Rest assured, it isn't just Rick Perry with illiberal ideas vying for the Republican nomination, as this video shows:



Try to ignore the irritating presenter and marvel at yet another contender utterly unsuited to the office they are trying to attain.

Doctor Who and Sexual Orientation

Both some of the comments (not my own, obviously) on this site and elsewhere seem to suggest that the problem that a lot of people have with the new Doctor Who is not the increasingly dense plotting and the iconoclastic moments like the Doctor being gunned down but rather the moments that reference homosexuality. Therefore, in this peculiar mindset, the problem with The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon is not the numerous plot strands left open when the end credits roll, but the fact that Canton Delaware III wants to marry a black man. Likewise, the thin/fat gay Anglican marines and the hint at a sexual relationship between Vastra and Jenny in A Good Man Goes To War are apparently further evidence of the show advancing a gay agenda.

This idea is, of course, bollocks. If by mentioning homosexuality it is advancing an agenda, then the main agenda the show is unashamedly and blatantly is a heterosexual one. Seriously. Think about the last broadcast episode. It was about a married, heterosexual attempting to rescue their baby -the product of their heterosexual shenanigans in the TARDIS on their wedding night. Likewise, much of the recent humour of the show has been about the heterosexual flirtation between the largely asexual Doctor and the far from asexual River Song/Melody Pond. If there is an agenda, then it is a heterosexual one.

But there isn't an agenda - the show is trying to tell entertaining stories and that works better if there are emotional ties between the characters. And this then leads to hints - and it really is no more than hints - of a physical connection between some of those characters. It gives the story a certain depth that was often missing from the original series.

Of course, the prudes and the prejudiced out there could argue that these sort of hints are not suitable for a children's show. They miss the obvious point that this is not just a children's show, it is a family show. As such, it needs to entertain the parents as well as the children. And that is what the sexual innuendo's do - they entertain (well some at least) of the adults who watch the show. I would have more sympathy for the "won'tsomeonethinkofthechildren" position if the adult moments were anything more than hints, but they are really not. It's not like we get full access to the wedding night of the Ponds, or get to see Vastra's tongue in action in a very different way to the one depicted in the show. Instead we get a blink and you miss it reference to the latter, and a wonderfully humourous moment when the largely asexual eleventh Doctor tries to work out when Amy and Rory might have been intimate in the TARDIS.

In short, there's no sexual agenda to Doctor Who - homosexual or otherwise. And those who insist on seeing what isn't there, well, I do rather think that it reveals more about them and their prudish mindsets than it does anything about the makers of the modern Doctor Who.

Guido and the Right to Publish

Yup, I'm jumping on the bandwagon and asking the question "was Guido right to publish his story about Hague and his aide?"

Now, my thoughts on the right of politicians to have a private life can be found here and here and I've got little to add; the fact that I don't approve of our salacious desire to see behind the net curtains of our political class doesn't mean I want it to be banned. After all, there's lots of things in Britain today that I don't approve of but that continue regardless; Jamie Oliver, EastEnders, chugging. I, and many others, may not like muck-raking, but it will carry on regardless.

And Guido is a muck-raker. His site isn't, has never been and never will be, about high-brow political debate conducted with sensitivity. It is a tabloid blog - which is precisely why it is so successful. People can visit the site to vent their frustration and anger against politicians, and because Guido is prepared to publish stories that the mainstream media is often wary of (the Hague story being a great example) those visiting the site will sometimes be treated to genuinely breaking news. It is a simple, unsophisticated format, but it works.

The Hague story was the sort of thing that was right up Guido's street, particularly since the mainstream media were dancing around the story without actually taking the plunge and publishing it. So Guido can claim that he was doing a public service by publishing info that no-one else would. This I get; this I can agree with. The problem lies not so much in the fact that the story was published, but rather the content of the story.

