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News Watch
Welcome to this issue’s
news review with
Andy Armitage, who takes a look at
what’s
been happening recently.
As always, if
there’s anything you think we should know
about or include, please
email us.
Telling it like it is
If this magazine and its
sister blog stand for anything, it’s freedom
of expression. But there are some – not all
of them among religionists – who would like
to see freedom of expression blocked, and
this has been the subject of a number of
news stories in the wider media recently.
Our own blog,
Pink Triangle, drew attention to the
latest attempt this month when the leader of
the British National Party (BNP) was pelted
with eggs rather than challenged through the
normal channels of democratic debate.
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Eggs mark the spot! |
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Under the headline
Free speech, yes, but on our terms,
we told how members of Unite Against
Fascism, having clearly had a collective
irony bypass, wanted freedom of speech for
themselves but not for the BNP.
The incident happened
only days after the BNP’s leader, Nick
Griffin, and another BNP member, Andrew
Bronz, had been elected Euro MPs. Griffin
was holding a news conference outside the
Palace of Westminster. He had to abandon it,
and those who might have wanted to challenge
what are often seen as loathsome views did
not get the chance to do so.
Like a virgin
A news item that showed
religionists in their true colours when it
comes to censorship concerned Madonna, who
plans a show in Poland on 15 August. But
Catholics want to prevent her from
performing, because that is the date of
something they consider “holy”.
The “holy” feast is the
Assumption of Mary. This is the reception of
the so-called Virgin Mary bodily into
heaven.
Madonna’s Stick & Sweet
tour features her arrival onstage on a giant
cross, and it’s already sparked controversy.
In Rome last year, she mischievously
dedicated the track “Like a Virgin” to the
Pope, angering some religious types.
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How to make a
Christian cross
– Madge |
Catholics have the option
of not going to the concert, of course, and
not watching it on TV – if it gets that far.
But historical figures
(actual or mythical), whether they feature
in a religious system or not, belong to us
all, to ridicule, praise, revere, examine,
analyse, discuss, dispute, challenge,
question, whatever.
Book burning
A bit further afield – in
Wisconsin, to be exact – there are religious
types who actually want the legal right to
burn a book.
I came across
this on a website called the Drudge
Retort (not to be confused with the
Drudge Report), which said that the
group were “seeking ‘the right to publicly
burn or destroy by another means’ the book
and asking for $120,000 in damages because
they were exposed to it in a library
display”.
The plaintiffs in this
case are the Christian Civil Liberties Union
and two other parties, who have been
battling to get Baby Be-Bop by
Francesca Lia Block banned from the West
Bend library.
In the story, Block
returns to the world of a previous novel
called Weetzie Bat, although it’s a
prequel of sorts. The novel, says the blurb
on the Amazon website, “opens while
Weetzie’s best friend Dirk is still a child,
lying on his mat at naptime”. It continues:
“Dirk had known it
since he could remember” – known, that
is, that he is gay. Tenderly raised by
Grandma Fifi, famous for her pastries
and her 1955 Pontiac convertible, Dirk
struggles with love and fear: “He wanted
to be strong and to love someone who was
strong; he wanted to meet any gaze, to
laugh under the brightest sunlight and
never hide.”
After his first
heartbreak, with his closest friend (who
cannot accept Dirk’s love nor his own
for Dirk), Dirk battles more fiercely
for identity; beaten up by a gang of
punks, he slumps into semiconsciousness
and is visited by his ancestors, each
telling a haunting, lyrical tale of
love, faith and self-acceptance.
What might seem
didactic from lesser writers becomes a
gleaming gift from Block. Her
extravagantly imaginative settings and
finely honed perspectives remind the
reader that there is magic everywhere.
Ages 12-up.
So it’s a book about
homophobia, and how a young person is beaten
up, left only half conscious, and dreams of
ancestors who lead him to self-acceptance.
That doesn’t sound like
subversive, treasonous or obscene literature
to most of us, but some religious types want
it not only banned, but burned, and want to
be compensated for having seen it in
a library.
Children, God doesn’t
like you
As bad as censorship is
the deliberate holding back of information
that might be beneficial, as could happen in
UK religious schools under new proposals.
The Pink Triangle Trust
(PTT) – which publishes G&LH – was
moved to anger over the fact that government
plans to compel all schools to teach sex
education will allow religious schools to
educate pupils in line with their religious
beliefs.
In the case of Catholic
schools, that would mean not giving young
people access to all the positive
information concerning same-sex
relationships, but emphasising the
“wrongness” of them – according to codes set
down thousands of years ago by nomadic
herders in a far-off land.
