Among the queer politics crowd, reality TV is frequently bashed; moving more in those circles than between the cocktail-serving clubs of Soho and Shoreditch, and being unabashedly a regular viewer, this is an awkward fact for me. The ‘bread and circuses’ argument – that light entertainment culture on Saturday nights acts as a political narcotic – has its merits, but I’d argue that if you want to find out how societies work, their circuses are the best place to look.
Christmas presents, like many aspects of Christmas, have often disappointed me. From time to time, I’ve had excellent ones – skincare sets, Sennheiser earphones and David Almond’s Skellig all stand out – but the tea towel of 2008 remains an all time low. In general, I like giving gifts more than getting them, and given I don’t enthuse over many parts of Christmas, I thought I’d write a post about this year’s choices. (I’m writing it here because, as a queer atheist in a traditional Christian family, my presents always have an agenda.)
This time two years ago, I wished someone at university a happy Hallowe’en. Then I realised I’d never done that before.
Alom Shaha, an ex-Muslim, writes in his memoir The Young Atheist’s Handbook about not being allowed to celebrate Christmas as a child. For me, the forbidden festival was October 31st. ‘As Christians’, a woman named Doreen told us in school, who also ran the Operation Christmas Child collections, ‘we don’t celebrate Hallowe’en.’
Remember Leadership is Male, the book I posted about at the start of June? As Christmas Eve approaches, another gem has revealed itself on my relatives’ bookshelf.
What’s the Difference? Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible is a similar volume by John Piper, and like Leadership is Male has a foreword by Elisabeth Elliot. (Because, of course, nothing endorsed by a woman is misogynous.) Once again, I read the book covered to cover – and, so that you don’t have to, thought I’d share some highlights.
Of the few encouraging signs about today’s PCC elections, one is the total unenthusiasm on display: I know only one person planning to vote, and friends are organising collective ballot-spoils. This couldn’t contrast more with Barack Obama’s reelection, the run-up to which included all the usual choruses of You must vote! and Don’t forget!
By most of the self-declared progressives I know, the choice to abstain was treated almost as a kind of treason; one acquaintance in Australia wishes voting were compulsory around the world, as it is there, and I’ve heard the same suggested closer to home.
Assuming that when our new police commissioners are chosen, turnout is as miserable as now seems likely, the case for staying at home on national election days is worth contemplating.
Pleasingly, Friday’s post about the (further) goings on at LSE got lots of attention – it seems like we’ve now got a climate where if British student unions do things like this, word goes out. Whatever else happens, that’s encouraging.
Also encouraging is the ASH society’s response to the union, which went public this morning. Some people seemed worried the ‘Request denied’ message would be the end of this, but they’re fighting it. (And everyone knows I love a good fight.)
Sundas Hoorain, who’s at the London School of Economics and a member of its atheist group, just posted about them requesting an official name change. Rather than just ‘atheist, secularist and humanist’, its members voted to call themselves the Atheist, Secularist, Humanist and Ex-Muslim Society. (It’s overinflated, agreed, but it does spell ‘ASHES’.)
Reasonable stuff, one might have thought. Yet LSE’s student union have just denied the group’s request for this new name.
Remember the Pineapple named Mohammed, that made headlines at Reading university before the recent ex-Muslim spat at LSE? In case you don’t, their atheist society was kicked out of its freshers’ fair for displaying something so offensive.
I am an atheist, and an angry one. An anti-theist, if you like. A firebrand. Not only do I doubt a god exists, I think belief in one, and religion in general, is bad for our planet – inherently. In my writing and my day-to-day life, I’m actively engaged in trying to talk people out of it.
I like to call myself bad without God, and I’m happy to be labelled a reverse evangelist. If you want to say I’m strident, intolerant or shrill, I don’t really mind. I’ve no interest in respecting believers’ views – I hate religion, and want it gone. As such, I have a dark and terrible secret. In my spare time, I am an interfaith worker.
There’s nothing new in using psychiatric structures to queerphobic ends: let’s not forget that it was only in 1990, the year before my birth, when the World Health Organisation stopped calling homosexuality a mental health disorder. The word itself was coined in Psychopathia Sexualis, Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Victorian volume on so called perversions, in which cross-dressing and BDSM are similarly pathologised. What’s interesting about Anglican Mainstream’s work, apart from their misuse of ‘post-gay’ and expectation Oxford Street would be a hotbed of homoerotic repression, is their insistence that ‘there is [no] indisputable scientific evidence that people are “born gay”, and…have no choice but to affirm their homosexual feelings’.