I'd have quite a bit of sympathy with a story that questioned whether Hague's SpAD was actually capable of doing his job - given said SpAD was being paid from the public purse, I'd say this is a legitimate story. The problem is that Guido's story, and much of the speculation around it, didn't centre on the question of the SpAd's ability. The at times overpowering undertone had nothing to do with the question of competence; it was all about the homophobic innuendo. For example, the claim that Hague and the SpAD shared a twin room in the election campaign was met with almost audible schoolboy sniggers, despite the fact that people of the same gender can share twin hotel rooms without having crazy monkey sex all night long. The legitimate question about the adviser's competence ended up being lost beneath an avalanche of innuendo.

Which means that the SpAD didn't go because he wasn't competent, but rather because of a homophobic whispering campaign. And we're left with no real evidence of any sort of an affair between Hague and his adviser, and legitimate questions about Hague's judgment in hiring some who, on face value, was not the best choice for the role have been lost behind statements about miscarriages.

So yeah, Guido was right to publish - however the tone of his story and the subsequent speculation about Hague's sexual orientation have robbed his story of its initial legitimacy. The real questions go answered because the story ended up going down the dead-end route around sexuality, rather than questions about competence. Guido may now be trying to redirect the story, but the resignation of the SpAD and the embarrassment for Hague had little to do with questions of competence, and everything to do with innuendo.

Anyway, enough already. The SpAd's gone, we know about the Hagues' miscarriages, that's (more than) enough. There are other stories out there that warrant, if not demand, discussion.

Modern British Politics: Gossip

So, what have we found out about politics today?

1. Tony Blair didn't get on with Gordon Brown: No, really? Blair and Brown didn't like each other? Fuck-a-duck that is news, isn't it? Except it actually isn't. Because we've known about this for the best part of the decade - Blair's confirmation of his difficult relationship with Brown proves nothing other than what we already knew.

And it isn't just about the lack of novelty - there's another reason why it is largely irrelevant for the future - neither Blair nor Brown represent the future of politics in our country. Neither of them will ever be Prime Minister - or even a high-powered elected politician - again. This is just watching a soap opera that has gone well past its prime.

2. Hague's adviser quits: So, someone has been forced from a job because of sly, often borderline homophobic, innuendo. And, as a result of that we've learned of the personal tragedy of the miscarriages that have befallen the Hagues. I can entirely understand why they wanted to keep this private, and I cannot understand why this needed to come into the public sphere. Except that it is a desperate attempt to end what I can see is just groundless speculation abut Hague's private life. Of course they didn't want to reveal this; of course, under the duress of prattling tongues, they had to.

And in the meantime, our politicians get away with continuing to do and say next to nothing about our future as a nation. They get away with having no ambition, no plan and no ideological commitment whatsoever because at the first sign of some titillating, controversial or in any way gossipy, the media works themselves up into a furore about it and we, the consumers, blindly accept it.

So the next time you wonder why Cameron, or Clegg, or whoever gets to be Labour leader, is so shallow, PR-obsessed and light-weight, remember days like these. When all we seem to want form our politicians is to be entertained, like vacuous viewers of the world's slowest, dullest, but most long-running, soap opera. If we want the calibre of our politicians to change, we need to change it. We need to redress the balance between personal and private, and we need to remember that the only meaningful litmus test for our politicians is what they do in power, rather than with their colleagues or in their private lives.

Because this is the truth - the politicians we get we deserve.

Gay, Bi, Straight, Whatever

The weekend just gone seems to have had its share of whispering around the sexual orientation of Cabinet Ministers; Crispin Blunt came out as gay while others have been coyly (or not) asking around the question "is another senior Tory Minister gay?"

The answer all decent people should be giving to that question is, of course, who the fuck cares? Seriously, why does it matter whether or not someone is gay? If they happen to be gay and married, they it will probably be a problem for their spouses and families, but that's it. That's where it stops. It does not matter one jot whether someone is gay, straight, bisexual or any other combination of orientations. At this point I could argue that sexuality is actually something to complex that it defies easy categorisation, but I won't - because it doesn't matter what a politician's sexual orientation is.

