For All We Know - Pure Function

David Frum plays moral Twister in a callous attempt to control evangelicals' response to the Haggard scandal

2006-11-04T18:28:00.000+01:00

Very occasionally I come across an article that seems to me to be so inherently wrong in its arguments and its conclusions that I am at a loss to appreciate how its author could in good faith have signed off on it. David Frum’s NRO diary piece yesterday is one case in point. Frum is a former White House official, famous for co-writing GW Bush’s 2002 state of the union speech, which gave the world the term “axis of evil”.
In his November 3 piece he directs his attention to the scandal surrounding a highly respected evangelical minister, Ted Haggard, who has stepped down as president of the National Association of Evangelicals amid allegations by a male prostitute, Michael Forest Jones, that Haggard paid him for sex over a 3 year period, and also during the meetings took crystal meth, which was supplied to him by Jones.　The scandal is generating such interest because Haggard is one of a number of influential evangelicals with ties to the Bush administration. He is said to have attended the weekly Monday conference calls which the president holds with religious leaders.

Frum’s piece has left me in such a state of bewilderment that I have not composed myself enough yet to be able to write a structured critique of it. Instead I have, in my state of discomposure, appended to his paragraphs my own short rebuttals. Frum’s text is presented in bold. It is entitled “Hypocrites?”

A sensational but to-date unsubstantiated allegation has been hurled at a major American religious figure. On much of the left, the reaction is gleeful delight: See! He is no better than anybody else! At the outset drawing political lines of battle. The left are capable only of reveling in somebody else’s suffering.
In my mind, however, this story highlights a widespread moral assumption that I have never been able to understand.
Consider the hypothetical case of two men. Both are inclined toward homosexuality. Both from time to time hire the services of male prostitutes. Both have occasionally succumbed to drug abuse.
One of them marries, raises a family, preaches Christian principles, and tries generally to encourage people to lead stable lives.
The other publicly reveals his homosexuality, vilifies traditional moral principles, and urges the legalization of drugs and prostitution.
Which man is leading the more moral life? With only the scant outline of their moral lives offered above, who can say? The easiest answer is to say neither of them. But I suppose if, like Frum, you equate morality with traditional values then moral superiority could be claimed by the former man. Frum’s language leaves no doubt as to his opinion on the matter, even before he shares it with his reader. The former is in all other aspects a model of restraint: preaching (this word doesn’t have negative connotations amongst evangelicals), trying, generally encouraging; while the latter is obviously out of control: vilifying and urging.

But what if the second man has gone through the same inner conflict as the first, only at some point he has gone in a different direction? What if the second man has reconciled himself to his homosexuality, choosing not to seek moral guidance exclusively from evangelical interpretations of the Holy Bible, and after long, drawn-out reasoning and soul-searching has honestly come to the conclusion that legalizing (or decrimininalizing) drugs and prostitution is in society’s best interests, that is to say it will make society stabler in the long run? Then how can this man be leading a less moral life than the first one? Well, he could be if he too were lying to his spouse (significant other) and concealing from him a sexual relationship with another man.

It seems to me that the answer is the first one. Instead of suggesting that his bad acts overwhelm his good ones, could it not be said that the good influence of his preaching at least mitigates the bad effect of his misconduct? Instead of regarding hypocrisy as the ultimate sin, could it not be regarded as a kind of virtue - or at least as a mitigation of his offense?

And what about the bad effect of his misconduct on his wife and children? Are they supposed to sacrifice themselves for the greater moral good? Were they consulted on this? Are they willing martyrs?

For Frum, there is only one moral authority, the will of God as expressed in the bible and interpreted by endorsed religious leaders. Unendorsed interpretations are of no significance. Such a view-point allows for absolutely no nuance, not even in interpreting its source for its moral principles. It has no time for any of the arguments that suggest that tactics in the war against drugs can be morally questionable. It grants no moral life to prostitutes beyond the immorality of the acts by which they engage in economic endeavour. Nor does it grant any moral life to the homosexual who is, according to Frum, a person merely “inclined” to homosexuality. That is, homosexuality is not an essential part of the psyche, of the emotional, spiritual and intellectual life of the person, rather an external temptation.

After all, the first man may well see his family and church life as his "real" life; and regard his other life as an occasional uncontrollable deviation, sin, and error, which he condemns in his judgment and for which he sincerely seeks to atone by his prayer, preaching, and Christian works. But as we’re being hypothetical here, what of a person who engages in gay sex while believing it sinful and immoral and who seeks atonement through prayer and by ensuring that no other people are hurt by his immoral actions?

Yet it is the first man who will if exposed be held up to the execration of the media, while the second can become a noted public character - and can even hope to get away with presenting himself as an exemplar of ethics and morality.
How does this make moral sense?

Let me put it another way:

In every other avenue of life, we praise people who rise above selfish personal wishes to champion higher principles and the public good. We admire the white southerners who in the days of segregation spoke out for racial equalityBut who would have admired them if at the same time they had been keeping slaves?. We admire the leader of a distressed industry who refuses to ask for trade protections and government handouts. But would we admire him if we discovered he was misappropriating funds to weather the economic slump? We admire the Arthur Vandenbergs and (someday) the Joe Liebermans who can reach past party feeling to support a president of the opposing party for the sake of the national interest. Trying to score political points again. First, it must be clearly shown that Lieberman’s support for the government is indeed in the national interest and not a betrayal of it. Morally, though, surely the only thing that matters is if Lieberman honestly believes he is doing the right thing.
If a religious leader has a personal inclination toward homosexuality - and nonetheless can look past his own inclination to defend the institution of marriage and to affirm its benefits for the raising of children - why should he likewise not be honored for his intellectual firmness and moral integrity? Since when was committing adultery and concealing from your spouse a 3 year arrangement for sex with a prostitute a sign of moral integrity? And surely marriage is to be defended not simply for its benefits in raising children (orphanages can do the same, after all, but for the environment in which it raises them. What is the impact on those children and their environment of the behaviour of this hypothetical man?
"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self." A victory which Haggard did not win, it seems hardly necessary to add.

This article is so absurd in its moral arguments that I can only conclude that its author is being disingenuous. His politicization of the scandal through his opening reference to the left’s reaction and his closing reference to Joe Lieberman encourage me in this opinion.

Is it worth speculating what kind of piece Frum might have written had Haggard been accused of having sex with a female prostitute? Would he have felt it worth engaging in a game of moral Twister in his diary had events been so? Frum is a political operator and I believe the prompting for this commentary was political expedience. Aside from the absurdity of the arguments presented, what is shocking is the complete omission of sympathy or empathy for Haggard’s wife and children. After all, the justification for outlawing gay marriage is the protection of the family. Here Frum reveals what exactly his agenda is.

Japanese Motorcycle Grand Prix, Motegi, September 2006

2006-10-25T16:31:00.000+02:00

"The homosexualising of America"

2006-02-28T01:00:00.000+01:00

The above is a cartoon from MSNBC.com which I found on Logan Berry's blog: "Yes, the boys saw that "Brokeback Mountain" movie and now they're playing cowboys." Ha ha!

Pleasantville

2006-02-28T00:19:00.000+01:00

You can imagine my shock on Saturday afternoon when, as I flicked over to BBC World and the usual newstime images of rioting were broadcast into my room, my complacency was jolted first by a preponderance of tracksuits and Celtic football shirts and then by the realisation that I recognised the street and the white Ford Transit vans with "Garda" on the front and sides.

Oh my god! This wasn't Palestine. It wasn't outraged muslims protesting cartoons in middle-eastern countries. It was Ireland! It was Dublin! It was O'Connell Street!

I imagine everybody's complacency has been shaken by the weekend's events. I had completely forgotten that there was a segment of the Irish population outside the loophole of Ireland's political classes. These are people who don't blog on whatever Kevin Myers writes in the IT about the 1916 rebellion. Nor do they write letters to the editor about it. Sinn Fein has been strong in Dublin's inner-city for decades now - ever since they supposedly sorted out the heroin problem there. Firebrand republicanism mixed with disenfranchisement and marginalisation is a heady concoction. As Sinn Fein move further towards political respectability it is all too likely that they will leave many erstwhile supports behind, for whom the "struggle" would always be of more interest than the progress. Today it's the supposed affront of Orangemen parading through Dublin's capital streets. How ideological is the rioters' braun? How promsiscuous is it? Could it be harnessed in the future for bigotry of a more sinister nature? What of the Gardaí? Did they really not have any intelligence on it? Have 14 people suffered injury thanks to the Gardai's complacency? What happened to the Irish media on Saturday afternoon? Could not even destruction on O'Connell Street and burning cars on South Leinster Street rouse it from its lethargic complacency? And what of complacent middle-class Dublin that just went on with its shopping and with its chattering over pints in opulent bars? When did we become so detached as a nation? When did that happen?

Air to the throne

2006-02-24T23:24:00.000+01:00

Prince Charles has taken the Daily Mail to court over its publication of extracts from a journal he wrote on the handing back of Hong Kong in 1997. He claims the newspaper group has violated his privacy and infringed his copyright. As Eddie Izzard once said of the Corinthians' invitation to St. Paul to be their penpal: "well, that backfired in a major way!" The judge ordered for the entire journal to be distributed in the court and so all the media got their hands on it.

Perhaps even more damaging to the prince is the sworn statement on behalf of the defendants given by his former deputy private secretary, Mark Bollands. In it, Bolland alleges that the prince actively sought to influence public opinion and government policy by using "all the means of communication at his disposal, including meetings with Ministers and others, speeches and correspondence with leaders in all walks of life and politicians. He was never party-political, but to argue that he was not political was difficult." British monarchs are constitutionally forbidden to infract on the country's political life. With regard to the correspondce, Bolland says: "These letters were not merely routine and non-controversial letters, but letters written at times in extreme terms from the Prince to various people, including members of the Government, Members of Parliament and other people in positions of power and influence, containing his views of political matters and individual politicians at home and abroad and on international issues."

And just to leave no doubt as to the prince's intentions, Bolland states: "The Prince's very definite aim in all this activity, as he explained to me, was to influence opinion. He saw that as part of the job of the heir apparent. He carried out in a very considered, thoughtful and researched way. He often referred to himself as a "dissident" working against the prevailing political consensus."

I am conjuring up images of the Prince in a Che Guevara beret with a big Cuban cigar hanging off his royal Windsor lips. Expect t-shirts.

Surely, the most damaging of all the damaging revelations in Bolland's statement, though, is this:

"The Prince's office operated in a very old-fashioned way when I was there. Even young people, who you would expect to be computer literate, would dictate shorthand to their secretaries, and when I left the office it still did not have external email or the facility for people to print out their own documents."

Bollands left the prince's office in 2002!!!! Damn it, even remote African villages had "external email" in 2002! What's worse is the idea of young people (were some of the in their 20s???) dictating to short-hand typists!!!!

Out with it all! The prince must drag himself into the 21st century and I know how he can get computer literate and continue his dissidence at the same time: he should start a blog! Not a crappy one on the royal website written by some stiff plonking away on a BBC 64 (that's what they were called, isn't it?). No, the prince needs to get his own blog on Blogger. Maybe he isn't too late to grab http://dissident.blogspot.com - but even if he is, there are loads of possible cool names for an English prince's blog. And he could have his own Halo-scan comments box, as well. Just so he doesn't accidently get cut off from the public mood. Just think how much the tax payer would save! His office could be shut down. All those fancy vellum "from the prince's pen" stationary sheets would remain trees (very much one of the prince's interests). All that sealing wax could be burned away more practically as part of a candle. All those dictating stiffs and short-hand secretaries could find gainful employment, and the prince could blog away to his heart's content on all those matters he finds so vital to the nation's interest.

If I had to be a woman...

2006-02-21T03:30:00.000+01:00

Like most people these days, I imagine, I watch TV with the laptop open and connected to the net. The number of screens vying for my attention can get as high as 3 if I find myself having to reply to a text message on my mobile. The whole TV versus internet is a good thing. It means the quality has to get better on TV as the internet, being more interactive, normally wins out. If a film or programme can get me to raise my head from my computer and keep it raised then it's good. Goldie Hawn raised my head tonight in the very funny Housesitter, a 1992 film starring her and Steve Martin. If I had to be a woman, I'd want to be Goldie Hawn.

"Contrary to American Values"

2006-02-21T02:39:00.000+01:00

That phrase comes up again and again in the memo outlining the sanctioning of "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of detainees at Guantánamo, which former general counsel to the US navy, Alberto J. Mora, penned for Vice Admiral Albert Church, the man who headed a Pentagon investigation into the abuses.

The memo gives credence to the claims in the recent UN report of practices amounting to torture at the naval base and reveals the complete falsity of Don Rumsfeld's remarks at a recent press conference when he rubbished the report's findings and claimed that detainees were subject to excellent treatment.

Fukuyama on Neoconservatism

2006-02-20T01:53:00.000+01:00

Sunday's NYT magazine offers us an idea of what to expect from Francis Fukuyama's forthcoming book,America at the Crossroads. In an essay entitled After Neoconservatism, Fukuyama does an excellent job of making sense. He draws our attention to an inherent contradiction in the philosophy that held sway until recently in the Bush admin.:
"[A] view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own ends" caused Neocons to reject domestic policies such as affirmative action and welfare. Yet "the belief in the potential moral uses of American power ... implied that American activism could reshape the structure of global politics."

Continuing with the theme of consequences, Fukuyama makes this obvious point:

"The reaction against a flawed policy can be as damaging as the policy itself, and such a reaction is an indulgence we cannot afford, given the critical moment we have arrived at in global politics."

But by consequences, he isn't just referring to further radicalization in the Arab world:

"More than any other group, it was the neoconservatives both inside and outside the Bush administration who pushed for democratizing Iraq and the broader Middle East. They are widely credited (or blamed) for being the decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq, and yet it is their idealistic agenda that in the coming months and years will be the most directly threatened. Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world."

