A Bigot is for life, not just for Christmas

This Christmas, instead of the traditional platitudes about peace on earth and loving each other, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster used his festive address to attack same sex marriage - again. And a High Court judge joined in.

One thing these two have in common is an interesting use of statistics. I've already written about how equalities are not a numbers game. Either a group of people is equal to others or they are not, regardless of how many of them there are. This is perhaps the most important point to be made when numbers are being brandished as the killer blow in an argument - although it is important to point out where statistics are being abused.

High Court judge Sir Paul Coleridge thinks the government shouldn't be wasting its time: "So much energy and time has been put into this debate for 0.1% of the population, when we have a crisis of family breakdown".

Statistics on the percentage of the population identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual vary but nowhere is a figure this low cited. Not everyone feels comfortable reporting their sexuality, but as a rough indicator of how wrong the judge is, in 2006, the first full year of civil partnerships, there were 231,454 marriages and 16,100 civil partnership between LGB people. That works out as 6.96% as a comparative proportion.

Archbishop Vince Nichols claims that during a "period of listening" held by the government, those who responded were "7-1 against same-sex marriage".

However, the government consultation run earlier this year found that 53% were in favour. This took account of the petitions received as well as 228,000 direct consultation responses, including the huge petition opposing any change from the Coalition for Marriage.

Within the consultation itself, 63% said religious marriage ceremonies should be available to everyone.

I've written before about the consultation and the religious opposition, despite the fact that the government has made it clear that no churches or other places of worship will have to perform gay marriages.

Vince Nichols also tries another tack, claiming that a change in law would not be democratic. He claims that "There was no announcement in any party manifesto, no Green Paper, no statement in the Queen's Speech. And yet here we are on the verge of primary legislation. From a democratic point-of-view, it's a shambles. George Orwell would be proud of that manoeuvre, I think the process is shambolic."

He is basically accusing the government of sneaking legislation through against the wishes of the electorate.

However, on May 3 2010, three days before the general election, the (shadow) equalities minister Theresa May launched the Tory's contract for equalities which included the plan to introduce same sex marriage. The section on civil partnerships states “We will also consider the case for changing the law to allow civil partnerships to be called and classified as marriage.”

If people wanted to vote differently based on this sole issue, they had time to make that decision. Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone has tackled the nonsense of this claim in her blog.

Democratically-elected MPs will be allowed a free vote and the Bill is expected to be introduced in the New Year. As this letter to the Telegraph shows, the MPs and Lords against gay marriage are very much in the minority.

It's not clear what the Archbishop thinks would constitute a democratic process. Legislation by petition? His version of democracy is more akin to a theocracy where a tiny minority made of religious leaders and fundamentalist believers rules the rest of the population. If the government were being truly Orwellian, the law would have been changed without any consultation or vote and history would have been rewritten to remove any trace of the previous status quo. When Nichols says Orwellian, what he means is 'legislation I don't like'. That's the trouble with democracy, you don't always get your own way. On the up side, you do get the freedom of speech to express your Yuletide bigotry.

The Pope used a Christmas address to say that gay marriage will 'destroy the very essence of the human creature'. He doesn't need to use dodgy statistics because he has a direct line to God and is never wrong.



31 December update: Vince Nichols is at it again. He has latched on to this like a ferret and will not let go until his teeth meet.

Dr Kendall's Gay Away

***

Tired of being gay? Who wouldn't be?

Try Dr Kendall's new Gay Away and be an ex-gay today.

Based on years of research, trained therapists using a stick with a picture of Jesus on will poke the gay out of you.

Guaranteed to maximize your heterosexual potential!

Tony B from Cheltenham writes: "I bummed men for 17 years. Now I'm ex-gay and I have a girlfriend. Thank you, Gay Away, you saved me from burning in hell".

Only £499 a session (+ VAT). May not work on lesbians.

*** A picture of someone who looks like a doctor but isn't actually me.

Religion, sex and death - election style

It must be election time. The main parties are parading their religious beliefs in order to court what they imagine to be the faith vote.

Both Cameron and Brown's Easter messages are likely to alienate more people than they attract though - both non-believers and people of other faiths. Gordon Brown said that 'the Christian Church is the conscience of our country' and that the visit of the Pope in the autumn would 'make this a special year for the UK'. I'm not sure what meaning of 'special' he was using.

Cameron's Thought For The Day style homily included: 'No matter what faiths we follow, we can all draw strength from Christ's message of hope, of a new beginning and a promise of a new dawn'. It is to be assumed that he will be drawing strength from other religions, too. Or not.

The Tories have gone further than Labour (so far) in parading their religious credentials. In an interview with the Catholic Herald, Cameron pledged to lower the abortion limit, block assisted dying and allow schools to teach PSHE (sex education) any way they like.

On abortion, he said the limit should be reduced to 20 or 22 weeks, His reason for this is 'the way medical science and technology have developed in the past few decades'. He doesn't go into details and blatantly ignores scientific evidence.

Foetal viability was rigorously examined by the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology in 2007. The Committee concluded that:

'While survival rates at 24 weeks and over have improved they have not done so below that gestational point. Put another way, we have seen no good evidence to suggest that foetal viability has improved significantly since the abortion time limit was last set, and seen some good evidence to suggest that it has not.'