Yet it does matter that we allow our media to get away with this speculation and at times, as a nation, let ourselves get swept away by titillating speculation about the private lives of others. And when need to stop. We should hold our politicians to account and viciously attack them when they fail - in their public roles. As long as they are not doing anything illegal in their private lives, they should remain just that - private.

And this isn't just about who politicians are humping or even what gender they prefer to hump. I don't want to hear about their spouses and I certainly don't want to hear about their sodding kids. I don't want know what to see photos of Cameron's new baby, I don't what to know what it is called - hell, I don't even care what gender it is. I want him to run the fucking country, and do so well. I don't expect him to be preening with his new tot like a z-list celebrity milking the profitable teat of Hello magazine.

Because removing the right of our politicians to have a private life creates this expectation that they will share every element of their private lives with us. Which means that those who are vying for high-office in this country are not those most capable of carrying out that office, but rather are the sort of preening narcissistic fucks who revel in the constant exposure of the media limelight. The end result of this obsession with the private lives of our politicians is not a purer breed of political leaders, but rather Tony fucking Blair.

Gay, not gay, undecided, asexual, both; the only suitable answer should be that you really couldn't give a fuck anyway.

Moronic Bigot of the Day: Richard Carvath

Oh, looky, we've got a hate-filled, god-bothering Neanderthal on our hands. Ladies and gents, I give you - Mr Richard Carvath:

Hmm... I've a lot of time on my hands right now and so I've been bobbing about the web a few places I haven't been for a while. I just happened to look up homosexual-pervert LGBTory Chairman Matthew Sephton who is over at a homosexual-pervert event in Liverpool today (the first Liverpool Pride).

"Homosexual-pervert" - good fucking God, we're back in the dark ages here. What a pig-ignorant thing to say. Only a bone-headed lackwit would even consider using such a deplorable phrase.

[Matthew was my rival candidate for Salford and Eccles at the last General Election. Despite having an easy ride - all the money, media and machine that any candidate could wish for - Matthew only managed to come in third as the Conservative Party candidate. It's a shame the Tories didn't pick a real conservative candidate rather than this homosexual-pervert activist. Any Tory candidate worth his salt and with those resources available should've at least beaten the weak Lib Dem Norman Owen into second place. Sephton failed to do so. Indeed after the count Hazel Blears appeared to be grateful above all to her Tory rival!]

The phrase "a real conservative candidate" links, inevitably, to a picture of Carvath - and he has a face only a mother could love. He also seems to miss the point that conservatism is not the same as being a reactionary; in case of doubt, Carvath is definitely the latter.

And let's look at the results from the particular election Carvath is talking about. He's right, Sephton did come third - which is not a great result but probably par for the course in a seat held by a high-profile former Labour minister. It is also worth noting that Sephton got 8,497 votes while our new friend Carvath came last with 384 votes. Which means that Carvath got just 4% of the support afforded to Sephton. Not that Carvath is bitter, of course. No doubt that Carvath would blame that on the lack of a party machine behind his candidacy, but that misses the point that the reason why he doesn't have a party machine behind him is because he's a despicable, reactionary bigot with intolerant homophobic views.

Will Matthew be gyrating on the back of a float wearing only a thong through the streets of Liverpool? Who knows, the mind boggles. Well, whether or not he's wearing bondage trousers and nipple clamps on the back of a lorry today, I have no doubt that my old chum Matthew Sephton supports the recent overturning of Prop 8 by a judge in San Francisco.

He probably does support it, what with it being a triumph for LGBT campaigners. Then again, most open-minded people will also support the over-turning. What with it being the right thing to do 'n' all.

This development is alarming because it'll probably end up in the US Supreme Court for a definitive legal decision as to whether the United States defines marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman (or not).