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

2006-02-18T00:25:00.000+01:00

Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov's refusal to even consider an application by gay organisations in Russia for a permit to conduct what would be the country's first gay pride parade on the grounds that it "outraged" Russian society should be of interest to all who have followed the Danish Muhammad cartoon furore. Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Muslim community and the Jewish community have spoken out condemning the planned parade. Chief Rabbi, Berl Lazar, has been the most moderate of the spiritual leaders, limiting himself to saying it would be a "blow for morality". According to Friday's English Independent, Orthodox Bishop Daniil of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk said the plans were a "cynical mockery" and likened homosexuality to leprosy. Not to be outdone, the Supreme Mufti of the Central Muslim Board in Russia, Talgat Tadzhuddin, warned that Muslims would stage violent protests if the parade went ahead, and said:

"If they come out on to the streets anyway they should be flogged. Any normal person would do that - Muslims and Orthodox Christians alike ... [The protests] might be even more intense than protests abroad against those controversial cartoons."

He went on to justify the killing of gays in accordance with the teachings of the Koran and to say that they had "no rights".

Although Tadzhuddin would appear to hold a position of great authority over Russian muslims, the chief Mufti is in fact a controversial figure within his religious community, having apparently been sacked in 2003 after declaring a jihad against the US. As far as I can make out, his position as "supreme Mufti" is due to his seniority in age over his fellow Muftis and I have not been able to establish how he has apparently maintained his title and position in spite of his "sacking". Interestingly, his reaction to the Danish cartoons was quite modest.

If not for the violence of Tadzhuddin's comments, one could relish their irony in light of the worldwide protests over the last few weeks and months.
Taking advantage of their right to assemble by staging a picket of the European Commission's building in Moscow last week, Muslims held banners declaring "freedom is not insulting religious feelings". Now here we have one of their supposed spiritual leaders advocating extreme violence against another social minortiy that wishes to take advantage of its right to assemble.

The reaction in Russia to the proposed gay pride march is interesting as it shows how religious groups may effectively cooperate to neutralise a minority social group's legitimate claims to recognition and respect.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia in 1993 under Yeltsin, but Russian attitudes towards it today are "glacial", according to the Independent. The plan to hold a parade has not been unanimously supported even within Russia's gay community, with some gay rights organisations declaring it "suicidal". The problem of Russia's gay community's lack of a foothold in its society must be compounded by the apparent conformity of Russians' public sexual morals with religious dictates. No doubt the legacy of communism, which punished homosexuality severely, is also brought to bear.

Moscow's mayor's characterisation of the parade as "outrage" is not that far away from the bigoted remarks of the three wise men quoted above. Surely, though, what's outrageous is a community leader's incitement to violence being effectively endorsed by government authorities. And surely, the "blow for morality" was sustained when the claims of members of a community pleading grave insult to their identity at the publication of a few drawings trumped the claims of those whose desire merely to celebrate their identity is met with death threats from a leader of the former group.

In early 2003 the chairman of the Russian council of Muftis, Ravi Gainutdin, declared "no Muslim should now hold prayer with Talgat Tadzhuddin or follow any order or advice issued by him" after the latter's call for jihad against the US. Will Gainutdin now remind Russian muslims of this injunction in light of Tadzhuddin's comments on the gay pride parade? Will he think to inform his community that freedom means a lot more than "not insulting religous feeling"?

Those who have so righteously condemned western newspapers' irresponsbility and "abuse" of the right to freedom of expression in the last few weeks no doubt have been silent about the fate of Russia's first gay pride parade as they have been catching their breath and nursing hoarse throats. I'm sure they will once again be in full voice by the time the curator of the Andrei Sakharov Musuem in Moscow, Yury Samodurov, goes ahead with his plans to mount an exhibition of the Danish cartoons.

Red Star Rising

2006-02-15T23:23:00.000+01:00

Looks like the Oompa-Loompa from Tim Burton's recent Charlie & the Chocolate Factory remake has been moonlighting for the Chinese government..... or maybe it's his costume designer.

Brokeback - one step forward or two steps back?

2006-02-13T23:37:00.000+01:00

Update: as is evident from the final paragraph, this piece is way too shrill. An anonymous commenter pointed out that Hari has already devoted columns to certain negative aspects of gay culture, so my posturing has been exposed. For some reason, I felt compelled to post a piece on Brokeback and I have to say that Hari's unincisive doom and gloom review struck me as not quite focussing on what is culturally significant about the movie. My shrillness and failure to really take on Hari mar even further this rather lame post. Nevertheless, read on, if you wish!

Back at the beginning of the year, Johann Hari took issue with the film Brokeback Mountain, challenging the widely held belief that it marks a milestone in the gay struggle for acceptance into the mainstream.

In his article, published in the Independent on January 3, Hari argues that Brokeback is just one more in a long line of Hollywood movies to retrieve from the back of the stock-character closet, the stereotype of the tragic, self-loathing gay. He says that, like other movies dealing with gay themes to have gotten full studio backing (Philadelphia, for example), Brokeback Mountain shows its audience that if you're gonna engage in some homo-action, then death or a life of suffering is all that awaits. For Hari, Hollywood's other stock gay character, the chaste gay, is exemplified by the character of Will, from Will & Grace, who is happy, successful, fun and yet - strangely for somebody combining these attractive attributes - very, very single.

Hari may have a point but I think that as well as labouring it a little, he's guilty of ignoring certain salient facts to make it stick. Brokeback is a milestone because it is the first serious film about a gay relationship to get full studio backing. It is also a milestone because it has managed to fill cinema screens across the United States, not only in gay-populous metropoli such as NYC and SF, but in crucial "middle-America" cities and towns in Texas, Kansas and Ohio*.

The film needs to be taken in its context. With sex more and more banished from big Hollywood productions (see the original Batman and last year's Batman Begins for a good example of changing times), it would be churlish to complain that scenes of physical intimacy were kept to a minimum in order not to alienate any viewers. Philadelphia, probably the last full-budget Hollywood movie with a gay man as its central character, was not a gay movie. Rather it was a variation on a well-worn Hollywood fave: heroic man's struggle and eventual triumph against injustice. Brokeback is too a variation on another universal theme. But this time the theme is love. Hollywood churns out countless films about tragic love. This time it just happens to be about two guys. The homophobia and self-loathing don't bother me. They strike me as pretty accurate given that the characters are from small towns and meet in 1963. Anyway, really only Ledger's character is homophobic and self-loathing.**

All in all, I think Brokeback Mountain is having a very positive effect on mainstream perceptions of gays. Its box-office success reflects the significant integration of gays into conventional society achieved in a short period of time, and I don't doubt that it will succeed in challenging the attitudes of many social conservatives who end up viewing it.

Personally, I objected to Annie Proulx' tale when I read it because I thought it fed into a gay tendency towards fatalism. I was fed up hearing gay people championing this "beautiful and tragic" story of gay love. Nevertheless, I could see its merits as a literary tale. For me, the movie dragged in parts (I assume because I'd read the book)and I thought Ledger's wife was too passive. I remember her as much more of a sexually-frustrated bitch in the novella.

I find it interesting that nobody ever complains about portrayals of gay characters by novelists. What is it about images that they can provoke us so much more? Hari would do better, I feel, chastising his fellow travellers instead of Hollywood. Doubtless, there is still a lot to be done in terms of moving gays more into the mainstream (aside from the argument about on whose terms and what gays stand to lose from this embrace of convention). It is still necessary for straight actors to play gay roles and it is impossible for gay men to play straight roles. There's the rub, if you ask me. Also, as evidenced by Ledger's and Gyllenhall's childish antics while introducing Brokeback at the Screen Actors' Guild Awards earlier this month, it's clear that gays still have a lot of work to do in getting straight people to see them as equal (possibly related to the arguments mentioned in the parenthesis above). Nonetheless, Brokeback Mountain is, I believe, a decisive step forward for gay acceptance into the mainstream. I hope Hari will see fit to dedicate an entire column in the Independent to an excoriation of the tendencies in the gay world which will inevitably produce a porn equivalent entitled Bareback Mounting!

*Incidentally, its box-office success appears to have been worldwide, even in Ireland, where only 8 years ago the Department of Health's safe-sex campaign trailer in Irish cinemas would provoke vocal wretching and loud expressions of disgust from many audience members when two out-of-focus naked man were shown caressing.

**The homophobia and self-loathing evident in the original British Queer as Folk TV series strike me as much more worrisome. This was a programme whose script writer was given carte blanche and which was supposed to champion gay life. The overwhelming message, though, was that gays were inherently dysfunctional and incapable of healthy relationships. It took the producers of the US version to introduce a little self-esteem into the series by setting about writing completely new episodes from the second series on. While they also managed to deal with all the relevant "gay culture issues", they didn't compromise the overall message that gay people are as capable of happiness and mature relationships as breeders.

Wrestlemania

2006-02-09T16:16:00.000+01:00

Expectation are high this week that the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, will challenge US President, George W. Bush, and British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to a cage match to settle once and for all their on-going war of words.

While of late President Bush has avoided passing comments on Mr Chávez' style of government, he was last week dragged back into the verbal wrestling ring after comments made by his secretary for defense, Donald Rumsfeld. At a recent press conference, "Rummie" launched a salvo at the Venezuelan president by observing that, like Adolf Hitler, he had come to power legally but had then consolidated in an undemocratic fashion (the inference being with disastrous consequences for not only his country but the world).

Chávez, not one to allow his opponents to hoist themselves on their own petards, countered in characteristically statesmanlike fashion:

"The imperialist, genocidal, fascist attitude of the US president has no limits. I think Hitler would be like a suckling baby next to George W Bush,"

However, expectation as to the imminent cage fight shot up this week after Mr. Chávez' comments eerily started harking back to the glory days of WWF and Wrestlemania. One would have been forgiven for thinking that Mean Gene Okerlund was standing by his side holding the microphone when the Venezuelan leader, addressing Tony Blair, came out with gems such as "you messed with me so put up with me" and "I sting those who rattle me, Mr Blair."

These comments were in response to Mr Blair's less WWF-esque remarks in parliament that Venezuela should abide by the rules of the international community if it wishes to be respected by it. Mr Chávez also said to Mr Blair:"Vayase largo al cipote", a South-American Spanish phrase that can be alternately translated as "go to hell" or "piss off".

In the likely event of the tag-team cage fight, it is as yet unknown who Mr Chávez' partner would be. Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has been ruled out as he is currently engaged in his own cage match of sorts with the new Iraqi judicial system. Zimbabwean leader, Robert Mugabe, North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, and Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, are all on excellent terms with Mr Chávez and doubtless all would relish the opportunity to have a go at one or other of Mr Chávez' tag-team opponents.

President Bush is expected any day now to make an announcement along the lines of: "I've been saying my prayers and I've been eating my vitamins, and what you gonna do Hugo, when Bush/Blair-mania gets its arms round you?????????"

No Comment

2006-02-08T02:48:00.000+01:00

In light of recent posts on many blogs in defense of the publication and dissemination of the Mohammed cartoons in the name of freedom of expression, I wonder if any blogger has reflected on their attitude to blog comments.

Many bloggers warn their readers that "flamers" will not be tolerated in their comments boxes. Others go further still and post a comments "policy" on their sites stating their right to delete comments without explanation. But is there something of hypocrisy in censoring a commenter on your own blog while steadfastly proclaiming the importance of defending freedom of expression in your blog posts?

Like many, I imagine, I got into blogging through first reading blogs and posting in their comments boxes. Now and again I got into contentious quibbles with other commenters. Although I have never "flamed" and I have always tried to avoid emotive language in trying to make my point, I don't have any real problem with flamers as I don't expect other commenters to adopt my own personal standards of what I believe is reasonable debate.

Of course, people will have different ideas about blogs and comments boxes. I suppose many bloggers operate under the idea that they have absolute discretion as to what kind of comment is acceptable or unacceptable on their blogs. For them, comments boxes are the instant equivalent of newspapers' letters to the editor.

Most internet forums have moderators responsible for ensuring that comments are on-topic and not offensive. While I question the necessity for these moderators, I can see the argument in their favour: namely that in this situation the moderators are impartial and their purpose is more or less to facilitate the discussion at hand and protect participants' sensibilities by weeding out the irrelevant and/or offensive posts.

With blogs, however, the people who exercises this job are the bloggers themselves, and in deleting comments they cannot be said necessarily to be facilitating the debate but rather controlling it. Often it is not their readers' sensibilities that they are seeking to protect but their own.

Yahoo and, more recently, Google, have come under fire from free-speech advocates for agreeing to Chinese government demands that they censor their Chinese search engines. Like these free-speech advocates, I believe the internet is a new frontier in the fight for complete freedom of expression and no censorship. To me there is something inherently contradictory in a blogger moderating their comments box.

In recent months I have been drawn to reading Irish blogs and I have often left comments on posts that have interested me. I'm not that au fait with what other Irish bloggers repeatedly refer to as the "Irish blogosphere" but I can see that it is still very much in its infancy. Anybody who reads blogs beyond the Irish sphere will have come across comments boxes with 200 or more responses. Often these comments are comprised of endless backs and forths between two people who steadfastly refuse to take on board any of their adversaries arguments. Often they contain flaming posts which ridicule the blogger. And often they contain lively discussions between two or more people who have long since gone off-topic. Damien Mulley recently asked who the first blogger in Ireland was and he defined "blog" as the first site to allow comments on a page as opposed to in a guestbook. I think it's fair to say that comments boxes are considered to be important parts of a blog (I know that many successful blogs do not offer comments, nevertheless).

As I acquaint myself with the "Irish blogosphere" I am becoming aware of bloggers' tendencies to delete even reasonable comments from their sites. Leaving aside my earlier point about hypocrisy, I wonder, in the interests of seeing the "Irish blogosphere" grow, and while Irish bloggers are engaging in an attempt to find out more about each other's socio-political backgrounds, is now not a good moment for them also to reflect on and discuss the role the comments box has to play in the development of their blogosphere, and the justifications as well as the implications, if any, of deleting comments from their blogs?

