Why I Am Ashamed To Have Marched In Newcastle For A Good Cause

It is very hard for me to march and attend rallies. It's hard to explain how hard it is for my head to cope with the noise and crowds and the fact that 56 hours later I have not recovered from being there. For me to attend such an event and stand up for equality, fraternity and liberty and all those nice things is a big sacrifice. 

I would still want to attend. Because there are things I believe in that trump the difficulties of being the owner of my lovely little autistic brain - and the shaking and tears and pain I've had the last couple of evenings as a pretty direct result of putting myself through the event.

But I am not going to attend. My conscience is such that I must in future stay away from them unless things change.

See if you can spot why I can no longer attend these rallies. Clue: It comes about 1 minute into this video:  https://vimeo.com/184366522

Newcastle Unites, "a broad coalition of the left" have shared the video on Facebook.  It's called "The English Defence League v Newcastle Unites."  A great title for a football match.

Answer: The call for people to commit suicide.

I cannot be associated with that. Ever. It's evil.

 

I don't care who the people are.  I don't care what they say.  I don't care what they have done.  It doesn't matter.  Shouting at them to commit suicide is never justified.  Never.

I am rubbish at social initiation. But I did it on this occasion. Telling them just how vile the chant is. The response I got was, "Well they say bad things so we can too." I felt physically sickened by that response.

Others disliked that chant too. But there it is in the video as if this is something that supposedly nice people should be proud of. It isn't. Newcastle Unites should be profoundly ashamed that such things happen on their watch. Not proud. Ashamed.

Other chants distress me too:

Calling people scum. Yeah, they might be wrong, they might be racist. But is anyone scum?

Saying they're "our streets." Er, no. They're everyone's streets. Because we live in a free society. This isn't some gang warfare, Jets versus Sharks. This is a call for unity, for the celebration of the dignity of all human beings.

So yeah, no more marches and rallies for me unless I can be assured that this awfulness can be consigned to the dustbin of shame where it belongs.

 

I strongly dislike the English Defence League and the things they believe and proclaim.  I believe their brand of racism, like any other brand of racism, is cruel, ignorant and inhuman.  Earlier today I watched the video the EDL produced of their rally.  The ignorance is plain.  The hatred is plain.  The fear of other people is plain.

 

Some of their members even proclaim these things while carrying banners claiming to be "Christian" defenders.  I'm not sure they had read the parts of the Bible about how to treat the alien in your land.  Or the parts of the Bible in which Jesus - an interesting middle Eastern guy whose family were forced to seek sanctuary in a foreign land - talked about love and mercy.

Yes.  I'd love to see every member of the EDL give up their ways and wear nice "Refugees Welcome" badges.  It would be wonderful.

 

I am proud that I stand, as much as my head and variable abilities allow, against the hatred and racism that organisations such as the EDL churn out.

But.  I am ashamed to have walked in a parade and stood at a rally where the encouragement was given for those members to commit suicide, to shoot themselves.

I am ashamed.

And I won't be doing it any more.

Days of Gratitude - For Food, Friends and Fellowship ... And Unexpected Meetings

Hoorah!

Some more days from my gratitude diary.  I am immensely grateful for the diary.  After nearly six months I can say that it has helped me a lot.  It's not the only thing that's helped me in the first half of the year.  The biggest three helps - all of which either didn't exist six months ago or were very new six months ago are this diary, the realisation of how much I can do with a bus pass, and my friendship with Amanda.  Without each of those three I would not be as well as I currently am.  I am immensely grateful for them all.

I have come a long way in the first half of this year.  My mental health has improved a lot, especially since the middle of April.  I'm actually quite proud of having reached the point I am at now as I was a long way from it six months ago. It feels good.  Or at least it feels good when it's not feeling bad!

So here we are.  Four more very varied days.  A couple were very quiet.  A couple were very busy.  And one of them went in a brilliant direction that I couldn't have predicted if I'd had all the astrological skills of Russell Grant and Mystic Meg combined and if I lived in an alternative universe where such astrology actually works.

18^th June

Grateful for a quiet day and for friends.

Grateful to have had the time to write blog posts for Blob Thing who is getting increasingly thoughtful at times.

Grateful to have learned more about quick photo editing on this phone. On the old one I could do nothing.

Although it turns out that negatives can be almost terrifying!

Grateful to have the confidence in me to go out unshaven and dressed in a short skirt and a panda top complete with panda hood.

Beth's friend saw me and called me adorable. Yay!

19^th June

Grateful to visit the Quakers today for the first time in ages. It was nearly silent worship but I go away with things to think about.

Today they unveiled this colour wheel. Each crayon is next to handwritten text, adjectives that members of the meeting had written about Quakers and being a Quaker. Each crayon has a specially made label.

It really is rather a special thing.

And afterwards there was a shared lunch.

Very glad to have been there today.

