Let Them Eat Cake

by Les May

A panel of five judges sitting as the Supreme Court yesterday gave a ruling which reinforces our right to free speech and ensures that we cannot be forced to express views that we disagree with.

The case revolved around a case where a Gareth Lee had placed an order for a cake decorated with the words ‘Support Gay Marriage’.  The owners of the bakery, Daniel and Amy McArthur declined the order because as Christians they were being expected to express a view that they disagreed with.

Lee argued that they were discriminating against him because he is a homosexual. Two lower courts accepted this argument but the Supreme Court did not.

The president of the Court Lady Hale said:

‘It is deeply humiliating to deny someone a service because of that person’s race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief’.

‘But that is not what happened in this case. As to Mr Lee’s claim based on sexual discrimination, the bakers did not refuse to fulfil his order because of his sexual orientation’.

The court accepted the argument of the McArthur’s lawyer that forcing them to bake the cake would be forcing them to go against their religious beliefs.

Commenting on this ruling the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said:

‘Freedom of expression – including the right not to express a view – and freedom of belief are rightfully protected in a democratic society and this case demonstrates the need for a more nuanced debate about how we balance competing rights’.

Lee was trying to use the Courts to force the McArthur’s to accept his view of the world. It was the action of a bully. His mistake was to argue that the couple were being ‘homophobic’ when they simply had a different view about the world.   A view to which he took exception.

But as I have argued in another publication Lee’s approach is far from uncommon.

https://peacenews.info/node/9175/no-right-not-be-offended

Increasingly we see people who express a view which the listener or reader does not like being labelled as antisemitic, homophobic, islamophobic, mysoginistic or some similar pejorative epithet.

The courts ruling means that provided we do not discriminate against someone because of what they ARE, we will not find ourselves in court for expressing our dissent from the views they hold. Mr Lee should be happy about this. He can criticise the views about homosexuality held by some Christians to his heart’s content safe in the knowledge that he will not find himself in court for being Christianophobic.

I should say that I have always been a bit puzzled how some Christians know what God thinks about homosexuals as to the best of my knowledge he has never written an autobiography. Perhaps they have just read the wrong sort of biographies..

Tory bad boy makes good on Tameside Council!

Enfant terrible - Liam Billington

NORTHERN Voices congratulates Liam Billington, the Conservative Party candidate who yesterday won the Stalybridge-South ward with 1233 votes, in the Tameside  2018 May local elections.  Katy Flanagan, the Labour candidate, came second with 834 votes.

As the former editor of the scurrilous blog 'Tameside Eye', young Billington, once disclosed  that Tameside Council had spent over £30,000 on a variety of futile events - 'the diversity breakfast', 'lifestyle clinics', 'urban walks', all organised by sixteen 'well-being champions'.

In November 2014, he criticised a charity (Tameside 4 Good), for making a donation of £1000 to Tameside and Oldham Gay Society which they hailed as a success story.  He described 'Tameside Pride' as "a bunch of puffs mincing across Ashton", and suggested that the money would have been better spent on food-banks or care for the elderly, the people who need it most.  Asked whether he regretted his choice of language, he declared, "I'm gay myself and I use the word all the time."

As the Tameside Eye blogger, Billington was arrested in 2008 on an allegation of harassment relating to three doctored images that appeared on his blog.  The complaints were made by Labour councillor's  John Taylor - who Billington dubbed 'councillor fuckwit' - and Sean Parker-Perry.  Aged 19, Billington was held in custody for seven hours at Ashton police station, where he was photographed, finger-printed, and a sample of his DNA was taken.  His two computers were removed from his home and seized as evidence. After being charged with one count of harassment and two counts of racially aggravated harassment, he was eventually released on police bail.  After considering the evidence against him, Manchester Crown Prosecution Service, decided not to prosecute.

