Denying gay civil partners a double-bedded room is illegal

(Please see UPDATES at end.)

The BBC is reporting that Bristol County Court has ruled against a couple who own an hotel, and who have 'Christian' beliefs, who said it was their policy to deny double-bedded rooms to couples who are not married, even if they are heterosexual.

From what I understand the court has ruled the couple's policy illegal because 'civil partnership' for homosexuals (male gay or lesbian female) is the legal equivalent of marriage for heterosexual couples and the law forbids discrimination of this type. In running a business, hotel owners may not impose their religious beliefs on others. There was a video-interview with the gay couple who brought the action following the judgement and understandably they are very pleased with the outcome of their case. There are no online links as yet, as the judgement has just been given, but I will undoubtedly come back to this story in due course.

It is very pleasing that this clear case of flouting the law by this homophobic couple has been stamped on by a court.

UPDATE (Tuesday 18JAN2011 11.03 GMT) PinkNews now have an article up about the judgement. The BBC have now also shown a video-statement made by Mrs Bull, one of the joint hotel-owners; she seems still not to accept that her 'beliefs' are not justification for discrimination so far as the law is concerned.

2nd UPDATE (Tuesday 18JAN2011 11.17 GMT)The BBC now have a report on the judgement.

Betty Bowers on "A Bible-based Marriage"

Very amusing, although shocking - but completely based upon Bible quotations. Hypocrisy ain't quite strong enough a word for some Christians' interpretation of their 'Holy Book'. The kicker is of course at the very end of the video-clip:

New York and its Islamic Center ('mosque') controversy

Amidst all the nonsense I've been hearing from the US about whether a 'mosque' should be permitted at 'Ground Zero' or not, it is a profound relief to have someone like Keith Olbermann come out and say clearly (and as usual quite loudly - that man should watch his blood pressure!) that the US should be a defender of freedom, not its oppressor. Mind you, I've been railing for years about the US's recourse to what most civilised people consider to be 'torture' and 'extra-judicial incarceration' in its response to events since '9/11', a stain upon American deomocracy that will take many years and probably decades to erase. To be clear, the so-called 'mosque' is not a mosque at all, but a multi-purpose cultural centre and although it will have a prayer room it will also have sports facilities, nor is it 'at Ground Zero', but several city blocks away and will not be visible from the old World Trade Center site. Anyway, watch this subject being aired in Keith Olbermann's unique style; incidentally he points out that a small Islamic Center has been operating nearer to 'Ground Zero' without incident since 1970, before the World Trade Center was even built:



(thru Chicken Yoghurt)

Iris Robinson and the NI political fallout

I had begun to prepare a lengthy article about the recent 'revelations' relating to Iris Robinson, MP MLA and her financial and personal arrangements several days ago. However, I have decided to hold that article in abeyance for the present.

Basically, and not to put to fine a point on it, even though I have no religious faith and certainly do not consider myself a 'Christian', whatever else I may be, I prefer to show more sensitivity and understanding at this difficult personal juncture for Iris Robinson and her husband Peter, currently First Minister of Northern Ireland, than she and some of her co-religionists have shown toward the 'gay community' of which I am a part. I have grown quite tired of hearing over the years the excuses of and for religiously-motivated bigots such as Iris Robinson toward homosexuals and others whom she considers morally deviant, and she is merely the latest in a lengthening number of such people whose own moral failings, according to their own standards, both in the UK and in the US, have been brought by their own behaviour into the public domain, not to mention in this case her own apparent flouting of the law in regard to matters of financial probity.

However, because I do have some human decency, unlike these odious hypocrites, I am not going to write more at this time. I hope very sincerely that the psychiatric treatment that Iris Robinson is said to be undergoing at this time has positive results for her and that she will recover her mental stability in the course of time.

If there are major constitutional developments in Northern Ireland flowing from this in coming days/weeks as seems at present to be a distinct possibility then I will obviously have to write about it, but will endeavour to do so in as sensitive a manner as I can - because I am a decent person, unlike Iris Robinson and those who think like her.