Outrageousness: the new blasphemy

2006-02-08T02:18:00.000+01:00

In response to the Iranian government's announcement of a holocaust cartoon competition, this in Tuesday's NYT:

In Washington, the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said: "Any attempt to mock or to in any way denigrate the horror that was the Holocaust is simply outrageous."

Doesn't he mean "simply outrageous to anyone with western values"?

Sphere of the unknown

2006-02-07T01:29:00.000+01:00

Found this article linked to at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish. I think it states its case quite well and passionately. It's by Ibn Warraq, the pseudonymous author of Why I Am Not A Muslim, a critique of Islam which the author was moved to pen in response to the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie in 1989 by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

Over the weekend, while the whole cartoon thing was going on, I made a half-hearted effort to find some blogs with some dialogue between muslims and non-muslims. I didn't come up with any. The coverage of this whole thing on Irish blogs has been pretty unenlightening (I include myself in this criticism). The amazon.com link here to Warraq's book is interesting for its 232 customer reviews (at the time of posting), some written in the last month as the cartoon kerfuffle heated up in the middle-east . Devout muslims write long criticisms or two-line dismissals of a book they haven't read, while westerners take them to task (many not having read the book either). At least it approaches some form of internet dialogue, something patently absent from our flurry of posts in the Irish blogoparish over the weekend.

Why Bromptons now suck even more

2006-02-06T01:43:00.000+01:00

The bicycle manufacturing industry, like the car industry, has diversified a little in the last 10 years or so, and the fold-up bicycle is to the former what the SUV is to the latter. Bromptons have been the benchmark of this niche since forever, but the bike pictured above would easily relegate them to the bargain bin if it were to see production. For the moment, it's just a concept bike, designed for Cannondale Europe by Philippe Holthuizen and Rodrigo Clavel, two design students studying at the Elisava design school here in Barcelona. The Cannondale Jack Knife is so called for the way it folds up, and it features a no-mess, low-maintenance hydraulic drive system, which would obviously have appeal to to the commuting hoards.

The idea of a fold-up appeals as I've had two bikes stolen here in BCN - the first was my prized Cannondale Badboy, my trusty steed for nearly 3 years of bicycle couriering in Dublin before I headed over here. However, I wouln't be caught dead on a Brompton as I reckon cycling one must be about as much fun as working out on a spinning bike in a suit.

Funnily, these days in BCN you see lots of fold-ups left un-folded and tied to lamp posts with two locks!!!

En fin. Sin comentarios.

Half Man Half Monkey?????

2006-02-04T16:37:00.000+01:00

I've just seen the Arctic Monkeys' new single, When the Sun Goes Down, on MTV. Haven't heard the album so can't be sure, but isn't there something decidedly Half Man Half Biscuit about their sound?

Cartoon time

2006-02-04T15:44:00.000+01:00

Speaking against the motion at the latest Doha debate, Mona Eltahawy made my point about critical thinking. The motion that 'This House believes that Arab media needs no lessons in journalism from the West' was roundly rejected (67 to 33, I think) by the largely Arab audience. I'll post a link to the transcript when it becomes available. I don't know if these debates get put out on regular BBC channels, but they and Hard Talk are two reasons why it's worth having BBC World. I am increasingly critical of the BBC's news reporting standards but they can still give us interesing and lively discussion programmes. On the latest edition of Hard Talk, Stephen Sakur brought Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Posten newspaper editor, and Imam Ahmed Abu Laban, the leader of Islamic Faith Society, Denmark (the group responsible for stirring things up in other Arab countries) to the table. Neither of them managed to completely convince with their arguments. Laban was pretty evasive about some questions. You could see he just didn't agree with with the fundamental right to free expression. He made a charge that also came up in the Doha debate: namely, that the west expects muslims to sit there quietly like well-behaved students while they get a master class on democracy. Actually, he didn't phrase it as well as I've just done (he,he) but that was his essential point. Rose was weak on defending his initial reasoning for commissioning the drawings. Stephen Sakur's okay but I wish they'd bring back Tim Sebastian! He's completely wasted chairing the Doha debates.

Disillusioned Lefty has a good post today on some of the absurdities thrown up by all this kerfuffle.

Red rags to a bull

2006-02-04T01:18:00.001+01:00

Okay, so now everybody's blogging about the cartoons. I view the republication of them in a different light to their original publication. I don't buy the high moral ground argument of freedom of expression. Am I being cynical when I think there's more to it than that? Newspapers are in the business of selling newspapers. Losing ground to the internet on a daily basis, they are getting themselves lots of publicity (and maybe even sales!!!) and really stealing the thunder from the web in running with this. The story has moved on. What we need now are cartoons that lampoon the story as it is now, not what is effectively old news. The one that appeared in Le Monde, for example, is what I mean by a cartoonist running with the story (the link is to a neat little slide show of the original offending cartoons and others on the same theme). Stevel Bell's cartoon in the Guardian on Friday went over my head, I'm afraid.

I guess the closest thing in recent western society - apart from the Jerry Springer Opera - is Andres Serrano's Piss Christ. At the time there was a joke going around in the US: what's the difference between art and pornography? The latter gets a government grant! Outraged Christians mobilised to protest this "blasphemy" but none of the protesting came close to the scenes we've witnessed in the last few days.

Here's US satirist Bill Maher taking a knock at a religio when he stood in for Larry King on his CNN show on August 11, 2005. Discussing his own religious views, he stated that he was an agnostic with an open mind as to God's existence. Then he took a call:

CALLER: "Hi. Well, my question is, the Lord spoke to me approximately three years ago, and if the Lord spoke to you [Maher], I was wondering if you'd become a believer."

MAHER: "No, I'd check into Bellevue, which is what you should do..."

He then addressed any scientologists that might have been watching to make his stance clear:

"You [a Scientologist], like all religious people, have a neurological disorder. And the only reason why people think it's sane is because so many other people believe the same thing. It's sanity by consensus."

I talk to God too, but I'm pretty much with Maher on this one. Anyway, all hope isn't lost. The Muslim extremists may yet see the light. After all, the Danish newspaper that published the cartoons used to be a Nazi-party supporting, dictatorship-advocating, right-wing publication!!!

It's all fun and games till somebody loses an eye for an eye

2006-02-03T01:24:00.000+01:00

The furore over the cartoons of Mohammed originally published in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten back in September is gathering momentum as European newspapers are choosing to publish the cartoons, apparently to take a stance on the right to freedom of expression. Needless to say, this has upped the ante considerably in areas where Muslims are, sometimes violently, protesting. Go to this article in wikipedia for the background and timeline.

Let's leave to one side the possible arguments for and against the re-publication of the cartoons and go instead to the source. The original article accompanying the cartoons criticized alleged self-censorship in the western media as a result of pressure, according to its writer, from "some Muslims" who rejected modern, secular society and insisted on "special consideration of their own religious feelings", a claim which the article said was "incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule." Out of about 40 Danish cartoonists invited to draw Mohammed as they saw him, 12 responded with caricatures. It is quite clear from the drawings, that some of the cartoonists chose to lampoon the newspaper for opportunism and staging publicity stunts and not Mohammed. This fact would appear to have been lost on the many protesting Muslims around the world. Quoted in the NYT, Jamila Al Shanty, a Hamas representative newly elected to the Palestinian Authority's parliament, said, "We are angry — very, very, very angry. No one can say a bad word about our prophet." What Jamila Al Shanty may not realise is that she is protesting against arguably one of the most important bases of democracy. Not freedom of expression, but rather the faculty of critical thinking. Some of the cartoonists questioned the motives of the newspaper that commissioned their work, and they reflected this in their art. This is a simle example of a human trait that has been one of the driving forces behind every step of progress that western society has made over the centuries. Ms Al Shanty is being critical but she is not thinking critically.

Nor are those Muslim leaders who have called on the Danish Prime Minister to punish the cartoons' publisher. Indeed they would appear to be wilfully ignorant of how western democratic societies work. They might also be accused of cynically attempting to curry favour with their constituents. As the wikipedia article shows, much of the protest in Muslim countries has been orchestrated by Muslim groups who have arrived from Europe to spread disinformation in a clear attempt to whip up public feeling.

At this end of things, what must be of interest to any westerner (and most particularly to the five Irish people who read this blog) is the extent to which blasphemy is or has been a punishable offence in Europe in recent years. The controversy ignited by the Paddy Power ad that accompanies this post shows that Muslims are not the only religious group highly sensitive to media treatment of their religion. In this case a standards authority stepped in and the bookies were obliged to remove the offending poster. But what about a charge of blasphemy going to the courts?

In his article, Free Speech, Religious Freedom and the Offence of Blasphemy, published in the Penguin paperback, Free Expression Is No Offence (ed. Lisa Appignanesi, Penguin 2005),Anthony Lester,QC, cites an interesting case that came before the Irish Supreme Court in 2000. Corway vs. Independent Newspapers was a prosecution brought by a Mr John Corway who complained that he and others had "suffered offence and outrage by reason of the insult, ridicule and contempt shown towards the sacrament of the Eucharist as a result of the publication" in 1995 in the Irish Independent of a cartoon accompanying an article by Conor Cruise O'Brien on the implications of the recent divorce referendum. In Lester's words, the cartoon depicted "on the right a plump and comic caricature of a priest. The priest was holding a host in his right hand and a chalice in his left hand. He appeared to be offering the host to three prominent Irish politicians, but they appeared to be turning away, and waving goodbye." The three pols were the then leaders of the rainbow coalition, Bruton, De Rossa and Quinn. The caption read " Hello Progress, bye bye Father?" The words were a play on a slogan used by anti-divorce campaigners in the run-up to the referendum: "Hello divorce - bye bye daddy."

The court ruled against the plaintiff concluding that punishing the mere act of publication of blasphemous matter without proof of any attempt to blaspheme would be difficult to reconcile with a secular constitution that guarantees the right to freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and freedom of expression. It said it was "impossible to say of what the offence of 'blasphemy' consists. In the absence of legislation and in the present uncertain state of the law the Court could not see its way to authorizing the institution of a criminal prosecution for blasphemy."

Lester also cites another interesting case taken by Barbara Whitehouse against Gay News in 1979 after it published a poem by James Kirkup entitled The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name, which dealt with the author's fantasies of necrophilic sex with Jesus Christ. Whitehouse won her case and the editor got a suspended sentence and fine while the publishers were just fined. You can read the offending piece here.

I'm not sure that the offending Danish cartoons would make for a successful blasphemy prosecution, based on the Irish supreme court's reading. However, had Britain's Labour government not had its racial and religious hatred bill defeated in parliament on Wednesday, there is no doubt that the Danish cartoons, if published by a British newspaper, would have fallen foul of its provisions to punish what is considered to be insulting and abusive.

Islamophobia is on the rise in the western world. In order to understand ourselves, we must understand its phenomenon.There is precious little understanding or acknowledgement of how western society was until relatively recently very similar to many of today's Islamic states in its irrational religiousness. The employment of critical faculties will be essential for the task. In the meantime, fundamental rights cannot be forsaken in an effort to appease fundamentalism.

Same-sex marriage

2006-02-02T22:07:00.000+01:00

Disillusioned Lefty adds his two cents.

Hillary Clinton's new look

2006-02-02T17:54:00.000+01:00

Looks like the senator for New York has gone overboard on the botox!

Hat tip: The Daily Dish

Dumb, Dumber & Astute

2006-02-01T00:50:00.000+01:00

I don't agree with Richard Waghorne's argument that Ken Mehlman, US Republican National Committee chairman and a former Bush/Cheney 04 campaign manager, is not fair game for media and Democrat party members' speculation about his sexuality. Mehlman has come under fire from Democrat activists for dodging reporters' questions about said matter. As a supporter of the marriage protection act and an alleged closet gay,the RNC boss is being called both hypocritical and dishonest by his opponents. Lining him up with two other people in the news for their sexual proclivities- Lib Demmers,Mark Oaten and Simon Hughes - Waghorne argues that Mehlman is an undeserving target of personal attacks as he is not necessarily being dishonest or hypocritical in supporting the marriage protection act and being gay. Oaten and Hughes, on the other hand, RW goes on, are fair game for the media as the first, apart from breaking the law, has been hypocritical, while the second has been dishonest.

While I agree with Richard in so far as it's possible to be gay and to rationally support the marriage protection act, I think the validity of his argument about media interest in Ken Mehlman's sexual orientation would have to rest on how he, and Mr Mehlman, Mr Mehlman's opponents, and the media define homosexuality. If being gay is simply about who you have sex with, then Messrs Waghorne and Mehlman are quite correct to say it is nobody's business except that of the consenting adults involved. However,if being gay is about more than simply who you bed, then surely media speculation as to Mr Mehlman's sexuality - not his sex life - is justifiable and not necessarily invasive.

I'm with Pope Benedict on this one. He believes being homosexual is about far more than who you have sex with, as his recent Instruction to catholic seminaries not to admit or ordain gay men - even those who kept their vow of celibacy - makes plain.

Mehlman doesn't have things as clear as the new pope, unfortunately. Here's an excerpt from his June 05 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press">:

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?

MR. MEHLMAN: I don't know the answer to that question. I don't think it matters to the fundamental question here because at bottom, this president believes in non-discrimination. He believes in equal treatment. He believes in respect for all. He also believes, separate and apart from that question, that the fundamental question of marriage ought to be defined in the way it's been defined for more than 200 years of our nation's history, which is by the people's representative at the state legislatures.

MR. RUSSERT: But the Log Cabin Republicans will say if you're born gay, it's a biological determination, not a matter of choice.

MR. MEHLMAN: And that's--that may be, but the fact is that's irrelevant to question of the public definition of marriage. They're two totally different issues.

And indeed, they may well be. But when as the incumbent president's election campaign manager, you use the marriage protection act as a political
tool
to get out the vote, and further, when you are working for an administration which can be realistically charged with homophobia and conduct prejudicial to gays, then I say you're fair game when it comes to speculation about your sexuality.

