Category Archives: Sexuality

Opponents of equal marriage resort to dirty tactics

Posted on by symonhill

It must be unusual to find that somebody objects so much to your wedding that he has travelled half way around the world to do a series of media interviews criticising it. All the more so if you don’t know him and possibly have never heard of him.

This is the experience of the same-sex couples in England and Wales who married today. They are the first same-sex couples to have their marriages recognised under English and Welsh law. Pro-equality religious leaders have been among the first to welcome the news. My congratulations and best wishes to them all.

Professor Bobby Lopez, a right-wing US activist, arrived in Britain earlier this week to campaign against these people’s weddings. He is here at the invitation of “Gay Marriage, No Thanks”, a bizarrely named campaign backed by homophobic lobby groups such as Christian Concern and so-called Anglican Mainstream. These groups are so extreme that they tend to embarrass the more moderate opponents of equal marriage.

The particular emphasis of “Gay Marriage, No Thanks” is to claim that children are harmed by same-sex marriage. This repugnant tactic is Lopez’s specialism. He was brought up by a female same-sex couple and claims that the lack of a “male role model” hindered his personal and social development.

I cannot of course comment on Lopez’s parenting. I am sorry to hear it was such a negative experience for him. What I can say is that growing up without a father is not a new or unusual experience. I am not speaking primarily about single parents in the sense the term is now understood. I am thinking of the many places and cultures in which it has been normal for a father to travel a long way to find work, sending money back to his wife and children, who may rarely see him. During both world wars, millions of children were effectively brought up by single mothers, because their fathers were away fighting. The lucky ones had more time with their fathers when the war ended. Others had only a distant grave to visit.

It is typical of anti-equal marriage campaigners to portray modern nuclear families as the “natural” way for bringing up a child. This is misleading in the extreme. Those who claim to be defending “biblical values” are of course ignoring the fact that no-one in biblical times would have recognised a nuclear family. They also skip over the controversy that Jesus caused by challenging biological notions of family, insisting that all who do the will of God are his brothers, sisters and mothers.

Some would point out that wartime mothers or single parents involved other people in the bringing up of their child, such as a grandparent, neighbour, aunt or uncle. This is exactly the point. Children do not need to be raised solely by parents (whether one or two, whether biological or not). Throughout history, extended families and communities have played a much bigger role in raising children than they do in much western culture today.

I have doubts about the notion of “male role models”, a phrase that implies that children should be taught to conform to narrow and unhealthy understandings of gender. Nonetheless, I accept the point that it is helpful for children to experience a range of role models and encounter loving adults with varied personalities and views. If this is what Lopez and “Gay Marriage, No Thanks” really want, they shouldn’t be opposing same-sex marriage. They should be opposing the destruction of communities under capitalism, the narrowness of nuclear families and the shallow, commercialised approaches to relationships that lay down restrictive and unhelpful roles and pressurise parents to conform to impossible ideals.

This would promote children’s rights, and all our rights. But it wouldn’t satisfy those who confuse the needs of children with their own hatred of same-sex relationships.

British racist group backed by Egyptian embassy official

Posted on by symonhill

The military government in Egypt has received the enthusiastic backing of Tony Blair. The UK government, while using more cautious language, has continued to license arms sales to this regime, which imprisons its opponents and attacks peaceful demonstrators.

If we needed another reminder of the reality of this regime, one of its press officers has now tweeted – with approval – a link to the website of Britain First, a violent, racist group that split from the British National Party (BNP). 

In January, Britain First held a rally outside the London offices of a group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Shortly afterwards, Sohair Younis, Press Counsellor to the Egyptian Embassy in London, tweeted (in capitals): “Demonstration: Britain First holds successful demonstration at London HQ of terrorist Muslim Brotherhood”. This was followed by a link to a story about the protest on Britain First’s own website.

Younis is clearly implying that she supports the demonstration. If she had made a statement about the event with no comment or link, she might get away with claiming that she was merely noting that it had happened. The link to the group’s own account of it, along with her willingness to use their own description of it (“successful”) make clear that this is not a neutral tweet.

I admit I would not have noticed Younis’ tweet were it not for a good friend of mine who campaigns against Egypt’s military regime. She uses Facebook under the name Sarah Antideepstate. Many thanks to Sarah for drawing this tweet to my attention.