As the Conservative Party candidate for Stalybridge South, Billington recently launched a petition to bring back a market in what is now the Stalybridge Civic Hall.  He believes that reviving the market will be a key component to the regeneration of Stalybridge.  He is, however, no defender of public libraries and will find himself, well at home, among the many semi-literate councillors who make up Tameside Council, who have also closed many libraries throughout Tameside.  The young whizz-kid, once said, "Who needs public libraries when you've got Amazon and a laptop."  Needless to say, not everyone has a laptop or can afford to buy books online. But this doesn't seem to worry Billington.  I suppose that's what makes him a Tory - I'm all right Jack, fuck you!

No doubt, this young controversial 'enfant terrible', will bring some much needed opposition in the one-party state that's called Tameside Council and will enliven the debates in the council chamber.  A future Tory leader in the making on Tameside Council? Watch your back John Bell!

******

The National Trust in Totalitarians Times

VOLUNTEERS at Felbrigg Hall, a Norfolk property owned by the National Trust, were being dragooned last week into wearing gay pride type badges.  It has been reported that dozens of unpaid guides have either refused to do so or quit the job.

The disgruntled volunteers are protesting against the requirement they wear the gay rainbow badges as part of the Felbrigg Hall commemorative season entitled 'Pride & Prejudice' to mark 50 years since homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967. 

Annabel Smith, head of volunteering and participation development at the Trust, has said volunteers sign up to the organisation's 'founding principles' of promoting equality of opportunity and inclusion.
However, she added:  'We do recognise that some volunteers may have conflicting, personal opinions,'.

Dame Helen Ghosh, the well-paid director general of the National Trust, has said the National Trust was marking the anniversary of the law change at 'a dozen or so of our properties of the people who lived there and whose personal lives were outside the social norms of their time'.

Dame Helen has been adept at climbing the greasy pole in the national bureaucratic hierarchies.  She did alternate stints at the Department of Pensions, the Cabinet Office, the Department for the Environment and HM Revenue and Customs under Tony Blair's New Labour regime.  She was made a Dame in 2008 when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, and became Permanent secretary of the Home Office in 2011.

She was appointed to the National Trust, which has an income of £500 million a year.  Last year, Melvyn Bragg accused the National Trust of 'mafia tactics' when it used it's deep pockets to buy Lake District farmland at inflated prices, and in doing so outbidding local sheep farmers who had hoped to work the land.

In the real world the National Trust operates a funny kind of equality of opportunity and inclusion.

Too much 'Gaiety' & Lord Mayor of Manchester?

THE art historian, journalist, and critic, Brian Sewell, died in 2015 aged 84.  Four years before his death in July 2011, he wrote in the ‘Daily Mail’:

'Is it true that the lives of heterosexual Mancunians are haplessly intertwined with transvestites, transsexuals, teenage lesbians and a horde of homosexuals across the range?  Is Manchester now the Sodom of the North? Where once we had no gaiety at all, we now perhaps, have rather too much.'

Sewell’s article, ‘What have they done to Corrie?' focused on how Coronation Street characters were becoming increasingly gay, something almost unthinkable, in the days of Ena Sharples and Minnie Caldwell. He wrote:

'The Lesbians, Sophie Webster and Sian Powers caught ‘in flagrante’ by Sophie’s mum Sally. Sean Tully, the barman, set to tie the knot with boyfriend Marcus Dent. Middle-aged cross-dresser, Marc Selby and Hayley Cropper, the first transsexual to appear on the screen in 1998.'

Although Sewell acknowledged that the creator of Coronation Street, Tony Warren, was a homosexual as well as scriptwriter Daman Rochefort, he seemed to think that in this age of political correctness and equal opportunity, minorities are given the opportunity to punch above their weight. After all, gay men are supposed to make up just 6% of the British population. More importantly, he pointed out:

'Scots favour Scots, Irishmen favour the Irish, Armenians favour Armenians, Jews favour Jews, homosexuals have always favoured other homosexuals. Its how minorities gain strength through influence.'