To me all this is a fine example of how political gays always want to have it both ways. While having it both ways is to be energetically encouraged in the bedroom, I fear it's rather less robustly defensable beyond those narrow confines. Gay activists are so often quick to deplore media witch hunts unless they are the ones instigating them. At the same time, those gays who benefit so much from their homosexuality not being disclosed like to trot out the whole "it's a private matter" thing and completely ignore the wider picture of on-going discrimination against gays in daily life. What gives the lie to that argument is the complete unwillingness of those who use it in their defense to be unequivocal about their sexuality. Were Mehlman to state categorically that he is indeed gay, surely he would lend weight to the pro-marriage protection act lobby? Likewise, if all the celibate gay priests in the catholic church were to come out, wouldn't they be a significant counter-argument to those who say that the church is institutionally homophobic?

As for Oaten and Hughes, well, I have to say I am not without sympathy for the former, although, obviously, the weight of my sympathy is with his wife and children.
Clearly he deserved his comeuppance as two years ago he chose to pass moral judgement on a high-court judge who was discovered to be having sex with prostitutues. As for RW's opinion that there is an inherent conflict between breaking the law and running for high office, well, I don't think it's as black and white as that. Clearly, such an argument would have put paid to Senator Norris' public career (something which by all accounts might gratify Waghorne). I'm not sure that engaging the services of a prostitute in a private place is in fact a crime in Britain anyway. This BBC article appears to say that it in fact isn't. Oaten has my sympathy because those who aired the story of his philandering saw fit to include details of what went on that are clearly of no public interest whatsoever. The irony of the prostitute being allowed to pass moral judgement on his customer by the NOFTW wasn't lost on me.

The last of the trio is Simon Hughes, who ran against gay activist Peter Thatchell in the 1983 British general election as the "straight candidate"(!!!) and won. While it's perfectly feasible that Hughes at the time was less than sure, or even ignorant, of his homosexuality, I think a full disclosure and a public, or at least private, apology to Thatchell would have been in order about the same time he began to indulge his penchant for gay chat lines.

Hughes' situation more closely resembles Ken Mehlman's than Oaten's does. They have played on prejudice to get votes, if not in Mehlman's case directly for himself, then for his party and his employer. While public speculation about what one does in bed with one or more people, in my opinion, should never be entertained beyond the realms of idle gossipers, media speculation about a public figure's sexuality may indeed be justified when it can be argued that there is a conflict of interest, so to speak. For as long as there's debate about whether the Bush admin is promoting, in Mehlman's words, "non-discrimination...equal treatment [and] respect for all" when it comes to gays, I'm afraid Ken Mehlman's sexuality is going to be part of that debate.

Fair play to Peter Thatchell for his Orwellian sensitivity to language:

“The media's use of the epithet 'rent boy' has a whiff of homophobia. It is a dated, insulting term from the anti-gay past. A 23 year old man is not a boy.”

“Such language infantilises gay men and risks conflating homosexuality with paedophilia.”

Thou Shalt Not Marry

2006-01-29T09:40:00.000+01:00

3. 1o The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack.

2o No law shall be enacted providing for the grant of a dissolution of marriage

2º A Court designated by law may grant a dissolution of marriage where, but only where, it is satisfied that—

i. at the date of the institution of the proceedings, the spouses have lived apart from one another for a period of, or periods amounting to, at least four years during the previous five years,

ii. there is no reasonable prospect of a reconciliation between the spouses,

iii. such provision as the Court considers proper having regard to the circumstances exists or will be made for the spouses, any children of either or both of them and any other person prescribed by law, and

iv. any further conditions prescribed by law are complied with.[87]

Above is printed Article 41 of the Irish constitution. The original provision outlawing divorce is shown alongside the amendment which made provisions for it following the referendum in 1995. In light of the Oireachtas report published last Wednesday, which concluded that no adjustments need be made to the definition of the family contained within the constitution, thus ruling out the possibility of same-sex marriage, I ask: if the concept of marriage can be altered over time to include the possibility of divorce, why similarly may not the concept of marriage be amended to include the possiblity of same-sex unions(by union here I mean marriage)?

Mentalmeanderings and Sicilian Notes have been at loggerheads over the last few days on issues arising from the report (Click here to get a helpful click-through guide to the tete-a-tete from Disillusioned Lefty, who has yet to offer his two cents on the subject). DeLondras proudly wears her sexuality on her sleeve. I'm not sure what Richard Waghorne's orientation is. He takes umbrage at DeLondras' lecturing him on growing up gay so I'm assuming (maybe wrongly) that he's gay or bi or transgender or questioning. Alas, neither of them really gets to grips with the specious reasoning of the report in upholding the orthodox and discriminatory defintion of marriage as that between a male and female.

Reading through the Oireachtas report, I come to two conclusions: firstly, the main problem besetting the aspirations of same-sex marriage advocates is the peculiar precedence awarded by the 1937 constitution to the institution of the family, to the extent that it does not deal with marriage outside of or separate from the unit; secondly, the term "family" as we conceive it today is completely divorced from the term as it was first conceived in the constitution, and in so far as it relates to the family, there is a high incidence of repeated tinkering with the constitution over the years by legislators to primp and pramp it according to the exigencies of the day.

The rights of a couple to seek to consolidate their relationship and enjoy the protections and privileges offered by the state through the institution of marriage are not dealt with outside the idea of family. It is clear that the original constitution could conceive neither of children without a married couple nor of a married couple without children. The report devotes precious little time to dealing with the terrible consequences of this gross selectivism, which saw thousands of single mothers cast into life in laundry homes and their "illegitimate" offspring sentenced to spend their childhoods enduring the hardships and abuses of the Catholic-run orphanages.

The report does devote a lot of time to looking at the problems that the constitution's "family" fetish threw up over the years. It states that articles 41 and 42 were drawn up against a world background of spreading communism and Russian totalitarianism, which had tried to outlaw the family. Thus the constitution sought to protect the family from interference by the state. The problem was that it didn't deal individually with the two components of family: children and parents.

Over the years, the family concept enshrined in those articles has changed radically. The first change came about as a result of the Commission on Emigration's 1954 report in which it recommended the removal of the marriage bar for civil servants and teachers and in banks, on the grounds that it would help raise the marriage rate(p.41). As a result, labour participation by married women increased while the marital fertility rate declined. Starting in 1958 and culminating in Ireland's entry into the EEC in 1973 the prohibitions placed on married women remaining in the workforce were removed. The role of the mother as stay-at-home care-giver in the constitution's concept of family was effectively done away with. The most recent example of a legislator introducing incentives for married women to join the workforce is probably Charlie McCreevey's invidualisation of the tax codes in Budget 2000(p.42).

The other major legislative blow to the 1937 concept of the family was the 1995 divorce amendment. What was previously dissoluble only by God was now dissoluble in a civil court and the guarantee was in the constitution(pp.38-39).

In light of the divorce amendment, the only difference between married couples and cohabiting ones is the privileges married couples enjoy. The report concludes in favour of introducing civil-partnership rights which extend the privileges of marriage to cohabiting hetero- and homosexual couples, while it advocates that the constitutional protections given to the "family" unit not be extended through a broadening of that term.

In my view, in light of the earlier accommodation of the constitutional concept of family to the contemporary exigencies outlined above, the drawing of a line at this point rests on shaky ground. It is clear that the nuclear family conceived in the 1937 constitution has been done away with over the years by acts and amendments. Why the oireachtas committee insists on dealing with the two components of children and parents together,is anyone's guess. If marriage is to be denied to same-sex couples on the grounds that they can't procreate, then why should childless heterosexual couples be allowed to enjoy its special protections? Is the institution of marriage only socially useful if it produces offsping?

If we can separate the idea of marriage for one moment from the idea of procreation, what justification is there for conferring partnership rights while denying the protections of marriage? Only that the union of man and woman is superior to that of man and man or woman and woman. In my eyes, that is discrimination and arguments for it can only be found in religion and bigotry. Just as in the past, the idea of a catholic marrying a protestant or a black man marrying a white girl scandalized the self-righteous and bigoted, so similarly does the idea of same-sex unions today. In the past southern US states argued that in providing separate toilets and train cars for black people, they weren't discriminating as long as there was no qualatitive difference in the services offered to both whites and blacks. Today those who would award gays partnership rights but deny them marriage make the same case.

The Irish constitution needs to make provisions for couples who seek to formalise their emotional bond, independently of whether or not it is their intention to have children. Similarly it must make provisions for those couples who embark on the journey of raising a family. The committee is right in saying that family is a bedrock of our society. It is wrong to seek to retain a definition of what constitutes that family that is so narrow that only a privileged number can enjoy the constitutional protections afforded.

Richard Waghorne essentially wishes to avoid a debate about gay marriage in his taking to task of Fiona DeLondras but in spite of himself he offers up a few explanations as to where he stands. In his ideal world, the govt serves to maximise freedom. He would thus do away with civil marriage, reducing it to contracts and leaving its more ceremonious and symbolic aspects to religions. Govts today, however, are involved in far more than maximising freedom and one of their roles is protecting equality. In denying marriage to gay couples, a govt is simply saying that homosexuals are not equal to heterosexuals. It will allow gay couples through civil unions to take responsibility for each other but in the eyes of the law they will not be equal to their heterosexual counterparts. Simply put: discrimination. The govt is not required, as Fiona DeLondras argues, to celebrate gay unions or to promote them in any way. But it is obliged to ensure that all its citizens are treated equally and have the same rights.

I will not deal here with the arguments put forward by various religious-motivated groups as I believe that people of my generation are more than able to weigh their merits. I can understand perfectly why people of older generations might feel in their bones that a gay union is inherently wrong or unequal. Most of my generation, and the younger generations coming up behind us,do not live with that bone-deep sense of the unseemliness of gay relationships. The constitution, if it does not change soon, will be giving a clear message to the younger generations that gay relationships are not on an equal footing with straight ones. In short, it will be promoting discrimination.

Gay Catholic Caucus' submission to the committee included this list of differences between gay couples and married heterosexual ones(p. 77/78):

• They pay higher income tax.
• They pay higher capital gains tax.
• They pay higher stamp duty.
• They pay higher inheritance and gift tax if they make any
gifts or bequests to each other.
• Their non-Irish spouse cannot easily work and live in
Ireland.
• They may face discrimination in pension benefits.
• In cases of domestic violence, they are less protected by
the law because they cannot claim barring orders under
the Domestic Violence Act 1996.
• They may not be recognised as next of kin if their
partner is hospitalised.
• The partner of a deceased gay person will have no
entitlement equivalent to that of a spouse, to a share of
the estate of the deceased.
• In case of pregnancy, the partner of the pregnant person
will not be entitled to parental leave.
• They can adopt but only as single people.
• The child of a gay couple is disadvantaged because he or
she cannot legally be recognised as a child of both parents.
The disadvantages relate to gifts, inheritance and custody.

To read somebody dealing far more eloquently with the substantive arguments than I've done, check out this letter by Anglo-American gay conservative, Andrew Sullivan, published in Slate in 1997.

Disillusioning Lefties

2006-01-29T03:17:00.000+01:00

"Hey! Hey! Hey! Chávez is here to stay!"

Just another march through Caracas by Chávez supporters? Not quite. These chants were heard inside the first session of the year of Venezuela's supreme court. Towards the end of a long speech by the supreme court president, Omar Mora Díáz, in which he condemned the partisanship of the courts under the 4th republic and acclaimed the independence and impartiality of the judiciary in today's 5th republic, the audience reacted with cheers and cries of the above chant ("Uh! Ah! Chávez no se va!" - in Spanish) and were joined by the members of the supreme court, who rose to their feet, clapping and chanting, "hey! hey! hey! Chávez is here to stay!"

Unthinkable in any democratic country you'd care to live in. Not so in Venezuela, which went through the looking-glass quite a while back, unfortunately. Now the fun starts as we get to watch first world lefties bending over backwards to justify such gross flaunting of impartiality by the highest judicial power in Venezuela. Yes, that's right: the one that's supposed to keep the executive branch in check!!!

Hat tip: Caracas Chronicles

For those of you not nauseated by the right-wing reputation of Foreign Policy magazine, here's quite a good, compact article from the Jan/Feb issue on why Venezuela under Chávez is not a functioning democracy:

Hugo Boss

You know you're old when......

2006-01-28T14:22:00.000+01:00

I've been spending a lot of time hanging round the comments boxes of other blogs lately - to the point where I imagine I've become that little boy from the neighbourhood who's always playing in your house and being a mild irritant to your mother, who wishes he'd just go the hell back to his own house and play there for a while.

So I guess I'm home to play by myself for a while:

Over Christmas I was back home taking it easy at my parents' house and would invariably start the day breakfasting on the sofa in front of the Sky Box. One morning, as I flicked through the rather too many MTV and assorted music channels, something dawned on me: all the rock singers were younger than me! I guess this has been the case for at least the last 3 years, but up until recently MTV UK&Eire was pretty much dominated by r&b and hip-hop artists. As I'd never really been into these genres growing up, I hardly paid attention enough to care what age these singing starlets were. But rock was my thing when I was growing up. In fact, the rise of dance music and demise of rock in the 90s seemed appropriate to me at the time. I was growing up. Music was changing. Just as rock 'n' roll had taken the world by storm in the '50s and alienated an older generation, a new genre, aided by technology advances once again, was asserting itself and it fell to me and to rock heads everywhere to accept the inevitable passing of time.

So rock's resurgence in the last few years and its return to stake a claim on airplay has come as a bit of a shock to me. It's like you got off the bus because they told you it was the terminus and then they all went off without you!

As a teenager I tended, like many, to listen to the old rock classics. So not only did the average age of a dead rock star (27) seem very old, but the fact that they'd all died before I was born made them seem even older. I guess Kurt Cobain's death in '93 should have set my alarm bells ringing, but I had always eschewed Nirvana and so wasn't that moved by their singer's demise.

Watching one fresh-faced rock wannabe after another shuffle on and off MTV's immortal coils over Christmas made me come face to face with my own mortality. You see, when I hit 27 rock had more or less disappeared so I didn't have to deal with that rite of passage. Now I'm being made confront it three years after the fact! Flicking through the pages of the Sunday El País magazine in a friend's house a couple of weeks ago, I came across an article on The Strokes. They're all about 5 years younger than me!!!!!

