Religion seems to be a topic I simply cannot get away from at the moment, there being much that is written else on the subject that merits comment, either because it is very good or very bad - the ‘middle ground’ seems rather absent in this present debate, an observation of which you can make what you will.

Dave Hill’s observations on some of the commentary on the recent efforts of religious hardliners to prevent the introduction of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientations) Regulations in Northern Ireland falls generally into the good category for all that it includes the odd bit of flawed argument, such as his reference to “the Dawkins delusion that religion is the root of all evil?”, which rather confuses a bit of slick Channel 4 marketing of last year’s two part polemical documentary with Dawkins’ own views - he actually hates the title applied to the documentary and certainly does not argue that religion is the ‘root of all evil’ in his book, The God Delusion.

Minor quibbles aside, the general thesis put forward in his article is a sound one. Yes, in debating religion and religious belief, those of us who argue from a liberal secular/atheistic position should be mindful of the need for a measure of semantic precision in our arguments and avoid making use of sweeping generalisations of the kind that unnecessarily and unfairly tar all religious believers with the same brush. For all that the Arbramaic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) do incorporate a view of homosexuality that is bigoted, prejudical and thoroughly irrational, that view is not uniformly accepted by all followers of those religions and it is, therefore, both immoderate and misleading to make reference to ‘the religious’ as being opposed to these regulations rather than make the proper distinction between those religious fundamentalists (or ‘extremists’, ‘hardliners’ or even ‘literalists’, any of which terms will do) who do espouse such illiberal values and the believers who are more liberal and, dare I say it, enlightened in their interpretation of the requirements of their faith.

As such, Dave’s criticism of Polly Toynbee’s intemperate commentary on this subject stands as being entirely valid. Of his comments. Of his remarks on AC Grayling’s article, I am considerably less certain that his critique has merit.

Grayling, for the most part, confines his commentary to impersonal matters. To describe religion, in general terms, as a “stone-age superstition with a tendency at one of its extremes to end in suicide bombings” is to take a strong, polemical, position on the subject, but not necessarily one that is either invalid or derogatory in the personal sense that labelling ‘the religious’ as, uniformly, holding homophobic views and values carries. Only in the final paragraph does Grayling skirt close to the line that was crossed so obviously by Toynbee, in which he notes that “this effort to halt the fight against the evil of discrimination is a step too far by the religious, so ready to squeal like pigs when it is they who feel they are being discriminated against”, and even in this it is questionable as to whether he makes an invalid use of a generality, i.e. “the religious”, given the the present propensity of religious believers to ’squeal like pigs’ and claim discrimination when some of their many privileges are questioned and subjected to challenge, runs much wider than the narrow confines of the Sexual Orientation Regulations.

While Dave’s general position, cautioning us to be mindfully of the harm that can spring for the injudicious use of generalisations, is sound, the conclusion he advances in the final paragraph of his article is one about which I am much less certain:

Many religious people are liberal to a fault. And while in some cases religious disapproval of homosexuality is fuelled by hate, in others it is not. There is a saying, “hate the sin, not the sinner,” which summarises a principle liberal secularists are rightly eager to apply to many whose behaviour or attitudes they wish to change. Why not to religious conservatives too?

Why not to religious conservatives too? Mmm… perhaps the most apposite answer to that question requires the use a scriptural reference, specifically Matthew 7:15-20, which is part of the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. (text from KJV, naturally).

[15] Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

[16] Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

[17] Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

[18] A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

[19] Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

[20] Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Yes, that seems about right, and is rather nicely illustrated by this particularly nasty, smallminded piece of sophistry from the House of Lords debate on the Sexual Orientation Regulations:

Some things about this legislation give me concern. First, there is the question of those exemptions which are granted. In shorthand, one could say that to qualify for these exemptions one would need to establish that one had, or belonged to a group which had, a profound religious objection to some of these matters. What has happened to liberal values? Why is a thoughtful agnostic or atheist to be compelled to do that to which these regulations would give thoughtful deists a waiver? Is that not itself a prime example of discrimination?

Perhaps we should have some legislation to protect those who are not deists in the way protection is being given to those who are of a religious frame of mind. Is it not possible for such a person to hold the view that it is wrong for the state to compel him to refrain from arguing that sodomy is a social ill or to conscript him or his children into aiding and abetting it—if that is the right expression? Is it not possible for a person without religious beliefs to reasonably hold the view that it is wrong for the state to compel him to refrain from making arguments which he could make were he a member of a religious group?

Lord Tebbit (from whose speech that passage is taken) poses what might, to some, seem to be reasonable questions…

Why is a thoughtful agnostic or atheist to be compelled to do that to which these regulations would give thoughtful deists a waiver? , and

Is it not possible for a person without religious beliefs to reasonably hold the view that it is wrong for the state to compel him to refrain from making arguments [aginst homosexuality] which he could make were he a member of a religious group?

Of course, as a merely practical note, there is nothing in these regulation that would prevent anyone, religious or otherwise, from advancing arguments against homosexuality, provided they do so in a reasonable manner and within the law - the regulations do not impose any restrictions on legitimate free expression.

That being said, before one even gets to the question of whether it is right that a ‘thoughtful agnostic or atheist‘ might be compelled by the regulations to a course of action from which ‘thoughtful deists’ are example, one first has to ask both how and why a thoughtful agnostic, and most certainly a thoughtful atheist, might arrive at the broad conclusion that homosexuality (or rather sodomy, as Lord Tebbit would have it) is a ‘social ill‘.

What is the line of rational argument that might lead a non-believer to the conclusion that homosexuality is a ’social-ill’, something that sufficiently harmful to the well-being of society that it merits disapproval?

Perhaps the simplest of all arguments is what one might call the ‘yuck factor‘ - a revulsion or discomfort that influences a person’s attitude towards something - it is, after all, a common enough source of unthinking homophobia amongst heterosexuals of both genders. Some people just don’t like the ‘idea’ of homosexuality and/or the sexual practices associated with it, it makes them personally uncomfortable.

There are two basic problems with that argument.

First and foremost, its an argument grounded in personal psychology, it tells us what some individuals feel or think about homosexuality at a personal level and, by inference, something about their perception of their own sexuality, but says nothing whatsoever about the sociological impact of homsexuality; what effect, if any, it has on wider society.

Second, the yuck factor does not operate consistantly within individuals. A heterosexual male may experience a strong, visceral, aversion to male homosexuality but not towards lesbianism - in fact one might argue very convincingly that that is the prevailing view of homosexuality within the male heterosexual population given that many heterosexual males are anything but averse to lesbianism.

Okay, we can rule that one out, so what about a purely Darwinian argument - homsexuality removes valuable genetic material from the human gene pool because it does not afford the opportunity for reproduction.

No, again that’s not a convincing argument at all.

Homosexuality does not actually prevent reproduction, it merely predicates a choice in some individual not to reproduce, and a choice that does not, necessarily, result in genetic material failing to be passed on to future generations either ‘indirectly’ (by siblings who carry most of the same genetic material) or directly (homosexuals of both genders actually do have children).

Nor, indeed, is homosexuality unique in (possibly) interrupting the transfer of genetic material to future generations - many other things can have the same effect; infertility, celibacy, deliberate choice, or even just being too ugly or socially inadequate to find a sexual partner.

I think we can rationally exclude the Darwinian argument as well.

What about the idea that homosexuality somehow ‘disrupts’ the fabric of society; that it impacts negatively on valuable social insititutions like marriage and/or the family - that at least sounds sociological.

Btu can we really say, rationally, that is has any such effect?

Homosexuality may be disruptive within individual families, in circumstances where other family members find it difficult or even impossible to come to terms with sexual orientation of a particular family member. But again such effects are not uniform in application - some families fail to cope with such situation, but many more ‘cope’ just fine and may well regard the sexual orientation of family members to be of no consequence whatsoever to their position within the family.

And while the same can be said in relation to marriage - marriages do fail in some cases due to the discovery that one of the marriage partners is a homosexual or due to the inability of marriage partner to reconcile conflicting views towards, most often, a child who, it transpires, is a homosexual, but such event are relatively rare and, again, have no appreciable sociological impact on the institution itself.

Having ruled out all those lines of possible argument, one is left only to address the idea that homosexuality is, in some manner, against, contrary to or in defiance of ‘nature’ - that homosexuality is not a ‘natural’ human condition.

Such a view may be, and most often is, rooted in a somewhat simplistic notion of what is and is not ‘natural’ for human beings, one that if examined closely is found either to be an attempt to rationalise the yuck factor or to have been heavily, if unconsciously, influenced by the religious view of homosexuality - i.e. having been taught that homosexuality is wrong, and give the rationale for that idea that is against god’s ‘law’, the concept of god is rejected and replaced by an understanding of the world based on the concept of ‘nature’; however the idea that homosexuality is wrong is not re-evaluated in the process, merely given a replacement rationale that holds that it is (now) against nature’s ‘law’.

One can also, and more fruitfully, review this argument in a much more sophisticated form.

One starting point for such an analysis is to be found in the work of Richard Norman, Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Kent (and vice president of the British Humanist Association).

Norman’s view is that the many choices that humans need to make to shape their lives take place against an extensive background of ‘conditions’, many of which are not, or perceived not to be, open to choice; for example (and in no particular order) sex and procreation, death, nurturing, aging, maturing, work (and its necessity/inevitability), illness, the existence of pain, and a whole range of other conceptual ‘forces’ that are nominally outside of human control.

Norman suggests, with particular reference to technology, that anything that alters or revises the ‘facts’ of any of these conditions, such as contraception or cloning or IVF treatment, i.e. a sudden paradigm shift in a concept that serves as a fixed reference point in the individual’s understanding of themselves and the world around them, will cause many people to experience discomfort and a sense that their capacity to lead a ‘meaningful life’ is, somehow, under threat, a threat that is often expressed in terms of their concept of nature and what is (and isn’t) natural. For those who do experience this sense of sudden cultural dislocation, ‘nature’ is being interefered with, even though the background conditions by which the individual define their perception of nature (and natural) are, in reality, only cultural (and culturally specific) constructs, nature been perceived to synonymous with whatever is perceived by a particular culture as being the core background conditions to human life.
As one might expect, common reactions to sudden changes in any of these core background condition may often be fear and/or hostility, responses which Norman considers to be unjustifed. This view is not, however, shared by Stephen Holland, of the University of York, who in his book ‘Bioethics: A Philosophical Introduction’ contends that an appeal to nature is not only a means of expressing hostility towards a change in a culture’s core ‘understandings’ of the world but that such reactions are, in fact, rational - within limits. Holland does concede that not all potential threats to such background conditions will, necessarily be perceived to be sufficiently threatening to engender hostility, and of those that are some will generate such an effect only in the short-term before becoming accepted.

A good example of this is IVF treatment, which initially spawned reactions ranging from doubtful acceptance -’a treatment for infertility is a good thing in principle, but could the technology be used for other, unacceptable, things in future’ - to outright hostility - ‘it’s unnatural, so it shouldn’t be allowed’ - and yet, today, not only is its use widely accepted but many would argue that it is wrong to withhold such treatment from those who need it.

IVF treatment altered the background condition that links sex with procreation, by enabling conception to take place not only without the performance of a sexual act but actually outside the body of the putative mother, but over time the benefits accrued from the use of this techonology have acclimatised most of us to its use and we have, as a culture, come to accept that the background condition for procreation includes the use of this form of technology.

Holland’s theory affords both considerable utility and explanatory power. One can readily see, for example, how this theory may be used to account for ‘events’ that take place at the point of interface between cultures that possess somewhat different sets of background conditions. In the case, for example, of the niqab, which was a matter of consider debate over the latter part of last year, one can readily see how Holland’s theory would account for the observable hostility that this garment engenders is some parts of ‘western culture’ - its wearing constitutes a perceived threat to a number of commonly held background conditions, from that of not covering the face unless out of necessity to conditions relating to perceptions of the nature of gender equality. One can also see that this would also account for why such reactions provoke both a hostile response in those whose background conditions have formed under the influence of Islamic culture and sense of confusion as to why such a reaction has arisen. For all these two cultures share many common background conditions, which enable understanding between them, in this particular case the respective background conditions in each culture are marked at odd.

Moreover, and this validates Holland’s efforts as a theoretician, the observable reaction on both sides of this debate could be readily predicted from the theory itself, provided that one can identify the relevant background conditions in each culture, even if the two cultures has not come into contact.

Whether any of this supports Holland’s contention that such reactions are rational is, however, rather more open to question, a question that is not answered either by his theories capacity to make sound predictions or that such predictions as can be derived from the theory can be shown to be well-supported by observational evidence.

Having necessarily digressed to provide a theoretical platform for the rest of this discussion, one must return to the subject of homosexuality and the question of whether one might be capable of forming a rational view of it as a ’social ill’.

Clearly, Holland’s theory provides a basis upon which one can explain, in rational terms, why homosexuality provokes fear and hostility in some people, not least as his theory does an excellent job in accounting for the existence of the yuck factor.

Homosexuality may, quite reasonably, be considered to ‘threaten’ a number of perceived cultural background conditions in some segments of even western society, for example, a condition that connects sex and procreation or a condition that connects sex with attraction to the opposite gender (and there no doubt other conditions on might reasonably bring into play) and knowing this to be the case one can also safely predict that, as a result, homosexuality will, in some, spawn a fearful and/or hostile reaction. And one can also safely state that, thus far, the argument that leads us to this conclusion is entirely a rational own.

But does that, then mean, that hostility towards homosexuality (and by extension a belief that it is a ’social ill’) is itself rational?

Holland’s contention that any hostile reaction arising from a threat to a background conditions suggests that it is, but Russell Blackford (whose article I must acknowledge as having a considerable influence on this piece) thinks otherwise.

As Blackford, quite correctly notes, Holland’s suggestion that hostility arising from a perceived threat to accepted cultural background conditions is rational presupposes that the individual who experiences and expresses such feeling of hostility has arrived at them by way of a rational thought process. This, to say the least, seems very doubtful, not least, as Blackford also observes, as it highly unlikely that such an individual would articulate their feelings of hostility towards homosexuality in rational terms - they may express the view that homosexuality is ‘unnatural’ but would highly unlikely to be able to go on articulate precisely why it is unnatural without relying on either a reference to religious beliefs about homosexuality or a generalised expression of personal revulsion - the yuck factor again.

That alone seems to mitigate against the view that such hostility may be rational.

Such a view also presupposes that the background condition ‘threatened’ by homosexuality is, itself, a rational one, and this, I would contend, need not necessarily be the case. To extend Blackford’s argument, the very fact that an individual may respond with fear and/our hostility to perceived threat to a background condition but be unable to articulate the nature of the background condition itself suggest that these conditions may function, at least to some degree, unconciously. If this is indeed the case then the view espoused by Holland that such background conditions are culturally specific constructs based on natural facts need not necessarily be entirely true, a class of such conditions might equally derive from contructs founded widely held beliefs that may not, in examined closely, be supported by natural facts.

If this is the case then it seems possible that an individual may ‘possess’ a background condition that suggests simply that homosexuality is ‘wrong’ or even ‘unnatural’, if brought up in a culture in which such a belief is commonly held, even if the individual in question has never consciously been introduced to such a concept or been invited to internalise such a condition by way of rational consideration. As to how such a construct might be acquired, one possibility may be by way of memetic osmosis, particularly in childhood, i.e. a child might ‘absorb’ the construct that connects homosexuality with ‘wrong’ by being exposed to that construct in the attitudes of its parents, even if their parents never make that statement outright. Such a construct could, at least hypothetically, be transmitted merely if, for example, certain words are spoken by a parent or other trusted authority figure only in tones recognisable to the child as one that express displeasure or disapproval - ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ would perhaps the most likely ‘memetic carrier’ for children due to their brevity/simplicity. Such a mechanism, if it does exist, would allow for the possibility of a child being unconsciously ‘programmed’ with constructs that act indentically (or near indentically) to those background conditions that are derived from natural facts, even though they lack any corresponding factual basis.

That Holland’s assertion that people are behaving rationally when expressing hostility by way of claiming that something is ‘against nature’ seems doubtful does not rule out, entirely, the possibilty that a rational argument against homosexuality could be derived from his theory, and question that Blackford poses and, then, explores by way of this argument:

Premise 1: It is morally wrong to threaten any of the basic background conditions for people’s choices in our culture.

Premise 2: The connection between sexual acts and procreation is one of the background conditions.

Premise 3: To commit a homosexual act is to threaten the connection between sexual acts and procreation.

Conclusion 1: To commit a homosexual act is to threaten one of the background conditions. (This follows from Premise 2 and 3.)

Conclusion 2: To commit a homosexual act is morally wrong. (This follows from Premise 1 and Conclusion 1.)

Such an argument is, as Blackford points out, entirely valid in its logical construction and, as such, its conclusions are true so long as its premises are satisfied and the various expressions in the argument are used consistently throughout - and yet the argument remains unsatisfactory, largely because its premises are all rather controversial.

Can one, for example, reasonably assert that it is morally wrong to threaten and of the basic background conditions found in a particular culture. Clearly not, not unless one give oneself over entirely to moral and cultural relativism and take the view that there are no values that could be considered to be either absolute or that would hold true across cultures.

This first premise could function adequately only if one excludes from consideration all background conditions that cannot be grounded in matters of fact that are held sufficiently widely to be reasonably considered to be beyond rational dispute, but such a constraint would, in turn, make the premise itself a tautology, albeit one that operated within a very limited range of conditions, and therefore render the premise, itself, meaningless. e.g. It would be morally wrong to threaten the background condition that the world is not flat.

Premise 2, as Blackford points out, is only true in our own culture if applied very loosely. Yes such a connection (between sex and procreation) exists but the connection is a tenuous one that has been heavily modified over time by the widespread acceptance of the use of contraception and IVF treatment. Unless such a connection is reinforced by an external influence (such as religious belief), taking the premise outside the scope of pure rationality, it seems very unlikely that the mere fact that homosexual acts preclude procreation would be sufficient to actually ‘threaten’ this condition that connects sex and procreation, such that both premises cannot be true at the same time if the same terms are applied in the same way.

Blackford’s conclusion:

I feel that it is going to be very difficult to find any case where an argument with this structure is rationally compelling. Premise 1 needs to be qualified, even though this threatens to undermine the whole argument. Meanwhile, one of the other premises is always likely to be false, or else the premises cannot be stated truthfully and simultaneously, without equivocation. Those pesky premises just won’t sit still.

…seems perfectly sound. The construction of the argument and the reasons for it failure to provide a rationally compelling solution do look to rule out the possibility of using this, or a similarly structured argument, as a basis for a rational assertion that homsoexuality should be considered to be wrong and, therefore, a ’social-ill’. Only if the condition that is ‘threatened’ by homosexuality is reinforced by or predicated upon a belief about homosexuality that is, itself, negative and that supports the contention that homosexuality is wrong or unnatural can both the second and third premises be simultaneously true without equivocation.

Where does all this lead?

Well, first to the conclusion that Lord Tebbit’s hypothetical ‘thoughful atheist’ who believes that homosexuality is a social ill does not exist, there being no exclusively rational pathway that might lead such a thoughtful atheist to that particular conclusion, at least not in our own culture. A rational background condition that would lead to such a conclusion could exist only in extreme conditions, either in a population with a very low degree of genetic diversity or an extreme scarcity of males or females such that a conscious choice not to reproduce would threaten the viability of that population.

As for the ‘thoughtful agnostic’, there is a pathway they could follow to such a conclusion - the could take the view that in the absence of a definite position on the existence of god, the safest long term option would be to accept precepts of religious morality as a hedge against the possibility that, on dying, they discover there is a god.

But such a pathway is not a rational one as not only does it entail the acceptance of an irrational belief on a very thin premise but it also presupposes that there is an equal chance of either outcome (there is a god or there isn’t a god) being true when, in reality, the evidence we have suggests that the probability of god existing is so small as to be almost neglible (as for why that is the case, you’ll have to read Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’) - so I guess our ‘thoughful agnostic’ is not quite so thoughtful as Lord Tebbit suggests.

In short, Tebbit’s argument is one of pure sophistry and rhetorical nonsense, one that attempts to assume the clothing of rational discourse even though that clothing in several sizes too large.

And what of Dave’s proposition that we should ‘hate the sin, not the sinner’ and, particularly, the distinction he seeks to draw between those whose relgious disapproval of homosexuality is ‘fueled by hate’ and those who disapprove of homosexuality for other reasons.

On the proposition that we should ‘hate the sin’ I would consider that to be axiomatic. The belief that homosexuality is ‘morally wrong’ or a ’social ill’ is one that cannot reasonably be derived or arrived at by rational means.

But does that lets the ’sinner’ off the hook or permit a clear distinction to be made based on the motives of the sinner?

No. I don’t believe it does.

While one cannot rationally arrive at the position that homosexuality is either morally wrong or a social ill, one can quite easily arrive at just such a position in regards to homophobia, which is self-evidently harmful and socially divisive. Homophobia, unlike homosexuality, is both objectively and morally wrong.

That a particular religious believer’s disapproval of homosexuality may be predicated on factors other than hatred is of no consequence to the wrongness of their position, it merely suggests that one might reasonably be expected to temper one’s own reaction to their position such that it is proportionate to the manner in which they express that disapproval - i.e. one might reasonably describe someone who rationalises their disapproval of homosexuality by reference to the false belief that is contrary to god’s intention that we should ‘be fruitful and multiply’ as being deeply misguided, where one would say, instead, that the believer is a homophobic cunt if the rationale supplied is that homosexuality is ‘evil’.

One should not, however, ever fall into the trap of thinking that such errant beliefs can be accepted or tolerated either because they are expressed ‘politely’ - i.e. “I’m not homophobic, but…” or confined, by a conscious choice in the part of believer, to the private domain. The sole valid distinction one can reasonably make is between the ‘believer’ who accepts the religious view that homosexuality is wrong and the believer who rejects that view as being one inconsistant with other aspects of their personal beliefs or as one that is recognisably irrational, harmful and/or morally wrong - distinctions based on an apprension of the motives of the believer in disapproving of homosexuality are essentially meaningless as even an individual who is circumspect in their expressions of disapproval or who chooses not to act upon their disapproving view of homosexuality may still make a contribution to the harm that arises as a consequence of homophobia by helping to perpetuate and propogate an irrational, unjustifiable and wholly prejudicial false belief.

Atheist that I am, I’ll happily give the Bible this: in the matter of ’sinners’, the sentiment expressed in Matthew 7:20 is a damn good one.