20^th June

I went for a short walk today. But plans changed quickly when I encountered these people crossing Monkwearmouth Bridge. Grateful to have joined them and walked with them to North Shields.

Grateful too for the good people at The Sage this evening singing songs to protest Nigel Farage and the UKIP event.

Glad to actually have the mental health today to stand with them, hold a placard, and sing out.

21^st June

Grateful for this £1.99 box set from Oxfam. I just finished season two and am almost in awe at it. This was 1984. Tea-time children's television. Yet it was THIS show.

Probably the best Robin Hood version ever. I can rave about it.

And grateful to look at my photos and other people's photos from Monday.

Many good people.

Pleased with how this picture worked out for me.  I took it on Marsden Beach if anyone is wondering.  Just before this we made a friendship circle round the rock stack.

Life on Facebook: Biblical Hedgehogs, Transgender Toilets and Cosy Cafes

I am so far behind on blog posts.  So many days out with photos.  And a couple of weeks of nice things from the gratitude diary.  I will catch up.  I will catch up.  I will catch up.  Saying it over and over as a mantra doesn't make it true any more than ten thousand people quoting Andrew Wakefield makes it true that vaccines cause autism.

Part of the reason for the lack of posts is that I haven't had the spare spoons for writing posts.  I haven't been doing well and spoons have gone on survival and on improving mental health by going to pretty places, or to less pretty places and buying liquorice.

Part of the reason is I keep getting distracted by Facebook.  I know Facebook is meant to be about sharing pictures of kittens and talking about babies, drunken nights and food.  But I can't stick to those rules and thankfully quite a few of my friends there can't stick to them either and post all kinds of interesting things.

Sometimes I do post about food.  Sometimes I post daft things that my head hasn't been able to avoid thinking about and analysing.  Sometimes I post serious things that are dear to me.

For examples, this is what I've posted in the last thirty hours.  Four posts.  With explanatory notes to follow.  As if the posts weren't tortuous enough.

Having written all those notes I realise I am still just as behind with blog posts.  Never mind.

1.

Poll: 6-in-10 oppose bills like the North Carolina transgender bathroom law

Or to turn it around:

Nearly 4-in-10 Americans support laws to keep transgender people out of the restrooms that most closely correspond with their gender and a quarter of Americans strongly support such laws.

Even among American liberals, 1-in-5 say they support the laws.

I wonder what the statistics would be here.


2.

Feeling very sorry for hedgehogs in the New American Standard Bible and wondering what the translators have against them.

First God is having somewhere made into a swamp for them to live in. (Isaiah 14)

Then they're being made to live in a land where the ground is unquenchable burning pitch. (Isaiah 34)

And then it turns out that hedgehogs are having to roost at the top of columns, which does not seem to me to be a completely natural place for them to live. (Zephaniah 2)

This persecution of hedgehogs by God never came up in any sermon I preached, back when I preached sermons.

3.

Really very overloaded / overwhelmed in town. But I decided to stay out and try a cafe I haven't been in before.

It's nice but I would prefer it with no music playing. Glad to have headphones nowadays and to know it's okay.

4.

Meet The Doctor Social Conservatives Depend On To Justify Anti-Transgender Hate

Today is like most days. Because this guy's name has appeared on my facebook wall.

Yep, nearly every day I see his name. Probably every trans person I know has seen his name sometimes.

He is a Doctor. But he is one man. There aren't many like him, which is why he is quoted so often by so many people.

They say "trans people are female impersonators". They say "Surgery for trans people is a bad thing and must be because they stopped it at Johns Hopkins." They say "We shouldn't encourage trans people because then they'll be suicidal." They say that "transgenderism" is a myth, a pathogen that is destroying society. They say that transgender people really have autogynephilia - that is, we get so sexually aroused by our own genitals that we completely change our lives.

They say all kinds of things and time and time again it stems from this man or is backed up by something this man said.


Notes:

1.

I find it interesting to be part of a marginalised group - in fact part of several marginalised groups.  For most of my life I lived in such a way as to not be part of any of them.  Because I was straight, male, cisgender, neurotypical and followed the official religion of my country.  Well, that's the person I presented as anyway.  While out today I used the toilet in the cafe and of course used the women's loo.  The thought that one in five American liberals (and a higher proportion of every other group) would support a law to make it illegal for me to do that raises certain issues.

2.

Yes, I know that other translations don't say hedgehog.  Quite why the NASB translators chose hedgehog when the Hebrew word so obviously means something else is a bit of a mystery to me.

My hedgehog thoughts arose when a preacher I know in Blackpool (one of the good guys) posted his daily five facts and/or thoughts.  Today they included the word "wankers" which is a word many preachers wouldn't use.  Yesterday they informed us that the cat is the only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible.  I check facts if I can.  Sometimes I check unimportant ones.  And sure enough, the fact was wrong.  I used the Wikipedia list of domestic animals.  No, the Bible does not mention the zebu, water buffalo, llama, alpaca, yak, gayal or ferret.