I hope there isn't a huge religious revival in 3 years'time. Jesus died at 33, but given that it happened 2,000 years ago,it's pretty much buried for me. If everybody goes Jesus-crazy in 2008, I'm not sure I'll be able to deal.........

For those of you with way too much time on your hands, a brief and selective history of my musical interests follows:

My interest in music goes way back. The first songs I remember singing along to were Tom Robinson's War Baby and Elton John's I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues. I was 7 going on 8. I don't know if it's significant that these two songs were by gay artists but it certainly strikes me as interesting in retrospect. Anyway, from that point I was hooked on pop music. I got a Topaz AM/FM radio with my communion money that same year and started listening religiously to Gerry Ryan from 10 to midnight Mondays through Thursdays. Obviously Mark Cagney's Night Train was too late for a 7/8 year old, and I have to say that Dave Fanning's playlist was lost on me back then. We sent away for all the 7" records with the Rice Krispie tokens. Then I bought my first 7" with a Christmas Golden Discs voucher from my aunt. I chose Talking Heads' Road To Nowhere. My older brother got Bruce Springsteen's double A-Side My Hometown/Santa Claus is coming to town, and my yonger brother got Shakin' Stevens' latest release!!! Sunday's pocket money went more often than not on a copy of Smash Hits. A fascination with Prince ensued and 5 years later I had all of his albums on cassette (or double cassette!!) except 1999. I was 13 then and and making the new boys in the secondary school stare at me as I delicately tried to reproduce New Power Generation on my pencil case and on brown paper-covered school books.

Then I decided to change direction. I'd been going through my cool uncle's record collection and had borrowed Blondie's Parallel Lines and a Best of Cream 2 on vinyl. There was something raw in this music which made me decide I wanted to explore it more. Apart from that, saying to your classmates that you were into Blondie and Cream allowed you to build up the image of a beyond-your-years-sophisticate far better than saying you were into Prince. And for a boy already deeply troubled by his sexual awakening, being able to introduce people to the beautiful Debbie Harry was reassuring in its vicariousness.

So the Prince cassettes were given away and a record collection was started on, along with an archive of taped records (nothing inferior to TDK SA90s and sometimes MAs if the album was a particular favourite). At first I maintained my interest in what was current: Eric Clapton's Journey Man (Bad Love had a great riff) and Queen's The Miracle (I Want It All was very inspiring) were two purchases then. Quickly I started listening more and more to '60s and '70s rock. I collected all of Cream's albums before moving on to Derek & the Dominos and then farther afield. Myself and two friends blagged our way into the Doors movie in the Savoy when it came out. We were 15. It shouldn't have been any surprise to get past the usher given that I was already buying my friends naggens (don't know how to spell that) in Sean O'Casey's off-licence in Marlborough Street.

By the age of 18 I had a large collection of second-hand records that more or less comprised all the major rock-bands of the past: Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Doors, Velvet Underground, Joy Division. Thanks to a friend I was listening to some new stuff too (Madder Rose) and lots of other singer-songwriter types (Nick Drake,Lou Reed, Bob Dylan)as well as some '80s stuff. Of course commercially successful automatically meant crap so alas Red Hot Chilli Peppers were lost on me.

As I moved into university, I began to shed a lot of the rock. Actually this had started happening around two years earlier. Nick Drake, Lou Reed, Joy Division and Fugazi were a new departure for me (I was listening to Magic & Loss heavily) and it was very hard to alternate between these and Cream and The Doors et al. I became a Smiths devotee, started listening to Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen, was introduced to Belle & Sebastian. At that stage inevitable distance grew between myself and a friend on whom I'd relied for new musical experiences and this was very much reflected in my listening habits. By the end of college I'd more or less turned my back on everything I'd listened to till then. Jazz was my new interest and I was busy finding worthy recordings of Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington. After overloading on jazz for a while I started listening to Johnny Cash. He and Nina Simone are probably my most recent interests - the kind which sit in your cd player for weeks and weeks and get listened to endlessly. I have left out lots of artists who I listen to (or used to listen to) religiously: Nick Cave, Neil Young, Serge Gainsbourg. But these days, try as I might, I can't find musicians and groups that inspire me and transport me the way those of older generations do. Scissors Sisters are fun, N.E.R.D. are jaunty, the Strokes and Goldfrapp are ranuchy, Antony & the Johnsons are melancholical, but, for me, they can't hold a candle to David Bowie, Johnny Cash, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Joy Division, Nick Cave, Morrissey, Will Oldham,Fugazi and others who've accompanied me in and moved me to innumerable moments of joy.

Hugo Chávez: The Revolution Will Not be Mediated

2006-01-14T04:07:00.000+01:00

I wrote the following piece for Honky, a friend's web magazine, back in March/April 2005. I'm posting it here now in response to some blogging on Chávez that's been taking place at backseatdrivers. I can't recommend strongly enough that people go to Venezuelan blogs to inform themselves on Chávez instead of relying on mainstream media such as the Guardian. I think lots of Irish people feel better informed than most because they got to see the Irish documentary (or was that romcom?) "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". I haven't been in Ireland since 2000 and I can't say that I've followed public reaction there to that production but I think I'm right in saying that it was discredited. To what extent that discreditation has been perceived as a right-wing conspiracy, I don't know, but there are serious critiques of it out there and they're worth looking at. For anybody looking to read Venezuelan political blogs, I recommend Caracas Chronicles. There you'll find links to both pro- and anti-Chávez websites.

Here in Ireland we have often laughed at the characterisation of the Irish that Hollywood has presented time and again over the years. The leprechaun voices and the invariably tipsy police captains notwithstanding, we could never argue that these mischaracterisations were insulting or serious enough for us to take more than slight umbrage at them. And anyway we’ve always had recourse to our European sense of cultural superiority over those dumb Yanks. Yet our own Eurocentrism, and that very sense of cultural superiority, leave us prone to impose, on issues that really are serious, the same simplifications when dealing with countries and continents that normally lie beyond the range of our comfortable 1st world vantage point.
Thus it is with Venezuela, the oil-rich Latin American country that was the birthplace of Simon Bolívar, the 19th century liberator of that whole continent from the yolk of Spanish colonial rule.

The first real ideological war between right and left could be said to have taken place right here in Europe. The Spanish civil war caught the imagination of many young idealists who came running from both the right and the left to fight for their cause. It is interesting that over the last 50 years that ideological war has seen itself transplanted to Spain’s old colonies in Latin American. Western Europe has lived in peace since the 2nd world war and so new generations of ideologues have been more sedentary in their participation in the good fight. Thanks in no small part to our media we’ve come to view Latin American politics as an eternal struggle between leftist saviours of the people and rightwing CIA-backed military and oligarchist coupsters. But maybe we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the media are failing to give us an accurate picture of what’s going on in that distant continent. After all, the media treatment of that original ideological battle, theSpanish civil war, was not exactly an exercise in non-bias and objectivity. George Orwell, one of many literary figures who went to fight on behalf of the country’s Republican government, wrote afterwards in Homage to Catalonia: “One of the dreariest effects of this war has been to teach me that the Left-wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the Right.” He singled out the then Manchester Guardian as an honorable exception which of the larger British papers was the only one that left him “with an increased respect for its honesty.”

I wonder then what Orwell would make of the Guardian’s coverage of the contemporary situation in Venezuela. The British quality daily has been publishing articles by Richard Gott under the headlines “Racist Rage of the Caracas Elite” and “Loathed by the Rich”. Gott is clearly a subscriber to the conventional right-bad, left- good Lat-Am dichotomy, and wants to convince us that the recent history of Venezuela is a tale of the clash between a heroic champion of the non-white poor masses on one side and a white upperclass minority on the other, who up until Chávez’ arrival had been able to pocket all the wealth produced by this oil-rich nation while scornfully leaving the poor huddled masses to make do in their squalor. His analysis of the situation would appear to be backed up by the Irish-made documentary “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, which presents the current situation as Chávez’ David to the Goliath of the all- powerful “oligarchs” and private media corporations.

But the story of Venezuela under Chávez doesn’t lend itself so easily to the Eurocentric blueprint of Latin American politics. In the years when most of Latin America’s nations were under the yoke of some dicator or other Venezuela largely avoided succumbing to political extremism. It had managed to overthrow the second of its US-endorsed dicators of that century, Marco Perez Jiménez, in 1958 and up until the 1980s lived in relative peace and prosperity. The last 6 years, during which the country has found itself divided by exactly the same kind of political extremism that for so long affected its neighbours and which it had always considered itself immune to, come on the back of almost 20 years of debilitating corruption on the part of various administrations. The incumbent president, Hugo Chávez Frias, elected on an anti-corruption ticket in 1998, is the divisive figure that is responsible for the precarious political situation that Venezuelans fnd themselves in. But the over-simplification of the country’s political crisis by the anti-neoliberal, anti-globalization international left, who have been able to mine a remarkably rich seam in the anti-US, anti-Bush rhetoric of the Venezuelan president, does nothing to help us get a real understanding of what’s happening in Venezuela.

Certainly it is true to say that the military in Latin America are traditionally right-wing. History shows that the Latin American military have never been shy about trying to influence politics. Therefore it should come as no surprise to us to learn that Chávez, who received his complete formal education in the military,
was himself involved in a failed coup attempt to overthrow the government of Carlos Andres Perez in 1992. Today as president of Venezuela he and his supporters celebrate the anniversary of his coup-attempt. At the same time, they loudly dismiss the president’s critics as coup-plotters. In 1994 the imprisoned Chávez was pardoned by Perez’ successor, Rafale Caldera. During his spell in military prison he had been persuaded by supporters to embrace the democratic process and so his party, the MVR (Movement for the 5th Republic), was founded. On emerging from prison Chávez set about looking for a spiritual leader, an experienced political figure who might give him guidance. He found two: Fidel Castro and the by then long-exiled ex-dicator of his own country, Marcos Perez Jimenez. In terms of right- and left-wing politics it would have been hard to find two leaders further apart on the politcal spectrum. If you were forced to explain what they had in common, you’d be hard pressed to say anything other than autocratic tendencies. Indeed Chávez’ embrace of undemocratic figures has been a feature of his presidency. After becoming president he paid a state visit to Saddam Hussein and more recently he bestowed on Robert Mugabe the gift of the Liberator’s sword, the highest honour a non-Venezuelan can receive.

A more than cursory glance at the opposition movement in Venezuela will also cause problems for those who do not wish to see beyond the left-good, right-bad analysis. The Democratic Coordinator is the large coalition of political parties, trades unions and civic groups that have united to oppose Chávez. It is indeed dominated by Venezuela’s 3 traditional political parties and as a result suffers in prestige as these parties will forever be associated by Venezuelans with the rampant corruption of the ‘80s and ‘90s. However the rest of the parties that compose this vast umbrella group are representative of the whole political spectrum. It even counts on the support of the leftist guerrilla organization, Bandera Roja, who in the ‘60s waged war on Venezuela’s governments with the aid of Fidel Castro. And lest we think it safe to try to apply a class-war analysis to the Venezuelan situation, it is important to know that the Venezuelan Communist party was founded in the 1920s by one of the richest families of Caracas, the Machado Zuloaga. Up until recently they owned the electricity grids that supply the capital city with most of its power. Today Chávez is supported by many well-to-do Venezuelans who, it might be said, have a lite approach to left-wing politics.

The image of the Democratic Coordinator will forever be tarnished in international eyes by its involvement in the April 2002 abortive coup against Chávez. Certainly it was opportunistic and rightly should be condemned for its role. That said, the coup was not a well planned and orchestrated conspiracy hatched by the CIA and the old political elite and wildy backed by the private media groups. Rather it came about as a result of the refusal by two high-ranking generals to activate Plan Avilas, a military contingency plan to deal with excessive public disorder. This plan has only been activated once in Venezuela and that was in 1989 when looters ransacked Caracas. The order to shoot looters on sight resulted in the deaths of 277 people. Negotations between the military and the Democratic Coordinator resulted in the head of a business federation, Pedro Carmona, being instated as interim president. Carmona, however, acted foolishly and undemocratically in the immediate 24 hours after his instatement. The military men who had deposed their commander-in-chief in the interests of protecting the constitution were not prepared to go along with the establishment of a right wing regime determined to purge the country’s democratic institutions of all vestiges of Chavismo - especially if that meant shutting down the national assembly. Chávez was swiftly returned to power.

The much vilified private media corporations played a dispicable roll in all this when, in the hours when the coup began to fall apart, they imposed a news blackout on the country. This was an unpardonable attempt to influence events on their part. At the same time questions must be asked about the role played by the state-owned media. There is a media regulation in Venezuela that obliges all channels, private and state-owned alike, to carry broadcasts by the president. Such broadcasts are known as cadenas, or “chains”. Chávez’ cadenas can go on for as long as 8 hours! When shots were fired on opposition protestors outside the presidential palace on the day that Chávez was temporarily ousted, a cadena was taking place. Chávez continued to speak while the shooting went on outside his office The private media corporations, prohibited from interrupting the president’s broadcast, split their signals so as to broadcast simultaneously the shooting event outside the presidential palace and the president’s speech inside. The state-owned channels simply continued with the president’s speech.

A more successful analysis of Hugo Chávez’ administration made be made if one were to look at it in terms of Latin America’s long history of populist leaders. Thanks to its oil, Venezuela is a relatively rich state. The proceeds from the oil have traditionally been distributed by the state. Corruption amongst politicians has been rampant. There is no evidence to point to any combating of this corruption on the part of Chávez’ administration. Chávez is fond of blaming business leaders, the so-called oligarchs, for the state of corruption in Venezuela. Yet it is the Venezuelan government which has access to the vast state funds, not the oligarchs. It’s a bit like tryiing to blame Larry Goodman for all the corruption in Irish politics in the 1980s and 1990s. Chávez’ populist solutions to the problem of poverty in Venezuela have gotten welcome funding from the recent record-high world oil-prices. It remains to be seen if he will be able to sustain this funding in the event of a downturn in the oil market.

