A major study in California has decided that homosexual men are twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer as heterosexuals.
We are bombarded with medical studies these days and most are reported and then forgotten about. What the trendy left media, such as the BBC, are going to do with this information I really don’t know. My guess is that they will simply not report it, as being against everything they believe in.
But there is interest for the rest of us in this report. It used to be that the things that were going to kill you – the BBC implies it is your fault – were smoking and drinking. Now, it seems there is a bigger evil.
The advice of this blog is only to put yourself at a certain amount of risk. So if you like a drink and a cigarette, and a man comes up to you saying ‘Hello Sweetie’, tell him you simply can’t give up the beer and fags, sorry.
Showing posts with label Homosexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homosexuality. Show all posts
09 May, 2011
29 April, 2010
Homosexuality in Politics
‘Don’t go there’ is what most people would say, but I am going to.
Philip Lardner, the Conservative candidate for North Ayrshire and Arran, has been suspended, in the middle of the election campaign, for saying that homosexuality was ‘not normal behaviour’. In fact he wrote on his website ‘I will support the right of parents and teachers to refuse to have their children taught that homosexuality is normal behaviour or an equal lifestyle choice to traditional marriage.’
Conservative Party policy is to give a tax break to ‘traditional marriage’, which will not include people who live together or homosexual couples so they must think it different, that is to say ‘not an equal lifestyle choice’, surely?
Here is Ian Dale, openly gay Conservative blogger: “He apparently thinks homosexuality isn't 'normal'. It is in fact quite normal. It's just not the 'norm'.”
Normal: Constituting, conforming to, not deviating or differing from, the common type or standard; regular, usual (OED)
Of course homosexuality isn’t normal. That doesn’t make it wrong, or undesirable or worthy of condemnation. It means it is ‘differing from the common type or standard’.
The Conservative Education policy encourages people to start their own schools. What would happen if I started a school which did not teach that homosexuality was normal behaviour – not taught the kiddies to discriminate, which would be illegal, but which simply did not teach that it was normal. In fact I was never taught that it was normal. I was never taught anything about it at all, which seems like a good idea for the modern school.
Of course it was an idiot thing to say in the middle of an election campaign and there is a case for suspending Mr Lardner on grounds of low IQ, but he seems to have been following Conservative policy, no more, no less.
So, what are we to make of all this?
Don’t ask me.
Philip Lardner, the Conservative candidate for North Ayrshire and Arran, has been suspended, in the middle of the election campaign, for saying that homosexuality was ‘not normal behaviour’. In fact he wrote on his website ‘I will support the right of parents and teachers to refuse to have their children taught that homosexuality is normal behaviour or an equal lifestyle choice to traditional marriage.’
Conservative Party policy is to give a tax break to ‘traditional marriage’, which will not include people who live together or homosexual couples so they must think it different, that is to say ‘not an equal lifestyle choice’, surely?
Here is Ian Dale, openly gay Conservative blogger: “He apparently thinks homosexuality isn't 'normal'. It is in fact quite normal. It's just not the 'norm'.”
Normal: Constituting, conforming to, not deviating or differing from, the common type or standard; regular, usual (OED)
Of course homosexuality isn’t normal. That doesn’t make it wrong, or undesirable or worthy of condemnation. It means it is ‘differing from the common type or standard’.
The Conservative Education policy encourages people to start their own schools. What would happen if I started a school which did not teach that homosexuality was normal behaviour – not taught the kiddies to discriminate, which would be illegal, but which simply did not teach that it was normal. In fact I was never taught that it was normal. I was never taught anything about it at all, which seems like a good idea for the modern school.
Of course it was an idiot thing to say in the middle of an election campaign and there is a case for suspending Mr Lardner on grounds of low IQ, but he seems to have been following Conservative policy, no more, no less.
So, what are we to make of all this?
Don’t ask me.
05 April, 2010
Gays under the bed
My parents told me that in Northern Ireland you used to see outside guesthouses ‘Catholics need not apply’ and I remembered this when I read about the case of the Bed and Breakfast owners who wouldn’t allow homosexual couples.
