"Christian Cop arrests Gay Protestor for anti-Church comments"

I'm paraphrasing this headline: "Gay Cop arrests Preacher for Antigay (sic) Comments". The story was carried in a few places, e.g. Telegraph, and many pro-Christian and pro-Gay sites. My version of the headline looks a little odd and out of place, and would either make people do a double-take or get quite annoyed.

The balance of feeling now is that gay is fine, it's been incorporated into 'normal', and persecution based on sexuality is fading fast. All good. It's also been shown that religious fundamentalism is seen as just that, an extreme, containing views that the majority of the faithful would not really hold.

So we would, rightly, be quite upset and angry if someone used their faith/belief as bias to persecute someone. Strangely though, it's fine when we do exectly the same but just under a different banner, that of gay-rights. From the reports on this story it seems that the preacher concerned stated opinion, quoted scripture, and was engaged in a debate. He wasn't hurling abused or threatening or "inciting hatred". In my opinion his views are wrong and I agree that, to me they are "offensive" in the sense that I'm gay/lesbian so he's, in a very minor way, insulting me for my sexuality. But it's his right to hold that view, in doing so he's not harming anyone (except maybe himself).

My (vague) understanding of the bible is that same-sex relationships are pretty much painted as a bad thing, you could argue this is devine proclamation or simply practical advice from the time, nevertheless that's what it states. Why persecute someone for stating something that is historical fact?

Seriously, there are lots of opinions that people hold that I could take offense at, and vice versa. You can use the law to force people to comply with what you believe - we really don't want to go down the 1984 route of having the thought police. This arrest was a bad thing, it shows that we've replaced anti-gay bullies with pro-gay ones, is this progress?

Think of the Children

The recent stories of the young transgendered children have received a fair amount of coverage in the press and in the blogsphere so I won't go into a huge amount of depth on the details as they are so widely available (though I guess of dubious accuracy). There are a few points I would like to make from my own perspective.

First of all, while it's possible the schools concerned had little notice about these pupils, if the reports are true regarding how they handled things then they really do need to have a rapid re-think of their approach. You can't simply ban the other kids from being mean and nasty and hope that works, it simply won't - I was bullied at school (not directly trans-related in my case) and I doubt such directions would have stopped the imbeciles involved from picking on me.

Even worse such an approach sends the wrong message to those slightly more thoughtful and compassionate children (and parents) who would benefit from having a little more explanation and information so they can begin to understand and maybe even support what these kids are going through. The 'newspaper' (I use the term loosely) articles did nothing to redress the balance either, taking the sensationalist angle rather than doing some decent research and attempting to educate the masses in the ways of understanding and tolerance.

Which brings me to the supposed reactions from the parents of other children at the schools concerned. These seem to have been largely expressed as shock and the underlying concern that their own kids may make similar choices. As we all know transgenderism is extremely contagious and can be passed on to others so make sure you keep well away from these children in case you catch anything! Sound silly? I would bet the idea has crossed the minds of some of the parents.

If you can't consider the trauma that these children have gone through, and are going to have to deal with for the rest of their lives, and you can't appreciate their suffering and feelings as human beings then you're a pretty pathetic individual yourself. Just because you may think of someone as 'weird' or 'not normal' does not mean that aren't human and are devoid of feelings, quite the contrary, they probably have an over-abundance of the latter.

If derogatory labels are the best you can come up with then it's maybe you that has the problem not them. For once I would agree with the mantra "think of the children"; don't persecute people so young and certainly don't teach your own offspring such intolerance and bigotry.

'Wacky' Jacqui is at it again

I must credit The Register with coming up with her title but I believe it is a fitting description of Jacqui (looks an odd way to spell that name) Smith our current home secretary. For a start she is responsible for the madness over the ID scheme and related propoganda as well as many other privacy-invading measures (okay I could have a biased view given the coverage of her in the aforementioned publication).

Her latest plan is supposedly an attempt to help women (and presumably some men in similar circumstances) who are pressured and exploited in the sex trade. From the coverage so far, e.g. this BBC article "Prostitute users face clampdown", it seems that that the proposals are actually going to impact 'legal' prostitution but probably have little affect on what the government claims to be targetting, helping women controlled by pimps.

Belle De Jour, the famous (maybe infamous) author of Secret Diary of a Call Girl has, given her experience, something to say about all of this. I'm sure there has been plenty of discussion and debate about it all as well - I caught some of an interview with Jacqui Smith on Radio 4 but I've so far missed question time and similar programmes.

There is just something about this that annoys me. I don't really have any right to comment as such, I have absolutely no experience or knowledge about this area of life; to the best of my knowledge I have only ever seen one person in my entire life who might have been a prostitute, I don't know anyone who knows anyone, was one or employed their services. I have led a sheltered life!

But it has always seemed to me, inexperienced (in alot of things) though I may be, that the most sensible thing to do would be to legalise prostitution and bring it out in the open for all the obvious reasons (regulation, safety, taxation). It is, as they say, just sex, why should this be any different to other areas of life? We can talk about love and relationships and everything else but sex is really seen as such a taboo.

Taking an adult approach to something that is clearly being viewed as a problem would show great leadership and illustrate that we can and should be open about sex. Instead this is just making things worse and stigmatising those who provide or use such services, but worse than that it makes everything related to sex feel that much more taboo.