's the least likely to pass the laughter test.

Finally, it's clear that Labour is intending to wrong-foot opponents of ID cards by placing them on the wrong side of the immigration debate - by claiming that ID cards will help control illegal immigration.

election rehearsals

Anyone else notice Rupert Mudoch writing the first draft of the narrative for the next election? From the Daily Mail:

Tony Blair is a 'lame duck' leader who should make way for Gordon Brown and David Cameron, according to the damning assessment of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

The Prime Minister['s] most important media supporter said Mr Blair made 'a terrible mistake' and surrendered his authority when he confirmed that he would not serve a third term.

Murdoch - quoted in an interview with the New Yorker - also has a few leading questions to ask of Gordon Brown:

Questioning the Chancellor's approach, he said: 'Is he such a micro-manager that he'd want to interfere with everything in the country? And does he still believe that the state can run everything better than private enterprise?'

In other words, to what degree is the Chancellor struck with the same control-freakery as the PM?

You might also notice that the Daily Mail is one of the few large circulation papers in the UK not owned by Murdoch's News International - and that coverage of this interview has yet to surface in The Times or The Sun, which are.

science to the rescue of happiness

For anyone starting to mistakenly feel good about themselves, here's a quick beauty update: "Research has revealed that the perfect length for a woman's legs is 1.4 times the length of her upper body."

Information on what this research might be, or how such a measure of perfection was arrived at seems strangely absent.

catholic church scolds universe for not being catholic enough

Whoops - I seem to have broken a press embargo set by the Catholic Church's Scottish press office. But then I don't really feel the need to protect a homily for a group of lawyers which essentially scolds the rest of the universe for not being Catholic. A brief sample:

Now a raft of legislative measures here in Scotland as elsewhere has jeopardised, recklessly I think, family life as intended by God’s purpose for human beings created in his image and likeness.

Behold the unmarried celibate man as he lectures us on family, sex and relationships.

As men and women of the legal profession, these legislative measures will be well known to you. Some of them are these: The Family Law Act which makes divorce even quicker and gives quasi-marital status to de facto heterosexual unions.

All of which isn't a problem if you're not a Catholic. In fact, a lot of people would see these as good things.

Civil Partnership legislation allows homosexual couples to register their relationships and enjoy a civil status analogous to marriage. The Gender Recognition Act allows people to choose to be male or female irrespective of their sex.

Again, not particularly a problem if you're not a Catholic and don't think any of these things are prohibited. Hey, recognising the merits of long-term commitment and empowering people to make decisions about their own lives might even be kind of cool.

The Catholic Church’s view of these kinds of developments here and elsewhere is well known.

No kidding.

We have protested all of these measures.

And failed to stop them from coming to pass. Truly, this is the will of God.

Our reaction to civil partnership legislation is typical of our stance. The social teaching of the Church could not be clearer: “By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and family life, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties” (CSDC 228).

Yeah, a government that refuses to think that gay and non-Catholic people are less important and deserving than Catholics must really be annoying.

daily mail: cancer still preferred to sex

The Daily Mail is still on the HPV cancer vaccine, resorting to the ever useful passive voice to make baseless claims:

Despite claims that it encourages under-age sex, medical journal The Lancet has called for compulsory cancer jabs for schoolgirls.

The magazine has published an editorial which says all schoolgirls aged 11 and 12 should be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer. The jab, against what is effectively a sexually transmitted infection, is controversal because it is argued that they encourage under-age sex.

But who makes these claims? Who argues this? According to the Mail's article, no-one at all. Despite giving the claim that this vaccine will encourage underage sex headline prominence, the article passes without a single mention of who it is that might actually believe such a thing - or why they should be given more credence than actual medical doctors.

It occurs to me that a person would really have to hate sex to think that cervical cancer is a preferred alternative.

the other kind of doctor

Good news: I passed. :)

mary kenny: men are from mars, women.. are horses

A few minor notes to add to the growing body of fisk surrounding Mary Kenny's piece in The Telegraph entitled "It's against women's nature to want to lead." Oh, my.