I wasn't sure about hedgehog so I looked it up and found that while many translations don't mention hedgehogs, the NASB does.  The King James Bible has bitterns living in swamps, not hedgehogs.  It could also be an otter, a porcupine, or an owl.  Hedgehogs share that fire land with three other animals - all of them birds.  The first of these is mostly called a pelican.  But the Emphasized Bible calls it "the vomiting pelican" which is nice!

Christian fundamentalists often talk about the "plain, simple truth of Scripture."  You just tell it as it is and believe it, literally.  I think that, whether you broadly want to believe the Bible or not, that's a laughable and dangerous viewpoint.  If your Bibles can't even agree whether a word means hedgehog, owl, bittern or otter you have problems being able to read anything like the "plain, simple truth" from it.

Yes, my head often takes me further than it reasonable into looking at things.  And while I never preached about hedgehogs, I did once include a section about the occurrences of laurel trees in The Bible in a study I led at a Baptist Church.  Possibly the most over-detailed series of Bible studies ever led in Lancashire on the first half of the book of Zechariah.  I can now remember pretty much none of what I talked about so it was probably not particularly important.

3.

Yes, the cafe.  Place of my use of a toilet that a fifth of American liberals would want to make illegal.  Not my only women's toilet use this week.  And other such restrooms contained other women.  Guess what?  Nothing happened.  I honestly hope things are different in the UK and rather less people would support a change in the law here.  Probably things are different here.  I'm choosing to believe that.

Almost a food post.  But just a tasty smoothie and a comfy chair to sit in.  And photos that will end up in the gratitude diary probably and so reappear in another post here.

The cafe is Super Natural, Upper Princess Square, in Newcastle.  It seems pretty good and the salad bar is decent.  They're starting a second cafe with an expanded salad bar and with all the profits going to some charities.  It's likely I'll be trying it at some point and returning to the first cafe which would be a good place if meeting someone.  The cafe next to it, Painted Elephant is a vegan place and is meant to be great in terms of both friendliness and the quality of the food - though I confess I still miss the cafe that was there before it, The Laughing Cat, one of only two cafes that I've written an entire blog post about.


4.

The name of Paul McHugh has cropped up quite a bit recently.  More so with all this fuss about American toilets and cisgender heterosexuals saying they want to ban transgender people of any variety of sexuality from toilets because cisgender heterosexuals sometimes do despicable things.

But today I made a mistake.  I answered back to someone posting about him.  I don't usually do that.  But for some reason I was annoyed at a guy laughing out loud because he agreed with the claims that "transgendered" people are impersonators, counterfeits.  Annoyed because I know that I am me.  Simple.  Annoyed too because I fell into the trap of being annoyed by someone whose opinion on the matter should not matter in the slightest to me.

So yes, I argued.  With Mr. Colditz.  I'm sure he's a nice guy, just one who happens not to agree that I am me. (Is that part of the definition of nice? You tell me.)  In any case, like anyone else he's doing his best.  I didn't know until I first saw his name that people were called Colditz.  I am stopping arguing now and thus I find I have Escaped from Colditz.

Sorry.  Couldn't resist.

Mental Health Hell and the Positivity of My Life

My mental health has been pretty damn naff recently.  There have been horrible days and even worse hours.  Mental health has stopped me doing many of the things I wanted to do.  It's paralysed me at times.  It means that instead of going to Sussex for 11 days I have had to stay in Newcastle.  I've cried lots, broken down very publicly in the city centre, hurt my head through banging it, had a constant headache from sensory overload, and really struggled to keep going at times.

Yes.  I could look at the last month and choose to say that it's been a terrible time.  I could focus in on the bad things.  I could focus on the painful meltdown on Tuesday and the way I stopped being able to function when sorting things for refugees and the way I had to walk out of my mindfulness session and cry in the corridor.  Or I could focus on the good.

I could focus in yesterday on how awful I felt in the morning, how I didn't even have the spoons to get back on the metro and come home from town.  Or I could focus on how good the day got when it became a surprise.

I have a choice.  To focus on the bad and the pain.  Or to focus on all the good things, accept the bad, and move on from there.  Because the bad is bad.  And the pain is pain.  I can't deny it.  I can't pretend that all the rubbish isn't there.  But I can choose to focus elsewhere and see that, even with all the rubbish, life is a wonderful thing.

Because there is so much good and so much hope and so many good people.  Taking - as examples - my Saturdays:

Four weeks ago I danced with a new and very valued friend, barefoot in a thunder storm at Autscape, a conference/gathering run by and for autistic people.  Four weeks on I know that Autscape was very important to me and there are things that happened there and things it taught me about myself that I haven't even begun to process.  In some way Autscape will affect the rest of my life.  That weekend I met awesome people.