You may well not have heard of Britain First. The group’s website is so full of half-truths, fantasy and lies that it’s difficult to know how much of what it says about itself is true.

It was founded by former BNP members who argued with BNP leader Nick Griffin. This appears to have been in part due to Griffin’s decision to allow non-whites to join the party. However, Britain First seem to emphasise religion at least as much as race.

Its members include Paul Golding, a former BNP councillor in Kent, and Jim Dowson, a former BNP treasurer and Christian fundamentalist minister with links to extreme loyalist activities in Northern Ireland.

The group say they want to preserve “British and Christian morality”. They describes themselves as a “patriotic political party and street defence organisation”. They clearly hate Muslims (who they lump together as terrorists and sexists). Their website declares that they are “overtly proud” of putting “our own people before foreigners” (how this fits with “Christian morality” is not explained). The website includes several attacks on homosexuality and applause for Vladimir Putin, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church and countries that have passed laws against LGBT rights.

Despite all their hate-filled, racist, homophobic rhetoric, they say they want to “restore Christianity as the bedrock and foundation of our national life”.

It may be argued that Sohair Younis is not supporting everything Britain First stands for. However, if she does not agree with the group’s other views, she at least regards them as tolerable enough to overlook them for the sake of unity against the Muslim Brotherhood.

I’m no supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, although it is absurd to suggest that all its members are terrorists.

The current Egyptian government is a terrorist regime. So why am I bothering to mention this tweet? You might point out that the regime’s violence against its critics in Egypt, its murder of opponents and its fixing of a referendum are far worse than a tweet about a small group of right-wing extremists in London. You would be right.

However, what’s significant about this tweet is that it’s a comment on British politics. It’s a reminder that when Blair and Cameron get friendly with this regime, their friends’ friends in the UK include racists, Islamophobes, homophobes and fundamentalists who don’t think that the BNP is extreme enough.

If you think UKIP’s members are extreme, read its official policies

Posted on by symonhill

Nigel Farage has thrown out the latest UKIP member to provoke controversy through bigoted opinions. Farage says he wants to get rid of candidates with “extremist, barmy or nasty” views. But it is not individual candidates who are the problem. UKIP’s official policies are extremely nasty, based as they are on an ultra-Thatcherite free-market extremism.

Earlier this week, I blogged about David Silvester, a UKIP councillor in Oxfordshire who attributed the recent floods to God’s judgment on the legalisation of same-sex marriage (rather than the real sin of human-fuelled climate change). I have now lost count of the number of UKIP members that have been expelled due to racist, sexist or homophobic comments. Farage’s insistence that there are bigoted individuals in every party is true but now wearing thin as an excuse for the number of them who appear to have joined UKIP.

You only have to look at the policies of UKIP to see why. They want to make even greater cuts than the Tories. They are committed to workfare (forcing people to work for benefits, instead of paying them a wage). They want to withdraw from the UN Convention on Refugees, meaning the UK could turn back people fleeing persecution. They would also remove the UK from the European Court of Human Rights, meaning it would join Belarus as the only other European country that is not signed up to it.

Despite slashing the welfare state, a UKIP government would increase military spending by forty percent and push ahead with the renewal of Trident. The party’s education policy includes the promotion of a biased, pro-imperial teaching of history in British schools. They would not, however, teach about climate change, as they deny its reality. Their policies include investment in several new gas-fired power stations.

Shortly after his comments about expelling “extremists”, Farage gave us a reminder of his own perception of reality by claiming that women can succeed just as well as men at the top levels of big business – if, he added, they are prepared to sacrifice their families. Why anyone should be expected to sacrifice their family to “succeed” was not made clear.

Of course, the debate on the number of women on boards of corporate directors conveniently obscures the reality of sexism for people on low and middle incomes. But given the power of corporations, it is telling that Farage is happy with those who are wielding that power.

It is not individual UKIPers who are the problem but the party itself and its own policies. Expelling right-wing extremists from UKIP is like expelling sand from the desert. 

UKIP, homophobia and the real sin behind the floods

Posted on by symonhill

UKIP councillor David Silvester believes that Britain’s recent floods are the results of sin. You may be surprised to learn that I agree with him. There the agreement ends, for we have very different ideas about what the sin is and how it has affected the weather.

In a letter to a local paper in Oxfordshire, Silvester has blamed the foods on the recent legalisation of same-sex marriage in England and Wales.