Yes, it probably will end up in the Supreme Court. It is the, well, supreme court in that land. And as such it is where all appeals fight their final battles.

This is the way that abortion was legalised in the US (in the Supreme Court with Roe vs Wade in 1973): abortion was legalised in the US not by legislation but by judicial activism.

No. This is wrong. Carvath's view is completely the wrong way round. The 1973 Supreme Court decision did not legalise abortion - it said that restricting access to abortion was unconstitutional and therefore illegal. According to this judgement, it was the constitution that legalised abortion when it was first written centuries ago. Carvath may disagree with this interpretation of the US constitution, but it doesn't change the basic fallacy of his assertion that Roe v. Wade legalised abortion.

Is the same about to happen with the homosexual-perverts' 'holy grail' of completely subverting the definition of marriage?

Hopefully.

I hope not, but with Barack Obortion in the White House and backing the perverts, who can safely predict that sanity will prevail in the Supreme Court?

Barack Obortion? Hilarious, Dickshaft Cuntvath.

And this notion that the Supreme Court is a naturally liberal body or one that naturally follows the sitting President is also fallacious. You only have to look at the notorious ruling in favour of Bush Junior after the 2000 Presidential election to see that.

Here in the UK it is tragic that David Cameron, Nick Clegg and David Miliband are all pro-pervert and do not recognise that marriage is an exclusively heterosexual institution.

Erm, David Miliband isn't Labour leader yet.

And in this example, Cameron, Clegg, and (I'd imagine) all of the candidates for Labour leadership are simply following the wishes of the electorate: both the LGBT campaigners who want equal rights under the law, and those tolerant voters who don't want to see discrimination based on sexual orientation (or in any other way, for that matter).

We are more likely to see the perverts get their way here by means of parliamentary legislation in the next four years. The perverts don't need to pursue their cause through the courts here because top-level British politicians from the major parties are already doing their bidding.

Goddamn those politicians! Doing the bidding of the electorate. What a crazy fucking notion for a democracy.

Well, you know what I think about marriage and about the homosexual-perversion: I've spoken out on these themes plenty of times. I sincerely hope that marriage remains correctly defined in both the USA and the UK in the years to come. As for Matthew Sephton and his pervert pals at Liverpool Pride, they can get the help they need here and here and good luck to them.

The links lead to ignorant organisations who dismiss homosexuals and bisexuals as sinners, and offer them a cure for their sexual orientations. They are the sort of bigoted and malign organisations that a malign bigot like Carvath would know about. I'm not going to link to them as they turn my stomach.

Carvath is simultaneously the worst kind of Christian and conservative: he is a close-minded bigot who hides behind scripture, and uses religious and political beliefs as a smokescreen that he believes, falsely, validates his atrocious views. Both the Conservatives and genuinely tolerant Christians should speak out against the likes of Carvath - him and his odious ilk do nothing but harm for their causes.

I see the Communist ruling elite in China is once again flexing its progressive muscles:

A Chinese gay pageant, said to be the first held in the country, was ordered by police to close an hour before opening, organisers say.

Apparently, the pageant has been cancelled because it did not apply according to procedures. Which, in an authoritarian regime like the one in China, has a certain ring of truth to it. Until you consider this:

Homosexuality was illegal in China until 1997, and officials described it as a mental illness until 2001.

And we all know how the Chinese government feels about the mentally ill. But it is difficult to describe the actions of the Chinese government in any other way than blatantly homophobic. And also I note the number of left-wing movements that end up brutally suppressing their own people when they get into power. I'm pretty sure that the point of a utopia - Communist or otherwise - isn't to describe homosexuals as mentally ill...

Christian Ignorance

Take a seat, and grab some popcorn for what should be a humdinger of a row:

About 300 protesters held a candlelit protest outside a Glasgow theatre over the staging of a play which portrays Jesus as a transsexual.

The protest was held outside the Tron* Theatre, where Jesus Queen of Heaven, in which Christ is a transsexual woman, is being staged.