That's so ... homosexual (said with a disdainful curl of the lip)

This quite amusing story just shows the ridiculous lengths to which some bigots will go to avoid using the sexual deviants' own word for themselves:

THE American Family Association has a strict policy to replace the word "gay" with "homosexual" on its news website - but it created a problem with sprinter Tyson Gay. The association's computer's auto-corrected the US sprint star's name to Tyson Homosexual. Here's an extract of an Associated Press story as it ran on the association's OneNewsNow Christian news website: Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has. His time of 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials Sunday doesn't count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind. Here's what does matter: Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he's certainly someone to watch in Beijing. "It means a lot to me," the 25-year-old Homosexual said. "I'm glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me." The embarassing blunder has since been fixed, although it's still visible on the site's search page.

There's a link from that article to a blog at the Washington Post, where the blog post is followed by an absolutely enormous number of comments, rather too many of which (for my taste) are completely wacko, for example this is one of many by one MarkF:

Joe G-A-Y, I don't accept that to believe that same-sex activity is wrong amounts to bigotry. I lived the same-sex way for over thirty-years. I know it from the inside, thoroughly, as one who was dedicated to it. I always saw the disgusting and depressing side of it, yet I still believed that somehow I could turn all that around myself. I didn't want to look at the evil that was in my own heart. Of course I never showed that side of me to those outside of the same-sex community, because I was ashamed of it. Now I know that the whole concept of same-sex behavior is flawed and deceptive, just like many things in life are. The same-sex life is a never ending search for happiness that always leads to a sad or un-fullfilling end. A man cannot be happy if he denies his own masculinity. That's a person at war with himself. I stepped off of and out of the same-sex way and things look a lot different to me now that I have. We have a lot of problems in the world that are caused by immorality... divorce, broken homes, children with no family, kids having kids, and the most common problem of all is heartbreak that comes from casual relationships. No one can believe that this is good for us. It is hypocrisy to just focus on people with same-sex attraction and to ignore all the rest of our problems. But it is also wrong to let it be thought that the same-sex way is not one of pain and suffering, just the same as adultery is.

- a very pertinent question is posed by another commenter:

So, anybody here want to be the first to have newly-straight MarkF marry their sister? Anyone?

(thru Bill and Kent)

A Doric Lord's Prayer

I do not consider myself a Christian ( I haven't been into a church except as a tourist or for hatchings, matchings or dispatches in several decades), but like most people I was brought up in a nominally Christian household, albeit with a very relaxed attitude toward the practice. Nevertheless I could probably, even now, recite the words of "The Lord's Prayer" without thinking too hard about it, so I was interested to see here a version of the prayer in Doric, the dialect of Scots that originates in the north-east of Scotland. I spent several years of my childhood living near Aberdeen so am familiar with at least some of the vocabulary of the dialect and find it quite attractive to listen to, but have never used much of it myself, barring an occasionalword very rarely. See what you think - as many readers will be familiar with the words in English, it shouldn't be too difficult to decipher the meanings of words that are unfamiliar:

Oor Faither, fa bides in hivven, We’ll aye hae a gweed conceit o ye. Yer croon winna be ill tae fit, Sae yer wye o it maun be the wye o it, Doon by, nae less nor the wye o it in hivven. Gie us oor mait an a pucklie loaf the day, an ilka day. An dinna haud it agin us nor we mak a cuddy o things, Jist as we widna skelp fowk fa chunce their haun agin us. An dinna scunner us wi wyes tae swick, Bit ding doon ony o Aul Nick’s coorseness. Michty me, bit ye’ve a haud o aathin, Sae it’s michty you an aa, An aat’s jist rare, Ivnoo an fir ivvermair. Fairly aat, min.

More Australian satire: 'Holy Homosexuals'!

My last post prompted me to look on YouTube to see if there were any more online sketches from this Australian television comedy show and it's a rich seam!

This one shows the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, being waylaid by an interviewer trying to get clarification about some of the things written in the Bible:



It's amazing how the spectacle-wearing Jensen conveniently wants to ignore that other verse in the Bible, isn't it? There's lots of other inconsistencies in that 'novel' for anyone who cares to look. Once more I suggest you read the captions floating along the bottom, too.

Scientific breakthrough: Christian gene isolated ...

... leaving open the possibility that this 'affliction' can be eliminated ... worried parents delighted!

This very amusing satire is aparently a sketch from an Australian comedy show. Don't forget to read the captions scrolling across the bottom of the screen; some quite witty observations there, too. Yes indeed, believers in 'imaginary friends' everywhere will be alarmed by this research!



(thru the very naughty Aussielicious, one of my favourite reads of late)