I respect the fact that many people interpret the Bible differently to me, but Silvester’s statements about the Bible are simply untrue.

In his letter, he writes “The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war.”

This is, to put it bluntly, nonsense. The scriptures make no reference at all to a “Christian nation”. They have no concept of a “Christian nation”. At no point in the New Testament is there any suggestion that Jesus’ followers should build a nation-state founded on their principles or expect any nation to prioritise them and their religion. There is certainly no suggestion anywhere in the Bible of a Christian coronation oath.

What Silvester is doing, like many before him, is rejecting the grassroots radicalism of the New Testament in order to pick bits from the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) that refer to ancient Israel. The people who use the Bible in this way then decide that the Bible’s comments on ancient Israel (or at least, the ones they’ve chosen to pick out) somehow apply directly to Britain as a “Christian nation” today. This simplistic approach manages to insult and misrepresent both Christianity and Judaism at the same time.

I don’t know if David Silvester sees any tension between the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus and the policies of UKIP (including even bigger welfare cuts than the Tories, withdrawal from the UN Convention on Refugees, a forty percent increase in military spending and denying the reality of climate change). I don’t know if he thinks that the UK was a “Christian nation” when Britain was engaged in the slave trade or when Britain’s rulers were committing genocide in Tasmania or suppressing religious liberty in Britain. But I do know that Silvester’s comments will attract more amusement than anger, at least in the mainstream media. Sadly, they will also serve to give people a skewed impression of Christianity. People who have never read the Bible may well assume that Silvester’s description of its contents are accurate.

That’s why other Christians need to speak up. Let no-one misrepresent us as being less Christian than Silvester and his allies, watering down the Bible or compromising the Gospel. We too should speak about sin. Sin is all that separates us from God, from each other and from creation. Sin has played a major role in these floods.

It is not sensible to say that any particular flood was caused solely by climate change. What we can say with confidence is that the frequency of floods and erratic weather conditions is a result of climate change. That change has been brought about by human beings pursuing the goals of capitalism led by politicians worshipping the idols of “growth” and corporations pursuing short-term profit.

Jesus’ solidarity with the poor is central to his teachings. It is at the heart of the Gospel. It is already obvious that the poorest people and the poorest countries will suffer the most as a result of climate change. Christians need to work alongside people of other religions and none in working for new economic systems in which resources are shared rather than hoarded or destroyed.

I don’t claim to live up to Jesus’ teachings. I’m not a better Christian than David Silvester. But I can see that sin is present in destruction, poverty and inequality, not in the love between two people who happen to be the same gender.

 

Celebrating revolution at Christmas

Posted on by symonhill

Tonight and tomorrow, millions of people will gather in churches to tell each other a truly subversive story.

They will tell of a baby born to a semi-homeless family living under a viciously oppressive regime. They will declare that the mother’s husband was not the baby’s father; this was a very unconventional family. They will tell of how the puppet ruler of the area was so frightened by this obscure baby that he killed all the children in the town to try to get rid of him.

They will add stories about visits to the child from migrant travellers, who foiled the king’s attempts to hunt down the baby. They will say that the child was visited also by people whose work was looked down on, but to whom God chose to reveal the news of the birth.

In many countries throughout history, and in some today, the authorities have tried to suppress Christians telling these stories to each other. After all, they challenge authority, monarchy, national loyalty and family values.

Over time, the people with power have become more subtle and effective in their methods. They have found it much easier to tell these stories themselves, repeating them so often that they become familiar and disconnected from the realities of life, death, power and politics today. Some of us can be quite comfortable with this. We can enjoy the stories, but not the challenge they bring to our lives. Even those of us want to change the society we live in can still cling on to the comfort of familiarity.

No king, no dictator, no burner of books has ever suppressed the Christian message as well as those who have domesticated Christianity. Turning subversion into a fluffy story is much more effective than banning it.

At times, we glimpse the transformative potential of Christmas. On Christmas Day ninety-nine years ago, German troops on the Western Front displayed a sign reading “We no fight. You no fight.” The British responded in kind, and the opposing soldiers were soon shaking hands and playing football. The authorities on both sides responded by criminalising such behaviour to make sure it didn’t happen again. If people realise that they are fighting people who are just the same as them, they might decide that there are better causes to fight for, and better ways to fight for them. If the troops had gone on playing football into Boxing Day, they might have stopped the war.