Manchester is known for being one of the most LGBT- friendly cities in the UK. It also has one of the highest numbers of people living with HIV outside of London. The City Council recently elected a 44-year-old gay man, to be the Lord Mayor of Manchester.

'Sworn into his historic role - with a quote from disco legends Abba', Councillor Carl Austin-Behan, from Crumpsall, a former ‘Mr Gay UK’, left school with only one GCSE in drama.  In 1997, he was drummed-out of the RAF when it was discovered that he was a homosexual. Previously employed with Great Manchester Fire Service, he now runs a cleaning company. Councillor Austin-Behan has said that he’s ‘passionate’ about promoting the achievements of Manchester’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, (LGBT) community and will,

'Use his year in office to highlight prejudice towards the Tran’s community and work to make HIV testing more readily available in Greater Manchester.'
The Lord Mayor also believes, that: 

'People with different identities and sexual orientations, shouldn’t just be respected in Manchester, but celebrated.'

Just why any of us should pay respect or celebrate someone, because they are of a particular identity or sexual orientation isn’t quite clear, but it sounds like the most conceited nonsense. Surely, respect is something that is earned and not owed to anyone?  

While Councillor Austin-Behan is to be applauded for his stance on fighting discrimination and for trying to make HIV testing more readily available, it’s clear, that the Lord Mayor’s horizons are extremely limited.  In fact, they don’t seem to stretch much further than Canal Street, the ‘Gay Village’, and what lies in the interests of homosexual’s. To be a successful politician, one needs to be far more circumspect and never forget who is paying you.

Apart from its claim to be a ‘gay-friendly’ city, Manchester also has another claim to fame. In 2011, it was dubbed the child poverty capital of Britain, with some 25,000 children growing-up in severe poverty.  In April 2016, more than 50,000 emergency food supplies were handed out to families across Great Manchester who were struggling to feed themselves in the sixth richest nation on earth.  For many, living in Greater Manchester, life is akin to living in a Northern Poorhouse rather than a Northern Powerhouse.

What the Lord Mayor of Manchester thinks about this appalling state of affairs, isn’t quite clear, because he’s too wrapped up with LGBT issues.  But if anybody deserves our respect and ought to be celebrated, it is in my view, the seven courageous homeless campaigners who Manchester City Labour controlled council tried to jail in September 2015, for up to two-years, for fighting homelessness in the city. I say, give them a medal!

Bisexual? Maybe I am! Maybe I aren't!

Is it the categorisation that dare not speak its name?

 

TALK about being catty! Tom Daley's claim that 'Of course I still fancy girls', has certaily brought on the heavy mob from the gay and lesbian community.

 

Leaning back against Union Jack pillows, Mr Daley on YouTube continued: 'But, I mean, right now I'm dating a guy, and couldn't be happier.'

 

First of all it was all sweetness and light from the gay community, after all Daley is a 19-year-old British Olympic diver announcing that he was dating a man. But then people started to wonder: Was it a cop-out or a ploy to hang on to his fans? Or was he just being greedy, as some joked?

 

According to the International Herald Tribune today: 'Whatever the answer, Mr. Daley's disclosure reignited a delicate conversation within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or L.G.B.T., community. Bisexuality, like chronic fatigue syndrome, is often assumed to be imaginary by those on the outside. The stereotypes abound: bisexuals are promiscuous, lying or in denial. They are gay men who can't yet admit that they are gay, or "lesbians intil graduation," sowing wild oats before they find husbands.'

 

Lisa Diamond, a professor at the University of Utah who studies sex orientation, said:

'The reactions that you're seeing are classic in terms of people not believing that bisexuality really exists, feeling that it's a transitional stage or a form of being in the closet.' It seems that only a few celebrities have embraced the term 'bi-sexual'.

 

Cynthia Nixon, who married a woman after having children with a man, told The Daily Beast in 2012: 'I don't pull out the "bisexual" word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals.'

 

Amen!

 

'Bi-sexual' is it the label or categorisation that 'dare not speak its name'?