Ok, good. A bit of a debate. And I reckon that the producers are well entitled to put their show on, despite it containing what some might call blasphemy. Just as Christians are completely entitled to protest about the depiction of their long dead Saviour as a transsexual woman.

The only problem is that the Christians just have to get offensive:

Another (slogan) said: "God: My Son Is Not A Pervert."

Fucking hell. For those of us who don't hold antediluvian views, there is actually nothing wrong with a transsexual person. It is certainly wrong to dismiss them as a "pervert". This sort of a slogan reveals far more about these protestors than perhaps they intend. It shows that they aren't about asking for respect for their views, but rather doing down the ideas of others and sitting in judgment over the lives of others. A religion founded on respect for others and loving thy neighbour is utterly undermined by this sort of puritanical and ignorant slogan.

*Presumably not this Tron.

More on Moir

Jan Moir, apologising (sort of) for that article:

Yet as the torrent of abuse continued, most of it anonymous, I also had thousands of supportive emails from readers and well-wishers, many of whom described themselves as 'the silent majority'. The outcry was not as one-sided as many imagine.

Their view, and mine, was that it was perfectly reasonable of me to comment upon the manner of Stephen Gately's death, even if there are those who think that his celebrity and sexuality make him untouchable.

Can it really be that we are becoming a society where no one can dare to question the circumstances or behaviour of a person who happens to be gay without being labelled a homophobe? If so, that is deeply troubling.

There is something wonderfully Nixonian about talk of "the silent majority." It is a way of saying you have oodles of support, without having to prove that people support you. Maybe Moir did get thousands of supportive e-mails - the naked homophobia of her article would certainly provoke a certain type of Daily Mail reader to write in to praise her. But readers of that rag holding ignorant opinions is nothing new. What was quite life-affirming about the response to her rant was that so many people were prepared to protest about the ignorance of her claims.

And as for Gately's sexuality and celebrity being the reason why people protested about Moir's comments, well, that's a little misleading, isn't it? The reasons why people protested included the fact that Moir was pruriently speculating on a very recently deceased person, using rumour and innuendo to fill in for the absence of fact. Gately's sexual orientation only became an issue because the tone of Moir's article - including her opinions on civil partnerships - was blatantly homophobic.

We are not in a position where someone cannot question a person's behaviour if that person is (or was) gay. However, Moir spread rumour and sleazy innuendo about a man who had very recently died without any facts to back up her assertions. That, in itself, is deeply troubling. It says a lot about Moir and the paper she writes for. And if Moir truly wants to avoid being classed as a homophobe, then she should avoid making homophobic comments. It wasn't the fact that she commented on the behaviour of a gay man that was so problematic; it was rather the fact that she judged a dead man and his bereaved partner as sleazy based on no facts whatsoever, and extrapolated from her made up factoids towards a negative judgment on other homosexual couples and on the concept of civil partnerships.

And I find it very telling that Moir's defence of her actions is to try to rewrite history and change what she said in the first place.

Republican Woes

The oft-flawed Danny Finkelstein has managed to come up with a decent article here about the problems of the Republican party. For my part, this little story here sums up those problems perfectly:

And then, a few days before the event, Kent County Republicans announced very publicly that they were withdrawing the invitation. They had discovered that Governor Huntsman favoured civil partnerships between homosexuals. They did not want to be addressed by such a man. Two weeks later Barack Obama announced that he had offered Governor Huntsman an appointment as Ambassador to China. And he had accepted.

Top stuff, that. Take a popular moderate from your party and then drive him into the hands of the opposition. Great way to expand your party base, increase your support and help you to the White House next time out. Or, more realistically, make your party a fan club for the likes of Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee and no-one else. 