Final proof of our 1st world-centric attitude to Latin American and our inherent inability to accord to it the kind of respect that we accord to ourselves comes in the shape of a recent editorial in the Washington Post written by ex-US president, Jimmy Carter. Carter’s Center has been mediating between Chávez and the opposition for more than two years. It gave its blessing to the results of the recent referendum to recall Chávez. The Venezuelan opposition has long argued that the body that oversees electoral affairs in Venezuela is controlled by Chávez and that a politically unaffiliated body is required. The members of this council were chosen by the Venezuelan supreme court, its members in turn having been appointed by Chávez. Carter, writing in the Washington Post about the upcoming US Presidential elections expressed concern along exactly the same lines about the Florida electoral body. Arguing that some basic international conditions for a fair vote were absent in Florida, he went on to say:

“A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place [is essential] . Although rarely perfect in their objectivity, such top administrators are at least subject to public scrutiny and responsible for the integrity of their decisions. Florida voting officials have proved to be highly partisan, brazenly violating a basic need for an unbiased and universally trusted authority to manage all elements of the electoral process.”

The kind of simplification of politics that we insist on using to analyse Latin-America would never be taken seriously if we were to apply it to our own 1st world countries. Similarly, we should not endorse any form of democracy there, which we would not be willing to endorse here. To its credit, the European Union, refused to send obervers to the Venezuelan recall referendum in August because it said that it could not accept the conditions being imposed by the electoral council. Only by confronting our own cultural ideologies and thus treating Latin-Americans equally will we achieve an understanding of the realities of those nations.

Reciprocating Loyalty in Motor Racing

2006-01-03T02:12:00.000+01:00

"The obstacles we found ourselves up against were various, decisive and, in a sense, inexplicable. It seems that the sporting spirit, which has always been part of motorcycle racing and which has given the public its great passion for this sport, had suddenly disappeared."

Those are the words of Roberto Zanni, president of Japan Tobacco International, Europe, makers of Camel cigarretes. Mr Zanni was commenting on his company's failed efforts to get Max Biaggi a ride in Motogp in 2006. As I posted earlier, Biaggi has been vetoed by HRC. It would now appear that his inexplicably loyal backer's efforts to get him on a bike with the other major teams in motogp have come to nothing. For a while, a ride with the Kawasaki factory team seemed a sure thing. In the end a deal wasn't possible and Zanni is vague, to say the least, about why.

The upshot of it all is that Biaggi will not be a member of the most exclusive paddock in motorcycle racing next season, and Camel are cutting their links both with HRC and the satellite team run by Spaniard, Sito Pons, which they sponsored for the last 3 years.

HRC will not be too miffed about the loss. They must have been counting on it, so adamant were they about keeping Biaggi off an RC211V next year. The situation for Sito Pons, on the other hand, is a little different. Satellite Teams are used to having their riders picked for them either by their factory or their sponsor. It was hardly a secret that Pons' team dreaded the return of Biaggi to its fold but, faced with either that or no sponsorship, I'm sure Sito Pons would have just resigned himself to working with the difficult Roman. He had lined up Spaniard, Carlos Checa, and Australian rookie and 250cc runner-up, Casey Stoner, for next season. Stoner, smelling trouble, jumped ship and returned to the fold of LCR, the Italian team that he has worked with for 4 of his 5 years in Motogp. So now Pons is a one man team with no sponsor. It remains to be seen if he will bail himself out of this pickle like he has bailed himself out of many others in the past. The Spanish motorbike press is fond of observing that he has the 7 lives of the proverbial cat (in Spain cats would appear not to be as lucky as in the Anglo-Saxon world!). Stoner, meanwhile, is sitting pretty on a HRC ride for next season.

What I'd like to know is what Zanni meant by a lack of "sporting spirit" on the part of motogp teams in not giving Biaggi a seat. Camel's loyalty to the Italian, to me, is inexplicable. Biaggi had no problem leaving them behind in 2004 to join the Repsol HRC factory team. As Sete Gibernau will tell anyone, sponsors are only as loyal as their latest marketing reports recommend them to be. It was his rejection of the Repsol seat last season which resulted in it going to Biaggi. At the time, the two times Motogp runner-up, and the only rider to give Valentino Rossi a run for his money, cited loyalties to his sponsors, Telefonica, as reasons for his not making the move. After a poor season this year for Gibernau, and with Dani Pedrosa abandoning Telefonica to join Repsol HRC in his first year in the queen class, Telefonica had no qualms in announcing its departure from Motogp racing and made no secret of its opinion that Pedrosa has been both ungrateful and disloyal in making the switch to the factory team. Gibernau, meanwhile, has been obliged to switch to the factory Ducati team.

All the above shows sponsors getting a well-deserved reality check in Motogp. As one would expect, they are liable to try to exert their influence to put their interests over those of the sport. I've already commented on the aging paddock with riders holding onto good team seats in spite of poor race performances. Some commentators argue for the sponsors to be treated with more respect by both the manufacturers and certain riders because of the amount of money they invest in the sport. But, as Telefonica have clearly shown us that their investments are only made when the return is guaranteed, I am very much in favour of their influence being checked. Of course, no official efforts will be made to do that. The sport's survival depends on its big sponsors. But at least we can applaud riders like Pedrosa, who make decisions based on their own competitive interests and not on the amount of money being offered to them or - as in Gibernau's supposed case - something so stupid as "loyalty".

Valentino Rossi, too, has come under fire from some quarters for provoking a dispute between Yamaha and Altadis, the French company that own Gauloise and Fortuna, among other tobacco brands. Rossi signed for a third season with Yamaha earlier this year, but he stipulated that he could not be sponsored by a tobacco firm - Gauloise and Fortuna have sponsored Yamaha for the last few years. This move by the Italian champion probably has less to do with any high-minded stance against tobacco than his plans to test extensively for Formula 1 with Ferrari next season. The Italian firm is sponsored by Marlboro, an Altadis competitor. The result has been a battle between the latter and Yamaha which has ended up in the courts. Yamaha has officially announced that its relationship with Altadis has come to an end. Altadis has countered with a press statement warning Yamaha that until their dispute is resolved by the courts, they are prohibited by their contract from using any advertising that is a direct competitor of the French tobacco firm.

What galls is the sponsors' attempts to potray themselves as a wronged party. In fairness, Altadis have more of a case than Telefonica, as they had a contract to sponsor Yamaha's factory team till 2007. That said, I don't think they had any grounds to reject Yamaha's plans to field a two-man Gauloise factory team and a one-man Rossi team. To me, that is another example of a sponsor abusing its position as paymaster to the detriment of the sport.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that Telefonica's plans to concentrate their sponsorship investment on Formula 1 have been dealt a severe blow by Fernando Alonso's signing with soon to be Vodafone-sponsored Mercedes McLaren for 2007. There have been reports (in Spanish)that Alonso wanted to take revenge on Telefonica for stalling his F1 career jump in 1999. The Spanish telephone giant was trying to expand its Latin American market at the time, and so chose Argentine driver Gaston Mazzacane over Alonso for the Minardi Team. Loyalty indeed!

Madrid, ¡te quiero!

2006-01-01T13:54:00.000+01:00

Happy new year!!!!

In typical fashion I avoided all alcohol last night. I make a point of starting the new year with a fresh head. Actually it isn´t too fresh on account of me going to bed at around 2am and getting up again at 4.30 to catch a flight to Madrid. I´ll sleep later. I´m here to catch up with two girlfriends from my August CELTA course. I know they´ve been out all night so I´m gonna wait till early evening to get in touch.

Touched down around 9.30, left my gear in Left Luggage and got the metro into the center. I wandered around Chueca, which was deserted, and then made my way down to the Puerta del Sol where everything was quite busy and bustly. Great to see people out enjoying the first day of the new year. It´s a little cold but there isn´t much wind and there´s a beautiful blue cloudless sky. It´s so therapeutic to have those skies above your head all day. Until you´ve moved out of Ireland and enjoyed them, you can´t really appreciate the difference weather makes to your life!

Was sitting waiting for the metro at Barajas airport today and reading the notices. I guess Spanish must be a bit of a headfuck for people who don´t speak it because so many words seem similar to ours. Take for example the following notice:

Metro le recuerda que existen asientos reservados en el vagón. Se recomienda cederlos a ancianos, embarazadas y discapacitados.

You could forgive somebody for thinking that meant: "Metro reminds you that there are seats in the carriages which are reserved for ancient, embarrassed and decapitated people."

Had to do the old sock and trouser fit check in Dublin airport. You take off your belt so they can see if your trousers are a good fit and you take off your shoes so they can make you feel ashamed of wearing socks with holes. The smell at the security check area was gross. What is wrong with my fellow Irish people? Where is their dignity? First on Friday, in the Long Hall with two friends, there was an awful smell of farts hanging in the air, and I swear I didn´t contribute even once to it. Then the pong of smelly feet at Dublin airport security check made me feel grateful I was heading back to sunny, personally hygienic Spain! Well, I´m off to stroll the city again. More later.

Bringing it all back home

2005-12-29T21:47:00.000+01:00

I’ve been back in Dublin since Christmas Eve. Every year I find myself less in touch yet more reconciled with the city. After 5 years I feel my links with it are no longer vital. I suppose that as the years pass in BCN, the young roots I have planted there strengthen, while those in Dublin weaken from neglect.

I have to say that the Vodafone poster ads that greeted me in arrivals made me cringe. While I respect and applaud the attempt to represent Irish culture, I feel embarrassed by its provinciality – its lack of sophistication. Of course, that may just be me. I am not claiming to be a worldly sophisticate. Nor am I under any illusion that Barcelona is less provincial than Dublin. But Barcelona isn’t my home city. Nobody gets embarrassed by other people’s families, do they? Just their own.

When I lived in Dublin, I used to bemoan (being hypercritical, I moaned a lot) RTE’s failure to represent Irish culture to its viewers. I guess it can’t be easy operating in the shadow of the (once?) great BBC. Anyway, I don’t know to what extent it is a failure on the part of the national broadcaster, and not, rather, a national failure occasioned by our forsaking of our native tongue. After all, TG4 has made a good job of representing us to ourselves using a language that the vast majority do not understand.
The Vodafone ads are evidence of a culture that is trying to create its self-image. My failure to identify with them may simply be just that: my failure. I got to thinking about the crude old placard ads that used to appear on RTE after the international ones. Des Kelly carpets and Boylan’s shoes sales were announced in 5 seconds with a voiceover and a few words on a block background. A national embarrassment, I thought as a child. In those days I felt hugely aggrieved by RTE. Until mid-afternoon all you had to look at were the big numbers 1 or 2 on the screen. With the other British channels broadcasting from early in the morning, it seemed like pure laziness on the part of Montrose. My disappointment was compounded then by an output for children that was nowhere near as entertaining as what the BBC was broadcasting. Say the words “childhood” and “depression” to me and I’ll think of Angus McNally on Anything Goes, Anois agus Aris, and Garda Patrol. Indeed my disappointment has never really left me. The inexplicable decisions taken regarding presenters (Pat Kenny doing entertainment television!!!!!). along with the dire programmes that passed for comedy were the cause of my enamorment of the BBC and consequently of British politics. I read a comment on Disillusioned Lefty recently along the lines of how British politics held the author’s attention much more than Irish politics and I could understand exactly what he was saying. Back in the 1980s I was utterly seduced by the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Michael Heseltine, Geoffrey Howe et al. swanning in and out of 10 Downing Street and pulling away in Jaguar XJ6s.
British politics gave us the suave and brutal Michael Portillo in the mid-1980s. Who did Irish politics give us? Brian Cowen?

I realise now that none of this is good. You could say that I’m plainly showing up a failure to engage with politics at any real level. I would counter, though, that I was simply ahead of my time in deciding that in politics image is key! Like I said earlier, it can’t be easy competing with the mighty BBC, even though Channel 4 and ITV have never really had any problems, have they? So was Montrose the problem or was its failure to get to grips with Irish culture simply a symptom of an ailing culture?

I won’t be flippant and say that I don’t care anymore. I do. All the same, I feel less responsible for coming up with an answer to that question than I did in the past. Anyway, not really being in touch with what’s going on here these days, I think it would be irresponsible of me to try to provide some answers.

My brother has on loan a beautiful Cannondale R3000. That’s something like €5,000 worth of road bike. I took her out on Christmas day for a short spin to Howth Head. As I cycled along the sea front through Clontarf and past Dollymount to Sutton and Howth I thought of Dublin’s former grandeur. I don’t know if it’s simply imagined – a result of reading Joyce, perhaps. It’s hard to associate grandeur with TB and consumption and slums, but maybe they are its necessary foundations. I think for a long time it was difficult to be committed to Ireland. She was “the sow that eats her young”, as Joyce put it. But today, I firmly believe in a commitment to Dublin and Ireland. Am I being hypocritical if I don’t share it? I support it. Maybe in the future I’ll come back and affirm a commitment to Ireland. In the meantime, I’ll simply say that I understand that commitment. There is hope.

King Kong

2005-12-21T00:12:00.000+01:00

Well, Peter Jackson's mega-remake of King Kong finally made it to our screens last week and so, on Saturday night, I made myself as comfortable as I could in my seat in the main screen of the Yelmo Cineplex in Barcelona and prepared to be enthralled.

There are few 3 hr movies I'm prepared to go to see at 11.30 at night (not being a huge fan of late sessions, be they in a cinema, a bar or wherever) but I was itching to see Kong. I was a kid before the first VCRs became popular (I'm talking about before betamax and V2000 even) but that's not to say that we didn't have home entertainment. Our "home cinema" was in some ways more faithful to that term than the ubiquitous miniature loudspeakers and integrated amplifiers that you find in people's homes today. Cine Hi8 consisted of a projector and a projector screen. I guess Hi8 must have meant "8 minute highlights" because I think that's all the time the reels we had lasted. So we had the final climactic 8 minutes of Star Wars, the famous gorilla scene from Disney's Jungle Book (I Wanna Be Like You - oo - oo), the duel scene from Disney's The Sword & the Stone, and 8 climactic minutes from the original King Kong movie.