Three weeks ago I went to a barbecue from which arose decisions that are majorly affecting my life.  Majorly.  Three weeks ago I found somewhere that has almost become my second home.  Somewhere that I hope will become a big part of my life.  That barbecue was just a barbecue and the person who invited me was really just inviting me to a barbecue.  Neither of us knew that it would lead to so much in such a short space of time.  That weekend I met awesome people and because I met them I went on to meet more awesome people.

Two weeks ago was a day I could say was rubbish.  Because the first half of it was pretty bad in terms of mental health difficulties.  I wouldn't wish those difficulties on anyone.  But then there was a wonderful message from an awesome friend, a message that really helped me face the day.  And then on what had been that rubbish day I had a surprise meeting with another awesome friend.  We pretended to have an appointment at the optician in order to help ourselves to hot chocolate (my awesome friend does things like that!) and then we sat in the street drinking and laughing with each other.

On the worst days there is good.  On the day I broke down so much in town my friends came to the rescue - especially three wonderful people from Autscape who stayed with me as much as they could through constant text messages until I was recovered enough to get myself safe.  I count myself as massively fortunate in the people who have come my way recently, some of whom I've met in surprising ways.  It's like I suddenly have this brand new extended family of people who I love, who love me and with whom there are all kinds of unexpected connections.

A week ago I belatedly got involved in the work going on in solidarity with refugees.  It took seeing people and donations in my new second home before I finally decided that I couldn't stay away from giving something to the cause.  It's entirely possible that the future will see me continue to be involved in that in bigger ways.  And I've met awesome people.  It takes a lot for me to stand up and do something positive.  But I think right now I am standing and I don't want to sit down again.  The work is there and will continue to be there and, if I allow it and choose it, there is space for me to be useful.

And tomorrow I go to a meditation group for the first time.  The start of what will be a weekend I am really looking forward to - though a very different weekend to the one I would be having had I not had all the mental health issues I've had recently.  There will be awesome people there too and awesome people throughout the weekend.

So.  My life has been a mental health hell.  And I could choose to see it that way.  But it has also been a time of massive and unexpected blessings and of meeting the awesome people - many of whom I would never have met had I not experienced the mental health hell.  For the future I can only see more blessings and more awesome people even if the hell continues.

I had an hour this morning when my head was not hurting from sensory overload.  The first hour in a few weeks.  It was bliss to not hurt.  And sometimes it hurts so much and that pain inside my head falls down and across my body too.  But in this life, painful life, I rejoice and in the last weeks have become more and more thankful and more and more able to see the light that comes from without and the light that I have been becoming from within.

My painful life is one of positivity.  And overall, I love the way it is becoming.

IDAHOT 2014 - International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, Newcastle event

Last Saturday was IDAHOT, the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.  A day to stand in solidarity with all those around the world who suffer mistreatment through homophobia or transphobia, whether socially or legally.  It's taken me a while to write about it.  Then again I've still got to write about the May Day march that happened weeks ago.  I'm a bad blogger!

There was an event organised in Newcastle.  Two years ago this took place at the Monument.  This year it was more out of the way, outside the Civic Centre.  I don't know if that was by choice or because the main city centre was having a busy day with a march by the English Defence League, a counter protest by groups including the Anti-Fascism League, and the Orange Order picked the same day to march through the city as well.  Unfortunately the one thing the Civic Centre lacks on a Saturday lunchtime is passers by so the event was preaching just to the gathered crowd, all of whom knew much of what is going on round the world, all of whom were firmly against homophobia and transphobia, and most of whom were somewhere within the LGBT communities.

The event began with the ceremonial raising of the gay pride rainbow flag.  It's an amazing thing that such a flag can fly at Newcastle Civic Centre.  It would have been unheard of here in the past.  And in many nations around the world such an act would be illegal, punishable by imprisonment or hard labour rather than arranged hand-in-hand with the city council.

The rainbow flag flies in Newcastle.

Our host for the event was our very own Rev. Cecilia Eggleston of MCC (Metropolitan Community Church).

I was talking at the event with an atheist.  He said he loves and admires Cecilia greatly and that if he was a Christian then she is the sort of Christian he'd want to be.  Many people - whether atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Christian or whatever - would share that view.

It is sad that even in the UK there is still a place for MCC to be what it is and that in other nations that place is more urgent.  Then again in many so-called Christian nations such a church would be illegal.



The first MCC began because there was no place that gay Christians could worship without being told that their sexuality was sin.  It is shameful that even today, in the UK, many churches still preach the same thing.  I look forward to a day when no church, beyond a few fringe elements, preaches against those who are gay or trans and that we'll think of such preaching much as we think of that preaching in the past that claimed that black people were cursed - because Noah cursed them.  We'll look back and wonder how Christians could have been so stupid, arrogant, judgemental and hateful.  That time has not come yet.  As it approaches then the reason MCC exists round the world will cease to be a reason to exist.  I'm sure it will continue to adapt and continue to preach, as the T-shirt proclaims, "God loves LGBT" and indeed that God loves all people.

