News from the Very Dark Caves

According to an article in today’s Guardian, the Church of England feels that ‘intelligent design’ could become part of the science curriculum in state schools. Well, not exactly part of the science curriculum, but as a suitable subject for discussion ‘within the context of lessons exploring how our understanding of science has developed historically’. In other words, it’s being recognised as ‘a way of looking at the evidence’. As in, with your eyes closed.

Intelligent design is literal creationism veiled. It has no part in the history of science, nor in our understanding of how science has developed. It’s a Trojan horse invented by American fundamentalists to downgrade and subvert the centrality of reason in favour of hogwash. How many times, and in how many ways, does this need to be said?

Health and sauciness

There’s an article in yesterday’s Guardian about the declining interest in naturism. Apparently, these days it’s seen as old fashioned. It’s quite a trick, to move from risqué to demodé without ever remotely touching mainstream, and we should be proud of the phenomenon for that, if nothing else. But what I feel most nostalgic about is less naturism itself and more that most wonderful of all top-shelf publications, Health and Efficiency.

I used to buy it as a schoolboy in towns near mine, scattered around the Midlands and the Potteries, sneaking it home to ogle over the photographs of naked men. In a world as starved of male flesh as that of provincial England in the 1960s, they were all there was, and it was endlessly thrilling to see how many different versions they came in. Old and young, fat and thin, hung and not so hung, sometimes, even, with the hint of an erection. It’s something contemporary consumers of run-of-the-mill gay porn never see: the sheer variety of it all, both sexy and reassuring, as ordinary men performed mundane and occasionally dangerous activities (I’m thinking barbecues) with their kit off. The sexiest ones I’d cut out and stick into the programme of the Stoke-on-Trent Arts Festival and keep with my Phaidon monographs. I don’t know where it’s gone now, but I’d love to have it back, There’s one photo in particular of a man coming out of the sea…

Literal geographies

You can’t miss them. They’re a mile or so away from the Very Wet River.

(And light years away from the Heights of Sensitivity.)

From a site called Bits and Pieces, full of amusing stuff.

Assertion without evidence

Sam Harris, in The End of Faith, quotes a rather useful dictum of Christopher Hitchens: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”.

Worth remembering when men in frocks blather on about natural law.

Naughty Fausto!

The Families Association Forum is frothing at the mouth about the fact that Italy’s Speaker at the House of Deputies, Fausto Bertinotti, friend of Castro, Carlos and, er, the Dalai Lama and just back from a rejuvenating spiritual break on Mount Athos, has decided to support Gay Pride. Their gripe is that he refused to take part in Family Day, which apparently disqualifies him from participating in anything else, ever, especially if it’s gay friendly.

I’ve been thinking how odd it is that, among these people who presumably use reason in other areas of their daily lives, the idea of family should be seen as inimical to the idea of being gay. Where do they imagine we come from? Hordes of turkey-baster wielding lesbians in Amsterdam or San Francisco? Stem cell manipulation in some illicit Scandinavian laboratory? Parthenogenesis? (If that’s what it’s called when you spring fully armed from your father’s thigh.)

Doesn’t it occur to them that we’re as much a product of the heterosexual family as anyone else? Doesn’t it occur to them that most of us, without heterosexual families, wouldn’t exist? Doesn’t it occur to them that, despite their efforts, many of us are still loved and cherished by the families that made us,a nd to which we continue to belong?

It’s as though I’d somehow lost my human status, not only as a complete, fallible, reasoning being capable of love, but as a son and brother and nephew and cousin (and dog owner) too. But these people aren’t really interested in families at all. They’re too busy getting hot under the collar about what other people do in bed. They’re too busy telling other people what to do.

Protecting children, Polish style

In line with recent attempts by the Polish government to outlaw any mention of homosexuality in schools, a certain Ewa Sowinska, the crackpot person responsible for children’s rights in Poland (including, apparently, the right not be informed), has ordered an investigation by infant psychologists into the sexual orientation of Tinky Winky.

For those of you who don’t watch The Teletubbies on a regular basis, Tinky Winky is the purple puppet with the handbag (so no big prizes for guessing there). The inarticulate antenna-ed one has already been outed by the recently defunct Jerry Falwell (see Good riddance, below). It’s a relief to know that the spirit of eternal vigilance in the face of all things gay didn’t go to, er, heaven with him.

Personally, I’ve always had my suspicions about Bugs Bunny. Now that you’re one with the prime mover, Jerry, maybe you can send Ewa a little inside information.

Human decency

It isn’t often that the Italian government offers a lesson in human decency to neighbouring countries, but its decision to take in 27 migrants found hanging onto tuna nets after ten days at sea contrasts favourably with the refusal of Spain, Libya and Malta to accept a further 26 found in similar conditions. The full story is here.

To Moscow… and back (sharpish)

Among those putin putting the boot into gay protesters in Moscow yesterday were two Orthodox priests. Of course, deep down, what they’d really like to do is turn the other cheek. Right, boys? Right and left? I said turn, not spread.

Or maybe their national pride was offended by the presence of Italian transgender MP, Vladimir Luxuria. With a first name like Vladimir, I imagine they think she ought to be slipping polonium -210 into poofters’ borscht, not squatting to piss.

Commonplaces: Marriage

January 4 1976

Marriage is ultimately an agreement – or conspiracy – between two people to treat each other as having each the right to be loved absolutely. If there is not this understanding, there is no marriage; if there is this understanding, all the things that are supposed to go with marriage – children, sex, etc., are secondary. For this reason, whereas marriage between two people of the opposite sex who are physically attached to one another fails if there is no such bond of understanding, marriage between two people of the same sex may be immensely binding, and marriage in which there are no children, perhaps even no sex, may be extremely real.

Journals 1939-1983
Stephen Spender

Revealed truths 3

This comes from The End of Faith, by Sam Harris:

When the members of the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ cult failed to spot the spacecraft they knew must be trailing the comet Hale-Bopp, they returned the $4,000 telescope they had bought for this purpose, believing it to be defective.