Showing posts with label homosexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homosexuality. Show all posts

Tuesday, 18 February 2020

Labour’s betrayal of women,

 children and homosexuals.

What do you do if you abhor Tory politics but there’s nobody else to vote for?


Feb 16 · 6 min read







Illustration by Ailin Rojas Bondarczuk

WHAT do you do if you are appalled by the imposition of austerity on the poorest and most vulnerable alongside tax breaks, perks and freebies for the rich, inherited wealth and big business? If you are sickened by the scapegoating of immigrants, the demonisation of foreigners, the denigration of the poor, the criminalisation of black people, the cronyism, the profit motive as god over all other considerations etc — but the only opposition party with any hope of ever beating the Tories at the polls has signed up to a misogynistic, homophobic cult?
That is the Hobson’s choice facing women, and those who support child safeguarding, women’s sex-based rights, and the sex-based rights of homosexual people.

It is also the choice facing anyone who believes in freedom of speech and freedom of expression as fundamental democratic rights.
Labour Campaign for Trans Rights last week issued a contentious series of pledges — contentious for a number of reasons:
1. They define “transphobia” as dissent with ‘gender identity ideology’.
2. They slander Womans Place UK — a grassroots group campaigning for female sex-based rights, and LGB Alliance — who campaign for homosexual/bisexual rights, as “transphobic hate groups”.
3. They call for the expulsion from the Labour Party of all dissenters.

Thursday, 3 October 2019

It’s Alright to Persecute Christians!

by Les May

I THOUGHT we had long ago stopped persecuting people for their beliefs in this country. I was wrong.  Saying, ‘I do not believe you can be born gay and I do not believe homosexuality is right’, is enough to get you sacked.   The actress Seyi Omooba was dropped from her role in The Color Purple for tweeting this and backing up her belief with a reference to a passage in the Bible.  As the passage also tells us that, the sexually immoral, the idolaters, the adulterers, the thieves, the the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers and the swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God either, and I’m not aware that any of these groups have complained, it leads me to think that the group who are whingeing are what my dad would have called ‘mard arses’ or in modern parlance ‘snowflakes’.

I should add that I am not a Christian and I think people who treat the Bible as a reliable document or that they know God’s thoughts about what people get up to in the privacy of their bedroom, are a bit gullible.  But that is no reason to persecute them for their beliefs.



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Sunday, 14 April 2019

This Sporting Life

by Les May

ACCORDING to the teachings of the Roman Catholic church my wife and I are adulterers.
According to an Australian rugby player called Israel Folau the doors of Hell await us, along with ‘Drunks, homosexuals, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators’.  As that covers most of the human race I assume the place is going to be a bit crowded when I get there.


Personally I don’t take this sort of stuff very seriously so as to avoid encouraging them.

Unfortunately some people do take it seriously including rugby player Billy Vunipola who ‘liked’ it on Instagram, the English Rugby Football Union who have ‘summoned’ Vunipola, his club Saracens, and Channel 4, which has decided not to employ him again as a contributor to its match coverage.


Now I don’t think that the decision by these organisations to pillory England’s number 8 is an attempt to pledge their undying support for we adulterers, atheists, drunks, fornicators, idolators, liars and thieves. It’s more likely to do with a Times headline of ‘England rugby star defends post telling gay people hell awaits’.


Which rather prompts a question about why homosexuals are thought more worthy of protection from comments like this than than the rest of us.  And please don’t tell me that homosexuals are a persecuted minority.  Forty odd years ago my wife lost her job because the life she had chosen did not meet with the approval of her church.


Will the English Rugby Football Union and Saracens behave like the Roman Catholic Church did all that time ago, and how Channel 4 have behaved just recently?  Quite likely, but what strange bedfellows they make.


As far as I am concerned those who feel offended by this kind of thing are what my Dad would have called ‘mard-arses’.   It’s a pity they’ve nowt better to do with their time.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mard

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Saturday, 13 October 2018

Say 'No' To Hate Crime

by Les May

ELLA Whelan, author of the book ‘What Women Want: Fun, Freedom and an End to Feminism’, has described the campaign by MP Stella Creasy to have misogyny classified as a hate crime as, ‘a top-down act of virtue-signalling by a handful of MPs and feminists, and an affront to freedom’.


It’s top down because as she points out women are not marching in the streets for the criminalisation of misogyny.  It’s an affront to freedom because it seeks to punish individuals for what they think, not what they do, i.e. thought crime.

Now whilst I share Ella Whelan’s view on this there is I think a more practical objection.   If you think you’ve witnessed a hate crime, who you gonna call? Certainly not ‘The Ghost Busters’!  It’s the police of course.

The problem is that the police may not understand what constitutes a hate crime and what constitutes free speech.

A week ago it was reported that in Bath city centre a Christian street preacher by the name of Dale McAlpine was threatened with arrest and forced to leave the area.  Police issued a dispersal notice to a group of preachers and ordered them to leave the city centre.   It seems that one of the officers involved claimed they were committing a ‘hate crime’.

The outcome? Avon and Somerset police have contacted all police staff in Bath ‘to ensure they understand the importance of freedom of expression’.


It isn’t the first time that McAlpine has been in trouble for expressing unpopular views.   In 2010 was arrested after he told a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) that as a Christian he believed homosexuality was a sin.   As the term ‘hate crime’ was not fashionable then, the PCSO contented himself with having McAlpine arrested for making ‘homophobic remarks’.

The outcome? The charges were dropped and police in Cumbria agreed to pay him £7,000 in compensation as well as his legal costs.  McAlpine responded ‘I hope the police will in future do their duty defending freedom of speech.’


I may not have any sympathy with McAlpine’s beliefs, but I’m glad that he’s there.  It’s people like him that remind us that freedom of expression applies to people you disagree with as well as those whose views coincide with yours.  The alternative is the echo chamber of social media where you need only listen to views that coincide with your own.

My motivation in writing this is primarily my concern that the eagerness of some people on hearing something they do not like to resort to words like, racist, anti-semitic, islamo-phobic, misogynistic, trans-phobic, homo-phobic, patriarchal or hate speech, prevents reasoned discussion and, if we self censor to avoid being so labelled, effectively denies us freedom of expression.   (It is not without interest that the PCSO who had McAlpine arrested is himself a homosexual.)  But in Stella Creasy’s case there is something else.

Creasy is credited with having championed payday loan fee caps and more recently has urged a crackdown on high cost credit cards. I admire this and say more power to her elbow. I just wish she would not waste her time trying to solve a non-existent problem. Perhaps she is not immune to vanity.


Thursday, 11 October 2018

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.


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..

Sunday, 6 August 2017

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.