Three speakers spoke at the event.  The first was Tara Stone, chair of Tyne Trans, the local support group for Transgender people.  Some people need a lot of support, some very little.  Tara works hard for the group and for acceptance of all transgender people.  Her vision, in part, is for a society where everyone can be who they are and what they are, without fear of persecution or abuse by individuals or media - with the usual provisos of course of being who you are based on love and respect.

It's a message of living, of being, of doing.  It's a message of freedom and even in the UK it needs saying because so many gay and trans people are afraid to be openly who they are and hide in shadows.

There are challenges in this of course.  To be openly transgender, especially if you're not cis-normative can be hard and I do find that trans people can be judged on a harsher scale than cis people, even by those who are our allies.  If a cis woman has a "bad clothes day" it can pass without comment.  If a trans woman does the same she will be criticised.  If a trans woman doesn't look enough like someone's picture of "a woman" then she is criticised.  If a trans man doesn't look like "a man" the same happens.  And if you're trans and don't really identify as "man" or "woman" and live as yourself then people can make things difficult for you - even people who are LGB.

And this photo shows another problem trans people have:

LGB people forget us.  Frequently.  In Newcastle we celebrate IDAHOT.  Here's a big UK poster from UNISON, advertising the website IDAHO.  Other sites are named "dayagainsthomophobia" and so on.

So often trans people are forgotten and LGB people fight for their own rights and leave us out - sometimes even actively standing against trans people.

This needs to change.

Our second speaker was Abraham, representing Rainbow Homes, an organisation for LGBT asylum seekers, many of whom have had quite horrific experiences in their countries of origin.  Some of them can show you the marks of torture they have received for being gay.  27% of votes in the UK European Election last week went to a party that wouldn't want to let these people into Britain.  But they are real people, with real stories of terror and suffering.  They are not demons - whatever newspapers and politicians repeatedly tell us.

Abraham spoke about Africa which he called the most homophobic continent and the lives of LGBT people in the 20-something nations there were being gay is a crime.

Also from Africa we had the FODI African drummers performing and supporting us.

Our final speaker was Janet, who works for an LGBT organisation in the city.  She spoke mainly about life in Russia.  Its anti-gay policies were much in the news during the Winter Olympics.  The media have gone.  The policies remain and life is getting harder for gay and trans people
there.

To follow our speakers we made a noise.  A minute of noise.  Loud noise.  We did it not for ourselves but for those across the world who could not do what we have done.

In 81 countries, same-sex relationships are illegal.  In 10 countries the death penalty applies.  This represents 40% of the world's population.
70% of people live somewhere where freedom of expression is limited for sexuality and/or gender.  They couldn't gather peacefully as we gathered.  They couldn't speak out.  They couldn't be sanctioned by the Council to raise the flag, watched by one friendly policeman from a force with LGBT liaison officers working against any hate crimes.

So we made a noise for those people who cannot make a noise.  We made a noise, a cry for justice.  For freedom.  For people to be allowed to be people.

And then there was cake.  Tasty cake.

There are better photos of the cake - and indeed better photos of the whole event - by a Newcastle media project called "Look Again".  They can be found on their facebook page.  There's also a 25 minute interview with Cecilia that they did a couple of weeks ago when visiting and filming at MCC.

Cake.  Always a good way to finish any event.









We were fortunate.  The weather was warm.  The sun shone.  Apparently it poured with rain two years ago at Monument.  And a passer-by called Cecilia the daughter of the Devil.  I'm sure there are plenty of Christians who would agree with that.  But like Jesus, Cecilia is more the friend of sinners than the friend of the self-righteous judges.

And people came and said hello.  People from the trans group.  People from MCC.  A couple of Green Party activists I'd met briefly at the start of the month - after the May Day march mentioned at the beginning.  And a woman I completely failed to recognise who I'd met once at the Unitarian church which I really should pay another visit to sometime. 

A good day.  A peaceful celebration.  And thankfully the marches and protests and parades elsewhere in the city remained peaceful - thanks in part to the large police presence.  We had one policeman.  The EDL had rather more!

Forcing people to accept the "gay lifestyle" and "Christianity"? No. We're not.

I am becoming angry.  I think that's a good thing.  It's only a matter of time before I break out into more practical social action.

I just saw a picture on facebook.  Somebody shared it from "The Tea Party" and anyone who knows me knows that me and the Tea Party don't see eye-to-eye.  I wonder who these two men are and if they know their image is being used in such a way.