By their fruits ye shall (indeed) know them.

Byline: Unity

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Much as I have a deep and abiding loathing for ‘reality’ television, and not just artificially induced freak shows like Big Brother but also those interminable earnest documentaries about people with disabilities that all convey the same message - it’s okay to gawp as much as you like as long you feel sorry for them - the one kind of reality show I will occasionally watch is the kind where they get a bunch of people to have a DNA test as part of going in search of the ‘roots’ and identify where in the world they actually come from.

Don’t get me wrong here, I still couldn’t give a shit about the ‘personal stories’ of the people fatured in the programme, that’s just window dressing. No, the bit I like is the pay-off, the bit where they sit down with the scientist to get the results of the test, because its at the point that you’re reminded that the universe has a wonderfully perverse cosmic sense of humour as you watch the biggest twat on the show get their come uppance:

So, give me the news. Where do I come from? I’m a descendent of the Masai, aren’t I? I’ve always felt a reall affinity for them so that must be my roots coming through.

Errr. No.

Well it must be West Africa then? Some noble tribe of great warriors who once ruled large tracts of Nigeria or the Gambia?

Errr. No.

Well, where am I from then? Come on, tell me…

Well. I don’t know how to put this but…

Yes…

Errrm…

Yes….

Well, according to the test, you’re from Chingford.

Whaaaaaaaattttt!

The very first of these kind of shows I saw ran pretty much down these lines. It was the young guy who was really into the whole ‘back to Africa’ thing and who took the test as means of vindicating his sense of ‘Blackness’ whose main ancestor turned out to be a White European. And even when they did another test as traced a different part of his ancestry to a tribe in West Africa, giving him the opportunity he wanted to indulge his romantic notions of heritage, he promptly went out there, chose himself an African name, which he took from a historical tribal leader who sounded like he was ‘the business’ - the whole ‘great and noble warrior’ thing - only them to discover afterwards that this historical figure was also one of more notorious slavers in the tribes history and they there, was therefore, even chance that he might the one yo have sold his real ancestor in slavery.

It’s the cosmic humour of moments like that that I really like, in fact a recent programme on the same basic theme, that I unfortunately didn’t see, managed to top that first programme by revealing that Garry Bushell, of all people, has a genetic ancestry traceable to sub-Saharan Africa. Garry Bushell has black ancestors, just how poetic a piece of cosmic justice is that.

The serious point here is that more often than not, when people start harping on about ancestry and their ‘roots’, in particular, what they’re talking about isnot reality but some sort of romantic fantasy about their origins that, more often than not, has little real basis in historical fact - hence we have Oprah Winfrey announcing that she believes herself to be a Zulu, even in the face of Zulu historians pointing out that:

If there were Zulu people taken as slaves they would have most likely been taken eastwards by Arab traders or to South American colonies.

Those who ended up in North America, say in Mississippi where Miss Winfrey comes from, were mostly of West African origin.

The whole ‘Back to Africa’ thing is, for the most part, no more than a modern myth, a romantic fantasy whose real roots lie not in Africa but firmly in Europe. In anthropological terms there is nothing particularly special or remarkable about the nature of African tribal society prior to European intervention on the continent, any more than there was about the Incas, Aztecs, Native Americans, the various tribes of the Amazon, the Celts or even Cro-Magnon man. The dream of going back to Africa to find one’s own noble heritage is a European myth, one born out the European Enlightenment and Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’ and then pumped up out of all sense of by 18th/19th Century Romanticism and the Romantic nationalism of the all-too German Johannes Herder and Johannes Ficter.

The harsh truth in all this is that idea that one has ‘noble’ roots is, for the most part, about as real as the belief in past-life regression under hypnosis, particularly when the latter leaves someone firmly convinced that they used to be Cleopatra or, even better, Guinevere (a character for whose existence we have no historical evidence at all).

The relevance of this to current events is, of course, the news that Tony Blair will, today, express his ‘deep sorrow’ for Britain’s role in the slave trade; Blair being particuarly good at apologising for historical events for he cannot be held responsible - he’s already apologised for both the Irish Potato famine and the expulsion of Jews from England by Edward I - but not for his own contemporary screw-ups.

Blair is, apparently set to say;

“It is hard to believe that what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time.

“Personally, I believe the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was - how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition, but also to express our deep sorrow it ever happened, that it ever could have happened and to rejoice at the different and better times we live in today.”

…But stop short of offering a full apology in case that gives rise to a claim for reparations, which rather emphasises the complete absurdity of this whole situation.

Reparations for what, exactly? For one’s ancestor having been transported as a slave some 200-300 years ago? The idea is completely absurd. If we’re going to pay reparations to the descendents of slaves, assuming those decendents can offer satisfactory evidence of their ancestry, then why stop there - why not pay reparations to the descendents of all those British people who driven from the land by the various enclosure Acts leading up to the Inclosure Consolidation Act of 1801. Maybe we should compensate the Roman Catholic Church for its losses arising from the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII or sue the present Italian government for negligence of the Roman Empire in leaving Britain undefended in the 4th Century AD and causing the Dark Ages.

Watching this debate unfold, in anticipation of next’s year 200th anniversary of the ‘abolition’ of slavery in the UK one cannot help but marvel at the pure sophistry of the debate.

For one thing, historical accuracy seems rather thin on the ground in this debate.

Next year is not the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery but of the outlawing of the trade in slaves. No one was emancipated by law in 1807, instead the 1807 Abolution of the Slave Trade Act simply imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found abord ship, in all a very New Labour way of going about things, although its not clear whether Wilberforce, who led the campaign against the slave trade in parliament, ever got around to talking about summary justice, on the stop fines or ABSOs for slave traders. We didn’t actually get around to putting an outright end to slavery until the Abolition of Slavery Act in 1833, so for around 25 years, the legal status of slaves was akin to that of endangered animal species today - you can’t transport them from the ‘wild’ but it was okay to keep them as long as their were bred in captivity.

And contrary to popular myth, Britain was NOT the first European nation to abolish slavery; that honour goes to France and to the Jacobin National Convention, which abolished slavery on Feb 4 1794. If you really want to see how slavery was first abolished by a European nation, then one needs to read up on the history of the Haitian revolution and, in particular, the history of Toussaint L’Ouverture, one of least know and yet most remarkable figures to emerge from the French Revolution; a slve who emancipated himself by first teaching himself to read and then teaching himself the art of war (and generalship) from the works of Julius Caesar before leading a revolution that eventually fought off Napoelon’s efforts to reintroduce slavery to Haiti and create the first Black republic. By way of contrast, the story of the abolition of slavery in Britain seems, well, all rather tame and uninteresting.

Then there’s the overweening hypocrisy of those demanding a full and formal apology for the slave trade. To illustrate the point, the subject on an apology for slavery was featured on this morning’s BBC Breakfast news in its usual fashion - i.e. a pair of talking heads on the sofa. As I was getting my daugther ready for school at the time, I wasn’t paying too much attention to the conversation until the subject of the African end of the slave trade, which is still alive today in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, was brought up, at which point the Black ‘talking head’ responded in stentorian tones to the effect that you can’t condemn Africans for the actions of the few ‘collaborators’, so slavery was all the responsibility of the European who instigated it in the first place, before wittering on about genocide.

All of which is complete and utter rubbish. Africans were trading in slaves both internally and with Arab slavers long before latter day Europeans got involved in matters. Slavery did not begin in Africa will the arrival of Europeans into the picture, and the involvement of African tribes in slavery was anything but confined to a few supposed ‘collaborators’.

Terrible as the conditions aboard European slave ships were, a 20% death rate in transit was about average - and, of course, conditions hardly improved if one survived the journey - the slave trade was not genocide, which, to remind everyone, is defined as, ‘the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group’.

And, equally, its absurd to suggest that Britons (or Europeans) have some collective responsbility for the slave trade, when the vast majority the British population of the time were treated only marginally better than slaves by their own ruling class - unless those who buy into this warped interpretation of history somehow think that my one ancestors, or at least that branch of my family that earned a crust first from digging canals and then working on them, we all given personal african slaves to mind their shovels while they hacked away at the ground with a pickaxe.
Both the exculpatory nonsense about African involvement in slavery being confined to a minority of collaborator and the characterisation of the slave trade as genocide are modern myths with no real basis in fact or historical reality; the former, in particular, being the product (again) of Rousseau’s idealised ‘noble savage’ coupled with the myth of the existence of a pan-African ‘racial conciousness’ that was popularised by the ‘Back to Africa’ movement, particularly in the US but whose history stretches back only as far as the early part of the 20th Century and the influence of Marcus Garvey.

Unsurprising, a quick trawl through the newspaper opinion columns finds Yasmin Alibhai-Brown picking up on this issue, and reminding me of point I really need to pick up with Sunny Hundal and the New Generation Network, this being the urgent need to remove from the public discourse around race and identity the half-baked sub-Marxian view of racial ‘politics’.

Alibhai-Brown’s article drags out all the usual tropes of this strand of thinking for a good airing, starting, as usual, with an attack on the mercantile class that profited most directly from the slave trade.

Last week I was in Bristol to deliver a lecture marking 200 years since the birth of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. On the way to the venue my host and driver said there had been a blazing controversy in the city over the naming of a new shopping mall.

The burghers wanted to honour the old merchant class who had brought prosperity to the city. Anti-racist inhabitants objected because many of the most successful traders were slave trade profiteers who deserve posthumous dishonour not fresh accolades. The Royal African Company, a collective of avaricious venture capitalists had bases in this city, as well as Liverpool, Glasgow, Hull and London. Go to Bristol’s Venturers House and see in stone the pride and self assurance of slave traders who called themselves Christians.

Alibhai-Brown error, here, is one that is so common place as to have become the epitomy of banality in discussions of history - she judges the actions of the mercantile class of the 18th Century by reference to modern beliefs and modern ethical standards of behaviour, as if to suggest, somehow, that in profiting from slavery they were perfectly aware that what they were doing was wrong and unChristian to boot.

This is far from being the case. The prevailing Christian worldview of the time was one in which the world operated within a highly stratified social hierarchy ordained by God. A place for everything and everything in its place - and the place of Africans, and other indigenous people, was at the very bottom of the pile and ripe for exploitation. There is no sense in which the mercantile classes of the time were acting contrary to their Christian beliefs, because the manner in which Christianity was interpreted at the time entirely supported their actions. It’s not that an 18th Century slave trader would disagree with the moral worldview expressed by Alibhai-Brown, they simply wouldn’t recognise it as its based on an understanding of the world and the nature of society that did not exist at the time and which arose only in the wake of the Enlightenment, the philsophical developments of which made it possible to challenge, and eventually, overturn the ‘old order’. And even that took time as some of the more lauded figures of the Enlightenment period were slave owners; Thomas Jefferson being just one example. I wonder, would Alibhai-Brown consider him worthy of ‘posthumous dishonour’.

It makes no more sense, rationally, to condemn from hindsight those who profited from the slave trade in the pre-Enlightenment era any more than it does to condemn the civilisation of Classical Greece for its acceptance of pederasty as a social/cultural norm. To compare either to a modern sense of morality is to compare apples and oranges.

Before launching an assault on the moral character of the mercantile classes of the 18th Century, Alibhai-Brown would do well to reacquaint (or perhaps simply acquaint) herself with Isaiah Berlin’s work on the history of ideas and, in particular, his work on (and biography/analysis of) Giambattista Vico.

To compound matters further, it seems that Alibhai-Brown hasn’t been paying much attention to Blair’s unabashed propensity for faux public contrition:

Just recently I wrote that an abiding tradition in this country is that it never apologises for its policies, past or present, however devious and destructive. Well this morning has broken like the first dawn. The self-righteous leader who never says sorry has proffered fulsome contrition, even though it will leave many natives gnashing their teeth.

Which turns out to be a rather embarrassing omission as in its main coverage of Blair’s upcoming statement it provides a handy list of past apologies, even if it does miss the apology for Edward I, but then that was at a private event to mark the 350th anniversary of the lifting of the expulsion, by Cromwell, so I suppose it doesn’t quite count.

British apologies

* POTATO FAMINE

In 1997 Tony Blair said sorry for Britain not doing more to relieve suffering from Ireland’s 19th-century potato famine.

* DESERTERS

This year some 300 First World War soldiers shot for refusing to fight (many of whom were shell-shocked) were pardoned.

* MAORIS

In 1995, the Queen officially apologised to the largest Maori tribe in New Zealand for the devastation wrought on their land in the 1860s.

* AMRITSAR MASSACRE

In 1997 the Queen visited Amritsar in the Punjab, scene of a massacre of up to 1.200 people in 1919. She said it was “distressing”, and said: “History cannot be rewritten, however much we might sometimes wish otherwise.”

Moving on with her arguments, she tackles the thorny question of reparations head on (and badly):

For some protesters, this expression of sorrow does not add up to a proper apology. There is always a wedge of the ne’er satisfied in our colourful democracy. For other rejectionists, Blair’s expressions are meaningless because they come not with a blank cheque for reparations to the descendants.

This demand is not preposterous and I have thought long and hard about back payments for this crime against the stolen folk of Africa. In the end I concluded it would satisfy nobody and would lead to inter-state quarrels and corruption and worse. We could do something imaginative and, perhaps, offer university grants for a thousand deserving Afro-Caribbean students every year for a decade. That would do some good.

So her prescription for a salve for our guilty consciences is a thousand university scholarship for African-Caribbean students (tsk ‘Afro-Caribbean’, Yasmin? That’s so un-PC). So that’s £3 million straight out of the gate in tutition fees, for starters, before we get on to the question of whether our contrition demands that pay a maintenance grant as well.

And who, exactly, is to pay for for this prescription? Do we, as taxpayers, pick up the tab, or is this something that only those descendents of the profiteering mercantile classes should be charged with paying for? And, while we’re on the subject, what’s you’re suggested repayment period for this cultural ‘debt’? 10 years? 20? 50? In perpetuity, perhaps? How long will it take to wash away the ’stain’ on Britain’s character?

Yasmin doesn’t say, but then I doubt she’s really given this as much thought as she claims, at least in terms of the pacticalities of such a scheme.

You might think that, having already pumbed the depths of absurdity, there is little prospect of Yasmin digging herself any deeper into a hole - and of course you’d be wrong.

Most profits of the Atlantic trade went to British and US operators and investors. Their role and greed made them the worst villains of the practice, no question.

Well, actually, there’s an interesting question in its own right. Britain certain got rich off the back of slavery, for time, and those profits certainly assisted in the ‘construction’ of the British Empire, which, at its height, ruled over something like a quarter of the globe. But…

One of the historical facts about Empire that rarely, if ever, gets a mention these days, when we’re all supposed to be ashamed our Imperial past, is that the profits of Empire flowed in more than one direction. At its peak, in the mid-late Victorian period, around a third of Britain’s capital was invested overseas, most of it in the colonies of the British Empire. How much of that capital investment filtered down to the indiginous populations in a beneficial form of the Empire is anyone’s guess, but what it does show is that in economic terms, the impact of the slave trade was not quite the one-way street that its often presented as being.

But then, the culpability of British merchants is only half the story:

However, some money was made by African trappers and sellers of their compatriots and the Atlantic slave trade could not have happened without the collusion of these middlemen. It is appalling that the west African countries where slaves were stored and packed into ships have made little attempt to open up this history to genuine and honest scrutiny. These were their sons and daughters.

Again we enter the realms of passing judgment in hindsight based on cultural values and social mores that did not exist at the time, such that the history of the slave trade is largely removed from its proper historical context. But that’s not quite all that she has in mind here:

If you can still find it, read the book The Atlantic Sound by the precise and poetic British black writer Caryl Phillips. He went to Liverpool, Elmina in Ghana (also a thriving slave port) and Charleston in the US where one-third of African men, women and children were taken to be sold into bondage. All three places were in denial about the scale and savagery of the business.

In Ghana, Phillips met an African-American émigré who told him: “To go deeper into the psychological and historical import of the slave trade is not what most Africans want to do.” An academic Dr Ben Abdullah seriously opined thus: “You must not be too romantic about slavery. It was a terrible thing but many of the Africans who left were not good people.”

There are two very different and interesting views in that second paragraph, both of which Alibhai-Brown characterises as being ‘in denial’.

The views of the unnamed African-American émigré perhaps deserve such a characterisation although she rather misses the significance of the suggestion that going deeper into the psychological and historical import of the slave trade would be undesirable. This has little real bearing on how African’s perceive their historical role in this trade; the majority, one doubts, give it too much thought being rather more concerned with getting on with their lives. It does, however, nicely emphasise the hypocrisy of those, in Britain, who are most vocal in demanding an apology for the slave trade and, particularly, those who buy into and promote the exculpatory line that seeks to minimise the public perception of African involvement in this trade to that of a few ‘collaborators’.

The central message here is one of ‘don’t look too closely - you might discover that things are not all that they appear and that Africans are not quite the universal victims we’d like you to think they are’.

By contrast, Dr Ben Abdullah, appears to offer a more rational view of the slave trade in noting both that there is an element of romanticism surrounding the slave trade, as far as African involvement goes and implying that not all those who were transported to the Caribbean and North America were necessarily ‘good people’. This suggests that, at least in part, the slave trade may have been used in West Africa as a means of ridding themselves of their ‘criminal element’ much as Europeans once transported their own criminals to the colonies as a means of punishment. While it would be undoubtedly the case that the ‘judicial’ process by which such decisions we taken would fall some considerable way short of modern standards of justice this does suggest that, at least in part, the African view of the apparent ‘utility’ of the slave trade was not so very different from our own at that time and that there may have been rather more mutuality in the arrangements between African tribal societies and European slave traders than is usually admitted, at least publicly.

Frustratingly, Alibhai-Brown neglects to provide sufficient information about Dr Ben Abdullah to enable his views to put into context against his academic background - how much store one might place in his opinions will naturally differ according to whether his academic credentials mark him out as having some expertise in the history of the slave trade, or not, but as far as one can reliably tell, it seems likely that the Dr Ben Abdullah, cited here, may well be Dr. Mohammed Ben Abdullah, a Ghanian and the country’s former secretary of Culture and Tourism and head of its National Cultural Council.

Alibhai-Brown’s contention that African’s are in ‘denial’ about their own role and involvement in the slave trade throws a nicely-weighted paradox into her article. To explore fully and honestly the historical realities of the slave trade in Africa is to being to light an uncomfortable truth that is entirely of keeping with the romantic myths harboured by the ‘Back to Africa’ movement, the idea that no one society, African, European (or Arab) is entirely innocent here. Where this takes us is towards what one might consider Africa’s ‘dirty little secret’, a historical reality in which European slavers did not so much instigate the trade in African slaves as provide a pre-existing, indiginous, slave trade with a new, and profitable outlet for its services.

African involvement in supplying slaves to European traders was rather more organised than the ‘collaboration’ myth suggests. Alongside an informal trade in slaves in which bounties were paid to ‘freelance’ raiding parties, the European traders of the time also entered into formal trade agreements with the coastal African Kingdoms for the supply of slaves, this being far from the picture that some are keen to promote at this current time. But then a full and open acknowledgement of the existence of an indiginous African slave trade, which was endemic across most of the continent long before Europe took an interest, and its role in servicing the ‘European market’, beyond the deliberately minimised view of this trade as comprising only a few ‘collaborators’ is not exactly the view of the slave trade that those demanding currently demanding an apology (and whom Alibhai-Brown professes to support) actually want the public to see.

There is rather more going on here, by way of denial, than simply Britain’s own perception of its role in the slave trade, indeed it seems entirely possible that those now demanding an apology for slavery are as much, if not, more in denial of the historical truth than those who built their personal (and corporate) fortunes on the back of the trade.

The idea that Europeans bear exclusive culpability for the slave trade, like everything else in the debate, is a modern concept, one derived from the same strand of sub-Marxian analysis of ‘racial politics’ that also holds that racism is function of the prevailing social hierarchy and the relative position of a specific ethnic group in the global power structure derived from that hierarchy, i.e. it springs from the same well that holds that ethnic minorities cannot be racist, only prejudiced, because they do not belong to the dominant ethnic group is society.

This is complete and utter rubbish; the result of a lazy transposition of race/ethnicity into Marxist notions of class-consciousness, the proof of which is manner in which adherents to these notions promote a view of Africa (and Africans) as a single, homogeneous cultural unit rather than a continent whose people are rich is variety and diversity like almost nowhere else on earth.

The last point of note in Alibhai-Brown’s article is one that needs to be met head on, that of the alleged ‘generational impact’ of slavery:

In America, African-Americans are still the most poor and uneducated, caught in crime and drugs and victims of overt white racism. Bill Clinton was a rare president who understood the generational disadvantages left by slavery. In his time, America started to recognise the history. In England - and yes, I do mean England - campaigners, black and white, are slowly breaking through the walls of stubborn rebuttals and denials.

This seems to be a common theme amongst those seeking not only an apology but reparations:

Ester Stanford, the secretary of the Rendezvous of Victory Campaign, said: “This statement of regret does not go far enough.

“What is now required is a dialogue about how we repair the legacies of enslavement, and we’re talking about educational repairs, we’re talking about economic repairs, family repairs, cultural repairs, repairs of every kind that we need to recreate and sustain ourselves - it will cost.”

Rendezvous of Victory, it transpires, is a Marxist organisation, of sorts, which styles itself as being ‘inspired by the vision and words of Aimé Césaire‘, a french left-wing intellectual whom, much as I loathe the term, could best be described as ‘fellow traveller’ - indeed their website exhibits all the classic signs of left-wing pseud-ism, and then some:

…our Heritage Learning movement that seeks to continue and advance globally, the historical work of Communities of Anti-Slavery Abolitionist Resistance….

…We hope you enjoy the journey through our pathway charted in the footsteps of the legendary Ananse. For, ours is a portal of journeying not only cybernetically but also spiritually into the Anansekrom web of Anti-Slavery Abolitionist Heritage Learning. As well known in traditional Afrikan folklore that became one of the weapons of Anti-Slavery Abolitionist Resistance, Ananse the Spider, links through its own natural worldwide web of global communications, various generations not only of Afrikan people of the continent and diaspora but also all of humanity in the universal quest for the Truth that will set all free in Mind, Body and Soul.

Loosely translated, what all that actually means is, ‘we’re a bunch of pretentious twats’.

There is a very basic problem with this general concept of ‘generational disadvantages’ arising out of slavery and, in particular, the idea of ‘repairing the legacies’ of enslavement - it is impossible to say definitively what these disadvantages and legacies are.

