Thinking of going to Croatia on holiday? Read this piece by Diamond Walid and see if you fit into the rather narrow range of sexual and racial acceptability demanded by Croatian youths on the lookout for victims (you know, the kind that ‘ask for it’). If you do, think about whether you want to have a holiday in a place where the range matters. If you don’t, think twice.
This is the Spanish tourist who went for a skinny-dip in the moat of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Clearly not a wise move…
If you’re on Facebook and really don’t think Peter Mullen should still be in business, or whatever its called, you can join the Sack the Rev Peter Mullen group. Go on, you know it makes sense.
The unsavoury Peter Mullen, (so sorry, the unsavoury Reverend Doctor Peter Mullen) may have been obliged to delete his blog, but the offending passage about tattooing gays can still be found in a cache. (I have ZeFrog to thank for this.) It comes as part of an attack on Matthew Parris, who very sensibly compared the three monotheistic belief systems to astrology and morris dancing. It’s actually much worse than the article in Evening Standard would lead one to think. Here’s an extract:
Since Parris will not dirty his hands by entering theological discussions with his readers, perhaps I might answer for religious believers in the purely utilitarian terms which even the lofty Parris is bound to engage with. We disapprove of homosexuality because it is clearly unnatural, a perversion and corruption of natural instincts and affections, and because it is a cause of fatal disease. The AIDS pandemic was originally caused by promiscuous homosexual behaviour. Such promiscuity is itself an evil because its perpetrators merely use others indiscriminately for their own gratification, treating their fellows as sex objects and as means to an end rather than as ends in themselves. I should have thought that Parris, having rejected religious belief, might want to construct his moral beliefs on this Kantian humanistic imperative. But I suspect he is not really interested in morality of any kind – except as a special plea to excuse his lust for gratification at whatever cost to human dignity and the sanctity of human life.
It is time that religious believers began to recommend specific utilitarian discouragements of homosexual practices after the style of warnings on cigarette packets: Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS. In addition the obscene “gay pride” parades and carnivals should be banned for they give rise to passive corruption, comparable to passive smoking. Young people forced to witness these excrescences are corrupted by them.
Let me continue the comparison with smoking which is banned in most public places. Those committing homosexual acts in public places – such behaviour being a crime in any case under the Homosexual Reform Act of 1967 – should be arrested, tried and punished. Parks, open spaces and public lavatories would at once become more wholesome places. There ought to be teaching films shown in sex education classes in all our schools. These would portray acts of sodomy and the soundtrack would reinforce the message that it is a filthy practice ending with the admonition: “We do, after all, know the importance of washing our hands after going to the lavatory.”
I love the idea of passive corruption, although presumably one could be passively cleansed later by watching Peter Mullen commit adultery with a female parishioner, something he appears to have done some years ago. And I’m fascinated by what the soundtrack might be as schoolchildren watch acts of sodomy during their sex education classes, a concept so radical that even the most fervently proselytising gay would blanch and quail at the thought. Any ideas?
The EU is looking into why religious education teachers in Italian schools receive preferential treatment: less rigorous selection (they’re handpicked by the local bishop) and better salaries. Not that they do teach religion, any more than a geography teacher who just does, say, rivers actually teaches geography. They teach catholicism. And not teach as in “opening minds”. Teach as in “indoctrinate”.
Margaret Drabble claims that her publishers, Penguin, are trying to persuade her to dumb her work down and increase sales. She spoke to the Independent:
“I do feel publishers are under very strong pressure to sell books rather than encourage long-term readers. They have not asked me to dumb down … but I have a feeling there’s a problem. I write literary novels but I can sense my publishers have difficulty in selling me as a genre … whether in literary fiction, or women’s fiction or shopping fiction. They don’t quite know whether I’m highbrow or literary,” she said.
According to the Rev Peter Mullen (click here for more info and a picture), gay people should have government health warnings tattooed on them in the appropriate place. He wrote on his blog:
“Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS.”
From BBC News:
A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.
Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.
The last three posts come from a collection of poems I wrote some years ago called Creative Accounting. At the time the expression was new and I was thrilled to be able to use it. Now, of course, as the world’s finances crumble around our ears, it’s less exciting. I’m not sure if that’s also true of the poems, or not.
What’s said remains in the idea of
a certain generosity of saying it,
of speech. The sink’s been blocked
for a week and not until yesterday
did we get some acid. I’m glad
you’re in love. Will it last and,
even if it doesn’t, will you care?
Is that what you intended, for
it to last? For example, I also
love you. A photograph of an almost
empty place, because the people
were walking too fast to be seen,
is another surrender to method that
garners and protects the eventful
silence, and so we’re appalled by
the chemical odours and I, angry,
expect that what’s seen in your
‘blindness’ is merely the figure of a
woman, rushing to scream at the
photographer, who won’t be there.
CHARLES LAMBERT 