The baby we’re talking about this week grew up, despite the king’s murderous intention. He continued to be in conflict with authority. He welcomed and challenged all whom he encountered. He declared his solidarity with the poor and marginalised, while offering just as much love to the rich and powerful as he called on them to repent. He spoke of the kingdom of God, a revolutionary notion in an empire whose emperor expected to be worshipped. He was executed after a rigged trial by the local rulers, helped by the collusion of religious leaders. Some of us have faith that the oppressive powers could not hold him and that God raised him from the dead to continue to lead and liberate us.

That really is something worth celebrating. Merry Christmas.

Why I’m not cheering the Pilling Report

Posted on by symonhill

Two and a half years ago, I was undertaking a pilgrimage of repentance for my former homophobia when I received a phone call from Ruth Gledhill of the Times. The Church of England’s House of Bishops had just announced a two-year consultation process on homosexuality. Ruth wanted to know my view on it.

Now the consultation process has ended, resulting in the Pilling Report. It is full of language that says the church should be more welcoming alongside policies that say the opposite. I’m sorry to see some LGBT Christians welcoming it and have written a fuller response on the website of Queers for Jesus. Please click here to read it.

Equal marriage in the Lords – We won!

Posted on by symonhill

 

I’m giving thanks for all the people who have worked so hard over the years for the legalisation of same-sex marriage. The Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill passed the House of Lords yesterday on its third reading. The law in England and Wales is now set to change within months.

The bill is not perfect, and is particularly confused and inconsistent when it comes to the rights of religious same-sex couples. However, it is massive progress. It deserves celebration – but not complacency.

As I wrote in an article for the New Statesman yesterday, some of the bill’s more vicious opponents will respond to its success with even more extreme and vocal promotion of prejudice.

As if to fulfil my prediction, the homophobic group Anglican Mainstream has compared the passage of the bill to the Nazi round-up of Jews. The new group Gay Marriage, No Thanks peddled their particularly nasty message about “the needs of children” by driving round a van with a billboard showing a same-sex couple ignoring their child.

I am not suggesting that all people who have a problem with same-sex marriage are so bigoted. I appeal to the more moderate opponents of the bill (with whom I strongly disagree but with whom I have had meaningful and helpful discussions) to disassociate themselves from these reactions.

P.S. Sorry that my New Statesman piece went online with a very out-of-date and inaccurate biography of me. This was due to my error in not asking them to update it. It should be rectified soon.

The Christian lobby group and the far-right party

Posted on by symonhill

I blogged earlier this week about statements from the homophobic lobby group Christian Concern ahead of the local elections. They encouraged people to vote for candidates opposed to same-sex marriage. Most of these candidates are likely to be UKIP or on the right wing of the Conservative Party. They are therefore likely to be very right-wing on economics. Until now, Christian Concern have largely avoided taking a stance on economic issues.

Today, Christian Concern sent out their weekly email bulletin, which includes a message from the group’s director, Andrea Williams, about the local elections. She writes in a celebratory tone. This is not, of course, because Labour have taken so many seats from Tories, but because UKIP have done so.

She writes:

“The local election results are showing massive losses for the Conservative party. This was by no means inevitable but David Cameron’s insistence on pursuing the same sex ‘marriage’ agenda has undoubtedly contributed to this dramatic result.

“His determination to dilute marriage has alienated not only Conservative supporters but voters at large. UKIP is notably the only party that supports marriage and their success in these elections is in large part due to that.”

Contrary to the above statement, there are in fact several other parties that oppose same-sex marriage (BNP, English Democrats, Christian People’s Alliance, etc), but Christian Concern seem happy to ignore them today.

Should we take this as indicating that Christian Concern is happy to support – or at least overlook – UKIP’s other policies? They include cutting taxes for the rich, raising taxes for the poor and people in the middle, increasing military spending, renewing Trident, going further than the Tories with cuts to public services, increasing workfare, banning all immigration for five years, withdrawing from the UN Convention on Refugees, scrapping human rights law and teaching children a pro-imperial view of history.

Do Christian Concern think that these are appropriate policies for Christians to support? I think they should tell us.

Same-sex marriage and the local elections: Who thinks they’re connected?