We’re dealing, here, with an argument that is entirely counterfactual in the sense that its impossible to say quite what course Africa, and its many different cultural/ethnic groups might have taken in the absence of European intervention, whether this is in the form of slavery or, a little later on, by way of colonial rule.

It is impossible to assess the real legacy of slavery or even say that such a legacy exists given that there is no benchmark against which assess its impact and no means by which we can isolate its effects, if any, from a myriad of other social, cultural and hsitorical factors that have gone into creating the position in which African-Caribbean communities find themselves today.

The Rendezvous of Victory website includes an article that purports to explain impact and legacies of ‘chattel enslavement’ that rather nicely encapsulates the problem with this strand of thought, not least by its opening sentence:

The human misery, economic exploitation and social disorder caused by Chattel Enslavement are impossible to quantify.

What a great opening line - slavery was a bad thing, just don’t ask us to explain how bad it was because we don’t really know… and as you might expect, its all downhill from there.

There are some ‘higlights’ in the article that are worth mentioning, if only for the paucity of reasoning they exemplify, for example, there is this:

…the trade in African peoples was about plunder and brutality and a complete lack of respect for the human rights of Africans who were enslaved.

The problem with this being, of course, that European society had no real concept of human rights until the end of the 18th Century (and the Enlightenment) such that argument is entirely moot - how can one respect something that one cannot conceive of?

It removed Africa’s young and healthy workforce, as well as destroyed agriculture and industry and increased political and military conflict among African states, which was largely encouraged by European traders as a way of acquiring slaves. It forced people to move away from their homes, their communities, their farmlands and from any kind of economic stability they had.

The first thing to say is that this sounds rather more like a description of colonialism than the slave trade, in terms of the presumed impact on agriculture and industry and it is equally facile to talk in terms of African ’states’ as the concept of the nation state had barely taken root in Europe at this point in time, let alone found its way to Africa. And as for the assertion that European intervention increased political and military conflict between the putative African ’states’, such a view is only sustainable if one accepts that the slave trade arrived in West Africa with European traders, when the reality is that is endemic long before Europe provided a new trading opportunity, and indeed persists today in some parts West and Sub-Saharan Africa.
And to add to this already discursive mix, we also have:

Racism as we know it today began as a justification and rationalisation by some sections of European society, of man’s inhumanity to man. The difference in complexion and appearance between Africans and their European oppressors made it possible for advocates of slavery to popularise the idea that Africans were a lower form of human life, or not even human at all.

This is, to some extent, correct, in the sense that the origins of the modern concept of biological racism lie, ironically enough, in changes in the prevailing Christian worldview arising, first out of the Protestant Reformation and then latterly from the influence of the Enlightenment, giving rise to the view that ‘all men were created equal’. Africans, logically, then had be recharacterised as ’sub-human’ in order to justify the continuation of slavery while remaining consistent with the newly adopted Christian precept of equality. However, far from clarifying matters, this muddies the waters even further as it poses the question of whether one can legitimately ‘blame’ the alleged generational disadvantages experienced by African-Caribbeans on slavery, for giving rise to the modern ideas of racism or whether the fault lies instead with the failure of society to reevaluate its ideas on race in the wake of having abolished slavery, and therefore removed the original raison d’etre for racism.

None of this takes us any closer to a rational explanation as to why we should now offer an apology to, and compensate, the descendents of those who were transported to the Caribbean and Americas by the slave trade or how financial reparations might somehow set everything to rights - it won’t, in fact the one wholly accurate statement that Alibhai-Brown makes in here article is this one:

In the end I concluded it would satisfy nobody and would lead to inter-state quarrels and corruption and worse.

Apologies for historical events that now are no so far in the past as to be well beyond living memory serve no real purpose at all. save that of providing a sop to those who harbour wholly romantic and unrealistic notions of their own heritage and identity. No one will be any better off for receiving such an apology and to bow before such demands is to reinforce the idea that one can play the politics of victimhood to one’s own advantage and not only get away with it but benefit from it, an idea that is already far too prevalent in Britain today.

If, nearly 200 years on from the abolition of the slave trade, we have any real duty at all to those who were transported from Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas (and to their descendents) that such a duty extends only so far as to give a full and accurate historical accounting of their stories and to learn the lessons of history and ensure that we do not repeat the mistakes of our own ancestors - and nothing more.

Apologies are meaningless - what matters is that we remember and we learn, and that we use that construct a better future and not wrangle over the past.
* BTW, I don’t really blame Alex Haley for any of this, I just thought it would make for a nicely provocative and attention grabbing title. 

Byline: Unity

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I haven’t done a full-on fisk for a few days, and with everything going on in the Middle East at the moment I really haven’t got the stomach to look in on the fifth horsewoman of the tabloid apocalpyse, Mad Mel Phillips, to see whatever it is that she’s shrilling on about at the moment; so I was quite pleased to come across this eminently fiskable piece of intellectual flotsam from a charity called the ‘Christian Institute‘, not least because charity law and the current Charities Bill is a bit of speciality of mine.

*There some more interesting information on the Christian Insitute and a little pat its having with the Gay Police Association over at MediaWatchWatch, at the moment - well worth a visit.

The background to my interest in all this is simply that one of the more creditable innovations in charity law that the Charities Bill is due to bring in is the extension of the ‘public benefit’ test to all charities and not just those registered under the previous catch-all category in which they claim to be ‘of general benefit’ to the community.

What this actually means is that where, previously, charities registered under the other three traditional ‘heads’ of charity - relief of poverty and sickness, advancement of education and advancement of religion, were simply assumed, in law, to benefit the public merely by their very existence, in future all registered charities will have to show that they really do operate for the public benefit - and not just new registrations either, as the Charity Commission are committed, at this stage, to conducting a review of all existing charities to see whether or not they shape up under the new legal framework.

This is not that an unusual thing for the Commission to undertake. A few years ago there was a review of Charity Register which looked, in particular, at Armed Forces charities and the charitable status of sports clubs, out of which a number of charities that were no longer doing anything of significant value wound up being deregisteredby the Commission. That’s just the way things go; the world moves on, society changes, and something that looked pretty charitable 50-60 years ago just really isn’t relevant or justifiable anymore.

It also ought to be said that this last review has its positives as well, particular when it came to the review of sports clubs in which the commission decided that simply promoting a particular sport on its own was not enough to justify charitable status, to register a sports club as a charity you had to be promoting sporting activities for a purpose; improving people’s general health is one of the more common ones that many clubs went for, for example, while another good one for sports clubs working with young people is to focus on the positive things they can learn through sport; leadership, teamwork, personal discipline, etc. all the good character-building stuff.

The upshot of all this was that a few old and outdated registrations were cancelled, but the sporting charities that stayed on the register reassessed the kinds of things they were doing and  focussed more clearly on the real benefits that their activities provided with the result that we, the public, and especially the taxpayer started to get much better value for our money.

And yes, there is an element of this that does come to hard cash - one of the major perks that comes with charitable status is the favourable tax regime that registered charities operate under; no corporation tax on surplusses (technical point, charities don’t make profits but they can make a surplus, which is either put into reserves or reinvested to improve, enhance or sustain their work) plus the use of the gift aid system, which allows charities to boost their income by reclaiming basic rate income tax on the donations they receive.

Altogether charities get a pretty fair package of support from Her Majesty’s Treasury - and because it does come from the Treasury and, therefore, from all of us as taxpayers, even if we have no particular personal interest in the charity sector there is legitimate public interest we all share as taxpayers, so we all, in a small way, have a bit of stake in the new Charities Bill.

So, as someone who works in the not-for-profit sector, who has a particular interest in charity law and who appreciates how and where I have an interest in this issue as taxpayer, my general view of the proposed extension of the public benefit test to all charities is that its a perfectly reasonable thing for the government to be doing - in simple terms, if charities want to hang on to the tax breaks they get (and they do) then its entirely reasonable for us, the taxpayer, to expect then to be able to show that what they’re doing is for the public benefit. It’s a simple matter of quid pro quo.

As you might guess, however, the Christian Institute sees things a bit differently, as you’ll see below…

Charities Bill

Removing the presumption that religion is a public benefit

The advancement of religion has always been presumed to be in the public benefit unless the contrary is proved. The Charities Bill removes this presumption. This is a massive change which in our view is likely to seriously damage religious liberties.

Nothing like starting with a good scare, even if there is absolutely nothing in the Charities Bill that would genuinely damage religious liberties. there are certain types of activity that some relgious groups may engage in that Charity Commission considers to be incompatible with charitable status but that does not stop religious groups carrying out such activities, it just means they have to make a choice about to continue with those activities or continue as a charity. They have a choice and its up to them how they decide to exercise it.

Under the existing statutory regime, the Charity Commission largely succeeded in regulating religious charities without passing judgement on their doctrine and ethics. But we sense that an entirely new approach is being adopted. The Commission’s position paper: Public Benefit – the Charity Commission’s approach is very secular in tone. It states that that public benefit must be assessed “in the light of modern conditions” and that keeping up with “modern society” is required if a charity is not to have its charitable status revoked.

All this is alarmingly subjective. The Charities Bill gives the Commission greatly increased powers to reject the applications of religious bodies or even to de-register an existing religious charity. The Commission should not adjudicate on religious beliefs. Removing the presumption creates the risk that it will. Religious Charities are in effect deemed to be guilty until proved innocent. There is nothing in the Bill to ensure that objective criteria are used.

In reality, when you’re trying to scare the faithful, there is nothing in the Charities Bill which would permit them to pass judgement on the doctrine and ethics of a religious charity, although in common law there is certainly a legal test as to whether a particular set of beliefs actually consitutes a religion in law, as this decision on an application for charitable status by the ‘Church’ of Scientology clearly demonstrates.

The ‘religion test’ is actually fairly straightforward inasmuch as it consists of two basic questions…

1. Is there a belief in a deity/supreme being (or beings), and,

2. Do the ‘religious’ practices of the group include a definable act of worship.

Taken together with the requirement that an applicant for charity status must seeking the ‘advancement’ of their religion, that is as much of a view as the Charity Commission is entitled to take in law.

The Charity Commission can, and has, therefore ruled on whether a particular set of beliefs and practices meet the common law requirement for being considered to be a religion but, certainly to my knowledge, has never one issued a ruling on a specific matter of doctrine.

However, a quick search for information on any previous dealings between the Commission and the Christian Institute did actually show a bit of previous form on the Institute’s part…

The Charity Commission has criticised the Christian Institute for breaching the terms of its charitable status in a letter sent this August. It has ordered the Institute to change its subtitle, "influencing public policy", and accused it of engaging in politics. Following complaints and a formal investigation, the commission has told the institute that its aims of furthering and promoting the Christian religion and the advancement of education in accordance with certain Christian doctrines and principles have not been obvious in its campaigns.

It criticised its 1998 publication Homosexuality and Young People for failing to articulate a Christian view. The Commission also criticised the publication Bankrolling Gay Proselytism: The case for extending section 28, which in isolation, it said, "could be viewed as overtly political for a charity publication". "It is not acceptable for a charity to declare particular purposes which stray from [its] stated objectives. Normally a charitable research body is required to analyse and assimilate all the evidence … there were occasions when the link between the charitable object and the publication was not always clear."

The Commission met the Institute in May last year after complaints that it was a political lobbying association for conservative Christian values, and that some of its publications were "of a political or propagandist nature".

What this story refers to is a complaint to the Charity Commission by GALHA (Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association) regarding its campaigning activities on political measures included the repeal of section 28 and the legalisation of adoption by same-sex couples and, in particular, a stunt in which it issued at card to its supporters that read "In the event of my death I do not want my children to be adopted by homosexuals."

The Commission, which did not formally investigate the Christain Institute, did not criticise it for its doctrinal view of homosexuality but for the manner in which it strayed from its charitable objects, which are…

1.THE FURTHERANCE AND PROMOTION OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
2.THE ADVANCEMENT OF EDUCATION.

…into some pretty obvious political activities of a kind which the Commission routinely consider and rule on - a few years back the human rights organisation, Liberty, ran into much the same problem with the Charity Commission as that which the Christian Institute faced in 2002 and were required by the Commission to draw a clear line between the activities of political campaign arm (Liberty) and its charitable arm (the Civil Liberties Trust)

To be absolutely clear, the Charity Commission has no power to rule on doctrinal matters, other than in the context of whether an applicant is genuinely a religious group, but it can (and does) rule on matters where doctrinal views are expressed in a political context that is incompatible with charitable status.

So far, then, every substantive point in the Christian Institutes ‘briefing’ has been inaccurate and based on errors in material fact… time to move on to the next bit…

Missionary minded charities

The Commission has made clear that, as well as applying the test to new applications, they will reassess whether existing religious charities should retain their charitable status.iii This could result in historic Christian charities losing their charitable status and their assets being confiscated and given to another charity.

A particular area of concern to us is that under the new thinking at the Commission proselytising or missionary organisations could lose their charitable status. Virtually all religious faiths seek to convince ‘non-believers’ of the merits of what they believe. For example, Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and Muslims all have organisations which seek to spread their faith.

Proselytism is where one faith seeks to convert those of another faith. Government Minister, Lord Bassam of Brighton, was asked if proselytising activity would be deemed to be of public benefit. He seemed to suggest it would. However, Charity Commission officials have made clear that they do not take this view. If put into effect, this would mean the de-registration of charities such as ‘Jews for Jesus’.

Example: A Christian group exists specifically to promote the Christian faith to Jews. Elements within the Jewish community vehemently oppose its charitable status. The Charity Commission will be required to arbitrate on this dispute.

Is a charity that does nothing but proseltyze providing public benefit?

Personally I’d say no, but then I’m not the one making the decision on this question.

But lets’ turn this question around and look at it from another direction - should the taxpayer provides funds, in the form of tax concessions, to an organisation when all that organisation does is try to recruit new members?

Does that seem a reasonable proposition to you?

As things stand I doubt very much that many existing organisations will see their charitable status run aground on this particular question. For one thing, in most cases, religious groups will have much the same kind of ‘character building’ aspects to their work to rely on that the Charity Commission have already accepted as being valid in the case of sports clubs.

Next one has to consider the human rights aspects that will come into play - I suspect that the Commission will be reluctant to head too quickly into a face off over the application of Article 11 of HRA 1998, which covers freedom of religion.

And then, finally, any religious group that has a reasonable open relationship with th epublic at large and, particularly, which supplements is religious activities with a traditional Christian approach to ‘doing good works’ will inevitably find itself on solid ground.

If the Charity Commission does move on any particular groups in the manner that the Christian Institute suggests it will only be where a particular group is not open in it dealings with the public - the Commission is generally pretty watchful in applying the public benefit test for anything that looks like a private members’ club masquerading as a charity.

As a result, one of clearest effect that I would expect the application of the public benefit test to religious groups will have is to make it much easier for the Charity Commission to identify and remove from register and groups that operate as religious cults rather than legitimate ‘churches’ - and that is no bad thing at all as far as I’m concerned.

Again, the Institutes claims lack substance.

Conflict with modern values

Of course, the major religions are not ‘modern’ since they tend to base their fundamental beliefs on writings that are thousands of years old. Religious bodies often come into conflict with the values which pervade the modern world. They should not be told to ‘modernise’ their basic beliefs in order to comply with the new thinking at the Charity Commission.

In any case what is currently ‘modern’ soon becomes outdated. It is of the essence of religious belief that an appeal is made to timeless values. The following examples illustrate orthodox religious beliefs that are unlikely to be deemed ‘modern’.

A Roman Catholic educational charity which opposes birth control exists to produce material for sex education which is against use of condoms.

A Pentecostal adoption charity exists to place children with Christian families. It will not place children for adoption with unmarried or homosexual couples.

A group of Muslim doctors want to set up a medical ethics charity that advocates Islamic teaching against abortion, embryo experiments and IVF.

Helpfully, when it comes to trying to scare the faithful about the pernicious evils of ‘modern’ values, the Institute provides a number of examples to shhot down in flames.

Remembering that Commission have no authority to rule on matters of doctrine…

In the case of the Roman Catholic Educational Charity, this would be entirely free to produce its sex education materials provided that its avoids the mistake that the institute, itself, made with its anti-gay adoption campaign and steers clear of politicking. Such a charity is quite within its rights to produce materials that promote its values and ideas as long it does so in a reasonable fashion. In short it is entirely free to explain, in its literature, what the position of the Catholic Church is on the use of condoms.

Whether many schools would be happy to use that literature in the classroom is an altogether different matter.

In the case of the Pentecostal adoption charity, what would happen will depend very much on the exact form that the new regulations of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation take. Unless these include a concession allowing such a charity to turn aware prospective parents on grounds of their sexuality then they would not be able to legally operate such a service in the manner that the Institute suggests.

Whether this creates problems in terms of its charity registration is another matter, not least because such a charity is not necessarily going to be registered as a religious charity as its primary purpose (facilitating adoptions) has nothing to do with advancing religion.

The question, itself, is a non-seqiteur - in fact a charity of this kind would almost certainly come under general benefit to the community under the existing Charities Acts and have to pass the publice benefit test anyway.

The same applies to our hypothetical group of Muslim doctors - a medical ethics charity is not a religious charity, per se, in that its not set up specifically to promote the Islamic faith, merely a limited aspect of that faith.

Again the question is a non-sequiteur.

In none of these three cases would the religious views on display necessarily compromise theoir application for charitable status, although I’d expect the adoption charity to come under a fair bit of scrutiny in terms of legal complience with the 2002 Adoption and Children Act and the 2005 Voluntayr Adoption Agencies (Amendment) Act.

Sorry folks - wrong again…

Creating uncertainty

There is no sense that the current legal presumption in favour of religion is causing great difficulty. However, removing it will crack wide open the question of what is and is not state-approved religion. There are few precedents on what constitutes public benefit in the context of a religious charity precisely because the existence of a presumption has meant the courts have rarely had to consider the question. The change will lead to immense uncertainty both for existing religious charities and for new applications.

There is certainly no evidence to show that the current legal presumption in favour of religion is causing difficulties simply because that presumption precludes any real questions being asked about the legal status of religious charities.

All they are saying here is ‘we get a free ride and we want to keep it’ - their argument is based solely on seeking to maintain their current privileged status. For that reason alone it is right that religious charities should face a public benefit test if they wish to keep the tax breaks afforded to them by charitable status.

In Britain there is no question currently as to what constitutes state-approved religion - the only state-approved religions are the Anglican Church in England and Wales and, in Scotland, the Presbytarian Church. There is, as I mentioned earlier, a common law test of what constitutes a religion for the purposed of law, but that is not a matter on which the state (i.e. Parliament) has even taken a view - if it had the legal definition of religion would have been codified in statute law and not have been left to the common law.

There may be few precendents on what constitutes public benefit in the context of exclusively religious activities, because religious charities have never faced the public benefit test until now, but there is no shortage of precedent on what constitutes public benefit in general and therefore ample basis upon which the Charity Commission, which has judicial powers in respect of regulating charities, can develop relevant precedents, not least of which is the ruling on public benefit issued in the case of the Church of Scientology.

Creating scope for organised complaints

Religious belief, particularly related to sexual ethics, can be very unpopular in a secular world. Bashir Maan, Scottish Chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain, was recently forced out as President of the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations for stating moderate, orthodox Muslim views on sexual morality. Mr Maan was told to resign by the SCVO board for criticising plans to teach homosexual sex in the school curriculum.

In England many Christian charities have been subjected to campaigns of organised complaints to the Charity Commission. Opponents of religious groups routinely use complaints to the Commission as a campaign tactic. Dropping the presumption of public benefit gives them a major weapon in their armoury.

Having looked, I can find no evidence to support the assertion that many Christian charities have been subjected to campaigns of organised complaints to the Charity Commission - okay, so the Christian Institute found itself on the wrong end of a justifiable complaint from GALHA, which I covered earlier, so one wonders if its own experience is colouring its views on this matter.

As far as Bashir Maan is concerned, what he actually said in his letter that got him into difficulties was…

"These politicians, through certain elements of sex education in schools, are motivating young innocent children to indulge in premature sex that is resulting in teenage pregnancies."
 
He went on: "As if that were not enough, gay sex education is also being added to the sex curriculum in schools.
 
"This will encourage experiments of homosexuality among young children and add to the growing creed of homosexuality."

And really one cannot be surprised if you receive complaints after making comments like that - Mr Mann certainly didn’t seem surprised himself…

Mr Maan, who will be 80 in October, has been president of SCVO for nearly six years, and he said last night he was going to retire soon.

This has forced my hand. It is a pity it has to end in these circumstances," he said.
 
"I can understand the SCVO’s point of view; my views would bring me into conflict with the gay and lesbian organisations in their membership, so perhaps I should have retired before I opened my mouth. I did not intend to demean anyone."

*By the way, The Herald, from which those comments were taken, sets new standards in online shittyness, unsurpassed even by the Indy’s pay-per-view firewall, by trying to use a scripted routine in its pages to prevent you from copying the text of its articles. Not only is this blogger-unfriendly but its also a waste of time as its can be easily bypassed using by viewing the page source.

If one looks at the Charity Commission’s inquiry reports section on its website you will certainly find that faith groups attract their fair share of complaints and investigations, although I’ve not checked to how this relates, in terms of proportion to the number of actual religious charities in the overal charity sector - anything more than about 13-14% would indicate that religious charities are disproportionately likely to attract complaints and face investigations than other types of charity, although it difficult to get accurate figures as these figures would not include the complaints that Commission rejects every year for jurisdictional reasons.

Reference to the alleged threat posed by organised complaints has become pretty much a standard feature in the propaganda put out by, particularly, right-wing evengelical Christian groups whenever there’s a piece of legislation they don’t like the look of - much the same scare tactics were adopted in relation to Religious Hatred Bill and is being used right now in their campaign against the upcoming sexual orientation regulations.

What such claims invariably lack, however, is any hard evidence to back up the claim that such groups are really being are subjected to such organised complaint campaigns- although there is plenty of evidence from things like Jerry Springer: The Opera to show evangelical Christian groups using the very same tactics that they’re now complaining about.

This leads me to three basic observations.

1. This is blatant propaganda designed to scare the faithful and create/reinforce a siege mentality amongst their supporters.