This conclusion is shared by the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Foetal viability means survival of foetuses who are alive at variable times during the pregnancy or the capability of surviving the neonatal period and growing up into an adult.

To put this into context, in 2007, 89% of terminations happened before 13 weeks. In 2005, only 1.3% happened between 20 and 24 weeks.

Are Catholics in this country so different from those in America and Australia? 64% of US Catholics disapprove of the statement that abortion is morally wrong in every case and 72% of Catholics in Australia say decisions about abortion should be left to individual women and their doctors. Cameron may well be scuppering himself with all but the most hard-line Catholic voters, let alone with the rest of us.

His argument against assisted dying is that there is a 'line to be drawn between allowing nature to take its course under some incredibly painful circumstances and on the other hand allowing doctors or others (however well-intentioned) to accelerate death. I think it would be wrong to tread over this line, because there are very serious implications for our families, and for our society as a whole'. The biggest danger he sees is 'that terminally ill people may feel pressurized into ending their lives if they feel they've become a burden on loved ones'.

He presents no scientific research, no statistics, no information from countries where assisted dying has long been successfully carried out. He just goes for the scare tactic. He also commits the hoary old mistake of of assuming that nature is good and right. Perhaps he'll remember that when someone close to him needs an organ transplant or cancer treatment. And he seems to have forgotten (or ignored) a poll showing that over 80% of people in the UK are in favour of assisted dying. Never let the facts get in the way of rhetoric.

When it comes to sex education, he thinks that 'schools should be allowed to teach it in a way that's consistent with their beliefs, and parents should be free to decide whether or not their children should take part in these lessons... I'm a big supporter of faith schools'.

He may think this is a vote-catcher but he is putting the health and well-being of the next generation at risk by allowing religious schools to keep them in ignorance or mix facts with faith.

As I wrote about PSHE before, it's hard to see how a school with a strong religious ethos will be able to teach the facts and get its religious message across without these two aims coming into conflict. Children in faith schools are often the most in need of accurate, impartial information as devoutly religious parents are unlikely to be willing or able to give it to them.

Proposed Conservative amendments would strike the requirement from the current PSHE proposals that teaching should 'endeavour to promote equality', 'encourage the acceptance of diversity' and 'emphasise the importance of both rights and responsibilities'. They would mean that schools would not be required to teach PSHE and also allow parents to withdraw pupils of any age.

The danger is that young people have no way of judging the quality of any sex and relationship teaching they do get until it is too late and they fall pregnant or get an STI. And how will young gay people cope in a school whose religion actively disapproves of homosexuality? The irony is that good PSHE would help reduce abortion rates overall and help women face the decision on whether to have a termination in a more informed way, which could reduce the (already small) number who need late ones.

The Tory party's stance on equality wasn't helped when Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that Christian B&B owners should be allowed to turn away gay couples. Hotels should take anyone but Christians should be allowed to say who comes into their homes - even though these homes are businesses for tax and legal purposes like hygiene and health and safety - laws which Christian B&B owners would of course observe because they don't happen to clash with their bigoted beliefs. The law says that services must be provided to everyone without prejudice. Grayling's message appears to say that belief puts you above the law.

It's not just the Tories who are pushing the religious agenda. Religious groups are trying to give the impression that they can deliver masses of voters. In previous elections when parties running on the Christian ticket stood, they failed in no uncertain terms. In the last European election, the Christian Party averaged only 1.6% of the vote, despite having a candidate in every constituency.

A group called Westminster 2010 has made a declaration which includes pledges to

'protect the life of every human being from conception to its natural end and we refuse to comply with any directive that compels us to participate in or facilitate abortion, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide, euthanasia or any other activity that involves intentionally taking innocent human life'.

and

'support marriage - the lifelong covenantal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife. We believe it is divinely ordained, the only context for sexual intercourse (...) and we refuse to submit to any edict forcing us to equate any other form of sexual partnership with marriage'.

So - no abortion, assisted suicide, embryo-based research, civil union, sex outside marriage or divorce. By refusing 'to submit to any edict' they are partly referring to equality law. That's law passed by Government and approved by the Queen (they're very keen on saying this is a Christian country based on Christian values because the Queen is Head of State and Head of the Church).

This manifesto is signed by five senior clerics, a peer, the chair of the Mission and Public Affairs Committee of the Church of England, the principals of three theological colleges and senior staff of around a dozen Christian associations and campaigning groups. That's a lot of heavy pressure put on MPs, threatening them with lost votes if they don't promote the same values. Blackmail is now apparently part of the democratic process. It should be noted that less than 3% of the population go to Church of England services at Easter, the festival on which the whole religion rests.

No wonder Brown and Cameron are bending over backwards to appease the religious voters. Except that the days of people receiving political guidance from the pulpit are long gone. Very few people now vote on single issues. Voting for a party purely on its stance on abortion, for example, is likely to land you with an MP or party you disagree with on many other issues, like tax, health care or foreign policy.

Not one of these religious messages puts women's and gay rights or health and well-being or personal choice before faith. Not one of them is evidence-based. Not one is even humane. Vote for the Dark Ages.