Posted on by symonhill

The “Christian Right” in Britain – inasmuch as it exists – is not like the Christian Right in the US. Over there, conservatism on issues such as marriage and abortion seems to go hand in hand with right-wing views on economics and foreign policy. Over here, we have conservative Christian lobby groups with a far more narrow focus. Organisations such as the Christian Institute, Christian Concern/Christian Legal Centre and so-called Anglican Mainstream focus largely on attacking LGBT rights. They also speak out against abortion, Islam and the supposed marginalisation of Christians in Britain.

But unlike their US counterparts, these groups rarely comment explicitly on economics or international relations. True, the tiny Christian Party adopts a right-wing stance on virtually every issue, cheering on Trident and tax cuts for the rich. In contrast, the (slightly older) Christian People’s Alliance is just as hostile to LGBT rights and Islam, but has a suprisingly good record of campaigning against the arms trade and talks quite a bit about poverty.

Shortly before the 2010 general election, Christian Concern appeared to endorse the candidacy of George Hargreaves, the Christian Party’s leader, in an email bulletin to supporters. The bulletin clearly provoked some negative reactions, as the group almost immediately issued another email insisting that they do not endorse one party or another.

This makes an email that they have sent out today particularly interesting. When giving advice to Christians about voting in tomorrow’s local elections, there is only one issue they mention: same-sex marriage.

Subscribers to their mailing list received an “action alert” today that declared:

“Please take the time to find out which of your candidates supports marriage as between one man and one woman before you go to place your vote.”

You might think that the afternoon before polling day is a bit late to be finding out such things. You might also wonder what local elections have to do with marriage law. The email declares:

“Local authorities hold a lot [of] power which they could use to penalise people or organisations who believe in authentic marriage, so it’s important that local councillors are pro real marriage.”

There is then a link to a leaflet produced by the “Coalition for Marriage” about the links between local government and marriage law. It consists largely of unsubstantiated statements. For example:

“Schools could be forced to promote the new definition of marriage in the classroom. The rights of parents could be ignored, and teachers who believe in traditional marriage could be pushed out of their careers… Churches that refuse to hold same-sex weddings may be denied grants or refused permission to hire halls from councils in the future.”

No evidence is provided to back up these claims (I hope that schools will encourage children to consider all sides of the argument on ethical, political and religious issues – as they are already expected to).

The only party that the email mentions by name is the Conservatives. Christian Concern quote a Daily Telegraph poll that shows:

“…that the plan to redefine marriage makes far more people ‘less likely’ to vote Conservative than ‘more likely’ to do so.”

Speaking personally, there is nothing that would make me “less likely” to vote Conservative, as there has never been any chance of my voting Conservative at all.

Will Christian Concern’s supporters vote primarily (or even solely) on the basis of which candidate or candidates oppose same-sex marriage? This could have alarming results. Of course, there are a few Labour, Lib Dem and SNP candidates who oppose marriage equality, but most anti-equality candidates are likely to be Tory, Independent or from far-right parties such as the UK Independence Party.

This is particularly relevant at a time when UKIP is under such scrutiny. Last week, their candidate Anna Marie Crampton was thrown out of the party for anti-Semitic comments on Facebook. When the story broke, one of the first to call for Crampton’s expulsion was Sam Westrop, director of the interfaith group Stand for Peace. He said, ““UKIP, to its credit, has expelled extremist and bigoted members in the past.” It is able to have done so only because it has had so many of them to expel.

Three years ago, I analysed UKIP’s policies and discovered remarkable overlaps with the BNP. UKIP are not only anti-European, anti-migrant and anti-Muslim. They also deny the reality of climate change, support an increase in military spending and want a flat rate of income tax (so milllionaires pay the same as cleaners and nurses). UKIP believe that the Tory cuts are not going far enough. Nigel Farage has described David Cameron, the man currently presiding over the destruction of the welfare state, as “a social democrat”.

And of course, UKIP is also strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. Winston McKenzie, UKIP’s candidate in the Croydon North by-election, made this one of the main points of his campaign, targeting religious voters with the untrue claim that the Tory, Labour and Lib Dem parties want to force churches and mosques to host same-sex weddings.

Mackenzie also described adoption by same-sex couples as “child abuse”. The party’s spokespeople disagreed with him, but they didn’t expel him. Instead, it was the head of UKIP’s youth wing who was forced out of his job for supporting same-sex marriage.

Is this the party that Christians are being urged to support tomorrow? Are Christian Concern simply naïve about the likely economic policies of most candidates opposed to same-sex marriage, or are they actively in favour of them?