Detailed Contents
Listing

On the Blog

You could be excused for believing there has never been a world without blogs. They’re everywhere. Unfortunately, many of them are drivel that no one other than the author and his or her pet gerbil would ever want to read. Others have used the medium of the blog to do powerful things. Yet others have used it as they might a magazine.

We recently jumped on the blog wagon ourselves at the Pink Triangle Trust. It’s called, simply, Pink Triangle and you can find it at http://ptt-blog.blogspot.com.

In the beginning

We began the blog in March 2008, and by early August had notched up going on for 280 posts, with labels (denoting subject areas) ranging – alphabetically, anyway – from Anglican Church to sport, with 28 more in between, among them Islam, freedom of expression, Christian fundamentalism, Sikhism, marriage, gay and bonkers. Add in employment, education, business, politics and police, and you start to get a picture of a blog that covers a lot of areas that press the buttons of humanism and/or sexuality.

Islam annoys a lot of people, so it gets a lot of mentions. It’s one of the most populated labels on the blog at the moment. Putting to one side individual Muslims, with whom we have no problem on the blog, we do find it annoying that Islam as a religion so often crops up whingeing and whining and often doing violence over things we in the West take for granted – and that usually amounts to matters concerning freedom of expression.

Christianity, likewise, has its fair share of criticism. Again, it’s the nuttier end of the belief system, its intolerance and its demands for special privileges, that causes us concern.

Random publishing

When it criticises, the blog pulls few punches. Why should it? In the summer, for instance, Random House suspended publication of a novel about the nine-year-old Aisha, whom Mohammed took as his wife. It looked at women in Islam, and probably brought to life things that many Muslims had never even thought about, because, along with fundamentalist Christians, they like their religion uninspiring and uninteresting, unchallenging and unchallenged, unchanging and unalterable, not to be interpreted except by fusty old clerics.

It was suspended because Random House feared reprisals, in case Muslims should get it into their heads that it would be an insult to their prophet. It could be another Satanic Verses, they said.

Sherry Jones, author

However, the book has had an on–off affair with publishers, and one brave publisher was going to put it out in the UK but had his home firebombed. He put it on hold. Now an American publisher has brought forward its intended publication. You can see all stories relating to that particular ongoing blog story here.

One story we’ve followed is that of Lillian Ladele, the Islington registrar who refused to do the job she was paid to do because of her religion. (That link will take you to all stories on her, incidentally, including those that may be published in the future.)

Lambeth

The biggest subject, you might think, has been the ten-yearly powwow and knees-up that the Anglican Communion holds: the Lambeth Conference. That took place at Canterbury this year (during July, in fact), and there was a lot of buzz about homosexuality, because, as you know, it still threatens to split the church right down the middle, ever since the Episcopals in the States voted on (yes they do that there) and then consecrated genial Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. But Gene is one of those, so it didn’t go down too well with the nutcases at the – well, the nutcase end of the spectrum.

See Neil Richardson’s article on Lambeth in this issue.

From the latest to the earliest, and back in March, when the blog began, we were talking about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which caused controversy because Catholic cardinals were against it. Our Prime Minister allowed MPs with a “conscience” on the issues a free vote when they were voting on individual parts of the Bill, with the understanding that they would be whipped when it came to vote on the Bill as a whole.

Opus Dei

But one minister – Ruth Kelly, she of the baritone voice and the sexy cilice, she of Opus Dei notoriety – sidestepped out of it.

Since we carried that post, she’s decided to hang up her ministerial duties, if not her cilice, and spend more time with her family.

One of the more unusual stories we’ve carried is that of Cardinal Newman’s bones. The Catholic Church – fond of carting relics around – wanted to separate him in the grave from the man widely believed to have been his lover. But the exhumation was not to be: when they got there, the coffin was bare. Or at least the grave was. The bodies of both men had decomposed completely and now they’re for ever united in the soil.

Mmm . . . Matthew

One young gay man who caught the world’s attention this summer was Matthew Mitcham, the Australian diver who won gold for this country in Beijing. A couple of our contributors ensured that this athletic hunk got some of the limelight on the blog!

Not all is serious stuff. We’ve had one or two of the more “fluffy” stories, too. Do you like numbers? We do! When the blog has reached a mini-milestone (the 101st post, for instance, the 180th post, the 200th, the 300th – even the 365th (the number of days in a year, give or take the quarter) – and the 400th (Circular blogic), we’ve found a novel way of marking it.

We run the blog alongside this magazine. We hope one will publicise the other. What we hope most of all is that you’ll take part. Magazines’ letters-to-the-editor columns are avidly read, and we hope to get a lively page or two of them going here once things pick up, so get them coming.

But the beauty of a blog is that you can write a “letter” (a comment, in the comments area) and it’s published instantly, allowing others to comment, too, whether agreeing or disagreeing with you, or just expanding on something you’ve said or was talked about in the main post.

Both magazine and blog will allow the humanist community – whether gay or not – in the UK and elsewhere to take part in lively discussion. So please read the blog, which is updated daily, often with two or more new posts, and send letters for publication here in G&LH to the editor.