None Of My Best Friends Are Gay

I am going to be brave. When the Pope says that proponents of gay marriage are enemies to peace and justice in our world, he is wrong.  Just about as wrong as he could be, in my opinion.

Gays wishing to marry one another are not strapping explosives to their chests and walking onto buses, or proposing laws (as in Uganda) that homosexual men and women  be put to death. Neither are they scouring the Internet for anthrax spores, or blocking all attempts to slow climate change...

Surely, these are far worse threats to 'justice and peace'?

I am saddened, because I believe in making statements like these, a man of God legitimises the persecution of the gay community, and persecution is what REAL sin looks like.

Attitudes to gay people are coloured by two different kinds of prejudice. Voluntary separation, and culpable ignorance.

I own up to the first. I didn't know that I knew any  gay people until twenty years ago, when a parent of one my students came to explain that she was leaving her husband for another woman. I confess, I was shocked, and had to struggle not to show it. I wrestled with the problem, MY problem, for some time. Was Jane a different person? No. She had become a friend, and her sincerity, warmth, generosity and humour hadn't changed. She  is the person now, that she was before she came out as gay. Light  and shade, good and bad, just like me. She hadn't changed towards me, and I saw no reason whatever to change towards her.

My daughters told me about their friends who were gay, and they taught me that to judge anyone by their sexual orientation was a foolish, unenlightened and cruel thing to do. In my heart of hearts, despite what Christian fundamentalists shriek from their foxholes, I know that rejection and persecution of gay people is WRONG.

The second prejudice is driven by culpable ignorance. Neural science and the science of genetics are demonstrating that homosexuality is NOT unnatural, it is NOT purely a 'lifestyle choice' and it CANNOT be 'corrected' by prayer or reorientation therapies. The facts are out there, published in mainstream scientific journals, and to ignore them in order to hold on to prejudice and fuel persecution is unconscionable.

I plead with all people of faith to take a long hard look at what they believe about gay people. If it tends to hatred, think again about the 'lifestyle choice' of the Prince of Peace, who sought out those whom everyone else marginalised, rejected and persecuted.

Perhaps for some of us it would be a good move to declare gays our enemies, then, for God's sake, we'd HAVE to love them...

'It's not about...

Our grandchildren, ' Frances said, 'They'll do well anywhere, ' It's about the kids we used to teach.'

Five retired head teachers, chewing the fat (not literally, 'Coco's Bistro' in Cheltenham serves excellent food) and doing what you might expect. Bewailing the fact that education is not what it was it was in our day.

I could go on about the stress that teachers are under to raise SATS scores (which fools think is synonymous with raised standards) and how these stressed teachers do stupid things, like cheat, or yell at kids, but I won't, because that will soon become evident, and the see-saw will hit the pendulum, and softer voices will be heard again...

I am incensed at the possibility that in the pointless pursuit of the higher grade, lasting damage is done to children NOW. We five  know that time and space for listening to music, messing about with paint, and working with the raw material of experience ( the REAL science experiment, not the video clip, for example) where real, permanent,  learning occurs, is being reduced,  robbing the child of the opportunity of the point of education. . To grow a brain.

Longer days, fewer breaks, little time left to dream, to imagine, to stare into space and wonder... Many of the ' kids we taught' live in areas of social deprivation, where the school is a haven of  normality. These children are undernourished morally, intellectually and spiritually, as much as nutritionally. Fed fast food in their homes, they are now offered the education equivalent  in school. Instant pap - hours and hours of extra 'tuition', that amounts to endless drill,  to give the correct Pavlovian response to key words on a 45 minute question paper. This isn't a programme for the future, it's the return to the nineteenth century. It's not education, it's theft.

Write To Your Representative

Twenty-one trillion dollars are stashed away in off-shore bank accounts worldwide, by just 92,00 people.  That's just 0.001 per cent of the world's people holding assets greater than the combined GDP of both the USA and Japan. Now this really isn't fair.

These figures are quoted not in 'Lefty Today' or 'Marxism for the Minority', but in the highly respectable, 'New Scientist' journal published weekly in the UK. (newscientist.com) The science in question, is of course, psychology, and the editorial ('An Appeal To Fairness' 28 July 2012) gives an account of research in the field of society's attitude to inequality.

Why do we stress out sick people by trying to force them back to work they are demonstrably unable to do, or blame homeless people for their inability to make it - people at the bottom of the pile, struggling in  a system weighted against them - whilst remaining silent about this particular obscenity? The NS editorial  might be read as a homily in our churches. It wouldn't be though. Too radical perhaps?

The editor is strightforward about his belief that, 'There is no authority to whom we can simply wail about unfairness in the hope of restitution. We are the responsible adults now.' I don't censure him for this; on the contrary, I am delighted that he brings the issue of fairness in our society into prominence, what I do question is why we citizens of faith aren't making more of a noise. Too comfortable perhaps?

Whatever our stance we ARE the responsible adults. We do have a say in what laws shape our society. We can make a difference.