The Republicans need to sort their game out as a matter of urgency. Especially now that Barack Obama has decided that the fabled "change that you can believe in" is second-rate social democracy with an aggressive spending plan. But they won't sort themselves out whilst they remain in the thrall of the Christian Right. The Christian Right is a minority in America, and the Republicans won't win by appealing just to that minority. Particularly since the views minority alienate so many of the more moderate voters the Republicans so desperately need to win. 

Of course, I'm not a Republican, and I can't vote in US elections. If I did, it would probably be for the sanest Libertarian candidate regardless of party. But every country needs a strong opposition. And at the moment, the Republican party can't be an effective opposition. It has hobbled itself with Christian fundamentalism...

Bears shit in the woods, just as the Pope talks shit

In this season of goodwill, some see it as customary to put differences to one side and embrace those people who, perhaps for the rest of the year, you have some differences with. For others, such as the Pope, it is the time to slag off anyone who does not live in a way he deems suitable:

In his address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration, he described behaviour beyond traditional heterosexual relations as "a destruction of God's work" and said that the Roman Catholic Church had a duty to "protect man from the destruction of himself".

And:

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official described homosexuality as "a deviation, an irregularity, a wound".

So sayeth a celibate man in a dress who lives in a palace a loooonnng way from the real world.

The irony is, of course, that Benedict's words - and the stance of the Catholic church as a whole - shows that it isn't homosexuality that is a deviation, an irregularity or a wound. Rather, it is the archaic, intolerant and out-moded Catholic church that matches that description perfectly.

"See, some of my bestest friends are..."

So, some priest or other has got himself into hot water over some comments he made about homosexuality. The BBC sums up these comments really nicely:

He suggested in his internet blog that homosexuals should have their backsides tattooed with the slogan: "Sodomy can seriously damage your health."

Apparently these comments were meant to be satirical. Hmmm. I love a bit of satire. But these comments appear to be more grossly offensive than satirical. I'd like to say that there is a fine line between satire and rampantly homophobic ignorance. Unfortunately, there isn't.

Still, his "satire" allows me to propose my new scheme, which is tattooing the words "Believing in a invisible, fictional sky fairy can seriously damage your common sense and tolerance for others" on the foreheads of Christian bigots everywhere.

And the Rev Mullan has some other thoughts on homosexuality as well:

In the same blog, Mr Mullen called for all gay pride parades, which he branded "obscene", to be outlawed.

So not just branding gay people, Mr Mullen also wants to suppress them. Although in fairness his desire to suppress gay people was also clearly demonstrated by his idea of tattooing them.

But what gets to me - what really gets to me - is this classic justification for his atrocious views:

"I certainly have nothing against homosexuals. Many of my dear friends have been and are of that persuasion."

Oh, bless you, Rev Mullan. Bless you. I haven't heard this justification used (in an apparently serious way) for a good long time. But it really is the classic excuse for pig ignorant comments. There is no difference between Rev Mullan's comment and a member of the BNP saying "I have nothing against immigrants, some of my best friends are immigrants..." Or the redneck in America stating "I have nothing against black people, some of my friends are black people but..." Or even a Nazi concentration camp guard stating "I have nothing against Jews. Some of my best friends were Jews, but..." And all I have done with those phrases is adjust them slightly; the sentiment is the same. As is the response to all such statements - having friends who are gay/black/immigrants/whatever doesn't stop you from being an ignorant prick. If, you know, you are an ignorant prick.

I don't know the Rev Mullan, but judging by his comments he comes across as the sort of nasty little bigot who is hiding behind his prayer book and church frock. And in being bigoted, he is missing perhaps the key teaching of his Messiah - "Love Thy Neighbour". And to clarify for the Rev Mullan and his knuckle dragging ilk, that is love thy neighbour. Not love thy neighbour unless they are gay, in which case you can tattoo them and suppress them.

Still, it would be wrong to brand all Christians as bigoted little shits based on the words of the Rev Mullan. It is only some of them who are bigoted little shits. And I can say that with a good degree of confidence - see, many of my dear friends have been and are of that persuasion.