2. Letter-writing campaigns have a long and distinguished history in open and democratic societies as a means of expressing legitimate concerns and the real test of the legitimacy of such tactics rests not in whether they’re adopted and used by a particular group in society but whether they encapsulate a legitimate complaint. To peddle scare stories like this, before any complaints have been lodged, seems nothing more than a pre-emptive strike designed to try and invalidate all complaints, however well founded, and is, therefore, thoroughly undemocratic, and

3. This quite obviously indicates that while they can happily dish it out, they can’t take it themselves.

What we have here, then, is a two-page briefing on an aspect of the Charities that contains several errors of fact, plenty of unsubstantiated and erroneous speculation, a bit of propaganda and not one single rational argument to support the contention that religious charities should continue to be enjoy an exemption in Charity Law from the requirement that they show that their activities provide public benefit in return for the tax concessions they receive from the Treasury.

What they want is their privileges for free adn without having to make any effort to justify them to the taxpayer, who ultimately pays for them…

… in which case, not only should the provisions in the Charities Bill extending the public benefit test to all charities stand as the Commission intends but, as far as I’m concerned, their introduction cannot come soon enough.

Byline: Unity

2 Comments »

Within the Labour movement, I think we can take it as read that we all understand the importance of tackling racist political partieshead on - you know exactly who I mean; that’s something we can all agree on, I should think, even if we sometimes differ in our preferred approach.

For example, there are many who still try and hold to the idea of ‘No Platform’, a tactic that I long ago concluded was ultimately counterproductive as efforts to ’silence’ the National Front, BNP and others and prevent then getting their message out only serve to contribute to the false mystique they try to create around their appaling ideas and values in order to convey the impression that they are somehow dealing in ‘forbidden knowledge’ rather than errant, pig-ignorant, bullshit.

‘No platform’ also leaves us wide open to the charge that we are censorious and acting as the enemy of free speech, sometimes with some considerable justification, and all too easily leads us into hypocrisy. During last year’s general election campaign, Unite Against Fascism tried to organise an e-mail/letter writing campaign against the BBC over a party electionbroadcast by the BNP, before it had been shown, ignoring the fact that as long as the BNP stuck to the rules governing such broadcasts, the BBC had no right to refuse to show it because the BNP were entitled to it under laws governing the conduct of General Elections.

As I recall, between that and my distaste for the party’s actions in Blaenau Gwent, I got into a minor spat with another Labour blogger, Jo Salmon, becaused I’d referred to a couple fo her posts to illustrate the points that I was trying make - giving her the impression that somehow I didn’t like her on a personal level when it was simply the case that I didn’t agree with her views on those specific matters. I must admit that I don’t think I even got around to apologising to her for the misunderstanding, so if she does spot this then, sorry, there really was nothing personal about my comments.

There are two mains reasons why I disagreed with attempts to complain about the BNP election broadcast before the fact.

First, its far to easy to hypocritical in adopting tactics of that kind - how can we credibily deride a drooling idiot like Stephen Green, of Christian Voice, for his artificially engineered and spurious, sight-unseen, protests over the BBC’s broadcast of Jerry Springer: The Opera only then to do the very same thing at the first sign of a BNP election broadcast. You can’t have it both ways, I’m afraid, either you accept that the right of free expression dictates that’s the BBC may sometimes broadcast material that you dislike, even to the point at which you consider that material to be entirely reprehensible, or you accept that even the most half-baked special interest group has a right to to try to dictate what we see and hear simply by throwing a public hissy-fit, without their deserving to be criticised for their tactics.

You simply cannot, in my view, have one rule for us and a different one for other groups or political parties without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.

Second, it has always struck me that complaining about something you haven’t seen is just not an intelligent way of going about things - if you are going to criticise and complain, then you should at least know what it is you’re actually complaining about.

As it stood, and having seen the BNP’s efforts, there was nothing really to complained about, unless you wanted to tell the Beeb that it was load of rubbish.

It wasn’t offensive at all, it was just a crap piece of television, so bad,  in fact, that it well deserves to be included in one of those ‘Most Embarassing TV moments’ list shows that Channel 4 and Five put out when they’ve nothing better to show and should comfotably occupy a place near the top of the list alongside Richard Madeley’s Ali G impression* and John Redwood’s stirring rendition of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, it really was that cringeworthy. It’s central premise, a sad, faux, tale of a homeless ex-serviceman let down by the system - to the accompanyment of a fifth-rate bit of Ralph McTell-ery written by Nick Griffin, also turned out to be hopelessly out of date - we’d already made changes to housing regulations two years earlier to provide additional support to ex-servicemen to address the very issue that the BNP were trying to hang this part of their election campaing on.

*Madeley, it seems, cannot help but make an arse of himself, as evidenced by his bringing his Ali G accent out of retirement in a recent interview with a Geordie women who unecpectedly developed a Jamaican accent after having a stroke… subtle as ever, eh…

My view, whether you agree with it or not, is that the very idea of ‘no platform’ has run its course and has no real value other than to bolster feelings of moral superiority amongst some of its supporters, and although I’m certainly not suggesting we should ever go out of our way to hand the BNP a platform for their views, what I am suggesting is that its time we looked closely at our own tactics and realised that simply trying to silence the far-right and prevent them putting their message out not only isn’t going to work but too often ends up working against us.

Where we nned to go from here is not ‘no platform’ but ‘no platform should go unchallenged’ - let them say what they want to say, just don’t let their views go unchallenged and take every opportunity possible to expose them for who and what they are. It’s time for us to stop pretending that we can simply moralise the BNP out of existance, get right up in their faces and take them on.

Here, I agree entirely with Jo’s remarks in the comments to this recent post of hers:

…If we are to defeat the BNP and other groups like them, then we need to counter their lies all day, every day - and we also need to counter their racism.

No more “are you thinking what we’re thinking” campaigns, no more pandering to the right on immigration instead of standing up for people’s rights.

We need to be positive about immigration, positive about multiculturalism and positive about asylum. We should be proud of the fact that so many people want to come here to work and live, and proud of the fact that the UK is viewed as somewhere safe, a great place to start again.

In short, we need positive messages to counter the fear and resentment and consequent xenophobia that is at the heart of any campaign run by BNP.

To which I should also add two other things we should be doing.

First, we need to start treating their councillors very much as we would any other political opponent from any other party and pay close and detailed attention to their record in office. It’s already a matter of record that a fair number of BNP councillors just aren’t up to the job - at least one has stood down and admitted that simply didn’t understand what to do as a councillor - and we certainly do need to make the most of that and expose their incompetance at every turn.

If they don’t turn up for meetings, can’t understand voting and other procedures, the terms and conditions under which they’re handed a publicly-funded website or their legal duties as a councillor or if they simply contribute nothing to work of the council, then we should ensure that their constituents are made aware of their failings at every opportunity. Don’t get complacent and think we can just save all this up for an election leaflet, keep the flow of information going throughout the year - drip, drip, drip - all the time getting over the message that a vote for the BNP is a wasted vote, because when they’re given the chance of public office, they cannot deliver.

The second thing we should be doing is looking beyond their racist views at some of the other ideas and values that many of them hold. It’s easy to focus too much on the racist side of the BNP as its such an easy and tempting target, and forget that their views of other groups are equally prurient and reprehensible. While researching the activities of Sandwell BNP councillor, Simon Smith, in his guise as Stormfront poster, Steve Freedom, what stood out most wasn’t the obvious racism/anti-Semitism of his views - that I fully expected - but the all to obvious misogyny of some his comments, for all that he harbours much the same ‘Brunhilde/Boadicea’ fantasies as some of the other posters.

Many of those who voted BNP not for ideological/political reasons but because they were ’seduced’ either by their attacks on immigration or out of dissatisfaction with our perceived failure to address the needs of the working class, will have been women, and I wonder how many would appreciate views like this…

There are two types of men. Those who will fight and those who won’t. Our cause depends on men primarily but not exclusively, in these "early" days, where the virtue of courage is necessary.

With regard to women. There are three types:

1) Those who won’t "fight"/support under any circumstances

2) Those who will give genuine feminine and natural support to their Nationalist husband.

3) Boadicea types who, with very few exceptions are better than many of the best men. These are women for whom the entire race is their child.

IMHO WN men make the mistake of looking for a Boadicea type, woman (3) when they should be looking for woman (2). Women generally have to be lead by a strong man (to be happy).

Some may hold strong religious beliefs or, particular amongst older people, retain vivid memories of their family’s involvement in fighting Naziism during the Second World War, in which case what do you think they might make of something like this?

Away from the seemingly (?) need to disassociate oneself from Christ or Hitler depending on whether one wishes not to regarded as a “”Jesus freak” or a “Nazi”, both men have been great influential world leaders. I grew up with the Christian faith and whilst rejecting the established church ,( not describing myself as a “Christian” other than in the general sense of performing a “Christian action" etc), the sayings of Jesus Christ are as quotable as Shakespeare ,Plato or Jefferson.

The Internet has been a great source of knowledge about Adolph Hitler for me. I’ve read the first couple of chapters of Mein Kampf and can’t find anything I disagree with ! I think even now, White Nationalists may be apprehensive about coming to close appreciating Adolph Hitler – In my mind a very courageous and truthful man. I suppose there may be a great fear about identifying with anything Hitler said, the argument being that it could set the movement backwards – perhaps the only thing that will push the “Movement” forward in the long run is the Truth – unpalatable and uncomfortable as it maybe.

These are some comparisons that came to mind between Jesus Christ and Adolph Hitler..:

Simon thinks Hitler ‘a very courageous and truthful man’ as well as considering that there are comparsons between him and Jesus - he goes on to list thirteeen in total - I wonder how many of those who voted for him are likely to see things in quite the same way?

There’s rather more to the BNP than just racism - if Simon’s anything to go by, some are just intent on pissing just about everyone off - so we need to put over a better balanced message, one that doesn’t focus exclusively on race but which takes in the full range of appalling views and values one finds amongst its members, especially when one finds comments like this…

I’d certainly agree with the notion that "holocaust denial" as you put it, should be avoided amongst Joseph and Josephine Public.. but then again anything that challenges the average attention span should be as well…

…We can expect to engage the more articulate, intelligent and educated on Stormfront.

And…

A real question for White Nationalist politics is :

Do we educate, or increase political influence by taking on board White ignorance ? (i.e. Playing along with the "Muslim Hijacker" paradigm.)

Or, to put it another way…

Hey, voter. You’re too stupid to be told what we really believe…

What we desperately need to take note of, in addition, are the points raised by Chris Dillow  - also in reference to Jo’s comments…

My fear - and I’d like to be proved wrong - is that the Labour party is in no position to heed this call. There are four reasons for this, two tactical and two philosophical.

1. Median voter theory. This says political parties win votes by moving towards the voters’ median position. In this case, this means accommodating racist sentiments, not combating them. Put it this way. In the areas where the BNP is challenging Labour, would Labour really want to take a pro-immigrant stance and fight voters’ racism directly? Or wouldn’t a better vote-winning strategy be to pander a little to the racists, by "listening to their concerns"?

2. The politics of machismo. For reasons best understood by psychotherapists, politicians feel the need to play the hard man, to pretend they’re in control. So they prefer macho talk about fighting illegal immigration. Take this from Liam Byrne. Where’s the positive messages about immigration?

3. Libertarianism. The strongest argument for immigration is the libertarian one - that people have a right to live where they want and employ whom they want. Such talk of liberty, though, would come uneasily from a party as illiberal as New Labour.

4. Public services. One of the main reasons for antipathy towards immigrants is the "strain they put upon public services" such as housing; the argument that immigrants worsen the labour market prospects of indigenous workers is easily tackled. A pro-immigrant party would remove this source of complaint. But to do so requires us to face an unpleasant fact - that public services are unresponsive to needs; their supply is inelastic. Labour wouldn’t want to draw attention to this.

For those of us on the ‘libertarian’/anti-authoritarian left, it is constant source of frustration, even bewilderment at times, to see what are ostensibly party colleagues from the Blairite fringe consistantly failing to recognise and appreciate the full implications for the party of the last nine years of constant parliamentary pissing contests with the Tories on Home Office policy and legislation.

To spell it out in simple terms, our policies in government have now shifted so far out to the right in some areas that, come the next election, Cameron will be in a position to position not only position himself a little to the left of where we are now and, more importantly, lay claim to the ‘moral’ high ground across large swatches of civil liberties issues, from fast-track extraditions to the US to Identity Cards and the database state but, to cap it all, should the Tories win the next election, they’ll also inherent a massive package of authoritarian legislation the like of which they could only ever dream of, going right back to the Thatcher years, legislation of a kind they could never have hoped of passing themselves, while in office, due to their reputation as ‘the nasty party’.

It’s a wonder that the likes of Michael Howard et al manage to keep a straight face in the Commons’ chamber as they watch a Labour government systematically hand them all the policies and legislation they always wanted but were never trusted to have.

As a party, can we honestly say that we’re comfortable with that thought, that we’re likely to be going into a future general election against a Tory party that looks and sounds as if its actually more ‘liberal’ in some its attitudes than we are?

How do we tackle that situation?

Do we try to kid the electorate with the line that they’re still the same old Tories underneath? That may well be true, but can we really take it as read that the electorate will buy into that as a campaign idea, given the abject failure of the Tory’s past efforts to play out that line on us - remember the ‘demon eyes’ poster? That really worked well for them, didn’t it?

Actually, it pretty obvious what ou approach is likely to be given, given the ‘hug-a-hoodie’ jibes directed at David Cameron over the last week.

Okay, so Cameron’s got no actual policies to back any of this up, just the usual wittering on about the wonders of local charities, which is no different to anything that we’ve been saying for quite a while - although it does prove that, like us, he hasn;t got the first fucking clue what most local charities are actually like - and even if he had put some actual policy content into his speech, my own reaction, and that of many other party members, would be distinctly sceptical - talk is cheap, after all, what matters is whether he oculd really deliver.

But hang, look again at what he’s actually been saying?

That many of the problems affecting communities arise out of thing’s like poverty and deprivation, alienation, family breakdowns and a whole host of other social ills, and that somewhere in all this many of the young people being derided in the media as ‘hoodies’ - yeah, sure, we should all be shit-scared of sweat-shirts - actually need a bit of help and support.

And we respond to that to taking the piss?

If you want to take a shot at Cameron because you think he’s being insincere, playing to the press gallery or trying to pick a fight with the old Tory floggers and hangers to get his ‘clause 4 moment’, then be my guest and fire away…

…but just think about what you’re saying for a minute and the impression that conveys.

Doesn’t the term ‘hug-a-hoodie’ just buy into and reinformed all the prejudices and febrile ravings of the Daily Mail/Express set? What kind of message does that send? Suppose Cameron’s speech had been about tackling social justice problems in minority communities - would you be happily writing that off as ‘hug-a-paki’ or ‘hug-a-nigger’?

I fucking well hope not!

Does it not give party members pause for thought to see a Labour Prime Minister citing Thomas Hobbes as authority when launching his ‘Respect Agenda’…

From the theorists of the Roman state to its fullest expression in Hobbes’s Leviathan, the central question of political theory was just this: how do we ensure order? And what are the respective roles of individuals, communities and the state?

Or constantly bastardising Isaiah Berlin’s concept of ‘two liberties’ (which was derived, in turn, from the work of  JS Mill to justify more and more state intrusion and control over citizens’ lives…


10 Downing Street
23 October 1997

Dear Isaiah

I very much enjoyed your interview with Steven Lukes in Prospect this month. I hope you don’t mind me following up with a letter asking your thoughts.

The brief discussion in the interview of the relationship between your two concepts of liberty is, I think, illuminating. The limitations of negative liberty are what have motivated generations of people to work for positive liberty, whatever its depradations [sic] in the Soviet model. That determination to go beyond laissez-faire continues to motivate people today. And it is in that context that I would be interested in your views on the future of the Left.

You seem to be saying in the interview that because traditional socialism no longer exists, there is no Left. But surely the Left over the last 200 years has been based on a value system, predating the Soviet model and living on beyond it. As you say, the origins of the Left lie in opposition to arbitrary authority, intolerance and hierarchy. The values remain as strong as ever, but no longer have a ready made vehicle to take them forward. That seems to me to be today’s challenge. Political economy has been transformed over the last 25 years, and it is here that there is a great deal of work to be done. But there remains action, too, to devolve political power and to build a more egalitarian community.
  
So reconstruction, yes, but the end no!

I would be interested in your further views on the current situation, its historical place and significance, and the prospects for renewal.

All good wishes.

yours ever

Tony Blair

source…

*The Lukes interview cited above appeared in Prospect and was a reprint of an interview given at least five years previously to a different publication, a fact that Prospect neglected to mention alongside the article. Blair’s letter arrived shortly before Berlin’s death - he was too ill at the time to reply and so Blair never did get Berlin’s views on ‘the current situation, its historical place and significance, and the prospects for renewal’.  Had Berlin been able to reply and being a dialogue with Blair he would, no doubt, have forcefully expressed his concerns as to the political dangers inherent in the concept of positive liberty, not least his view that there is an elective affinity between positive liberty and political totalitarianism.

All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate. - Isaiah Berlin

With hindsight one cannot help but wonder quite what might have emerged had Blair been able to pursue his desired dialogue with Berlin, although one suspects from Blair’s obvious interest in the ‘limitations of negative liberty’ at the outset that he would almost certainly have been disappointed with Berlin’s response to his enquiry. What can be said, however, is that over the last 5-6 years, Blair has certainly provided ample proof to support Berlin’s contention that the concept of positive liberty is all too easily used, and abused by government to justify authoritarian attitudes, values and policies and ever-increasing state control over the lives of citizens - not that I think Berlin would have been gratified to see that proof supplied so close to home.

- - -

There is, however, rather more at stake here than merely the vindication of the work of a noted philosopher.

Since winning the election, last year, the government, a Labour government, has appeared to lurch from one foul-up to the next while all the time doing its utmost ot avoid even the merest hint of accountability for its actions.

It’s been scandal after scandal - if one is to take the media at face value.

Loans for peerages. Casinos for cowboy outfits. Too many immigrants, so its claimed. Foreign prisoners getting released and not deported when the should be - as if most of them are any more dangerous that our own home grown criminals. Sentences too short - who wote the sentencing guidelines? (Hint: not the judges). Dangerous offenders paroled too soon. A terrorist attack (and no public inquiry). An extra-judical shooting (and no one seemingly likely to be held to account). A hopelessly one-sided extradition treaty that, as Owen points out, will stay just as one-sided, even if the US ratify it. Internement and house arrest and dodgy deals on deporting alleged terrorists to countries where the torturers art remains in high demand. Turning a blind eye to ‘extraordinary rendition’ - or kidnapping as is should be called if you take away the euphemisms.

The list goes on and on and on…

At what point in all this do we, as party members, turn around and say, ‘Enough!’

Why do we stand against fascist parties like the BNP? Because there’s something in it for us? Because we get a little more out of it and scape that little bit further up the greasy pole to the top?

No, we do it a matter of principle, because fascism stands against everything we believe in… and so we put up a fight.

And if we can do that there, why can we not carry those principles through to other issue, not least the conduct of those who most visibly represent (allegedly) our interests and values?

Reading the feeds on Blogger 4 Labout over the last few months, one of the most dispiriting things one encounters is the seeming willingness of some Labour bloggers not only to turn a blind eye to our own party’s failings but, in some cases (and I won’t name names here) to openly try and defend the indefensible.

Blair’s personal fundraiser/ fixer, Lord Levy, gets his collar felt and how do some respond? By claiming that this is all just a bit of theatrics by a bunch of on-the-make coppers.

Never mind that the underlying accusation here is that our own party has used the honours system, which we are supposed to be against anyway, as a means of filling party coffers from the back-pockets of self-interested millionaires - that’s not something we should be concerned about as party members is it?

And even if it turns out that the Police cannot make a charge stick against Levy or anyone else caught up in all this, none of that removes the simple fact that having promised to make party funding more open, honest and transparent on coming into office, and worse still, having changed the rules on disclosure of donations supposedly to that very end, we then get caught side-stepping the very same rules that we created.

And the excuse for that? Well, the Tories were doing the exact same thing… so what! Since when did start judging our values by Tory standards - and don’t come the smartarse and reply 1994…

Same with Prescott - oh that’s all a right-wing plot, its his personal life and nothing to do with his political office, oh and its just the usual establishment snobbery as well…

Try looking again a bit more closely and that not the issue at all - the issue is that it looks for all the world as if oru policy on the liberalisation of gambling laws has been written by a small bunch of high-stakes casino operators and has only come unstuck when parliament put its democratic oar into things.

Where, I have to wonder, are the Christian socialists on this one? They seem awfully quiet of late, don’t they - so much for their contribution to the moral character of the party…

Look even more closely at this one - I have - and just look at who we’re doing business with here and on what terms.

We’ve a eight ‘horse’ race for the one uber-casino licence we could get though parliament - one that’s entirely fair, transparent and above board…

…just as long as you ignore the fact that one of the runners will be paying the government a 15% kickback on casino profits if they get the licence thanks to the deal they pulled off when taking on the Millenium Dome - or alternatively cutting out half what they planned to put in to the deal if they don;t get it, if you prefer to look at it that way around. Oh, and you also need to ignore the fact that this same runner has been having regular meetings with both Prescott and with ministers from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport - which just so happens to the department responsible for casino licencing - as well as just happening to run across the same guy at a dinner party organised by his PR consultant.

Oh, and did I mention this is guy who paid $4 million to the New York State Attorney General to avoid getting charged over a little bout of IPO spinning that netted him $5 million, whose one-time telecoms company was up to its arse in the MCI Worldcom crash, although he was never personally fingered after the US authorities bought into his ‘I know nothing’ defence. He’s also the same guy to tried to get rid of some his home state’s equality laws - the one’s covering the gay community - and one of guys who finances the Discovery Institute, which promotes the psuedo-theory of ‘intelligent design’ - its a wonder he hasn;t been offer an academy or two with that track record.

And if that’s not enough, what about his partner the in casino deal - the one who created the Sun City resort and allegedly bribed the government of Transkei in effort to get exclusivity on gambling in their territory and was then sheilded from prosecution by South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Is all that a right-wing plot by a couple of Tory bloggers? Open your eyes, for fuck’s sake.

Much of the time, its not even the big headline stuff that should be setting the alarm bells ringing…

We’ve got at least one NEC candidate who’s been mouthing off about ‘party discipline’ and how we should be cracking down on any sign that we have members who display an unfortunate tendancy to exhibit signs of having a mind of their own - guess who won’t be getting my vote, BTW.

Still, I do have to wonder quite what some of our more disciplinarian Labour bloggers make of this, which appeared today…

For the first time, in over a year of writing this blog, I have received my first ever complaint.