And I screamed inside.  At the idiocy of that question - and at how many people would think it a good question, that their freedom is threatened by allowing gay people to marry.  Then again I saw a comment yesterday from someone - a very faithful Catholic - who didn't see that the laws in Uganda as an affront because, he said, homosexuality is an affront to nature.  Would he want LGBT people in America to be imprisoned for life I wonder?  Would he think it an affront to imprison me for life?

Bear in mind that I wrote a long response to someone earlier in the day defending theism and theists - that it isn't a belief in God that leads to idiocy but other things that arise in non-theistic situations too: exclusivism, defensiveness, fear, crowd psychology, the human need to belong, leaders not encouraging thought - and sometimes actively discouraging thought.  I was a strong theist for two decades and know so many marvellous people who are theists.  I'm not anti-theism or anti-Christianity and remain a Christian, albeit a non-theist.

None of what follows is an attack on theism - I have no problem at all with people believing in God and see how many good things this can bring.  Even if theism is an erroneous belief it brings great things to millions of people and inspires great deeds, great art and literature and great charity.


I wrote this.  In one rapid sprawl.  And haven't proof read it, checked it or altered it at all.  I can't post it on facebook - I lost the original post by pressing the wrong button. That may be a good thing.  If you get fed up with my ramblings there are links to a couple of better writers at the bottom of this post.

 

 _____________________________________

 How stupid.  At best stupid.  At worst evil.

A) it's not a 'lifestyle'.

B) nobody is asking anyone to adopt a gay life - only to allow gay people to live their lives.

People are being asked to stop discriminating against gay people (like myself).  They're not being told to be gay.  People are being asked to accept us - not become us.  To stop hating us.  And they DO hate us, while claiming to 'hate the sin but love the sinner'.  I've been told my marriage is void, blasphemy and that I'm an abomination.  By Christians.  Throwing the Bible at me.  Many friends have had similar experiences.  All we ask is that we can be who we are - and that's rooted in love, compassion.

The current situation in many places, including much of the USA, is that people are forced to not be themselves and love who they love.  And the Catholic Church supports that situation.  "Who am I to judge?" falls on deaf ears when we've already been judged.

C) Who doesn't accept that Christians can be Christians?  Nobody is telling Christians to stop being Christians.

Except Christians keep living in fear - if we allow a gay couple to marry it will destroy civilisation, they'll turn and kill the church, they'll want to marry squirrels.  And all that crap.  Why are Christians taught to live in such fear?  Why do Christians fear human beings so much?  Are they really so faithless?  Do they not believe "if God is for me ...?"

If God is love and perfect love casts out all fear then it has to be said that an atheist gay couple can be MUCH closer to God than many Christians are.

Or does this picture imply that if the government allow gay people to live their lives it should force people to be Christian?

I hope not because that would be evil.  Very, very evil.

What I really hate is all this talk of "religious freedom" when what is meant is "we religious people want to force everyone else to live the way we want them to".  When I hear "religious freedom" coming from an American it is rare that religious freedom is meant.  What is almost always meant is bigotry, persecution, criminalising humans, and a lack of freedom - religious or otherwise - for others.

Hey, a church which I love I attend regularly is part of a denomination founded in the USA.  It teaches that gay marriage is fine.  Why shouldn't we have the "religious freedom" that people, including yourself, go on about?  Why do so many Christians think that religious freedom includes forcing your religion and the morality you draw from it onto everyone else?

So, legalise civil gay marriage.  Legalise it.  Any sex marriage.  Any gender marriage.

Because anything else destroys the concept of religious freedom.  And legalising it doesn't destroy your freedom to be in a church that teaches that it is evil.  That my marriage is evil.  That I am evil because of my gender (as Benedict XVI made abundantly clear).

Legalise it.  Because that's freedom.

Or don't you trust God to be able to cope with a society that is free?  Don't you trust God to "protect" the Catholic Church?

Your God should be big enough that you don't feel the need to piss, through your thoughts, words and deeds, on people for being gay and loving one another.

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If you want to go further read something else about threats to religious freedom, something written with much care and common sense, something which quickly and clearly cuts through much of the nonsense that people speak about the subject, I can recommend this post:

  

How to Determine If Your Religious Liberty Is Being Threatened in Just 10 Quick Questions by Rev. Emily C. Heath

Or take a read of this short article from an evangelical Christian website, written by Kristen Howerton on "the biblical definition of marriage and its relevance to marriage equality."  She doesn't judge any definition, opinion or interpretation but writes:

The relevance of your biblical beliefs on homosexuality in regards to marriage equality?

THEY AREN’T RELEVANT.

Case closed!

The Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Law. Catholic Opposition? Western Influence?

This is most definitely not what I'd expected to be writing about this afternoon. 

I hadn't been expecting to be writing anything at all.  The plan was to check Facebook and then go to a quiet room and read a book.  A book by Elizabeth Chadwick, The Love Knot.  Not the sort of thing I'd have even thought of reading a year ago.  Coming out as transgender means that I feel I can experiment with reading things that I wouldn't have tried as a "man".  The experimentation is all part of finding out what kind of a woman I am and revelation comes whether or not I like something.