My siblings and I loved King Kong. Even though we'd seen it countless times, we would sit mesmerised when the curtains were drawn at the New York city theatre to reveal a huge shackled ape. I guess we were no sophisticates at that age because we could completely buy the illusion, which I imagine some pretty crude 1930s special effects weret trying to create. It's been years since I watched it. The projector and its screen were brought out less and less as we got older, and when my mother finally relented on her threat to walk out of the house the day a vcr was brought into it, the CineHi8 was definitively pushed into retirement by 4 ungrateful children already afflicted by a keeping-up-with -the-Joneses obsession.

King Kong is pure cinema. It is, to me, what Hollywood does best: large-scale. Over the last 10 or so years, with the rapid advances being made in digital and computer effects, the industry has churned out more than a few films which failed because of their failure to harmonise the new effects and the more traditional stays of a movie, like plot and characters. It was as if they were experimenting with a new formula that was so potent yet crude it had a tendency to blow up in their faces. In the last few years, directors seem more and more to be getting the hang of these unweildy effects and cinema-goers have been treated to some memorable scenes which have completely sustained the illusion: the Trojan fleet in Troy and the Germanic battles at the beginning of Gladiator come to mind along with Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy. Of course Jackson is probably the director who has dedicated himself most to the employment of digital computer effects to ehance a movie. Perhaps better than anybody, he has understod how a movie cannot be subordinated to its special effects and how its success in fact depends on the reverse.

As an exercise in such, Kong is perhaps much more complete a film than the LOTR threesome. LOTR had the advantage of being pure fantasy with no connection to our modern world. Kong, on the other hand, takes place in the most modern city in the world, New York, albeit in the 1930s. Interestingly, I think Jackson's decision not to set the story in the present works hugely in the film's favour as it allows the special effects to retain a certain simplicity. The choice of cast is excellent. Jack Black sufficiently keeps in check his more exuberant tendencies to give a complete performance as Denham, the cinema director whose passion for his art makes him a brilliant and visionary director while a terrible human being at the same time. Adrien Brody, as Driscoll, has enough character and sensitivy to make sure he is not overshadowed by Kong in the scenes that they share, while at the same time wisely not trying to overshadow the beast either. And Naomi Watts is wonderful in her range, playing Ann Darrow as an at first unremarkable young woman who is then transformed into an astonishing emblem of femininity through Kong's attentions to her.

Jackson remains essentially faithful to the original film while managing to evolve it. A film like Kong almost demands to be remade in order to take advantage of today's digital effects. As I said above, and it may seem obvious, the success of a film incorporating digital effects depends entirely on whether or not those effects are subordinated to the telling of the story. There are certain effects in Kong which seem to protrude inelegantly from the screen's clean corners, and, indeed, there are certain plot resolutions which would seem to indicate that handling the mammoth issue of Kong sometimes meant that the director lost his perspective. But the central effect, Kong, is masterful. The illusion is sustained from the very moment we hear him roar from the depths of his habitat right through to the moment when he slumps from the top of the Empire State Building. The story is as clever as the effects that help to sustain it too with Jackson juxtaposing his Skull islanders with his Manhattan islanders throughout the story. Watt's transformation over the course of the movie from stumbling, insecure swooner into a poised and utterly self-enlightened specimen of femininity is wonderful to watch. She is wooed first by Brody and then by Kong, and it takes the alpha-male braun of the gorilla to awaken her to herself. This awakening culiminates in her noble rejection of Brody's character when Kong is captured. After Kong, he must come across as rather effete to the woman who was previously reduced to giggling girlfoolery in his presence.

Universal Studios are banking on Kong being a slow burner at the box office. The film's failure to live up to forecasts in its first weekend's box office takings has prompted Universal to look for comparisons with Titanic, which in its first weekend did not give any sign that it would go on to be the biggest grossing film of all time. However, while Kong certainly deserves to out-gross Cameron's mega-production, I'm not sure that it will. After all, a major draw of Titanic was its love story and, while King Kong might be getting the two thumbs up in bestiality forums all over the internet, I can't see the non-star-driven "love story" element of the film drawing the same number of crowds as its maritime-mayem counterpart did using Leonardo and Kate.

This Christmas the cinema isn't likely to hold much attraction for right-wing Christians , what with two of the most acclaimed films showing being about either gay love or interspecies love! But if you're not a right-wing Christian, this Christmas, give 3 hours of your life to a beast. You won't regret it!

Vatican cyclical condemning youths' "social uselessness" suppressed

2005-12-13T23:08:00.000+01:00

A Vatican cyclical thought to offer the new pope's views (and that of his council) on the issue of youths in society has allegedly been suppressed by Vatican higher-ups fearful of the response it might provoke from secular world leaders and liberal media.

The cyclical, an estimated 30,000 words in length, is believed to argue that today's society is becoming too tolerant of youths and is dangerously close to treating them as social equals. The document inveighs against those who support the "so-called `youth' culture" and warns of the danger of promoting it as an alternative viable lifestyle.

This unprecedented Vatican parry against a sizeable sector of society has apparently been motivated by alarm within the Holy See at the increasingly high profile of youths in western society since the second world war. The Vatican is believed to be worried about the evergrowing number of youth pursuits aimed at nothing more than providing pleasure for non-adults. One section of the suppressed article lists off "worrying pursuits" such as, skateboarding, free-ride, urban freestyle, urban free-ride, biketrial, and online gaming, as well as "alarming tendencies". One example given of these latter was so-called "boy youth"'s habits of wearing trousers below their hips and thus leaving exposed their underwear. It goes on to express shock that "girl youths" are beginning to imitate this tendency - proof, in the Vatican's eyes, of the morally corrupt nature of all youth on the one hand, and a complete lack of personal will on the part of the female ones on the other.

The document condemns the "social uselessness" of all of the above pursuits and tendencies. Sources who have read the paper say that it harks back to days when youth was something that society actively discouraged and managed to keep in check. 19th century industrial society's placing of youth in factories and coalmines as well as society-in-general's age long habit of sending youths to their deaths in war are two examples given by the authors of what they believe were correct attempts on the part of society to make youth "socially useful".

The document goes on to say that youth will not be accepted into Catholic semenaries because of a lack of what it calls "affective maturity". Such an attitude on the part of the Vatican today is in stark contrast with that held in former times when youth made up 99% of the influx into semanaries. Anticipating reaction to this change of position, the document argues that in the past the Vatican had attempted to adopt a Christian attitude to youth, and aid society in its job of making them socially useful by taking them under its wing and reforming them. It points out that it was not alone in such an endeavour as organisations such as the Boy Scouts and the Nazi Youth were set up for more or less the same purpose. It laments that over the last 50 years youth has proven its inherent unsuitability to clerical life and relinquished any claims it might have made to being considered as a social equal to adulthood. For overwhelming support for the belief on the part of the Vatican that youth is irredeemably corrupt, the document argues, one need look no further than the huge number of clerical abuse scandals that have come to light in recent years. The authors of the document state that the "disgusting, unspeakable, and shameful" abuse at the hands of children suffered by thousands of innocent Catholic priests throughout the world is justification enough for Rome's new departure on the subject of this social sector.

This writer could not manage to obtain any comment on the suppressed cyclical from leaders of Catholic Youth organisations, which, like Catholic Gay organisations, are clearly fighting an uphill battle for acceptance in the eyes of today's Vatican.

Max Biaggi gets his comeuppance

2005-12-09T19:44:00.000+01:00

Max Biaggi's hopes of getting a seat in next year's motogp nosedived yesterday when Bridgestone made it clear that they were not prepared to shoe a 3rd bike for the Kawasaki team. Since he was vetoed by HRC for next year (it has overall decision over who rides its RCVs on its satellite teams) after a poor performance as their #1 factory rider this season accompanied by typical Biaggi displays of ill-temper and resentful outbursts directed at his employers, the 3 time motogp runner-up has been trying to secure himself a seat with one of the other competitive teams in the paddock. Needless to say his nemesis Valentino Rossi's employers, Yamaha, quickly made it known that his services were not of interest. Ducati have already lined up Caparossi and Gibernau on their Desmosedicis and Suzuki also declined an offer from Biaggi's backers, Camel, to fund a third bike. They've landed world superbike young gun Chris Vermulen to replace retiring Kenny Roberts Jr.for next year alongside young John Hopkins.

Why is everybody turning the Roman down? He's notoriously hard to work with and after a lacklustre year with the might of HRC behind him, teams must reckon that he'd be absolutely unput-upable-with next year in teams with less resources than the Japanese giant.

It now appears that Biaggi's only chances of avoiding forced early retirement are if Camel manages to persuade HRC to climbdown and allow Biaggi a seat on Sito Pons' satellite team. Camel has sponsored it for the last few years and Biaggi rode for the team in the 2003/4 seasons. Camel has repeatedly threatened to follow Telefonica Movistar out of motogp sponsorship but HRC have so far refused to budge. Pons has lined up young aussie Casey Stoner alongside Spanish Carlos Checa. If Camel and Biaggi prevail it's likely that Stoner will lose his seat and might find himself obliged to reopen negotiations with Yamaha, who could give him a seat on Herve Poncheral's dysfunctional Tech 3 satellite team.

At 34, the Italian Emperor only has one or two more seasons left in him, surely, and Camel's loyalty to him is, to me, inexplicable. Motogp sponsors seem to be extremely conservative. Alex Barros, Carlos Checa, Troy Bayliss and Kenny Roberts Jr. all managed to keep seats in the 20 strong paddock over the years even though they have not really been accompanied by results. Bayliss, Roberts Jr. and Barros have all been forced into retirement this year as team managers are taking on younger riders. This is no small way due to Marco Melandri's excellent year at Team Gresini where he deposed his team mate Sete Gibernau as championship runner-up. Melandri had spent his two first years in motogp at Yamaha Tech 3, where he had not exactly shone. Next season he'll be joined by young Spaniard Toni Elias, who rookied at the very same Tech 3 team this season and has brought his sponsors, Fortuna, with him to Honda Team Gresini. With young Dani Pedrosa (20) along with Casey Stoner (20) and Chris Vermulen(24)
all joining the motogp paddock for next season, and with this year's runner-up, Melandri (24) and third-placer, Nicky Hayden (24) promising to stay on top of their game, the average age of the paddock will drop considerably and will get a well-needed injection of new blood and life. in 2006.

Biaggi should be obliged to join his aging colleagues, Roberts Jr. et al., after his disastrous performance this year on supposedly the best bike in the paddock. Of course, he could ride for WCM or TeamRoberts but I don't think such a fall from grace would sit well with the Roman's temper.

UPDATE
Well Max Biaggi went ahead and announced at the Bologna motorshow that he'll be riding with Kawa next season. He said he'd gotten assurances from Bridgestone that tyres won't be a problem. If this is indeed true, that means that Sito Pons will be left without a sponsor as Biaggi will bring Camel with him. It does look as if Biaggi isn't simply thinking wishfully as Casey Stoner has abandoned his Honda RCV and Pons to reunite with his 250cc manager, Lucio Cecchinello on a one-rider motogp project using a Yamaha M1!
Who exactly is served by Biaggi getting on a Ninja next season? Everybody'd like to see Rossi on a Ninja but I doubt that Biaggi will be drawing in the crowds and viewers with this move. Apart from his loyal Italian fanbase, who would have been sad to see Biaggi forced into retirement this year? Come to think of it, who would have even noticed?

God "knocked for six" by Vatican decision to shut down Limbo - Heaven braces for huge soul influx

2005-11-30T23:00:00.000+01:00

God is said to have been completely "bowled over" by the Vatican's announcement yesterday that it is to shut down Limbo. Sources close to the supreme being say that he had no foreknowledge of the decision which is believed to have sent shockwaves through the Heavens.

The Vatican has not offered any explanation as to why it has decided to close Limbo after 700 years. Opened in the early 1300s as an eternal holding place for unbaptized babies, it is thought to currently hold more than 1300 trillion gazillion willion souls and the Vatican has offered no clues as to where it plans to relocate them.
Rumours have circulated in recent year about Heaven becoming increasingly cramped, although these have been hard to substantiate due to the notorious difficuties involved in obtaining unbiased reports from the heavenly realms - the only people considered to be capable of achieving reports of a non-partisan nature, so-called "media", are not deemed to be creditable news sources.
If the rumours are indeed true, the fate of the Limbo souls would appear to hang in the balance. Asking to remain anonymous, an angel told us, "we really don't know where they're going to go. Clearly they can't be placed in temporary accommodation outside the "gates" because then they might as well just stay where they are. But Heaven already has an influx of hundreds of thousands of souls every day and we really don't know how we can just suddenly take in such a large number of souls."
There has been speculation that the Vatican's latest announcements on homosexuality are part of a concerted effort to reduce the numbers of souls entering Heaven. With so called LGBTs having to endure less oppression and rejection in many of today's modern societies, the number of homosexual souls entering Heaven in the last 20 or so years has shot up. Previously, such people, tormented by guilt and self-loathing, tended not to lead productive or happy lives and so ended up burning in Hell.

With the change in attitude towards them that has swept through much of western society, homosexuals have begun to live increasingly happy and fulfilling lives and so on dying they have been entering into Heaven in increasingly large numbers. Being a homosexual is not apparently a bar from entering Heaven or joining the US military, although the Vatican has just announced that gays will not be allowed to enter Catholic semenaries. It is not known if there is any relation betweeen the dwindling number of catholic seminarians and the increasingly large number of visible, happy and well-adjusted gays in secular life. There have been rumours of a gay "sub-culture" in Catholic seminaries but there could be no listing found for such in the popular gay venue guide Spartacus, usually a reliable source on such things. God is not believed to be worried about a gay subculture in Heaven.