For anyone reading the site earlier today, a rather humourless MP has threatened to take legal action unless I remove a post that mentioned his office.

Although I stand by what I said, I have no intention of a) upsetting people b) being involved in a long legal dispute - so I have removed the ‘offending’ article.

I note the MP has ‘reported me to the Chief Whip under new PLP rules’. Oh dear, oh dear.

I’ve not seen the ‘offending post, but from the comments it appears that this is nothing more than a piece of petty bullying by a humourless tosser with a bit of added ‘overkill’ - I note the MP has ‘reported me to the Chief Whip under new PLP rules’.

And then there’s the stuff you don’t see because it goes on out of sight and out of mind, where only us ordinary members on the frontline get to see it.

I can’t give details, for obvious reasons, but over this last week I’ve been dealing on of the byproducts of the good old ‘Respect Agenda’…

a mixed-race family who’re on the fact track to losing their home under an ASB-related eviction as a result of a series of piss-poor complaints from neighbours many of which are obviously racialy-motivated, if only you bother to investigate this properly.

But then their situation is being being investigated properly because its shunted by the landlord - an RSL - into the hands of a supposed firm of ASB ‘enforcement specialists’ who’ve already decided that this family is the problem and, having put them on the fast-track to eviction - isn’t going to back off for anything quite to unimportant as the truth.

*Must mention that this firm of ‘ASB enforcement specialists’ appears to provide no information about their background and no means of contacting them other than a mobile phone number. There’s no record of them with Companies House, no  listing for an office in the phone book or yellow pages, no website - not even a PO Box on their letter - and certainly nothing to confirm that they’re in any way adequately qualified to carry out the work they’re doing. For I can find out about them, they could easily be a one-man-band operating out of council flat - and yet they appear to operating more or less independently of the RSL that employs them to the extent that when this family contacted their landlord about the notice they received, the manager the spoke to hadn’t even got a fucking clue what they were talking about to begin with.

Before crowing about how wonderful all this fast-track summary justice and ASBO crap is, maybe people want to see what’s actually going on first hand, out here in the real world - at the effect it has on ordinary people’s lives when the system decides that they’re the problem even when there’ substantive evidence to back such view.

I really wish I could give you the whole story, but I can’t - not with eviction proceeding pending, but what I can say is amongst the ‘complaints’ cited on the notice they’ve been issued are allegations that gave a neighbour ‘dirty looks’ and that they were ‘lauging and mocking’ a visitor to that neighbour - no mention at all that these ‘incidents’ took place while they were being subjected to racial harassment by the the complainant, or that the family making the complaint had, themselves, been evicted for causing verious problems (including racial harassment), or that the first this family were aware of these complaints (which are three years old) was when they read the notice-seeking possession.

And you want to know what the sickest joke is, in all this? The next item listed on the notice after these complaints alleges that they caused a nuisance by asking a neighbour who witnessed one of these incidents if they would be willing to provide a witness statement, after the family had reported the incident to the police!

Actually, that not the sickest joke - that signal honour belongs to the system and the fact that this family stand a fair chance of being evicted because it allows hearsay evidence like this to be presented in court - oh and the fact that because this family receives working families tax credit, they’re not eligible for legal aid, so the fact they can’t afford to pay a solicitor to defend them puts them even further up shit-creek.

In fact, the only saving grace here - their one paddle - is the incompetence of this so-called ASB enforcement speciallist, whose managed to issue them with the wrong notice - one that does not apply to the kind of tenancy they are actually under.

Anyone feeling quite so proud of our achievements in introducing ASBOs and fast-track evictions now?

Some of you, I’m sure, will look at this an think this case is just a one-off - not our fault, its all down to the incompetence of the people dealing with this case…

…except that it is our fault. It our policies that made this sorry-ass situation possible, which have taken away the one solid defence this couple would have had against the malicious complaints that might just cost them their home - a fair and equitable system of justice which demand proof beyond reasonable doubt adn evidence based on facts not uncooroborated hearsay…

I should point out that the actual reason all this is happening to this family is that they’ve recently been hit by a new series of malicious complaints from a new neighbour who - by strange coincidence - has also previously been through the ASB system for casuing nuisance at their previous address and also has a history - so its alleged - of involvement in racial harassment. The trigger for all this was dispute with the neighbour over a high-fence that the neighbour put up with notice or permission from the landlord, which the neighbour then had to remove after this family complained.

That;s something else, BTW, that the ASB enforcement specialist dealing with this doesn’t appear to have noticed either…

I suppose at least you can’t say that the system we put in doesn’t provide some people with a learning experience, because some of them clearly seem to learning real quickly how to work the inadequacies and iniquities of the system to fuck over their new neighbours.

I’ve covered a lot of ground here, I know - from fighting the BNP, past ‘hug-a-hoodie’ and flogging the odd peerage or two through to ASBOs and evictions, but rest assured there is a theme here, an underlying thread which ties all this together.

In the not too distant future its going to be all change at the top of the party and thoughts have long since turned to the end of the Blair era and where we go on from here…

…and with that in mind and in view of everything I’ve written and everything that’s gone on of late I’d like to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we need to get back to a situation where we actually know what we fucking well believe in as a party and then start acting on those beliefs once again - because if all we give a shit about is power for its own fucking sake the the Labour Party and everything it ever stood for is dead in the fucking water - fourth term or no fourth term…

Byline: Unity

9 Comments »

14 Jul
2006

Read this piece by Emily at Second Child Syndrome - just read it, check my comment on it and see if you feel the same as I do.

I really don;t know what else I can say…

Byline: Unity

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Abortion is back in the news, courtesy of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor - excellent commentary here by Owen Barder, by the way -  so it should come as no particular surprise to note that while researching the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship’s campaign on the draft Sexual Equality Regulations, I discovered that one of the other group’s supported by its Public Policy Officer, Andrea Minichiello Williams, Christian Concern for Our Nation has a few things to say on this subject as well.

In fact, only this week is published a press release on behalf of what looks to be another spin-off group ‘Choose Life’ with the following headline:

VAST MAJORITY OF WOMEN BELIEVE ABORTION IS CRUEL AND LAW SHOULD BE CHANGED

The press release, which I’ll analyse in a moment, trumpets the results of an opinion poll carried out by CommunicateResearch on their behalf into attitures towards abortion, the results of which, so this group claim, support their calls for changes in the present abortion law - but does it really do that and does the spin put on these results by this group genuine match up with the results of the poll?

The problems with Choose Life’s interpretation of the results of this opinion poll begin right from the very headling of the press release which makes two clear statements, that the ‘vast majority’ of women believe that abortion is cruel (full stop) and also beleive that the law should be changed.

In actual fact, the poll does not ask whether women believe abortion is cruel, in general, what is asks, instead, is whether respondents (not all of whom were women) agree or disagree with the statement that ‘aborting a baby at six month is cruel’ - to which 76% of all respondents agreed.

Not only does this group misrepresent the actual question asked in the poll but the question, itself, if both unreliable and biased, if the objective of the poll is to assess the level of support for current abortion laws. The question of whether one perceives abortion at six months is cruel is entirely subjective and limited in scope; the poll does not ask whether respondents consider an abortion to be ‘cruel’ to the foetus; to the pregnant mother or both, nor are respondents asked to consider whether, even if they perceive abortion at this stage to be cruel, whether it could also be justified or even considered necessary in certain circumstances.

As such, it is not possible to make any assertions as to the degree of public support for current abortion laws or changes in the current law based on this one question, not least as nowhere in the poll are respondents asked explicit whether they would wish to see or support changes in existing law - the headline states that women believe the law should be changed, but nowhere in the poll is that actual question asked.

The full text of the press release is given below with my own annotations, based on the actual results of the poll as published by CommunicateResearch, including a number of questions/responses that the Choose Life group have chosen to omit from their press release for what you will see are very obvious reasons.

The vast majority of women believe that abortion is “cruel” and that the existing law should be changed, according to the biggest ever professional survey of female opinion.

The assertions made int he press releases headlines, and restated here, I’ve already dealt with and shown to be unreliable. As for the ‘biggest ever professional survey of female opinion’, the research results show a total sample size of 1503, of whom 1046 were women, which means it is certainly not the biggest ever professional survey of female opinion on this subject, a 2002 survey into women’s’ perceptions of abortion law and practice (pdf) conducted by Marie Stopes International, used a sample size of 1,222 women aged 16-49 and included attitudinal data.

I’m pretty sure if one looks around, you’ll find even larger studies have been carried out in the past - a sample size of 1046 women is not that big and nothing in particular to crow about.

The survey also shows that most people – men and women – believe that too many abortions are being carried out each year and want to see the 200,000 a year toll reduced.

The survey does indeed show that ‘most people’ agreed with the proposition that 200,000 abortions a year is too many in total and should be reduced, although the actual figure for those who agreed with this statement was only 53% - 29% disagreed with the proposition (the survey did not ask why) and 18% chose ‘don’t know’ or refused to comment.

The survey does not, however, ask respondents to indicate by what methods they would prefer to see the number of abortions reduced and the simple fact is that any reasonable individual, even the most ardent pro-choice supporters, would prefer to see fewer abortions being carried out, albeit that their preferred means of achieving such a goal - better sex education and access to contraception - differs fundamentally from Pro-Lifers who favour a complete ot near complete ban on abortion.

The mere fact that a majority of people would like to see fewer abortions carried out each year, again, tells us nothing about attitudes toward current abortion law or any denabd for change.

Another key finding is that women overwhelmingly want Government money spent on charities offering alternatives to abortion, such as adoption. Eighty five per cent want to see more help given to women who want to keep their baby rather than further moves to make abortion easier.

This is, again, wholly misleading.

The actual questions asked in the survey were:

If you were forced to choose between the following outcomes, which ONE would you select?

Easier Access to Abortion – 10%

More support for women who wish to keep their baby – 84%

And

It has been argued that since the government funds abortions in private clinics, it should also make funds available to organisations offering women alternatives to abortion such as adoption. Would you support or oppose this proposal?

Support - 85%

Oppose - 11%

In neither case do these questions demonstrate a lack of support for the current abortion laws or servie provision - one can easily reach the conclusion that the government should prioritise greater support for alternatives to abortion simply on the basis of believeing that existing provision is already adequate and that women should have every available option open to them when choosing what’s best for them.

Pro-choice means exactly that, enabling women to choose according to their needs and their personal circumstances, whether than means abortion, adoption or motherhood.

The poll, carried out by CommunicateResearch for the campaigning group Choose Life, will add to the mounting pressure for a change in the abortion law and a reduction in the current upper limit.

But the poll suggests that women will not be satisfied with a simple reduction in the upper time limit of 24 weeks if that simply results in an increase in early abortions. Most want to see fewer terminations overall and wider availability of alternatives to abortion.

The poll, in actual fact, does nothing of the sort as none of conclusions cited so far in anyway conclusively supports this group’s claims - what they giving here are the results they wanted to see, not the results they actually obtained.

It comes shortly before a major public debate in London between doctors and lawyers on opposing sides of the abortion argument. Barrister Charles Foster and Professor Patricia Casey will declare that the the number of UK abortions is too high and that the Abortion Act, last revised in 1990, should be reviewed. They will be opposed by barrister Nick Toms and Dr Wendy Savage.

As noted previously, it does not follow that the perception that there are currently too many abortions being carried out should necessarily lead to either a review of the Abortion Act or greater restrictions on access to abortion, nor that such such restrictions would even reduce the total number of abortions carried out each year on UK citizens. As the experience of the Irish Republic clearly demonstrates, prohibitive restrictions on access to abortion, these days, only lead to those seeking abortion going elsewhere - mainly the UK.

The net effect of restricting access to abortion in the UK would be simply to encourage women seeking an abortion to go abroad, most likely to Eastern Europe to get the procedure done.

Tory leader David Cameron and his predecessor Michael Howard have both backed calls for a lower limit and the leader of Britain’s Roman Catholics Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor is to meet Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt next week to press for a tightening of the law.

Professor Casey said: “For years abortion has been cast as a central tenet of feminism and as essential to women’s empowerment. But recent developments in pro-life feminism give the lie to this thesis and abortion has devastating effects on the psychological well-being of many women.

"There have been several influential studies published recently that show an increased risk for psychiatric disorder and psychiatric hospitalisation among women who have abortions.

“So, contrary to the early feminist rhetoric promoting abortion as a positive choice for women with crisis pregnancies, women deserve better and we cannot and should not act as oppressors of our unborn children as we were once oppressed by the structures within society.“

Professor Casey, quoted here, is Professor of Psychiatry at University College Dublin and Consultant Psychiatrist in the Mater Hospital, Dublin, and from what little biographical information I can find appears to something akin to the Irish equivalent of Raj Persaud.

Abortion is undoubtedly a traumatic experience for any woman and in some case may result in psychiatric problems, but the same can be said for both adoption and motherhood. In talking about ‘pro-life feminism’, Prof. Casey is talking about abortion in a political and a professional context, one which I would certain hope would not carry through in her work as a consultant psychiatrist as such a biased view of this issue, if applied in therapy, would create severe ethical problems and compromise her objectivity within the doctor/client relationship.

Andrea Williams, public policy officer for the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, which is organising Monday’s debate, said: “This poll confirms that women in this country are deeply unhappy with the existing abortion laws and want them tightened up. It also suggests many women fear that too often abortions are carried out because of social pressures and not because the women concerned want a termination. Above all women want to see fewer abortions in this country. It would be disastrous if the move towards a lower time limit for abortion were to lead to more early abortions. That would achieve very little”

Again, it is worth restating that the questions asked in the survey and the response received do not support the view put forward here - in fact the single most telling question in the survey is one that the press release omits from consideration, thus far:

Q5 Do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements about abortion?

A woman’s right to choose always outweighs the rights of the unborn

Agree – 65%, Disagree – 26%

In fact the survey also include this question, for which the response is equally revealing:

Q.4 If a candidate in a general election in your constituency publicly said they believed that abortion should be made less easily available would yoube more likely or less likely to vote for them, or would it make no difference?

More Likely – 19%

No Difference – 56%

Less Likely – 22%

65% of those surveyed consider a woman’s right to choice in the matter of abortion to be paramount, which is altogether a kick in the teeth for the pro-life lobby as is the abject their failure to find any evidence support for greater restrictions on abortion has a significant impact on voting intentions.

The latest survey reveals mounting disquiet among women at the scale of abortions in Britain and the laxity of the existing law. It is based on interviews with 1046 women and 457 men.

Having read the survey results that’s not, as you might have already gathered, the impression I’ve gained, but then as a trained psychologist what do I know about attitude surveys… still, lets take a closer look at the evidence.

The key findings are:

More than eight in ten women believe that aborting a baby at the current upper age limit is cruel.

That’s the third occasion that this statistic is quoted - see my earlier comments and contrast with the 65% support for the pre-eminence of a women’s right to choice.

A massive 95 per cent of Britons agree that the abortion law should be kept under regular review and fewer than one in twenty disagrees.

It’s only reasonable for any law to be kept under periodic review, so support for this proposition tells us nothing at all about any level of support for actual change, it just means that people think it prudent to keep an eye on how the law is working in practice.

Two-thirds of Britons believe that abortion law hasn’t kept pace with our knowledge of early development in the womb. Only one-quarter disagree.

Does this indicate actual support for a reduction in the time limit for elective abortion on grounds other than disability or not? The one question that the survey avoids asking is whether the current time limit should actually be reduced - quite why is unclear as it’s a simple enough question.

The most one can legitimately infer from this statement is a belief that abortion law should take into account current medical practice and clinical evidence on the viability of the foetus at certain stages of development and nothing more - it indicates support for evidence-based law-making not necessarily for further restrictions in access to abortion.

The survey also finds widespread dissatisfaction with the way the current law operates.

78 per cent of women want a compulsory cooling-off period between diagnosis of pregnancy and any abortion.

So what? Women want time to think things through properly before making a major decision about their life - nothing unreasonable in that.

That the law does not explicitly provide for a ‘cooling-off period’ between diagnosis of pregnancy and abortion is not a deficiency in law - most pregnancies, today, are self-diagnosed using home tests, follwing which, even if a women’s immediate view is that she wants abortion, she still has to obtain an appointment with a medical practitioner, which takes a couple of days at least, then undergo a counselling session and then be given an appointment for the actual procedure. Unless someone is badly ‘on the clock’, having discovered their pregnancy or decided on a termination at a very late stage in relation to the current 24 week limit, even going private with result in a delay of about a week between the initial decision to have a termination and the actual procedure, allowing time to think things over.

Why is there no statutory cooling off period - most likely because giving a patient time to think things through adn come to an informed decision is simple matter of medical ethics and, therefore, one that does not require legislation. If anyone feels that a doctor has rushed or pushed them into a decision on abortion without giving them time to reach an informed decision then their recourse is a complaint of professional misconduct to the GMC.

A massive 96 per cent of women want a right to be fully informed of the medical risks associated with abortion.

Well who in their right mind wouldn’t want to be fully informed of the medical risks before any medical procedure, If a doctor prescribes medication you’re not familar with then the second question you ask is generally going to be whether there are any side-effect - the first is always, "is this going to help?", obviously.

Again, the right to be fully informed of medical risks is a matter of medical ethics and not one that requires legislation.

The most common reason for abortion is perceived to be on grounds of disability (66 per cent), and this proportion is even higher among women than among men. But this is far from correct. In 2004 only one per cent of abortions in England & Wales took place for this reason.

Public understanding of the grounds on which abortion is sought is certainly out of kilter with reality in the matter of disability, however this was not the only thing that this particular question looked at - the actual question was:

Q6 As far as you can tell, what would you say are the most common reasons for abortion?

And the full results were:

The baby’s father is unsupportive - 45%

A girl’s parents don’t agree with her having a baby - 55%

It would be difficult to combine a baby with a full time job - 48%

Having a baby would interfere with education - 52%

The unborn baby has a disability - 66%

Note the obvious bias here, in so far as the answers given seem to relate primarily to abortions in teenagers, particularly those who are still living with parents and in full-time education.

In actual fact, one the most recent complete statistics (2004) only 2% of abortions were carried out on under 16s and teenagers, in total, account for only 20% of all abortions. The largest number of abortions by single age group - 27% - occurs in the 20-24 age group, while women over 30 account, in total, for nearly 29% of all abortions.

The vast majority of women seeking abortions in the UK are mature adults - more that half of all abortions occur in women over the age of 24 - so its not just in the matter of disability that there is a degree if general ignorance about abortion, but equally a significant degree of ignorance as to just who might be having all these abortions and, in fact, the majority of women who do seek an abortion or more than capable of making and informed adult decision as to what they believe to be in their best interests.

Two-thirds of Britons support, and one-quarter oppose, a right for healthcare workers not to have to sign abortion forms or assist abortions where this would conflict with their ethical views.

As far as I’m aware, medical practioners are under no legal requirement to sign abortion forms or assist in abortion procedures if they have a personal moral objection to abortion - should this arise the would simply be under a duty to refer the individual to medical practioner who will deal with them.

Okay, I could be wrong, in which case I would expect a fellow blogger such as the excellent Dr Crippen to correct any misconceptions I might have on this matter…

84 per cent of Britons, including the same proportion of women, believe parents of girls under 16 have the right to know if their daughter has been referred for abortion. This rises to 90 per cent among women in social groups DE, often regarded as the most prolific client group for abortion.

Again, this is a matter of natural parental concern - of course parents of girls under 16 want to know if their child is considering having an abortion. Whether some parents should know is a very different matter and I suspect that a majority of people, if asked, would take the view that it is only right to withhold such information from parents where, at the very least, it may put the teenager in question at risk of harm.

Once parent’s get over the initial shock of finding out that their teenage daughter is pregnant, many and probably most are supportive and concerned only with the best interests and well-being of their child - sadly there are some who aren’t and who may either pressure their child into having (or not having) the baby againsther wishes, or in the worst case scenarios, may abuse, assault and even kill their daughter.

The question is misleading simply because it fair to ask respondents to give an informed response on consideration of the full issues.

More than seven in ten Britons, including two-thirds of women, agree that fathers should be given a say over whether their child is aborted. Among women aged 18-24 this rises to 79 per cent.

Again, the question itself is ambiguous and therefore misleading - all this demonstrates is the view that a majority of people think that a woman who is considering having an abortion should make some effort to discuss the matter with the father of the child and seek their opinion. What this question does not address is whether peopel believe that fathers should somehow be given a veto over the decision to abort a foetus and, therefore, override the woman’s wishes. Ask that question and I suspect that the outcome would look much more like that given in relation to the question of a woman’s right to choose, at least amongst women, which is what actually matters most in this case.

More people agree than disagree with the statement ‘most abortions are carried out for purely social reasons’ (49 per cent:41 per cent). This rises to 56 per cent agreement among Labour voters.

The question is simply ambiguous once again - what does the survey mean by social reasons?

Does this include decisions based on personal economic and financial circumstances or not, for example, and if so was this clearly communicated to respondents or not. One can infer nothing from this question due to its poor framing.

The phrase “a woman’s right to choose” clearly carries enormous emotional weight, as 65 per cent of Britons (both genders) agree that it ‘always outweighs the rights of the unborn’. This however conflicts with the earlier statements about, for instance, abortion for disability.

The supposed ‘conflict’ actually comes later in this press release, not earlier, but never mind - it’s up next so I’ll deal with it there.

Disability

Only around one-third of people are aware that abortion is legal up to birth if the baby is disabled, and men are more ignorant than women of this. The youngest age group, 18-24 yrs, are the least likely to be aware of this fact.

Most Britons regard it as unacceptable that under existing law abortion is legal up to birth on grounds of disability. Opinion runs strongest among the 18-24 yr age group, 73 per cent of whom regard it as unacceptable – perhaps because disability rights legislation is a more recent development. Interestingly, among both men and women those who voted Labour in the 2005 General Election are more likely to regard this law as unacceptable than those who voted for any other party.

The reference to a woman’s right to choose carrying emotional weight seem clearly intended to devalue the results of that question - 65% support - as does the allusion to a conflict with the response to the question of abortion on grounds of disability being available right up to birth.

In fact the two are only in conflict to a limited extent based, primarily, on perceptions as to the viability of the foetus - in fact , if one takes the two set of responses together, the issue of viability is absolutely central to this whole issue.

What one can quite reasonably infer here is that mainstream public opinion is broadly of the view that a woman’s right to choice in abortion should be supported, but only to the point at which foetal development is such that the child has a reasonable chance of survival outside the womb - this is perceived by many as a pragmatic view of pregnancy which holds that the notional right to life begins for foetus at that point where it is capable of surviving independently of the mother.