As reported in “Balls
Up!” in the May 2009 issue of G&LH,
the PTT wrote to Ed Balls, the Secretary for
Children, Schools and Families:
It seems that a
get-out clause for faith schools
will permit them to present sex
education “in line with the context,
values and ethos” of the schools and
clearly this will permit them to
tell pupils (in line with the
teachings in their holy books) that
lesbian and gay sexual relationships
are morally wrong.
Homophobic bullying plagues the
majority of our schools and shocking
levels of bullying are meted out to
school pupils and teachers who
either are gay or perceived to be
gay. That is the conclusion of a
wide-ranging study carried by the
gay equality organisation Stonewall.
The study found that nearly
two-thirds of lesbian and gay pupils
reported instances of homophobic
harassment and significantly this
figure jumps to 75% for those
attending faith schools.
When this survey was issued, you
yourself pledged to stamp out all
forms of bullying in schools.
It is surely unacceptable that a
large proportion of our schools
should be allowed to tell their
pupils that same-sex relationships
are wrong with the inevitable
consequence that anti-gay bullying
will increase.
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Ed Balls |
Predictably, back came an
unsatisfactory response from the department
(signed by Colin McCarthy, of its Public
Communications Unit), which read:
Everyone in a school
has responsibility for creating an
environment that is welcoming to
diversity and difference. Guidance is
provided on what should be taught in
schools in all subjects, including
citizenship, religious education, and
sex and relationship education (SRE).
Personal, Social, Health and Economic
education now addresses issues that
arise for young people from all kinds of
family backgrounds. Schools should teach
about traditional family values,
including describing religious teachings
about marriage, homosexuality or
homosexual sexual practice. If the
subject of LGBT people comes up for
discussion it should not be ignored. Of
course, any explanations must be given
in an appropriate way.
We want LGBT teachers
to be able to do their jobs in the
knowledge that they are not going to be
persecuted for being themselves and
recognise the value of LGBT History
Month in reminding us that everybody has
a hand in making history, whatever their
own personal history and background.
The Government
believes that all bullying is
unacceptable, and that bullying because
of a person’s actual or perceived
sexuality is as unacceptable as any
other form of bullying. No one should
suffer the pain and indignity which
bullying can cause.
To reflect our
commitment to stamp out homophobic
bullying from schools and to fight
prejudice, we have included in our
comprehensive anti-bullying package for
schools, Safe to Learn: Embedding
anti-bullying work in schools,
specific guidance on homophobic
bullying, which reinforces the duty on
all schools to prevent bullying on the
grounds of a person’s or their parents’
sexual orientation.
We were aware that
schools found coping with certain
aspects of prejudice-driven bullying
difficult, and that a particular need
existed for schools to have the
knowledge and expertise to tackle
bullying in all its forms including
racist and homophobic bullying. On-line
guidance on bullying around racism,
religion and culture was issued last
year. We continued to receive feedback
suggesting that some schools were unsure
about how far they could get into
discussions around sexual orientation
with their pupils. We believe, therefore
that there is a real need for this
guidance.
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The Department has
worked with Stonewall and Educational
Action Challenging Homophobia (EACH) to
develop this specialist guidance.
Anti-bullying experts, representatives
of lesbian, gay and bisexual groups, the
main professional associations, faith
groups, young people and practitioners
have all been closely consulted.
This guidance will
directly address the needs of governors,
heads and school staff. It will provide
dedicated advice on topics including:
challenging the use of the word “gay” as
a derogatory term; working with pupils
who bully and providing support to those
who are being bullied; how teachers
should respond if a pupil comes out as
lesbian or gay; and preventing
homophobic abuse within schools by
ensuring proper reporting systems are in
place and creating a climate where
lesbian, gay and bisexual adults and
students feel safe.
The guidance will
give staff the practical skills to feel
confident challenging both physical and
verbal abuse, as well as information on
working with parents, engaging the whole
school community and supporting the
victims of bullying.
“Schools”, he says,
“should teach about traditional family
values, including describing religious
teachings about marriage, homosexuality or
homosexual sexual practice” (my
emphasis).
So telling a class of
young people, which will include some who
are gay and coming to terms with their
sexuality, the “religious teachings” about
relationships is seen as a good thing?
And what does Mr McCarthy
mean by “any explanations must be given in
an appropriate way”?
Much of the letter deals
with bullying, ignoring the real possibility
that bullying might be reduced considerably
if a major perceived justification for
bullying – religion’s objection to gay
relationships – were removed from the
equation.
The PTT was writing back
to Balls’s department as this issue went
live.
Exit polls
Polls have shown that 80
per cent of the UK population support the
right to die.