My stand-out favourite part is where Kenny argues that women don't want to be leaders because they are predisposed to caring. Because "caring" is diametrically opposed to "leading":

[The fact that some women want to be mothers] is also, to some extent, a reversion to what Nature regards as normality. Perhaps it is what Nature has encoded into the DNA of most women – that the female instinct is towards the maternal vocation, although that maternal instinct can be expressed in a wide number of ways, from animal welfare to teaching to medical care to nurturing a corporation.

Uh.. what now... nurturing a corporation? That sounds suspiciously like leadership, even if it's dressed up to sound like a woman is breast-feeding the staff of a Fortune 500 company. It's also lovely that Kenny was able to find out exactly what Nature wants: it's an interview I look forward to reading.

I also like how it's "most" women - which allows for the occasional genetic aberration of free will. Even so, Kenny does her every best to avoid recognising that women might be different from each other and lead different lives - and that the "choices" available when it comes to working and/or raising children are definitively not the same for everyone.

To finish, there's nothing like a parable based on a horse, because if there's one thing we know about women it's that they are.. like horses. Hmm:

I met a racing expert recently who told me about a gifted filly in which he had an interest. She was a fine goer, but as soon as she pulled ahead of the field she would suddenly get second thoughts and fall back with the herd.

She didn't want to lead: it went against her nature. If women pull back from the hard world [herd world, shurely?] of career competition it is because we are, in the end, often restrained by our nature: and maybe the rising generation is wisely deciding to go with the flow.

And it's also very hard to type or take minutes if you have hooves for hands - though the clear advantage is that you only have to pay women in sugar lumps.

(h/t to Dave Hill).

jamie oliver: food is for girls, eating is for boys

So close, and yet so very far:

Jamie Oliver has blamed working mothers for contributing to the breakdown of British family life. [...]

He said: "As far as holding a family or a nation's food culture together, it's always been women. And when the Industrial Revolution and two world wars kicked in - and there was rationing - women went to work and stayed in work. To my mind that's why we've lost our food culture".

Oliver said: "I might be biased, but I think if you got everyone round the table two or three times a week you'd get a drop in the divorce rate.

Oh, the utter irony of a male chef who absolves men of any role in a nation's food culture.

It's the traditional analysis that enjoys the traditional blindspot: women stopped fulfilling traditional roles in the home, so the traditional home crumbled. Oh, if only there was someone who could have stepped forward to help with the child-rearing, housework and food preparation - someone who might even have had a penis to help clean those hard to reach places. Oh, I forgot: that's women's work.

Describing social change is one thing: pretending that the only remedy is "go back to the way things were" is another. If we're going to talk about the impact of working mothers (a tautology at best), it might be useful to talk about the consequences of working fathers and their mysteriously frequent absence from discussion of family and food.

At the very least, men should be more angry that this kind of discussion assumes that they're useful, if limited, idiots when it comes to the home: if being hopeless in the bedroom isn't a mark of masculine pride, why should incompetence in the kitchen be one? Ah. That would be the penis thing again.

re: deliberate sexy ignorance

You have to be a special kind of idiot to seize on a story about ignorance about AIDS and other STIs and jump to the conclusion that the real problem is promiscuity. Let me use small words: you only need to have sex with ONE infected person to contract an STI if you are totally ignorant of safe sex. The problem isn't sex: the problem is unsafe sex. The problem is being so chronically uninformed that you couldn't protect yourself or your partner even if you wanted to.

Of course, if you think that having sex with one person outside of marriage is the same thing as hopeless promiscuity, that STIs are nature's punishment for sex that doesn't lead to babies and that ignorance should be wilfully embraced then there's little that can be done for you.