That’s not the absolute right to choice that some favour but its also certainly not the absolute prohibition of all abortions that pro-lifers are after either - it’s a compromise position and one which relies largely of medical practice and technology.

The apparent conflict with views on abortion and disability is, therefore, not quite so straightforward as this group are trying to suggest and certainly does not negate or mitigate entirely against a woman’s right to choice - in simple terms how one views the rights and wrongs of abortion up to birth in cases of foetal disability is entirely contingent on the nature of disability at issue and its affect of on the viability of the foetus.

Public opinion, it would seem, would not support such late abortions for disabilities where the foetus in question has a good chance of survival and is likely to experience a decent quality of life, even allowing for their disability, but this would almost certain not carry over to severe disabilities that are likely to result in very early mortality or in the child, once born, having little or not quality of life whatsoever.

All this really tells us that abortion raises a series of complex ethical debates in which, by and large, the public view is that its interests are best served by a reliance on medical evidence - the viability argument carries considerable weight in the public eye and, for those without strong moral/ethical views on the subject is perceived to be a valid position, albeit as both Owen (linked earlier) and Brian Barder note, its adoption by the pro-life lobby is entirely hypocritical - the best response to this new particular tactic, by the way, is to turn the moral/ethical argument on its head by questioning the pro-life as to the extent to which it would be prepared to accept medical intervention in pregnancy at ever earlier stages. How would, for example, this largely, if not entirely, religiously motivated lobby respond to Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ scenario in which conception and incubation to ‘birth’ takes place entirely outside the womb? One suspect, not very well, which is precisely why the question should be asked.

Support for alternatives to abortion

87 per cent of women (and 83 per cent of men) agree that government funds should also be available to organisations offering alternatives to abortion such as adoption, in light of the funding given to private abortion clinics.

Well quite - so what? It’s entirely reasonable and laudable to provide women with alternatives to abortion, should they choose to take up such options - of course by far the best alternative is always high quality sex education and access to effective contraception, which, curiously enough, this survey neglects to mention at all.

89 per cent of women support a legal duty on doctors to provide access to advice both from abortion providers and from organisations offering alternatives such as adoption.

Again, a balanced spread of information on the options available to women in order to support them in making an informed decision as to what’s best for them is, quite obviously, a good thing - provided that there is adequate quality control as to the nature and content of the information provided.

If any organisation wishes to promote adoption as an alternative to abortion, then that’s fine by mean, as long as its done properly and with the intent to inform - however, its also perfectly clear that any group whose approach is try and moralise or scare women into taking such an option, as some pro-life groups seem to think is acceptable, have no business receiving public money or being given access to women who may be considering abortion as an option - which is probably not what the pro-lifers would really want.

And finally…

85 per cent of women would rather see more support for women who wish to keep their baby than easier access to abortion – and support for this is particularly strong among the 18-24 age group and Labour voters.

Well yes, but the actual question, as noted earlier, is:

If you were forced to choose between the following outcomes, which ONE would you select?

Easier Access to Abortion – 10%

More support for women who wish to keep their baby – 84%

And the fact that a large number of women would like to see more support for women who wish to keep their baby in no way indicates support for any increased limitations in access to abortions nor, indeed, should it come as any great surprise to find that Labour voters strongly support this idea - the survey does not ask the question that needs to be asked here, which is what kinds of additional support should be provided, but as a Labour Party member I think I can safely predict that the kind of additional support that most Labour voters would have in mind would come in terms of economic/financial support, access to high quality affordable child care, strong employment rights and an equitable labour market that does not unduly penalise women for taking time out to have a baby - all things which serve to minimise the impact of financial/career considerations in the decision-making process undertaken by women which find themselves, usually unexpected, pregnant.

If Labour voters, and particularly socialists, have a clear and long-standing moral and ethical position on abortion it is is that no woman should - in an ideal world - be deprived or unduly limited and constrianed in her right to choice on the basis of purely, or largely, economic/financial considerations.

That, I suspect, is something that this particular group simply do not understand - and probably never will.

 

Byline: Unity

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Apropos of my last article on the rantings of Mad Mel on the subject of the government’s proposed Sexual Orientation Regulations (consultation document - pdf), I thought I’d take a bit of a closer look at the campaign being conducted, in the main, by a evangelical group called the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, which seeks express exemptions from these regulations for religious believers.

Before moving ahead to look at the LCF’s campaign, its worth putting this group in it proper context - on it’s website its gives a very brief ‘history’ of the organisation as follows:

Originally founded in 1852, in London, as the Lawyers’ Prayer Union, LCF has grown to become a national organisation with around 1500 members at every stage of the legal profession. We have strong links with the Association of Christian Law Firms and also have many international links.

It’s also a registered charity, with a current annual income of around £250,000 per year, derived largely from donations and tax recovered via the gift aid system and from conferences & fundraising events and recieves no public money.

This background information is important because it demonstrates that what we have here is a pretty mainstream evangelical Christian group and not a Christian Voice-style bunch of religious wing-nuts.

Against this, however, the Law Society of England and Wales, alone, gives its present membership as being of the order of 116,000 practising solicitors, to which can be added around 14,500 practising barristers, who are regulated by the Bar Council. Even without adding in the figures for Scotland and Northern Ireland, which have their own professional/regulatory bodies, LCF represent a very small proportion of the total number of lawyers in the UK, less than 1%, and should not, therefore, be regarded as representing mainstream legal opinion.

In addition to the obligatory press releases and the LCF’s public policy officer, Andrea Minichiello Williams, doing the rounds of various Christian news websites, the LCF has produced two ‘information and action packs’, one for churches and one for non-church Christian groups (both MS Word docs), which have been promoted through the ‘Christian Concern for Our Nation’ website, in addition to submitting a formal response to the government’s consultation, and it’s these I want to look at in more detail.

To begin with, the LCF’s general position is quite succinctly summed up by this statement, which accompanies the information packs on the Christian Concern for Our Nation (CCFON) website:

Why is it [the Sexual Orientation Regulations] a problem? Firstly, we must stress that Christians are commanded to love all their neighbours (including homosexuals) equally. Christians would never want to be homophobic or discriminate against homosexuals out of bigotry or prejudice. Christians of course earnestly desire the repentance and salvation of homosexuals.

However, the Bible is clear that the only rightful sexual relationship for which we were created, is a relationship between a man and a woman in the context of a legitimate marriage. Consequently there are times when Christians need to be free to discriminate against homosexuals in order to make it clear that we believe in the Bible’s teaching that homosexual practice is wrong.

I supposed the best one can say about this group is that they’re at least open in their hypocrisy - they would never want to be homophobic or discriminate out of bigotry or prejudice (really?) but they still need (supposedly) a statutory right to discriminate against homosexuals simply because of their sexuality.

Well, let’s take a look at what the dictionary has to say on the subject of prejudice:

Prejudice:

1. a. An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.

The mere that an individual may be homosexual says little or nothing about the kind of person the might be or the kind of relationships they might have or be in at any particular time, therefore, to judge them and their character in an adverse manner purely on their sexual orientation would clearly fit the dictionary definition of prejudice, the thing that Christians would never want to be (allegedly).

Right from the outset, the assertion that prejudice and discrimination do not go hand in hand looks to be little more than hypocritical sophistry, not that we find this to be an uncommon feature in the LCF’s arguments as is apparent when we move on to look at the actual views forwarded to the government in response to its consultation:

Anti-discrimination legislation


The Bible teaches that all people are created equally in the image of God and all are loved by God (Genesis 1 and John 3:16). The corollary is that as Christians, we support the outlawing of unjustified discrimination, and therefore support the Government in their implementation of anti-discrimination legislation regarding race, sex and disability. Such legislation has been a helpful tool in seeking to redress injustice in the treatment of different (often marginalised) people in society.

So far, so good, at least as regards discrimination on grounds of race, gender and disability, but what about other forms of discrimination?

In the consultation it is stated that

‘By introducing these regulations, we will be treating sexual orientation discrimination with the same seriousness afforded to discrimination on the grounds of disability, sex, race and religion or belief’.

We are of the view that it is a mistake to approach the issues of religion (and belief) and sexual orientation, as directly comparable to race, sex and disability. While race and sex are fundamental to a person, unalterable, and incontrovertibly fixed at birth (disability can be fixed at birth or at a later stage), religion and sexual orientation are not of the same nature. People cannot by their volition change their race or their sex or their disability, but they can (and do) change their religion or their sexual orientation.

So the logic here is that while its wrong to discriminate against individuals in regards to factors over which they have no choice, things are very different when its come to facets of their character or lifestyle in which they are perceived to have a choice as to their beliefs and/or behaviour.

This is an interesting line of argument to say the least - for one thing it assumes that one’s sexuality is a matter of absolute choice, as if to suggest that one might arrive at the conclusion that you are attracted to someone of the same gender after carefully contemplating the alternatives or even wake up one morning and decide that you’d quite like to give being gay a try to see if it suits you.

Such a view is patently absurd and entirely contrary to the mainstream scientific position on homosexuality, which is set out here in a factsheet on the website of the American Psychological Association:

What Causes a Person To Have a Particular Sexual Orientation?

There are numerous theories about the origins of a person’s sexual orientation; most scientists today agree that sexual orientation is most likely the result of a complex interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors. In most people, sexual orientation is shaped at an early age. There is also considerable recent evidence to suggest that biology, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, play a significant role in a person’s sexuality. In summary, it is important to recognize that there are probably many reasons for a person’s sexual orientation and the reasons may be different for different people. 

Is Sexual Orientation a Choice?

No, human beings can not choose to be either gay or straight. Sexual orientation emerges for most people in early adolescence without any prior sexual experience. Although we can choose whether to act on our feelings, psychologists do not consider sexual orientation to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed.

Can Therapy Change Sexual Orientation?

No. Even though most homosexuals live successful, happy lives, some homosexual or bisexual people may seek to change their sexual orientation through therapy, sometimes pressured by the influence of family members or religious groups to try and do so. The reality is that homosexuality is not an illness. It does not require treatment and is not changeable.

Is Homosexuality a Mental Illness or Emotional Problem?

No. Psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals agree that homosexuality is not an illness, mental disorder or an emotional problem. Over 35 years of objective, well-designed scientific research has shown that homosexuality, in and itself,is not associated with mental disorders or emotional or social problems. Homosexuality was once thought to be a mental illness because mental health professionals and society had biased information. In the past the studies of gay, lesbian and bisexual people involved only those in therapy, thus biasing the resulting conclusions. When researchers examined data about these people who were not in therapy, the idea that homosexuality was a mental illness was quickly found to be untrue.

The psychological underpinning of individual sexual orientation have been studied extensively over many years without producing any credible evidence to support the view put forward by the LCF despite the many attempts made by religiously motivated researchers to ‘prove’ that homosexuality could be ‘treated’ and ‘reversed’, as this overview of so-called ‘reparative therapy’ from the University of California Department of Psychology shows:

In many of these behavior-change techniques, "success" has been defined as suppression of homoerotic response or mere display of physiological ability to engage in heterosexual intercourse. Neither outcome is the same as adopting the complex set of attractions and feelings that constitute sexual orientation.

Many interventions aimed at changing sexual orientation have succeeded only in reducing or eliminating homosexual behavior rather than in creating or increasing heterosexual attractions. They have, in effect, deprived individuals of their capacity for sexual response to others. These "therapies" have often exposed their victims to electric shocks or nausea-producing drugs while showing them pictures of same-sex nudes (such techniques appear to be less common today than in the past).

Another problem in many published reports of "successful" conversion therapies is that the participants’ initial sexual orientation was never adequately assessed. Many bisexuals have been mislabeled as homosexuals with the consequence that the "successes" reported for the conversions actually have occurred among bisexuals who were highly motivated to adopt a heterosexual behavior pattern.

The extent to which people have actually changed their behavior – even within the confines of these inadequate operational definitions – often has not been systematically assessed. Instead, only self reports of patients or therapists’ subjective impressions have been available. More rigorous objective assessments (e.g., behavioral indicators over an extended period of time) have been lacking (Coleman, 1982; Haldeman, 1991, 1994; Martin, 1984).

Some psychoanalysts claim to have conducted empirical research demonstrating that their "therapies" are able to change gay people into heterosexuals. Their studies have multiple flaws, including a lack of safeguards against bias and a lack of control groups. Rather than having patients evaluated by an independent third party who is unaware of which patients received the "reparative therapy," these studies are simply compilations of self-reports from psychoanalysts who are attempting to change their patients’ sexual orientation (and who are highly motivated to report "success").

The rational, scientific view of sexual orientation is, therefore, both that it is a rather more complex matter than simply a choice between heterosexuality and homosexuality, between which there exists a state of uncertainty or confusion that is  bisexuality, but rather that sexual orientation is a continuum within which individuals find and express their sexual feelings without conscious choice as to what those feeling might be or how they might manifest themselves. Choice, in this context, is not a matter of making positive determinations about one’s sexuality so much as repressing those aspects of one sexual feelings that one is uncomfortable about expressing, most often in response to external factors particularly social pressures arising from religious, social and cultural beliefs.

The view, therefore, that sexual orientation should not be according the same status as race, gender or disability in formulating anti-discrimination legislation is not only false but also highly repressive and damaging to individual.

LCF then goes on to state:

The corollary of our view that it is wrong to treat sexual orientation as equivalent to sex, race and disability, is that it is a mistake to use legislation to try and regulate and control attitudes towards sexual orientation. In our opinion, society ought to be left to draw its own conclusions about sexual orientation, just as it has in past centuries. Whether or not one agrees with other people’s views on sexual orientation, there has always been a freedom to hold, put forward, discuss and debate any personal view about sexual orientation. This is a facet of our highly prized freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, and freedom of expression. The problem is that the Regulations may allow someone to express a view about sexual orientation, but may equally deny them the right to live according to that view. This strips the value away from the right to freedom of expression. Only where there is a compelling justification should the state take away a person’s freedom to act in accordance with their beliefs.

Because of our opinion that sexual orientation is dissimilar to sex, race and disability, it is also our opinion that there is no compelling justification for removing from society the freedom to act according to their views on sexual orientation (subject to what we say below). For the Government to try and regulate and control people’s attitudes to sexual orientation by seeking to eliminate discrimination in the way people behave indicates, in our view, an illegitimate attempt to ‘nationalise’ a private moral issue.

This segement of the LCF’s response takes us quite neatly back to the commentary from Reynolds vs United States, from which I quoted yesterday in commenting on Melanie Phillips’ article on this same subject, specifically this statement:

Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order.

This is fundamental essence of all current anti-discrimination legislation in addition to that which relates to free expression and freedom of thought, belief and conscience - one is entirely free to hold whatever views and beliefs on wishes, no matter how prurient and without risk of penalty of law.

However when one comes to manifest those views and beliefs in the form of certain actions, which can include the publication or public utterance of those views, one may be subject to certain constraints and restrictions in the interests of public order or of certain social duties; hence the existance of laws covering libel and defamation, threatening behaviour, incitement to hatred of various forms and the commission of other criminal offences and criminal conspiracies and, of course, laws that prohibit discrimination in the workplace
and in other aspects of everyday life.

LCF’s view is that ‘only where there is a compelling justification should the state take away a person’s freedom to act in accordance with their beliefs’ and in this case such a compelling justification is clearly present in prohibiting discriminatory behaviour that infringes on the civil rights and liberties of the gay community.

Somewhat more amusingly, the LCF appear to have failed entirely to recognise just how easily they can be hoisted on their own petard by their own line of argument - if society is justified in disregarding the legitimate claim of the gay community to equal treatment and the prohibition of discrimination based on their sexual orientation simply because the regarded by Christians as having the capacity to choose their sexual orientation, then one must surely be equally jusitified in taking the very same attitude toward Christianity and ita adherents, and indeed other religions, given that as the LCF state:

We are of the view that it is a mistake to approach the issues of religion (and belief) and sexual orientation, as directly comparable to race, sex and disability. While race and sex are fundamental to a person, unalterable, and incontrovertibly fixed at birth (disability can be fixed at birth or at a later stage), religion and sexual orientation are not of the same nature. People cannot by their volition change their race or their sex or their disability, but they can (and do) change their religion or their sexual orientation.

Moving ahead with the LCF’s response we come to a glorious little treatise on the nature of homophobia, which is well worth highlighting:
We are concerned that the approach taken by the draft Regulations is not focussed precisely enough on the type of discrimination which the Government seeks to eradicate, and therefore the scope of the Regulations will inadvertently criminalise the expression of legitimate views on homosexuality.

Although it is not stated expressly, the tenor of the examples of discrimination given in the consultation indicate that the mischief which the Government is seeking to deal with through these Regulations might be better described as discrimination on the grounds of homophobia, rather than on the grounds of sexual orientation. Homophobia can be defined as an irrational prejudice against a person based on a dislike of their homosexual behaviour or their sexual orientation towards people of the same sex. Our conclusion that this is the sort of behaviour that the Government want to eradicate is supported by the statement on the Women and Equality Unit website which says:

‘In December 2003, the Employment Directive, which outlawed discrimination and harassment in the workplace on the grounds of sexual orienatation, came into force. The new law means that it will be unlawful to deny lesbian, gay and bisexual people jobs because of prejudice’


Entirely distinct from irrational (homophobic) prejudice against homosexuals, is the Christian teaching, first codified around 3300 years ago, that homosexuality is sinful and not a right way for people to live their lives. This Biblical doctrine has been followed by millions of believers across the centuries. It is not an irrational homophobic prejudice, it is a conviction, based on a belief that the Bible is the word of God, that in accordance with clear Biblical doctrine, homosexual conduct is sinful and wrong. Consequently our response to the draft Regulations is founded on the Bible’s teaching (see further, below).


The examples of discrimination given in the Consultation are not examples of this latter doctrinal Christian view that homosexual practice is not equal to heterosexual married practice, they are examples of unjustified prejudice towards homosexuals by people who have an irrational dislike of those who are attracted to people of the same sex. Because of the failure to distinguish between these two foundations for discriminating on the grounds of sexual orientation (homophobia or Biblical doctrine) the Regulations currently make it illegal to discriminate on either ground in relation to the provision of goods, services and facilities etc.

Did you follow that?

Outlawing discrimination founded in irrational prejudice (i.e. homophobia) is fine because prejudices based on Biblical doctrine aren’t (supposedly) irrational. This is a basic logical fallacy called an appeal to authority (argumentum ad vericundium), one in which, as a society, we are expected to accept the view that Christian’s should be permitted to discriminate on grounds of sexuality solely on trust in the authority of the text of the Bible.

There is no rational argument here, we are simply expected to accept that LCF and those who take a literalist view of the Bible, should be entitled to put their prejudices into practice because those practices are founded on scripture. And yet, in reality, Biblical reference have been used over the centuries to justify all manner of prejudices and discriminatory practices that are, today, prohibited; including racism, slavery and institutionalised gender inequality to name but three. If, as a society, we can reject the presumed authority of the Bible in those areas, then why should we not also reject its view of homosexuality in the same way, as being one that is woefully outdated and therefore, one that we have simply outgrown to the point that it has no further relevance.

In the same way that we have no difficulty in rejecting the validity of prejudice founded on political or cultural beliefs, we should have no problem in rejecting those founded on religious beliefs - Christian prejudice against homosexuality rests on no more solid foundations than those to be found in Fascism’s prejudice against Jews, both relief on an unquestioning belief in a highly questionable authority for which there is no concrete evidence.

The blatant sophistry continues unabated in the LCF’s next line of argument, in which they attempt to ‘explain’ Biblical teachings on homosexuality:

We are concerned that the approach taken by the draft Regulations is discloses a failure to fully understand Biblical doctrine relating to the issue of sexual orientation.


The Bible teaches that Christians (and indeed all people) should love a person irrespective of sexual orientation. Sexual orientation being defined as an attraction to someone of the opposite sex, someone of the same sex, or people of both sexes. A homosexual orientation per se is, according to the Bible, not wrong. Everyone undergoes temptation and temptation to do something is not in itself sinful. Therefore, we would endorse and support the Government’s attempt to eradicate discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation per se in much the same way as we support their desire to eliminate homophobic discrimination.


However, the Bible is clear that to act on a homosexual attraction and to practice homosexuality is sinful and wrong. The distinction may appear semantic, but in fact it is of great importance. People who discriminate based on sexual orientation are discriminating on a personal basis – because someone is attracted to people of the same sex. On the other hand, Christians following the Bible have no desire to discriminate against that person at all, but in order to obey the Bible, Christians must discriminate against that person’s conduct. Of course, discriminating on the grounds of a person’s conduct will often result in indirectly discriminating against the person themselves, but the difference in intent and emphasis is key.

Again, we are of the view that the discrimination which the Government seeks to eradicate is the unjustifiable discrimination against a person based purely on their orientation, it is not the discrimination of a Christian who discriminates because the Bible teaches that homosexual conduct is not equal to heterosexual conduct in the context of marriage.


Because of the failure to distinguish between discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and on the grounds of sexual practice, the Regulations currently make both unlawful. The onus is on the Government not to draft a law which inadvertently renders illegal a justified doctrinal view, however hard it is to frame that law to capture only unjustified discrimination. If anything, we think this difficulty further illustrates our view that this issue is not well suited to legislative intervention.

Again, the position here is one of manifest hypocrisy in which, in the case of homosexuality, we are expected to accept an artificial distinction between their sexual orientation and whether and how they express that orientation in terms of actions, but when it comes to Christians their actions are indivisible and indistinguishable from their beliefs and, consequently, they are justifed in discriminating against homosexuals - this is nothing more than purile rubbish of the highest order.

So far, we’ve covered the basic principle of the LCF’s arguments, none of which stand up to rational/logical inquiry, but what of the practical aspects of their views?

One of the LCF’s main contentions is that these new regulations will force Christians to act against their beliefs and consciences, which sounds like a matter for concern, until one starts to look at the kind of examples given by the LCF to illustrate their arguments:

Example 1: an advertising company when interviewing for a new post will have to start asking all interviewees ‘would you refuse to advertise an event that encouraged homosexual practice’. A Christian who answered ‘yes, I would refuse’ would not be given the job because the employer would understandably not want to risk taking on someone whose views might place the employer in breach of the law in the future. Therefore the Christian would effectively be being discriminated against on the ground of their religion.