The law has traditionally been that a landlord can treat the place as his home and if he wants to ban you for whatever reason – big nose, mullet haircut – he can. But now there is a list of things over which he must be tolerant. The State tells him what he is allowed to have strong views about; it tells him what to think.
I often wondered how the B & B owners of Armagh knew their guests were Catholics; the smell of incense coming from under the door? Not wearing an orange sash over your pyjamas? And the thought occurred too that if two men asked to share a room purely on cost grounds (Nothing queer about us, I assure you!) the owners would presumably have no problem with that but ironically would be quite entitled to bar them.
No one wants to live in a society where guesthouses have signs outside saying ‘No Mullets’… sorry…. I meant ‘No Gays’, but when the law intervenes it makes an ass of itself. If you think that the owner is a pig-ignorant bigot, don’t stay there.
Stupidly, with an election coming up, Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, has felt the need to air his views on the gays-in-the-guesthouse issue, missing, as President Chirac once put it, an excellent opportunity to keep silent. The Guardian is not letting go (Shocked! Yes, shocked!) and the Conservatives are making a complete hash of rowing back. I suggest the tactic of Ken Clark who, when it was pointed out that a statement he made was completely at odds with a previous speech, replied ‘That was before I was exposed to the collective wisdom of my colleagues’.
The law has traditionally been that a landlord can treat the place as his home and if he wants to ban you for whatever reason – big nose, mullet haircut – he can. But now there is a list of things over which he must be tolerant. The State tells him what he is allowed to have strong views about; it tells him what to think.
I often wondered how the B & B owners of Armagh knew their guests were Catholics; the smell of incense coming from under the door? Not wearing an orange sash over your pyjamas? And the thought occurred too that if two men asked to share a room purely on cost grounds (Nothing queer about us, I assure you!) the owners would presumably have no problem with that but ironically would be quite entitled to bar them.
No one wants to live in a society where guesthouses have signs outside saying ‘No Mullets’… sorry…. I meant ‘No Gays’, but when the law intervenes it makes an ass of itself. If you think that the owner is a pig-ignorant bigot, don’t stay there.
Stupidly, with an election coming up, Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, has felt the need to air his views on the gays-in-the-guesthouse issue, missing, as President Chirac once put it, an excellent opportunity to keep silent. The Guardian is not letting go (Shocked! Yes, shocked!) and the Conservatives are making a complete hash of rowing back. I suggest the tactic of Ken Clark who, when it was pointed out that a statement he made was completely at odds with a previous speech, replied ‘That was before I was exposed to the collective wisdom of my colleagues’.
17 December, 2009
Homosexuality: on we go
If I had to name one expression from the last decade which fills me with loathing, it is 'Have your say'. It seems to express entitlement, rather than a contribution to a debate being assessed on merit, and thereby devalues it. Anyway, the BBC World Service seems to have such a problem with it, having produced a 'message board' entitled 'Have your say. Should homosexuals face execution?'. Pretty racy, I thought.
As you can imagine all the usual representatives from the Equality Industry wanted to have their say, although not actually on the forum. Everywhere else.
In fact the question was put because the Ugandan Parliament is debating just such a measure (although the measure does not propose a broad application of the death penalty, only when the victim is a minor, or the aggressor is a serial offender or has HIV. A bit of consensual bonking and you would be let off with life imprisonment).
Eric Joyce, a Labour MP, says it is 'completely unacceptable'. I presume he would prefer to ban debate over Uganda's proposed law. For myself I think it quite right that the World Service, pretty well the only part of the BBC not run by climate change cranks, lefties and politically correct minority advisers, should air a decent debate about what is going on under our noses. The problem, as Mr Joyce observed, was that a large number of posts in favour of the propositions were from people in England.
Nevertheless, the Western Consensus and in particular the Anglican Church, are going to have to take notice of the wide hostility in many parts of Africa to homosexuality. Africans will soon make up the majority of Anglicanism and now that as a faith it is run on democratic lines by the Synod, they are in for a few tricky surprises. I remember at the last Bishops' Conference a West African bishop rounded on a reporter who had asked some right-on question and shouted 'You don't understand, homosexuality is a sin against God'.