Though it shouldn't have to be said, the cure for ignorance - as one might suspect - is a better education and not a deeper hole to hide your head in.

the "public interest"

The Independent confirms that the Gay Police Association "bloody bible" ad will not lead to a prosecution due to insufficient evidence that a hate-crime had been committed.

And, with perfect symmetry, Rev “Macho” George Hargreaves - leader of Operation Christian Vote - is seeking a private prosecution in the name of "the public interest."

Of course, all this takes a place without something that might genuinely be in the public interest - a discussion of how some people think that religious texts give them the right to violently attack others they suspect of being gay. In Hargreaves defence, he's probably very busy with those private blasphemy prosecutions that don't seem to have happened yet.

Hmm.

a toxic mix: abuse allegations and a religious culture of secrecy

The Catholic Church's response to the BBC documentary alleging the systematic cover-up of child-abuse by priests deserves a little close attention. It's a long post - but stick with it because it's important to think about what's at work here.

Here's a key moment in the statement from Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Chairman of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults:

[The attack on the Vatican and the Pope] is false because it misrepresents two Vatican documents and uses them quite misleadingly in order to connect the horrors of child abuse to the person of the Pope.

The first document, issued in 1962, is not directly concerned with child abuse at all, but with the misuse of the confessional. This has always been a most serious crime in Church law.

This is, to be polite, quite misleading: the question of whether something is a serious matter in Church law is almost entirely irrelevant. The more significant issue is whether an obedience to Church law has been used to conceal crime - and allegation of crime - from the impact of civil and criminal law.

What the first document does discuss - in a tremendously arcane manner - is the treatment of priests who have tempted a penitent (one who confesses - i.e. us) toward "impure and obscene matters." The fact that this document is not entitled "how to deal with child abuse allegations" is not a sign of the policy's innocence - it is, rather, a sign of the policy's breadth when it comes to handling primarily sexual allegations which might damage the Church.

It describes how the allegations of such conduct within, before, after, in the pretext of or just generally outside the "sacrament" of confession will be handled: in absolute secrecy. A person could be forgiven for thinking that what constitutes the sacrament of confession has such a loose definition because it allows so much to be swept under the same voluminous carpet.

So while it's true it doesn't deal explicitly with child abuse, it does describe a system that will shroud untoward behaviour in silence - and, most crucially, binds those who make allegations or act as witnesses to such allegations to silence. It defines a system of internal discpline which simultaneously dissuades those involved from turning to external authorities.

As the document itself declares (pdf):

The oath of keeping the secret must be given in these cases also by the accusers or those denouncing [the priest] and the witnesses.

The oath in question compels absolute secrecy

even for the most urgent and most serious cause [even] for the purpose of a greater good [...] unless a particular faculty or dispensation has been expressly given to me by the Supreme Pontiff.

In short, the document describes how the Church's particular demands for secrecy in the name of the sanctity of the confessional take priority over any other concern. It's a system that allows the Vatican to act as judge and jury for the Catholic faithful, making decisions as to the validity of allegations and appropriate punishments without ever making the matter public.

While it might seem appropriate to the Catholic Church that someone suspected of "impure and obsence matters" only be moved from one diocese to another, it's of little comfort to victims - who, it should be noted, don't appear at all in the 1962 document except in the elided form of witnesses who are sworn to secrecy. But, as Archbishop Nichols argues, it's never really been about them.

While the Vatican might well protest the BBC's "sensationalist tactics" and misinterpretation of religious doctrine, it's much harder to avoid the fact that priests and bishops suspected of abuse were protected from public and legal scrutiny, often by moving those under investigation into new areas where they were free to commit the same acts which had first brought them under investigation.

Whether such protection occurred out of blunt stupidity, or a misplaced loyalty to "protect the Church" over the victims of abuse, such events were only able to take place in an organised culture of secrecy enforced with the theat of punishment. That's what the 1962 document describes, and there's little that can be said to deny that.