Example 2: any Christian teacher working in a state school would be liable to be sacked if they refused to teach the equivalence of homosexuality to heterosexuality because this would place the school in breach of the Regulations. In the future the school would be more wary about recruiting Christians because of their religious views that homosexual practice is sinful, and so would discriminate on the grounds of religion.

The first example given is complete and utter rubbish - there is no express requirement in law, not even in existing anti-discrimination statues, which would require an employer to question a candidate at interview about their attitudes towards homosexuality, race, gender, disability or anything other field in which discriminatory conduct is prohibited, although many employers, particularly in the public and voluntary sectors, do include a generic question about candidates understanding of equality and equal opportunities.

Discrimination in employment on religious grounds is already unlawful under the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, which the LCF neglect to mention here, or in their information packs, such that one can only conclude that they are indulging in deliberate scare-mongering in an effort to artificially induce a moral panic on this issue amongst their potential supporters and so give rise to an inflated response in support of their position.

Example 2 is equally spurious in as much as it would, first and foremost, apply only to a very limited range of subjects - in most state secondary schools only science, if dealing with sex education, Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE), and possibly Religious Education - very few teachers could, therefore, be affected in the way suggested.

More importantly, teaching children about the Christian view on homosexuality should present no difficulty whatsoever if one goes about it in a strictly factual manner in which children are invited to reflect on plurality of opinions on the subject - but then that’s the real problem here, which arises because the hypotetical teacher’s objection in such a situation is not predicated on education but on indoctrination in which the objective is not to teach pupils that Christian’s believe homosexuality to be sinful but to directly teach them that homosexuality is a sin and thereby pass on theri personal prejudices, irrespective of whether they beliefs are shared by pupils, their parents, or the school itself.

Personally, if these regulations did limit the scope for Christian’s to make use of the state education system to indoctrinate children in their prejudices then this all to the good and can;t come soon enough - even if I doubt that this will be the case in practice. In any case it is well with the capacity of schools to permit a teacher to withdraw from teaching a particular element of the curriculum if that creates difficulties of conscience for the teacher, a furnish a replacement for such lesson who has no such problem. In fact from personal experience, schools and colleges have in the past also withdrawn individual teachers from lessons where it was felt that they might  go beyond education and into direct indoctrination due to their personal beliefs. This happened at the sixth form college I attended many years ago, where an openly Marxist sociology lecturer was not permitted to teach that portion of the ‘A’ level curriculum that dealt with Marxism for fear that he might attempt to indocrinate students and recruit them into Marxist politics - complete irrational bullshit, of course, but the college did it anyway and used another tutor for those sessions.

LCF follow up these example with a fairly banal exposition on the relative merits of articles 9 (religious freedom) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination) in which they argue that their version of religious liberty - i.e. the right to discriminate - trumps the rights of the gay community not to be discriminated against in the provision of goods and services, one in which they fail to notice the usual qualifying codecil, which applies to almost all the articles, excepting 3 (prohibition of torture) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination):

Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Before returning, again, to the subject of free expression and education:

Prima facie the Regulations make it illegal to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation in the content of the education given in both secular and faith schools. For example, to teach that homosexual practice was wrong and not equivalent to heterosexual practice within marriage would clearly count as discrimination against any homosexual students – it is undoubtedly ‘less favourable treatment’ which is ‘on the grounds of sexual orientation’. The syllogistic conclusion is therefore that under the draft Regulations as they stand, it would be illegal to express the view in schools that homosexual practice is not equivalent to heterosexual practice within marriage.

In fact, prima facie, it would not be unlaw to express the view in schools that homosexual practice is not equivalent to heterosexual practice within marriage in the context of explaining the nature of Christian belief, it may be unlawful for schools to proselytyse and indoctrinate on that particular subject, which would be no bad thing at all.

Frankly, if Christians, whether in the context of a church or community group, wish to indulge in indoctrination then they can do on their own time and in a context where pupils (and parents) have a choice as to whether they wish to be exposed to such ‘teachings’ - they should not expect the state to facilitate such a course of action, nor should the state support such actions.

Central to most of the LCF’s arguments is the contention that beliefs and actions are, for a Christian, entirely indivisible, this, again, being a position justified solely on Biblical authority:

The previous paragraphs have highlighted that the current proposals for the Regulations cover and render illegal discrimination even if it derives from a genuine expression of Christian doctrine about homosexual practice. On an initial reading, it might seem that a Christian who believes in the Bible need simply be given the freedom of conscience to believe homosexual practice is wrong and be given freedom of speech to express that view to others. However, it is of course trite to point out that almost all religions, and certainly Christianity, demand the devotion not just of the follower’s mind and lips, but also, critically, of their actions. There is no value to declaring that homosexual practice is sinful and wrong if your actions then run completely contrary to that view…

By definition Christianity is not a purely personal faith or private set of beliefs: Jesus’ command to all Christians is to go to ‘all nations … teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you’ (Matthew 28:19-20). This requires more than mere words. Christians are charged to live with integrity (Titus 2:6-8), which means not just professing the Bible’s teachings, but also acting in accordance with them. It would be anathema to Christianity to allow Christians to profess Biblical teaching but to force Christians to act inconsistently with that teaching. Firstly then, any law which does not provide freedom for Christians to discriminate on the grounds of the Bible’s teaching about homosexuality, denies every single Christian the freedom to live with integrity.

And yet no such consideration is afforded to homosexuals, whose sexual orientation, and therefore sexual behaviour, is an intrinsic element of their personal character - as here in their suggestion for ‘improving’ the definition of what constitutes discrimination:

…one possible way of addressing all the problems we have identified would be by defining more accurately what is meant by ‘sexual orientation’ discrimination so that the new law would only capture:

a) homophobic discrimination (where homophobia is defined as an irrational prejudice against a person based on a dislike of their homosexual behaviour or their sexual orientation towards people of the same sex) rather than discrimination based on a religious doctrine regarding homosexuality, and

b) discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, but not discrimination on the grounds of sexual conduct.

Leaving aside, for a moment, their unsustainable assertion of rationality based solely on scripture on has to wonder quite how (b) would work in practice. How, exactly, do they suggest that Christians should go about ascertaining whether a particular individual is a practising or non-practising homosexual before decided whether it would be legally permissible to discriminate against them?

One of the example scenarios about which the LCF has got hot under the collar is this one:

It would be illegal for Christian run hotels, bed and breakfasts, sheltered accommodation or community housing projects to refuse a homosexual couple a room with a double-bed (or any similar arrangement) if the refusal was based on the fact the couple were practicing homosexuals.

Even if the hotel etc. refused un-married heterosexual couples a room with a double-bed, there would still be a real danger of prosecution if they also turned away gay lovers: it is not hard to anticipate that either those gay lovers or a court might struggle to accept that the hotel was discriminating not on the grounds of sexual orientation, but on the ground of the Bible’s teaching that it is wrong to have homosexual or heterosexual sex outside marriage.

On top of this, it would be illegal in any case for the hotel etc. to refuse to let such a room to a gay couple who had a registered civil partnership, because the Regulations treat such a partnership as equal to a heterosexual marriage. There is no doubt that being forced to let a room with a double bed to homosexual lovers would be to force the owner / staff of the premises to facilitate homosexual conduct and would go directly against the Bible’s teaching.

The assumption, presumably, would be that the mere fact that the homosexual couple in question were seeking to book a double room would indicate that they are practising homosexuals, which may or may not be the case - even in this day and age, celebacy remains a valid lifestyle choice for some and, in fact, courtesy of the HIV virus, long-term celebate relationships are not all uncommon within the gay community.

So just what are the LCF expecting here? That gay couples should have to sign some sort of affidavit attesting that their celebate state on check-in or submit themselves to intrusive questioning by the proprietor before being permitted a room? Or is the expectation here that hotelliers would be permitted a legal defence based on a ‘reasonable belief’ that the couple in question were practicing homosexuals, one in which the burden of proof in demonstrating that discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and not conduct rested with the complainant?

Given that this has been drafted by lawyers, one would expect the latter to be the case, knowing full well that in such cases would be near impossible for the plaintiff to prove that discrimination had arisen out of their sexual orientation rather than their sexual conduct - there is one way to be sure if this is what LCF actually intends, which is to put forward the proposal as being one that should be considered for inclusion in the regulations, but only on the basis that the burden of proof as to whether the discriminatory action was based on sexual orientation or sexual conduct rested with the defendant and not the plaintiff, as is now the case in  race and other discrimination cases in employment.

I think it obvious how LCF would respond to a proposal.

Elsewhere the source of this groups prejudices and concerns is made more obvious:

It would be illegal for Christian housing or accommodation providers to prioritise provision of accommodation to married heterosexual couples over homosexual couples, even if the providers had genuine and logical reasons for such prioritising. For example, the accommodation providers might have a concern (based on evidence) that the homosexual couple would encourage other vulnerable (adult) tenants to engage in homosexual practice.

For a Christian housing provider to be forced by the Regulations to prioritise a homosexual prospective tenant whom they had reason to believe would lead others into homosexual practice, would be to force them to act against Biblical teaching by facilitating and enabling homosexual practice.

It could also, depending on the circumstances, be illegal for a Christian hostel etc, to try and evict a resident who had not initially declared their sexuality but who then sought to seduce or have a relationship with another adult of the same sex in that hostel. Biblical teaching about the sinfulness of homosexual practice would make it incumbent on the Christian running the hostel not to tolerate such homosexual practice within their institution and so in this example the Regulations would again conflict with the Bible.

What we have here is nothing more than good old-fashioned "backs to the wall, lads" homophobia dressed up as an allegedly legitimate point of concern and the unsustainable assumption that homosexuality equates to predatory sexual behavior as a matter of course… and of course, it doesn’t. what is clearly expressed here is the fear that contact with homosexuals may certain individuals to investigate and explore their own sexuality and sexual orientation and throw off the shackles of religious repression - that is homophobia however much this group would like to pretend otherwise.

Elsewhere in their submission, the LCf’s analysis of the proposed regulation is simply plain wrong as here:

It seems that according to the Regulations churches who use their premises for (heterosexual) weddings (this would also fall under the ‘provision of a service’ head as well) would be required to accept civil partnership ceremonies on their premises – to refuse to do so on the grounds of the sexual orientation of the couple seeking to book the venue would be unlawful.

Further, because the consultation makes it explicit that any discrimination between married heterosexuals and those with Civil Partnerships will be direct discrimination, it would clearly be illegal for a church to refuse to be a venue for a reaffirmation of civil partnership ‘vows’ whilst allowing reaffirmation of marriage vows.

And here…

It is clear from the consultation and the other Equality Enactments that churches count as service providers. As the proposed Regulations currently stand, baptisms, dedications, christenings and confirmations that take place in a church would all count as ‘services’ – they are services which offer a benefit to the ‘general public’ and which cannot be accessed other than through a church.

The Regulations could cause a number of problems in this regard. One can envisage a vicar having difficulties of conscience and doctrine in allowing the gay parents of an adopted child (gay adoption being lawful under the Adoption Act 2002) to declare in a christening service that they ‘renounce evil and sin’, and promise to bring their child up according to God’s rules and principles (this is in the liturgy of the christening service in the Church of England), whilst they clearly and manifestly do not renounce their homosexual relationship. However, the Regulations currently make it unlawful to refuse to christen based on the sexual orientation of the parents.

It is clear that the Regulations as they currently stand will make it illegal for every single Christian vicar, minister and pastor in Great Britain to act in accordance with the Bible.

Further, holy communion would count as a service according to the definition of a service given by the consultation, and a vicar would thus be breaking the law if he were to refuse to administer communion to a self-confessed practising and unrepentant homosexual who had a registered civil partnership, if the refusal was based on that person’s sexual orientation.

What the consultation document actually states is:

3.32 Churches, mosques and many other religious organisations advance their faith or belief through activities such as worship, teaching and preaching, officiating in marriage, conducting baptisms and giving sacraments to members of their religious community. We recognise that there may be circumstances where the new regulations could impact on aspects of religious activity or practice in the light of the doctrines of some faiths concerning sexual orientation and the beliefs of their followers. We need to consider therefore the application of the regulations in these areas.

3.33 We are interested to hear views on the impact that the regulations may have in these areas, particularly where the regulations may impede religious observance or practices that arise from the basic doctrines of a faith. Any exceptions from the regulations for religious organisations would need to be clearly defined and our starting point is that these should be limited to activities closely linked to religious observance or practices that arise from the basic doctrines of a faith.

And…

3.35 In line with the Equality Act 2006 provisions in relation to discrimination on grounds of religion or belief, we are not proposing to exempt activities that are provided by an organisation related to religion or belief, or by a private individual who has strongly held religious beliefs, where the sole or main purpose of the organisation offering the service is commercial.

3.36 Similarly, we propose to apply the prohibition on sexual orientation discrimination to organisations – including churches, a charities or other similar groups with a religious ethos – that are contracted by a public authority to deliver a service on its behalf.

All of which amounts to an open invitation for faith groups to suggest exemptions specific to discrimination in religious/doctrinal practices - in practice there is little or no prospect whatsoever of these regulations extending to religious ceremonies such as marriages, baptisms, etc. Not only would one expect a specific exemption to be included in the regulations but, in relation to civil partnerships, the registration process covering venues at which religious weddings take place is different from that which relates to civil ceremonies, where the licence granted covers both civil weddings and civil partnerships.

In practice, mainstream Christian churches will be largely unaffected by these regulations due to the licensing regime thet operate under - the Church of England and the Church in Wales are automatically permitted to register marriages in law while priests of other denominations and faiths can be accorded the same authority on application for a licence to their local superintendent registrar - in the case of Jewish and Quaker weddings such licences are granted automatically.

Only where such a licence isn’t granted, with the result that couples have to undergo a civil ceremony in addition to the religious ceremony could an issue around parallel rights for civil partnerships arise and then only if the venue (i.e. church, mosque, etc…) is, itself, registered for the purposes of conducting the civil ceremony - if all a particular venue provides are religious ceremonies then no such issue arises.

Nothing in the present consultation document suggests that the government intends to apply these regulations to religious services and therefore override church doctrine - it may well be that this is not clear in current draft regulations, but then these are a first public draft and, therefore, far from being a complete and full expression of the government’s intentions for these regulations.

A number of the other practical examples of where the law might impinge on religious freedom, according to the LCF, are particularly revealing as to their prejudical and homophobic attitudes, for example:

Any large churches who provide auxiliary services to the community such as restaurants, libraries, bookshops, counselling etc would be at risk of costly allegations of discrimination (costly in terms of legal fees and adverse publicity) if they sought to restrict the access of certain homosexual individuals to those services, even if they only sought to restrict them because the individuals concerned were known to be seeking to cause trouble.

Not only is this not true - discrimination law, across the board, does not provide mitigation for or protection of bad conduct - but the idea that a church might refuse to set someone a cup of coffee and a sandwich simply because of their sexual orientation does rather fly in the face of the LCF’s assertion that:

Christians would never want to be homophobic or discriminate against homosexuals out of bigotry or prejudice.

Likewise, we have…

Any Christian charity or organisation that used public money to rebuild/extend premises or provide a service will come under a legal requirement that in the use of those premises and services they do not discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation. There is already significant pressure on many Christian groups and organisations who have received crucial local authority funding (possibly including lottery funding) to allow all local groups to have access to their new facilities. There is a big danger that Christian organisations will have their freedom to decide who to support and provide services and goods to curtailed to an even greater extent and will therefore be forced to act contrary to Biblical doctrines.

To which the only valid response is to note that if any group or organisation feels itself unable to comply with extant equality regulations in any area, not just sexual orientation but race, gender, disability, age, etc then it should feel entirely free not to ask for public money and have no expectation of receiving any. You’ll have to excuse me here, but as a tax payer I object strongly to funding the prejudices of any group and so have no sympathy at all for this kind of argument.

Worse still, we have this:

Under the Regulations as they stand, a school (whether a faith school or otherwise) would be unable to discipline or exclude a child because that child was seeking to encourage others to practice homosexuality or advocating that they experiment with homosexuality.

Let’s not forget here that in the eyes of evangelical Christians, merely holding and expressing the opinion that homosexuality is a valid sexual orientation is considered to be encouragement to practice homosexuality - again were back to indoctrination and the avoidance of dissenting views but here in such a way as would permit a child to be excluded from school for nothing more than accepting, uncritically, that a classmate may be gay. Nowhere is is more obvious than in this statement that the real concern of LCF is to reserve to faith schools the unfettered right to inculcate prejudice and homophobia in children.

The LCF puts forward three specific recommendations for amendments to the draft regulations as follows:

1) Sexual orientation discrimination should be defined more accurately so that the Regulations only prohibit homophobic discrimination and discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, whilst leaving those who hold genuine religious doctrinal beliefs free to discriminate on the grounds of homosexual conduct.

Alternatively

2) The protections afforded in the Equality Act 2006 Part 2, designed to guarantee freedom of religion, should be mirrored in the proposed Regulations. In addition, there must be a clause added to protect the religious freedom not just of organisations, but also of individual believers. Finally, the protections for religious organisations should extend to organisations which could be described as wholly or mainly commercial.

Alternatively

3) The protections afforded in the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, designed to guarantee freedom of religion, should be mirrored in the proposed 2006 Regulations. In addition, there must be a clause added to protect the religious freedom not just of organisations, but also of individual believers.

The blatant sophistry of their first recommendation I’ve already dealt with - one cannot reasonably divorce sexual conduct from sexual orientation, and it is entirely unreasonable to accept arguments for such a distinction from groups who, in turn, put forward the view that their own actions are indivisible from their beliefs. In this case one, if the law is to accept that there is no separation between beliefs and actions for Christians then one must accept the indivisibility of sexual orientation and sexual conduct in the same way.

Alternatively, if one accepts the separation between sexual orientation and sexual conduct that is proposed here, then one must also apply the same distinction to matters of belief and action by Christians in the interests of equal treatment and take the view that while they may freely hold such beliefs as the Bible indicates, it is entirely right for the law to intervene where those beliefs are translated in to discriminatory actions.

However, it seems highly questionable as to whether the proposed distinction between discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and on grounds of sexual conduct is workable in law, certainly without overt and draconian intrusions into the privacy of potential plaintiffs, such that it would seem that the underlying intent of this proposal is to render the law unworkable and hopelessly biased against those whose rights the law is ostensibly intended to protect. Such a distinction could be reasonably made only if the burden of proof rests, as it does in discrimination law in employment with the respondent and not with the plaintiff, once it has been established that a discriminatory act has taken place.

The second recommendation seems largely redundant - there is no necessity to ‘mirror’ the regulations in Part 2 of the Equality Act within these regulations, which are issued under the same act. There is, however, no justification for amending the provisions of the Act in repect of their application to individuals or to extend provisions covering religious organisations to those that are largely or wholly commercial - there is a fundamental difference between excluding an individual from a religious ceremony on doctrinal grounds and refusing to sell them a cup of coffee, one may be arguably justified by belief (even though I personally disagree) the other most certainly cannot.

As regards the third and final recommendation, the protections afforded in the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003 stand unless specifically amended or repealed by Parliament. What the LCF appear to asking for here, failing acceptance of the other two regulations, is much the same kind of exemption that was slipped into employment law at the last minute, but applied to goods, services, etc. The problem here is that the two sets of regulations are not co-terminus in scope and application primarily due the lack, in provision of goods and services, of a principle analogous to that of a genuine occupational requirement in employment law, from which to judge whether the actions of the provider are proportionate and, therefore, lawful.

It would seem to me that there are few legitimate occasions upon which one could safely establish, in relation to the provision of goods and services, a genuine requirement to discriminate based on a proportionate balance between doctrinal observance and the right of an individual not to be subjected to discrimination.

Other than in direct doctrinal matters, i.e. specific religious services, there is to my mind no justification for exemptions on religious ground to the proposed provisions for prohibiting discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, nor should any such exemptions be afforded to religious groups.

Byline: Unity

2 Comments »

Scribbles has written an interesting and very personal reflection on the seemingly interminable debate around the Muslim practice of Hijab - and specifically the burka which represents the most ‘extreme’ (to Western eyes) form of this practice; one which charts, I suppose, the evolution of her own views on this subject.

I will say, from the outset, that I disagree with her conclusion (she supports the proposed Dutch ban on this form of dress and would support a similar ban over here) but that’s not really what I want to write about to begin with.

Instead, there’s a short passage early on in the piece that I want to pick up on; not to disagree or argue but, hopefully, to try to explain and inform as best I can.

Here’s the passage:

I didn’t know then what it was or why it was worn, but the sight of a women on a hot sticky day encased from head to toe in several thick billowing layers of black cloth, with even the eye slit covered in gauze, genuinely shocked me. I remember being unable to shake the feeling of upset for the rest of the day.

What drew may attention straight away was Scribbles’ description of her reaction to the sight of woman wearing a burka - which is not actually such an uncommon sight around these parts*

*In case anyone hasn’t picked it up in the past, we both come pretty much the same area and although we’ve actually never met from comments she’s made in the past I suspect we live no more than a mile or two apart - maybe less. I live on the Bearwood/Smethwick border if that means anything to anyone other than the two of us.

And at first sight you could be forgiven for thinking her reaction rather extreme and irrational. Some might even be inclined - wrongly - to ascribe such a reaction to some degree or form of racism; although if you’ve read her blog for any length of time you’d know that isn;t the case.

In fact, her reaction is far from being extreme or irrational at all. In fact it’s all too natural reaction in anyone not brought up in a society wear the burka is not a part of mainstream culture. It also, has nothing whatsoever to do with race, ethnicity, xenophobia or an intractable fear of the unknown, rather its her discomfort is all a matter of communication.

Yes. Communication.

As human beings only a very limited amount of the way we communicate with each other comes down to speech and language; according to some studies only about 7% of human communication relies on speech. Of the rest, 38% comes from paralinguisitics and chronematics (the ‘way’ we speak, i.e. intonation, timing, rhythm) with the remainder being made up of kinesics, proxemics (so-called ‘personal space’) and semiotics, which collectively is usually refered to as ‘body language’.

Communication is an innate human faculty. Yes, it is a skill we all have to learn as we develop but our capacity to learn is part of our fundamental genetic and physiological make-up. For good old Homo Sapiens Sapiens, the eponymous ‘Nekkid Ape’, communication is as natural as… well, breathing and the capacity to communication (and some would argue the need/desire as well) is something that hardwired into to us all.

For me, as an atheist, this is merely a matter of simple logic. Communication is the key to our intellectual development and our ability to act cooperatively, both of which are major evolutionary advantages and this is, therefore, fundamentally to who and what we are as a species.