Meanwhile, three
amendments on assisted suicide have so far
been tabled to the Coroners and Justice
Bill, which is, at the time of writing,
going through the House of Lords.
The question of allowing
terminally ill people a dignified choice of
when and how to end their lives has been
exercising religious types recently.
Some of them see these
amendments – by Lord Falconer, Lord
Alderdice and Lord Joffe – as back-door ways
of legalising assisted suicide.
Joffe has – between 2003
and 2005 – already brought three Bills to
the House of Lords attempting to legalise
euthanasia and assisted suicide. The first
ran out of parliamentary time. The second
led to a Select Committee enquiry, a report
and debate, and the third (the so-called
Joffe Bill) was defeated at a second reading
by a margin of 148 to 100.
His latest amendment
would reduce from murder to manslaughter an
attempt by one person to assist the suicide
of another.
You can read the three
amendments
here .
Religionists’ main
concern seems to be that making assisted
suicide easier might also make it easier for
people to bump off unwanted relatives.
Yes, it would. However,
if they’re that intent on getting rid
of unwanted relatives they’ll find a way,
whatever the law. And it would be up to the
authors of eventual assisted-suicide
legislation to build in safeguards that make
such a thing virtually impossible.
I suspect religionists
are less concerned with human justice and
fairness, and more concerned with some
pretend edict from on high to cherish life
at all costs – even if that means leaving a
person suffering for the rest of a
miserable, painful life.
However, you need look no
further than
an article in the South Wales Echo,
to see that it’s caring people who
are brave enough to help.
In this article, the
sometimes outspoken Dan O’Neill reminds us
of the case of Daniel James. “This
23-year-old rugby player,” he writes, “at
the peak of physical perfection, was
paralysed in a training accident. For him,
life was no longer worth living.
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Daniel James |
After failed suicide
attempts, he told his parents he wished to
escape from “the prison” of his body. They
took him to the Dignitas clinic in
Switzerland where assisted suicide is legal,
where they could say their final farewells.
“Were they ‘immoral’ to
help their beloved son in that way?”
He also writes of an
American woman, Terri Schiavo, who vegetated
in a coma for 15 years with no hope of
recovery. “Her parents and husband finally
insisted on the removal of the feeding tube
that prevented her release.”
And he cites Hannah
Jones, a 13-year-old who refused an
operation that might have prolonged her
life. Instead, she told her parents she
would prefer to live as normally as possible
and face an inevitable early death.
Were the families in
these cases morally wrong to agree? he asks.
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Terri Schiavo |
Then he talks of how, for
16 years in Italy, “Beppino Englaro kept
vigil at the bedside of his 37-year-old
daughter Eleuna, another accident victim, as
she lay in an irreversible coma. At last he
was given permission to remove her feeding
tube. Was he morally wrong to do so?”
The Vatican thought so,
he writes. “Monsignor Rino Fisichella, head
of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said
that what had been authorised was
euthanasia.
“A coma is a form of life
and no one can take it upon themselves to
put an end to the life of a person,” said
Fisichella.
O’Neill says, “Meanwhile,
polls have shown that 80% of the population
support the right to die – and what
scriptural authority says we do not
have that right?”
And he ends
unequivocally: “While concluding that I
don’t want any Last Rites. Just my last
Right.”
Right on!
For a contrary view on
assisted suicide, see Neil Richardson’s
article, “Emergency
exit”, which we ran in the
February 2009 issue of G&LH.
You can trust us with
your kids, honest!
It’s hard to believe, I
know, but the Catholic Church in Ireland
still wants to maintain its grip on
schooling.
This is in spite of the
recent and damning Ryan Report into cases of
child abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and
teachers, stretching back decades.
Recently, religious
orders in the country were happy to let the
taxpayer fund most of the compensation
promised to victims. Our blog reported on
how The Times had said:
The leader of the
Catholic Church in Ireland has clashed
with the religious orders involved in
child abuse over the amount they are
willing to contribute towards
compensating victims. Eighteen Catholic
congregations defied calls from Cardinal
Seán Brady to be more generous in their
dealings with those who suffered abuse.
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Cardinal Seán
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The report identified
some 800 abusers, principally members of the
Christian Brothers. Only a handful had been
prosecuted and convicted.
We’ve since learned that,
after a three-day meeting, Catholic bishops
in Ireland insisted that children are now
adequately protected from the risk of abuse
in their schools and said it would be wrong
to remove religious orders from the managing
of schools.
It may be unfair on those
Catholic teachers, nuns and priests who are
innocent of all wrongdoing, but it would be
hardly surprising if parents in the Republic
never trusted their kids to a Catholic
institution again.
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