It is thought the Vatican hopes that by discriminating against and oppressing homosexuals
more actively, it will cause them to return to their formerly unhappy ways of life and thus disbar themselves from entry into Heaven.

Outrage has been expressed at the Vatican's alleged plans to examine the Limbo souls for pre-natal homosexual tendencies. It is thought that any souls identified with such inclinations will be sent to burn in Hell in order to reduce the final number of souls that will be relocated to the next life and thus ease the strain at the "pearly gates". Arguments that such pre-natal tendencies, or post- for that matter, could only be considered to have been fleeting, given the short earthly life of the souls in question, appear not to have been taken into account by the Vatican council dealing with the issue. Their cyclical on homosexuality, however, does draw a distinction between "transitory" inclinations and what it calls "deep-seated" ones.

Another outcome of the Vatican decision thought to be exercising God's mind is the question of what to do with the thousands of angels who have been staffing Limbo since it opened over 7 centuries ago. One such angel reacted less than serenely to the news, saying: "it's alright for them. They're not in the least affected by the decisions they make but what the f#*! am I gonna do now? It's been hundreds of years since I was up there. It's gonna take me ages to readjust!"

There is little hope that the Vatican will backtrack on its decision, such a move normally taking centuries and usually being preceded by a long drawn out process in which the decision eventually becomes dogma and a tenet of the Catholic faith before it can be summarily discarded by a sitting pope.

God is not thought be considering sending a representative to earth to negotiate with the Vatican. The Lord is known only to have once sent a representative to earth, his white son, Jesus, just over 2 millenia ago. That visit ironically resulted in the founding of the Roman Catholic church and the Vatican. It is thought that God now believes that he was rash in sending his son and didn't think through the consequences of his action enough.

With these latest events, God has opened himself up to the charge of "taking his eye off the ball". There has been some criticism of him for spending too much time talking on the phone to US president George W. Bush. The 43rd president of the United States is on record as saying that God calls him for personal chats.

Higher Rates of Substance Abuse in LGBT Community?

2005-11-22T01:45:00.000+01:00

In my last post I stated that there is a far higher instance of substance abuse among gays than among heterosexuals. A friend of mine who works in the area of recovery often quotes me a pretty staggering statistic: that the instance of alcoholism and drug addiction is 30% in the gay community while only 3% in the community at large! To me it was a claim that seemed to be borne out by what I could see around me. I pretty much gave up going out on the scene 3 years ago because of the incredibly high drug consumption here in BCN. The last straw came when I was in a club and could smell the pungent and intoxicating whiff of cocaine in the air!

Let me state here that of course it takes somebody who`s used coke to be able to smell it. I was never a habitual user and I haven`t touched any drug (not even poppers, which I never liked anyway) since August 2002.

Anyway, I went googling for some stats today and the stats I found supporting my friend`s claim were all from research done in the late 70s and early 80s. I took issue with Andrew Sullivan in my last post for arguing that gays have shaken off the emotional trauma and the inner conflicts that dogged our modern gay forefathers. But a 2004 report on Social Exclusion and its effects amongst the gay community by the British organisation, Gay Men`s Health Networkwould appear to offer some support for his argument, citing as itdoes recent studies showing that gay men are in fact no more prone to alcohol abuse and addiction than their heterosexual peers. Interestingly, it doesn`t say the same for lesbian women, who, according to this report, are higher consumers of alcohol than their heterosexual counterparts and prone to more mental health problems even when they consume less than straight women!

There still remains, however, the issue of HIV infection. I recently attended a sexual health workshop for gay men and they gave me an interesting stat: for every 1,000 men a het woman sleeps with, 3 of them will be infected with HIV. For every 1,000 men a man sleeps with, 270 of them will be infected with HIV and as many as 50 of them will be unaware of their positive status.

Sullivan stated that in San Francisco HIV infection was down on last year. It would be interesting to know what the figures are countrywide. I know that over here, at least in Spain, infection rates are on the up. When you add to that fact the surely not unrelated rise in popularity of barebacking, and the less frequent but to me much more disturbing subculture of "conversion" ceremonies, can we really be celebrating progress in our community? Or maybe that`s not the right word to use. The gay "community" is a thing of the past, apparently, because we`ve all done such a good job of getting breeders to accept us.

The End of Gay Couture

2005-11-20T04:04:00.000+01:00

Gay Republican Andrew Sullivan has written an interesting article for The New Republic magazine and posted it on his blog. Entitled The End of Gay Culture & The Future of Gay Life, it celebrates the increasing openness of society to gays and lesbians and the waning of monolithic gay culture as a result.

I have a lot of time for Andrew Sullivan. Back in Dublin I always read his columns on US politics in the News Review section of the Sunday Times. He was an open gay republican way back when to be such was to expose yourself to despisement both from fellow gays and fellow republicans. The fact that this is no longer the case is indeed proof for the case he makes in this article. However, I am not as optimistic as him in drawing my conclusions.

I agree with a lot of what the article says as it simply chronicles developments that are plain to the eye: "gayness" has been assimilated into western culture at a remarkable pace over the last 15 to 20 years. This is the age of the ubermedia. Their power to influence us and set agenda is unquestionable. If earlier generations grew up having "gay" represented to them by John Inman`s camp character in Are You Being Served, today`s young gay people are spoiled for choice when it comes to gay representation on TV. Shows are now built around 1 or more than 1 gay character or person;. Hollywood`s frequent high-school movies have at least one stock gay adolescent, and reality shows have shown how openly gay people can win the hearts of a viewing nation - a stark contrast to times when closeted gay people in the public eye won the people`s affirmation only to have it coldly rescinded when their sexuality was salaciously leaked by capricious media. Back then the public would righteously nurse its sense of disgust and betrayal while at the same time feeling vindicated in its belief that all homosexuals were devious.

The new fondness of the media for us gays, I think, has its origins in another happy development: the modern family`s ability to embrace (or at least to come to some sorts of terms with) a son or daughter`s homosexuality. Coming out to parents these days, thankfully, is more likely to produce sadness about not having grandchildren, anxious wondering about what one as a parent did wrong, or, more happily, simple acceptance. Even the most religious of parents manage to produce the words "you`re still our son/daughter and we love you". Banishment and disinheritance are very much untypical reactions these days, although of course they still do happen.

As Sullivan points out, society seems very much to have come to terms with homosexuality and now we homos must be brave and be prepared for the consequences and responsibilites that come with this acceptance.

What I take exception to in Sullivan`s article is its failure to take stock of the extent to which we are indebted and beholden to "heterosexual" society for the freedoms we now enjoy. Sullivan doesn`t seem to consider as serious the still fraught coming out process that gay people still go through. In an update he cites as support for his argument a mail from a 20 year old American undergrad who tells him how much support he`s gotten from his straight friends, how little prejudice and rejection he`s experienced, and how irrelevant to his life are those older generations of gay men that went before him. Yet both the author of the letter and its recipient are blithely unaware of the pained psychological process this kid would seem to profess to have gone through in coming out to himself. Sullivan talks up the great number of gay role models that exist for young people coming of age today and the increasingly faceted lifestyles that a young gay person can adopt. Yet this 20 year old tells Sullivan that in becoming aware of his gay feelings he could not accept he was gay because effectively he couldn`t identify with any of the notions of "gayness" that he had. For many people the coming out process is still a deeply psychologically wounding one, regardless of whether you do it at 15, 20 or 25 years of age. What`s more, I would argue that most gay people are not aware of this psychological damage. If there is more space for us in modern society, we still have to traverse a long emotional bridge alone and there`s very little if anything that modern society does for us there.

I agree with Sullivan in so far as assimilation is concerned. Back in university(about 7 years ago now), I was motivated to coordinate a campus-wide Anti-Homophobia campaign to take the place of the traditional Gay Pride week. I came out in my first year of university to all my friends. I didn`t know anybody gay and I could not identify with the luminous pink posters of the LGBT society advertising wine and chocolate evenings and safe-sex classes. My campus,I felt, was a very socially conservative space which could only tolerate a stereotypical representation of gay people. 3 years later, still very much lost in my own personal difficulties in making progress with myself from a developmental and emotional point of view, I approached the LGBT society to ask them if they would be interested in running an anti-homophobia campaign during their traditional Pride week. With them on board, I went to the Students Union. It was obvious to me that the initiative would have to be seen to come from them. This was a student welfare issue. The SU was happy to go along once I looked after the organisation. It would be an anti-homophobia campaign run by the SU in conjunction with the LGBT society. My idea was to run a serious of events during the week in conjunction with other clubs and societies. Thus there would be a literary event with the Lit Soc, debates held in conjunction with the debating societies, a talk on homophobia hosted by the Sociology Society etc. We published a supplement in the university newspaper to announce the campaign and we wrote to all the clubs and societies asking them for permission to include their names on a page wishing the campaign success. Most societies responded favourably. We blanketed the campus with big posters that read "Homophobia Sucks" and distributed thousands of lollipops with the fliers listing the events for the week. Also in the supplement, we asked people to sign up as members of the LGBT society during the week to show their support. In comparison with previous Pride events run in isolation by the LGBT it was a huge success.

My thinking was that people should be able to come out in the social groups that they feel most comfortable in - where their interests lie. A rugby player should be comfortable being an out gay man in the rugby club and a law student likewise in the Law Soc. For me, promoting Pride in your homosexuality amongst people only at an age where they were first becoming aware of it or taking their first steps in exploring it was asking too much. To me an LGBT society didn`t make sense in the way that a debating society or a rugby club did because of course we are so much more than our sexuality.

If in the past coming out of the closet meant simply stepping into a big communal one, these days it`s synonymous with no such separatist action. I think that for many gay people future happiness is index-linked to one`s ability to reconcile one`s pre-coming out life with one`s post-coming out life. In the past, many gays benefited from the strong monolithic gay culture as it helped them either to sever all ties with their past lives or to live two lives simultaneously. These days young people coming out don`t have to sever links or live two lives. Yet I believe they still have problems reconciling the life they lived before coming out with the one they live after coming out. I think the fact that alcohol/drug abuse and addiction stats are higher among gays than straights as well as HIV infection rates is evidence of that failure to reconcile and to take stock of the psychological damage inflicted by coming to terms with being gay.

Sullivan cites the large gay vote received by Bush in 2004 in spite of his gay marriage amendment as proof of a more varied political discourse amongst gays today in comparison with the leftist stance of the monolithic gay culture. I would argue that in many cases - not his own, but in many - it is evidence of low self-esteem and internalised homophobia.

Those of us who`ve had dealings with gay activist organisations will have met those people who have chosen to fight for a cause in order to avoid dealing with their own problems - I would include myself in that group too. These days there are plenty of gay people who want absolutely nothng to do with gay politics and are quite happy living their gay lives in a manner not unlike your average straight person. Nevertheless, I believe that most of these people bear the scars of having come out and even if they haven`t gotten involved in activism to avoid confronting their pain, they have found some other way of not confronting it.
Sullivan is absolutely right in saying things have changed. But the waning of a monolithic gay culture and its giving way to more diverse representations may simply reflect the adaptions made by heterosexual culture and not any key progress made by a gay culture, which in its day failed to capitalise on its strength. To me Sullivan`s narrative is way too linear. It fails to acknowledge any sort of gay sentimental education different to that lived by heterosexuals growing up. Sullivan seems to welcome the change but I wonder if with the waning of the monolith, we didn`t miss some sort of golden opportunity.

Prostitution in the Modern Age

2005-11-20T03:10:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the pompous title. I was reading a post on Boi From Troy by guest blogger Brat Boy about whether or not laws should be obeyed. Not a small subject, but that's neither here nor there as it's not the subject I want to address. A commenter made a point about the problem of where to stop when you go down the liberalisation road and gave as an example the old "hookers and prostitutes" one. Now that's a subject that interests almost anyone, right? We have those who have absolutely no problem with legalised prostitution, those who think it's a necessary evil (in their words) and one that's better controlled through legalisation, and then we have those who get indignant at the very idea of legalising transactional sex.

Right now I'm not gonna take a stand. It`s another subject that isn't small. What interests me is where the anti-legalisation people stand on pornography and on acting.

"Acting?????" you say. "What's acting got to do with it?"

Well, isn't acting a form of prostitution? Not all acting, I mean. But every time the guy and the girl (guy and guy and girl and girl, for that matter) engage in a bit of tonguing and then go and collect, are they not engaging in a form of prostitution?

"But prostitution isn't about kissing!!" you say. "It's about penetrative and oral and all those other types of sex!"

Ok, I agree. If we look into what's actually outlawed, we'll find that indeed paying somebody to kiss you is in fact, not really contemplated as soliciting and being paid to kiss isn't deemed prostitution (at least, I don't think so. I'm winging it here because I haven't bothered to look up any laws relating to prostitution). But to those people who believe that legalising prostitution would signify a complete collapse of our moral system, is it only genital sexual acts that are unlawful?

I guess at the moment, the crowd I`m interested in getting answers from is the gay world. I would think that the instance of prostitution and "escorting" is statistically higher among gays (again I`m winging but usually when it comes to gays, statistics - for whatever- are higher, right?). So for the average gay guy who believes that prostitution is wrong and would be scandalized to learn that so-and-so was in fact an escort, what`s the deal with escorts who only engage in genital sex but refuse to kiss on the basis that it's too intimate and not for sale? Compare that with the actors who will only kiss but contractually insist on simulating everything else on the basis that that's too intimate.
And then we've got our porn stars. They're prostitutes, right? I mean, they're getting paid to have sex, no? So what about all my fellow gay men who believe prostitution is not something we could ever consider legalising? Do they studiously avoid all gay porn?
Finally, for the Brat Boys amongst us, if we believe that prostitution and escorting is illegal (leaving aside the little legal note about paying for time and anything extra being a private thing between two consenting adults), do we on principle refuse to open profiles on gaydar? After all, it has an escorts section, so it's promoting the infringement of a law, right?

I'm sure there's a really obvious flaw to my argument which I`m too stupid to see. If this blog got more traffic, somebody might enlighten me. Oh, well. I'll go on!