Yes, I'd been expecting a quiet afternoon, free of any controversial subjects and free of thinking hard about difficult topics.  But then I checked Facebook and found myself reading something someone wrote about the "bold opposition" the Catholic Church has made since 2009 against the new anti-gay law in Uganda.

Ever suspicious of claims, the cynic in action, I wondered how "bold" the opposition was.  As a result of easy research - for the answers are easy to find.  I was cross about what I found.  How could their "opposition" possibly be described as "bold"?  The Catholic Church is powerful.  Bold opposition would use that power in a way that risks consequences, risks persecution.

I'm sure what I found out isn't the full story.  I'm sure there were plenty of faithful Catholics who did bold things.  But the story I found wasn't good.  To be fair, the Catholic Church did more than any major local church to oppose the bill.  No other major denomination in Uganda spoke against the bill at all.  The Ugandan Anglicans didn't.  And many of the other churches are greatly influenced by and often financed by American evangelicalism - with all its fundamentalist homophobia.

Indeed the genesis of the bill springs at least in part from those American fundamentalists.  It grew from a seminar called “Seminar on Exposing the Truth behind Homosexuality and the Homosexual Agenda."  There, a Ugandan group financially supported by US groups teamed up with two anti-gay activists.  You can read about the seminar here.  The entire article is worth reading.  Another article on the same subject can be found here.  It's also worth reading.

The second article gives more information about one of those activists, Scott Lively.  He's a holocaust revisionist who believes that homosexuals founded the Nazi party and were responsible for much of the holocaust.  He wrote a book about it, The Pink Swastika.  Not a book well received by historians who agree the premise is "utterly false".  And it's offensive to anyone who knows anything about the pink triangle - which was used to identify people sent to prison camps by the Nazi regime because of their homosexuality.

The article quotes him from a transcript of the seminar: "I know more about this [homosexuality] than almost anyone in the world ... The gay movement is an evil institution. The goal of the gay movement is to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity."  Later he met with the Ugandan parliament and after he left parliament announced the need for the new law. 

The other activist was from Exodus International which was a prominent anti-gay group calling for conversion therapy until June 2013 when it shut down and the leaders apologised for all the hurt they caused.

Both articles point to other first-world, Christian visitors to Uganda.  One of the most prominent, Pastor Rick Warren, visited in 2008.  I already knew that but it's good to find myself reminded.  Warren is the pastor of the Willow Creek Church, a "seeker friendly" mega-church and author of the astoundingly popular book in Christian circles, "The Purpose Driven Life."  I've owned a copy and at least one church I've been part of has studied and worked through the book en masse.  But that was just after I left it and I've not actually read the book!  Warren told political leaders in Uganda that homosexuality isn't a human right because it's unnatural.  Fuel to the growing fire.  And others have visited and funded massive satellite broadcasting channels on which similar speakers preach.

It's hard to know what can be done to help LGBT people in these nations.  It is almost as if the fires are so big that whatever action we take would be like pouring a jug water onto a vat of burning oil.  David Cameron spoke out.  Ban Ki-moon spoke out.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spoke out.  But the situation is such that they are all told "what right have you to impose yourselves on us."  The result, at least in the short-term, is often that things become worse for LGBT people.

At least in part first-world people stepped in to help create a problem that we, as first-world people, can't step in to solve.  The influence of certain branches of western Christianity on Africa is sobering and, at least to me, disgusting.

Anyway, I quickly wrote a response on Facebook about the Catholic claim - not about the influence that we first-world people have had on the situation in Uganda.  And in Nigeria.  And in other nations where homosexuality is illegal.  And then decided to put it here, at which point it was only fair to mention non-Catholic Christian responses and influences.  And then I got carried away with the writing.

It won't do any good here - but it wouldn't have done any good on Facebook either.

Again, the two articles, here and here, are really worth reading.  A part of our shared history that we will, in time, look back on with shame.  Read them!

To close, here's that response.  Written in too much anger to be a picture of tact and diplomacy.  And not posted on Facebook.


Oh, such bold opposition.

In 2009 the Catholic Archbishop of Uganda said the bill was unnecessary because "acts of sodomy" were already illegal and said the death penalty was too severe and that gays should be rehabilitated.  True - no other major religion in Uganda opposed the bill at all but the statement suggested the laws in place - which could already include a sentence of life imprisonment - were good things.

When the Ugandan Ambassador visited the Pope in December 2009, the anti-gay laws (that at the time included the death penalty) didn't get a mention.  Instead the Pope talked about the climate of freedom in Uganda and praised the country for respecting the Catholic Church.