Why should this be relevant to Scribbles’ obvious unease, even revulsion, on encountering, for the first time, a woman wearing a burka?

Well quite simply because because the burka, in covering the body so completely, strips away almost all possibility of nonverbal communication.

But, you may well ask, what has this got to do with her reaction? After all, from her account Scribbles wasn’t even trying to communicate with the woman.

For the answer to that you have to look at our nearest genetic relatives, the other primates. Amongst Chimps, Gorillas, Organ-utans, etc. non-verbal communication plays an extremely critical role in establishing and maintaining social order and social hierarchies within the group. Gestures, facial expressions and, particularly posture all play a crucial role in identifying and reinforcing the position of a particular individual in the social hierarchy providing a whole set of visual cues which establish, from the outset, where one sits in the ‘pecking order’ and how one relates, therefore, to other members of the group.

In encountering the woman wearing the burka, Scribbles appears from her account to have experienced a degree of profound psychological discomfort, this being a direct product of her inability, due to the nature of the burka, to acquire sufficient visual and other non-verbal cues to establish a ‘relationship’ and an understanding of their relative positions in the social hierarchy. This was simply an atavistic reaction in which, unconsciously, she was reacting on the basis of instincts we all share, not just amongst ourselves but with all other primates.

Ok, one could argue that this is, indeed, irrational in the sense that the reaction is one of hardwired instinct and not rational choice but this ignores the fact that it remains an entirely natural and readily explainable reaction, one which can be accounted for rationally in terms of evolution and basic biological imperatives.

Why I’ve chosen to try and point this out is not to try to explain to Scribbles why [I think] she reacted as she did but rather to make a more general point about reactions to the burka in general and to note, in particular, a key reason why many people fell uneasy about it, often without ever really knowing why. It’s not a matter of racism, xenophobia or disrespect for another culture - although such things do obviously (and unfortunately) exists and are a factor in the reactions of some - it is often an unthinking, instinctive and atavistic reaction to a situation which, unconsciously, causes psychological discomfort for reasons over which we all have no immediate control.

Of course, it is a reaction that can be readily and consciously overcome if one is aware of it, but many people aren’t - they just know it makes them uncomfortable without knowing quite why that should be the case. It really is nothing personal.

The second point I want to pick up on relates specifically to this particular comment:

the sight of a women on a hot sticky day encased from head to toe in several thick billowing layers of black cloth, with even the eye slit covered in gauze

In other words the burka itself.

Look around and there is no shortage of analysis, comment and opinion on the subject of the burka and its perceived symbolism both from an Islamic and Western standpoint - that’s not a debate I intend to get into overmuch.

Instead I just want to point out a simple and very basic fact, that customs and cultural values - howsoever they may eventually come to be defined and/or enforced - almost always have practical roots. At some time in the past virtually ever custom began because it served a practical purpose and/or a basic need.

Here’s a fact for you. Both Judaism and Islam require prompt burial of the dead - usually within no more than a day or two of death. Anyone ever wonder why?

Ok. So the obvious answer is that this a practice which forms part of their respective faith and culture and which operates under an express religious injunction - but the question still remains why? Why does Jehova/Allah insist that burials be carried out within a couple of days? Why not a week or a fortnight? What’s the big deal?

In fact the practical roots of Jewish/Islamic burial customs should be fairly obvious.

Consider, for a moment, the environment and climate in which both faiths originated… now what do you think happens to the deceased human body in that environment if its left lying around for days in the absence of modern innovations like refridgeration?

You see my point?

In cultures which develop in hot climates there are very pratical and obvious reasons for adopting the practice of speedy burial. Not only is the dear-departed going to very rapidly get to be an pretty unpleasant sight (and odour) if left lying around while the natural process of decomposition kicks in but with all the flies, bacteria, etc. that come with territory thing are very quickly going to get pretty insanitary and rather a hazard to public health.

Not for nothing was the first historical use of bio-weapons [in siege warfare] based on the idea of killing a few sheep, letting them fester nicely for a few days and then lobbing over the walls at the enemy with a catapult in the hope of infecting the water supply with whatever nasty diseases had managed to develop in the meantime.

Rapid burial is a very practical solution to a very practical problem and like many such solutions, over time, it has become wrapped up in layers of custom and belief to the extent that the original purpose fo the practice has largely been forgotten.

The same principle applies to the Burka.

It is a peculiarly Western thing that people assume that the burka must be a hot, uncomfortable and extremely impractical garment and that, on those rare occasions when the British weather struggles its way up into upper 70’s fahrenheit or better , the poor woman that’s actually buried under acres of cloth must sweating like nobody’s business.

In fact, nothing could be further that the truth. The burka is a garment which developed in a hot climate and which has the virture of being both relatively cool during the heat of day and relatively warm during the night when, in desert climates across North Africa and the Middle East air tempertures quite readily drop down close to and even below freezing.

It something of a cultural curio in Western attitudes that we spend so much time focussing on the Burka without really noting its obvoious similarities to the tradition robes worn by male bedouin, even down to the practice of covering the majority of the face, which is simply a practical measure when living in regions where sandstorms are a common occurance.

As with burial customs, garments like the Burka have very practical roots and offer a set of practical solutions to the problems of living in a desert environment and equally they have become wrapped up over time in all manner of customs and belief, some of which we find, in the West, rather difficult to accept because they clash with our own values.

This, more than anything else, explains the wide variations in interpretation of what, precisely, constitutes hijab, the garments that Muslim women are required to wear according to the customs and traditions of their faith. These variation are simply reflections of local culture. Islam introduces the concept of hijab and this, in different areas, in interpreted and adapted to fit existing local customs, many of which have their roots in simple, practical considerations. Only later did particular forms of hijab acquire the degree of symbolism that we in the West appear to find problematic.

I did, right from the outset, that I disagree with Scribbles on the issue of banning the burka and this anthropological view of its development explains, in part, why.

As a garment it is an entirely neutral object - only when worn do we vest any particular significance or symbolism in it and what it symbolises is very much a product of culture and cultural conditioning.

Now that may well be either benign - in the sense that a Muslim women may freely choose to wear the burka - or malign - in the sense that some women are seemingly coerced (so it is alleged) into wearing it but neither is, for me, any reflection on the garment itself.

The fact is that it is perfectly possible for attitudes within Islam towards women to change without it necessarily resulting in the end of the burka or any other aspect of hijab; in many cases no change may even be necessary - Islam, like Christianity, has many different variations and interpretations and is in no was a homogeneous a culture as it frequently depicted.

Banning the burka and its perceived symbolism (as seen through the lens of Western culture) seem to me to be little more than trying to tackle the symptoms of a problem in the vain hope that one might someone end up tackling the cause - it’s like treating influenza with Lemsip, you may end up temporarily feeling a little better but it isn’t actually going to cure you.

And that really is my problem with this whole idea. It seems to me that this whole suggestion has everything to do with making us feel a little better but little or nothing to do with actually improving the lot of Muslim women at all.

It’s what Buddhists would call ‘maya’, an illusion and what I, personally, would see as nothing more than ‘The Spectacle’ at work, as usual.

Byline: talkpoliticsuk

3 Comments »

Yep, I was right. The ongoing shambles that is the CSA is rapidly turning into amother issue in which it is impossible to conduct a reasoned and mature debate.

Today’s dose of crass gender politics comes courtesy of Zoe William’s in the Guardian who’s pissed off that men who have the temerity to question liabilities for child support on the unreasonable grounds of not being the father are getting subsidised DNA tests AND, horror of all horrors, a refund if it turns out that they’re not the father after all.

Worse still, it seems that, according to Zoe, staff at the CSA have even dared to e-mail round some of the weird and wonderful replies that have turned up in response to the question about the ‘father’s details’ on application forms:

somewhere in the basement of this great, tottering joke of a financial agency, there was an employee - maybe a couple - who, despite being desperately incompetent, behind with everything, unable to work their computers, writing off money hand over fist, who despite all this still found time to collate a round-robin showing what laughable slags single mothers were. That’s funnier than someone just making it up, wouldn’t you say?

Oh dear, it seems Zoe’s got something wrong with her head this morning - it’s stuck firmly up her ass!

Dumb stories on claim forms e-mails have been doing the rounds for years - the CSA one is the latest in a long series which probably started with the insurance industry and some of the bizarre statements that appear on insurance claim forms, some of which made their way, IIRC, into Jasper Carrot’s act.

Of course, the mere fact that Zoe’s got so fired up over this e-mail is an open invitation to track it down to see what it actually said, so here goes:

The following are all replies that women have put on Child Support Agency forms in the section for listing father’s details: These are genuine excerpts from the forms.

01. Regarding the identity of the father of my wins, child A was fathered by Jim X. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of child B, but I believe that he was conceived on the same night.

02. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my child as I was being sick out of a window when taken unexpectedly from behind. I can provide you with a list of names of men that I think were at the party if this helps.

03. I do not know the name of the father of my little girl. She was conceived at a party on Acacia Avenue where I had unprotected sex with a man I met that night. I do remember that the sex was so good that I fainted. If you do manage to track down the father can you send me his phone number? Thanks.

04. I don’t know the identity of the father of my daughter. He drives a BMW that now has a hole made by my stiletto in one of the door panels. Perhaps you can contact BMW service stations in this area and see if he’s had it replaced.

05. I have never had sex with a man. I am awaiting a letter from the Pope confirming that my son’s conception was immaculate and that he is Christ risen again.

06. I cannot tell you the name of child A’s dad as he informs me that to do so would blow his cover and that would have cataclysmic implications for the economy. I am torn between doing right by you and right by the country. Please advise.

07. I do not know who the father of my child was as all sailors look the same to me. I can confirm that he was on a ship berthed at Norfolk.

08. Peter X is the father of child A. If you do catch up with him can you ask him what he did with my AC/DC CDs?

09. From the dates it seems that my daughter was conceived at Disney - maybe it really is the Magic Kingdom.

10. So much about that night is a blur. The only thing that I remember for sure is Delia Smith did a program about eggs earlier in the evening. If I’d have stayed in and watched more TV rather than going to the party at Miller Drive, mine might have remained unfertilised.

11. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my baby - after all when you eat a can of beans you can’t be sure which one made you fart.

By now, having read all this, you’ll surely be coming to the same conclusion I have - this e-mail is nothing more than a collection of piss-takes which may or may not have turned up on actual forms - you can’t discount the possibility that some of these are real in the sense of actually appearing on CSA forms, even if the forms themselves were piss-takes.

Whatever, they’re not real and all they prove is that journalists should always check their facts before going into print, which would not have been difficult in this case as the ever reliable Snopes has this particular joke listed (and more embarassingly for Zoe, dated to November 2000)

Whether what follows will appear in the Grauniad is another matter but obviously I couldn’t resist sending this:

To: letters@guardian.co.uk

Subject: CSA and Urban Myths

Regarding Zoe William’s article (”Chap Support Agency” - 29 November 2005) can I point out that the e-mail round-robin that she refers to as ’showing what laughable slags single mothers were’ is quite obviously a joke, not a real list of responses culled from claim forms, and has been listed as such on Snopes.com since November 2000.

Regards

I should note in reference to Zoe’s comment about the ‘e-mail’ - “That’s funnier than someone just making it up, wouldn’t you say?” - that the answer to her question is:

No, what’s funnier is the sight of a journalist spitting feathers over a joke e-mail she’s neglected to check out and making a complete prat of herself in the process.

Byline: talkpoliticsuk

1 Comment »

Lots of ground to cover here so I’ll straight down to business.

First up Tim Worstall notes an interesting statistical claim from Julie Bindel in today’s Grauniad, which he files under the category ‘idiotarians’:

Violence against women is the cause of more deaths and disability around the world in 15- to 44-year-olds than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war.

Tim would like to know where the evidence is the for this, which as good question as figures from the World Health Organisation put deaths from cancer at 7 miiion a year (12.5% of all deaths) and malaria at around 1 million and year while traffic accidents rack up 1.2 million deaths and anything from 20-50 million injuries/disabilities each year.

Given the scale of the problem that Bindel claims exists, you might expect this to be mentioned by the WHO in their new ‘landmark’ study on domestic violence around the world - yet neither the summary report nor the full report makes any such claims - in fact the WHO report, in calling for more research, explicitly notes that:

In some places few [sic] data on violence against women are available. More research on the magnitude and nature of the problem of violence against women, and its costs, in given countries or settings is therefore urgently needed to provide a stronger basis for advocacy and action.

Which seems to confirm that Bindel’s figure derive from that time-honoured journalistic tradition more commonly refered to as ‘pulling numbers out of your ass’.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International’s survey on attitudes toward rapes, reported here by the Times, has been rattling around the blogosphere and spawning much interesting commentary.

As things go, Andrew at Non-trivial Solutions, with a bit of an assist from Jarndyce in the comments, has pretty much the right kind of take on things in noting that ‘blame’ and ‘responsibility’ are very different things and that there seems to be a fair bit of public confusion between notions of responsibility and risk within the survey answers which is reflected in some of the commentary on this study.

I think the sensible thing for Amnesty to do is commission a follow-up study to unpick this whole blame-responsibility-risk issue and provide a more nuanced assessment of public attitudes.

My main practical criticism of this study, however, is reserved for its seeking to draw conclusions about the public’s understanding of rape and the issues it raises - which is ’sold’ as ‘public ignorance’ - from their apparent lack of awareness of current crime statistics and conviction rates. Andrew rightly points out that aspects of the survey’s design will tend to introduce a degree of cognitive bias into the results.

What the survey and many of those commenting on it fail to address, however, is the question of why its assumed that the public should possess an encyclopedic knowledge of crime statistics and conviction rates for rape, or any other offence for that matter, in the first place?

I think it a near certainty that the same kind of survey questions, if applied to other types of criminal offence, would turn up much the same the results - i.e. that the public don’t really know but about half of them are willing to take a guess based on the multiple-choice options put in front of them.

As it happens, had I been one of those surveys, I would have got the questions on rape statistics and conviction rates pretty much right - but only because I’ve had cause - for professional reasons - to look these things up and have, in any case, read something in a newspaper on just this subject fairly recently.

Ask me the same questions about fraud, street robbery or pretty much any other crime and I really couldn’t tell you what the figures are, not because I’m ignorant but simply because I’ve had no particular reason to look them up. If I should find myself needing to know the numbers, well the I do know where to look for them and can track them down pretty quickly if and when I need them.

All of which makes me wonder whether, if I rang a few journalists and asked them to tell me, off the top of their heads and without looking it up, the gross domestic product of Lesotho and the countries per capita expenditure on toilet paper and then stuck out a press release claiming that journalists know nothing about Africa, would that get me an op-ed piece in the Grauniad?

Still, this is an issue which looks set to rumble on for a bit, not least courtesy of the High Court judge who ruled that consent given when pissed is still consent, at the conclusion of a rape trial which ended with the judge instructing the jury to render an acquittal.

This has sparked something of a controversy as the alleged victim claims to have been unconscious at the time the rape took place, making it appear that the judge has overturned both part of the recent Sexual Offences Act 2003 and a hundred year-old principle in common law that consent cannot be given - quite obviously - when unconscious, even though the law professor drafted in by the times to comment on this ruling notes that:

“If a woman has sex with a man just because she is drunk, and with whom she would not have had sex otherwise, then she cannot say she did not really consent because she was under the influence of drink.â€?

She added than any case where a woman was proved to be unconscious would be a long way down the line from that.

All of which explains why the judge directed the jury as he did when you not the operative phrase “any case where a woman was proved to be unconscious” - and its also worth noting that he made his comments in response to a request from Huw Rees, the prosecution barrister, that the case be abandoned “in light of the evidence revealed in cross-examinationâ€?.

Essentially what happened here is that the prosecution were unable to establish with corroborating evidence and beyond reasonable doubt that the alleged victim was actually unconscious and, therefore, incapable of giving consent, which - whether you like it not - means an acquittal.

So, the reality here is that the judge isn’t overturning either the Sexual Offences Act 2003 or common law after all as without proof that the ‘victim’ was unconscious, the question of consent become entirely moot.

All of whcih bring me to the last post I want to reference, which is this one from Gendergeek, and specifically this from Emmy’s actual post:

Amnesty’s Kate Allen believes that the government must take action to combat this ‘blame culture’ and publicise the true prevalence of rape and its appalling conviction rate in the UK. The results of this opinion poll indicate that current policy approaches are not working.

And this comment from Emma in the comments:

Your confidence in the British public is not borne out by the attrition rate for rape complaints. Only 4% are converted into convictions in Scotland.

Yes, it certainly is true that headline conviction rates are appalling low in rape cases - 5.6% overall being the figure most often quoted of late.

Except that this has very little to do with public attitudes to rape or ‘ignorance’ of crime statistics, as this recent Home Office report ‘A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases‘ clearly demonstrates.

The 5.6% conviction rate that is widely reported is the headline rate for all reported rape cases. By way of contrast the actual conviction rate in cases which make it to the courtroom is actually 60% - 24% due to the defendant entering a plea of guilty and another 36% where a trial leads to a conviction on a guilty verdict - which amounts to 48% of all cases where a full jury trial takes place leading to convictions.

The real problem here lies in getting cases to court - only 14% of reported rapes result in trial proceedings but:

9% of reported rapes are designated false during investigations; the majority of which comprise reports from women in the 16-25 age group.

A full third of all reported rapes fail to proceed past the investigation stage due to ‘evidence issues’ – in many cases the issue here is one of ‘victim credibility’.

Another third are lost when the victim withdraws from the case, either for fear of being disbelieved or of the criminal justice system and court process.

So you tell me, where’s the problem here?

You can’t really blame ‘public attitudes’ when so few cases go to court in the first place, a jury trial being the only situation where such attitudes - as opposed to the victim’s own perception of what public attitudes may be or the attitudes their encounter from the police and CPS - are really put the the test.

All things being equal, a 48% conviction rate in trials is still pretty much on the low side compared to most other offences but even then, without studying and evaluating what goes in jury room in cases which result in an acquittal its still impossible to say how much of factor public attitudes are as opposed to the quality of evidence, despite the fact that the evidence from the US, where for example Alameda County, California (which includes Berkely and Oakland) has a conviction rate at trial of 90%, shows that the use of specialist rape investigation and prosecution teams increase the conviction rate in rape cases at trial to around 85%.

This all brings us back to a particular pernicious and disreputable subtext to the current law and order debate, one which masquerades as concern for ‘victim’s right’ but which is actually a coded argument in favour of articificially inflating conviction rates by the quick-fix method of denuding the fundamental principles of justice, the presumption of innocence and the requirement for ‘proof beyond reasonable doubt’.

Put simply, what the evidence says is that the way to improve conviction rates in rape and many other offences is through the use of highly-skilled specialist teams who can generate quality evidence - this is certainly true in the US in rape cases and equally true in the UK where the introduction of a specialist unit to tackle serious and complex fraud cases has successfully upped the conviction rate from around 63£ to 85%, albeit that this unit has also had the odd spectaclur and extremely expensive failure.

The trouble with this approach as that, politically-speaking, it requires both a significant cash investment to put such units together and takes time to deliver concrete results - if government were to make such an investement today it could take anything from three to five years for such units to start to make a significant dent in conviction rates - allowing both for the time it takes to get units set up, trained and resoourced and the time it takes to investigate cases, get them to trial and see their outcomes reflected in official statistics.

As is the case with many things, doing the job properly can be an expensive and time-consuming proposition, even if that’s the right way to go.

Unfortunately, politicians have a second option; tinkering around the edges of the law to create the impression that they’re doing something, which comes considerably cheaper and is more ‘immediate’ in political terms as it appears to generate results - new and amended laws - the actual effectiveness of which can be nigh on impossible to evaluate for several years.

For politicians this can all too easily appear a win-win strategy. you tweak the law so that, in theory, it should make getting a conviction bit easier and dish out stiffer and more punitive sentences - all of which plays well with the likes of the Sun, Mail and Express - and then a few years down the line when it turns out to have made little or no difference at all you’ll either be out of office and out of the firing line or you can just pass the buck and blame judges for not interprting the law the way you wanted them to, tell everyone that ‘public opinion’ supports more changes to the law and start the whole dumb process all over again.

This is where the supporter of this current campaign to tackle violence against women, and women’s groups in particular, need just to be a touch careful and not lose sight of the nuances of the debate.

What we should all be demanding is that government tackle the difficult things here, the things that require long-term and sustained investment in education - to try and change attitudes, particularly amongst men - in better policing and specialist investigation teams and prosecutors and in the co-ordinated provision of support and after-care services for women who are victims of rape, domestic violence and violent attacks in general.

What needs to be avioded, though, is falling into the trap laid by the notional idea of ‘victim’s rights’ and that, somehow, changing the law in ways which, so the government claims, rebalances the system towards the victim but which, in reality, eat away at the fundamental principles of Britis justice, which seems to promise much but invariably delivers very little.

We should avoid the easy option here, the one which takes away more and more of our precious rights and freedoms not just because its wrong in principle - although it is - but because if offers the least effective solution here adn if we genuinely want a first-class response from government on this issue we should make it clear from the outset that we’re not going to be suckered into taking second, third or fourth best just to cover their collective arses with a quick fix before the next election.

Update: It turns out the statistics that Bindel uses (badly) in her article are taken from 1993 World Development Report, which is produced by the World Bank and, as Jo Salmon has pointed out in comments, is in widespread use by both Oxfam and the US Congress.

None of which validates the manner in which these statistics are used in the article.

For one thing the statistics in question relate to morbidity not mortality, which is assessed in terms of an estimate of the years of healthy life (1 in 5) lost to women due to violence - which is not an assessment of cause at all but an indication of the extent to which such violence is a significant contributory factor in women’s health problems.

This notional idea of ‘healthy years lost’ due to the effects of violence would certainly include situations where there is a direct causal link, where the violence results in death or injury, but also many more indirect effects, for example those arising from drug or alcohol dependancy which can certainly be linked to violence but cannot definitively be said to be caused by violence as there are a wide range of other factors which must be taken into account.

In addition, the actual WDR estimates being cited place healthy years lost due to violence above those lost to either breast cancer or cervical cancer but make no claim at all in relation to all cancers - in fact breast and cervical cancers combined make up about a third of all cancers in women in this particular age group.

In essence there’s nothing particularly wrong with the statistics themselves but the manner in which they’re being used here is problematic and their significance is overplayed - as is all too often the case when sucvh things turn up in newspaper articles.

Byline: talkpoliticsuk

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