At one stage or another all this is going to have to be dealt with, so if you think we should talk openly, and think Mr Joyce is wrong to try to sweep the matter under the carpet, Have Your Say.
As you can imagine all the usual representatives from the Equality Industry wanted to have their say, although not actually on the forum. Everywhere else.
In fact the question was put because the Ugandan Parliament is debating just such a measure (although the measure does not propose a broad application of the death penalty, only when the victim is a minor, or the aggressor is a serial offender or has HIV. A bit of consensual bonking and you would be let off with life imprisonment).
Eric Joyce, a Labour MP, says it is 'completely unacceptable'. I presume he would prefer to ban debate over Uganda's proposed law. For myself I think it quite right that the World Service, pretty well the only part of the BBC not run by climate change cranks, lefties and politically correct minority advisers, should air a decent debate about what is going on under our noses. The problem, as Mr Joyce observed, was that a large number of posts in favour of the propositions were from people in England.
Nevertheless, the Western Consensus and in particular the Anglican Church, are going to have to take notice of the wide hostility in many parts of Africa to homosexuality. Africans will soon make up the majority of Anglicanism and now that as a faith it is run on democratic lines by the Synod, they are in for a few tricky surprises. I remember at the last Bishops' Conference a West African bishop rounded on a reporter who had asked some right-on question and shouted 'You don't understand, homosexuality is a sin against God'.
At one stage or another all this is going to have to be dealt with, so if you think we should talk openly, and think Mr Joyce is wrong to try to sweep the matter under the carpet, Have Your Say.
28 June, 2008
Gays and the church
I have never been able to get very excited about the issue of gays in the church, feeling that both major Christian churches spend too much time talking about sex, like pagans, and not enough dealing with the ills of society, to say nothing of saving our souls. I also felt that with scientists identifying genes so regularly now it would only be a matter of time when the gay gene was discovered and they would be able to say they were made by God just the same as the straight people and it would be unanswerable (to the extent, as I say, that people feel the need to answer it).
But the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, writing in spiked, says there is no genetic cause of homosexuality. Genes might affect the child’s predisposition towards homosexuality, as might hormones encountered in the womb, but that is not the same as causing it.
Some may remember the Clause 28 issue back in Mrs. Thatcher‘s time. This was a clause preventing local governments promoting homosexuality as a normal lifestyle. Gay rights campaigners (Tatchell too, if I recall) were up in arms saying it was a normal lifestyle, in that it was natural, just different from the majority. I rather agreed with Clause 28 inasmuch as it seemed a gross waste of taxpayers’ money for local governments to be promoting any kind of alternative lifestyle.
You may think that in saying that homosexuality is not genetically caused Tatchell is agreeing with the Clause 28ers, but no. He says whatever its cause, homosexuality is determined at a very young age – in the first few years of life. All external influences can do is stop gay people repressing their gayness.
Perhaps he might agree with my point that at the very least promoting homosexuality in classrooms is a waste of money when our children can’t read and write. But the debate goes on, even if it shouldn’t.
But the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, writing in spiked, says there is no genetic cause of homosexuality. Genes might affect the child’s predisposition towards homosexuality, as might hormones encountered in the womb, but that is not the same as causing it.
Some may remember the Clause 28 issue back in Mrs. Thatcher‘s time. This was a clause preventing local governments promoting homosexuality as a normal lifestyle. Gay rights campaigners (Tatchell too, if I recall) were up in arms saying it was a normal lifestyle, in that it was natural, just different from the majority. I rather agreed with Clause 28 inasmuch as it seemed a gross waste of taxpayers’ money for local governments to be promoting any kind of alternative lifestyle.
You may think that in saying that homosexuality is not genetically caused Tatchell is agreeing with the Clause 28ers, but no. He says whatever its cause, homosexuality is determined at a very young age – in the first few years of life. All external influences can do is stop gay people repressing their gayness.
Perhaps he might agree with my point that at the very least promoting homosexuality in classrooms is a waste of money when our children can’t read and write. But the debate goes on, even if it shouldn’t.
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