Then in 2012 the Catholic Church in Uganda changed its views - to support the bill.  Catholic leaders there said the bill was necessary because of "“an attack on the Bible and the institution of marriage."  The Catholic bishops, discussing the bill at that time, stated "“We, the Catholic Bishops of Uganda, appreciate and applaud the Government’s effort to protect the traditional family and its values.”

The Catholic Church in Uganda thus threw its weight behind the campaign to revive the bill - which the government had shelved due to international pressure, largely of a financial type.

Such bold opposition.

Please don't look at this issue and portray the Catholic Church as some bold moral crusader standing up for the lives of human beings.  Because in this case it really isn't.

Asylum Seekers and Facebook - Where Does the Truth Lie?

I use facebook.  I use it a lot.  Some people would tell you that I use it too much!  And I tend to get annoyed by hoaxes and scams.  They crop up regularly - some of them crop up over and over again.  But I get most annoyed when those posts that unfairly demonise a group of people or individual people - the posts that began somewhere as a malicious lie not just a silly joke. There are politicians and organisations I don't particularly like and rarely agree with - but I've sprung to their defence when I've seen lies told about them, intentionally or otherwise.  Because of course most hoaxes and scams are passed on by well intentioned, pretty decent people. 

Here's something that I see variations of posted on facebook quite regularly.  There's a good chance that if you use facebook then you've seen it too.  A 30 second look on Google brings up several articles that show how wrong it is.  But people tell me they don't know how to do that - yes, there really are regular computer users who claim that Google is a complete mystery.  And other people tell me they haven't got the time to do that - which only shows that they would prefer to risk spreading lies, demonising other human beings, rather than spent 30 seconds giving them the benefit of the doubt.  I truly think the "no time" excuse is a symptom either of evil or of a belief in the basic rotten nature of humanity.

And this particular post, one I've seen quite a few times in different forms, makes me very, very cross:

I don't personally know any asylum seekers at this time.  We had an asylum seeker and his family at church for quite a while and they went through great suffering until they were granted asylum and could finally start to create a life here.  But I know people who are involved in working with asylum seekers and refugees - through an aid centre for them (which received my entire wardrobe of clothes in the last few months - new outward gender means new clothes for me) and through various groups run for them.

From those people I hear horror stories - families living in one room, without furniture, without extra clothes, with only one cup between them.  Asylum seekers who know they face life imprisonment or death if they are sent home, so live in great fear each day.  They may have the "wrong" race, religion, politics, sexuality or whatever else to be free in their nation of origin.  They are usually innocent of anything we'd call a criminal offence under our own comparatively very freedom loving laws.

There is a group of LGBT asylum seekers in this city who would face terrible punishment if sent back, because of their sexuality or gender - because of that fear and because of prejudice among others from their nation they cannot be openly gay, or lesbian or seek help as transgender.  Yet in order to stay the kind British government wants to force them to "prove" their sexuality or gender.

But tonight (at the time of typing - not of posting this) I saw the above set of lies on facebook.  Again.  Yet again.  And I just had to respond.

It'll do little good I suspect. (edit - I removed my post the following morning)  If someone wants to believe the worst about people and situations then they'll still believe the worst no matter how much light or truth is passed their way.  So I responded, and the likelihood is that someone will not like my response much - I'm afraid it's not 100% the epitome of calm diplomacy but does improve after the 'baloney'!

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I think it's a total disgrace that such complete and utter baloney keeps getting posted on facebook and elsewhere - especially when it's by people who know about the work of refugee centres and who have seen what poverty asylum seekers generally have to live in while often in desperate fear for their lives if refugee status is not granted.

But go ahead, scapegoat them.  They can't fight back.

An "illegal" immigrant gets nothing.  The clue is in the word "illegal".

A single asylum seeker can receive £36.62 a week.  That's under £2,000 a year to live on. 

A roof is provided - usually horrible as the contract goes to the lowest possible bidder and this can change at any time, without warning.  Recently some asylum seekers in Newcastle had to move to Teeside - with less than one hour's notice.

Under £2,000 a year doesn't leave a lot of spare cash and asylum seekers have to report in regularly.  In Shields.  So they walk, very regularly, from Newcastle to Shields and back in order to receive their £36 because they can't afford a bus.

But hey, that's only a 17 mile round trip and I'm sure we'd all be happy to walk that in the middle of winter in order to receive £36 to pay for our food, fuel, clothes, and anything else we might need to survive.

We wouldn't be allowed any other money - asylum seekers aren't allowed to seek work unless refugee status is granted.

If the asylum seeker is eventually granted refugee status he/she is entitled to the same benefits as anyone else.  Anyone who thinks that's wrong is wishing these people a quick trip back to their nation of origin where imprisonment or sometimes death awaits - for their politics, race, sexuality, religion.

They are scared, have run for their lives.  They arrive in Britain.  And people on facebook listen to lies and just piss all over them.