The EHRC finally makes up its mind

[amateur51]

Anna

A small correction. We have Civil Partnerships, but not yet same-sex marriages, there is a difference. My partner and I had ours just as soon as it became possible at the beginning of 2006 after a partnership that has now lasted 50 years. It has been rather a long wait!
I did not expect my life as a fully out gay man to feel very different, but it does. A great sham has ceased to exist for so many of us.

Scotty and others wonder why I'm so angry when religious bigotry ( because there is no other name for it ) prevents the full expression of dignified and productive lives.
Well, I can't help that, time will tell.
Meanwhile I'll stay angry but hopeful.

Right on Ferret!

And many congrats on the longevity of your relationship - a magnificent achievement, whatever others choose to call it

[scottycelt]

Enlighten me do, if you think that my knowledge is deficient, scotty (you've never needed encouraging before )
Are you telling me that the Pope is NOT operating an amnesty for women who are attending this youth event in Madrid who have had an abortion?

And if he is, are you telling that this is NOT a significant departure from usual practice?

That's all I'm saying

As to the EHRC's decision, I'm delighted that decency has prevailed and the law's intention has been upheld

I never mentioned anything about the Pope's visit to Spain, amateur ... that was you, don't you remember?

Rather than be accused of ignoring your irrelevant question, general amnesties issued by the Pope are indeed rare as are their political equivalents. If those who disobeyed Church teaching and now have the opportunity to re-join the Church en masse by now abiding by the Church's teaching that seems to me entirely compatible with the Catholic tradition of forgiveness and redemption. Perfectly logical and thoroughly humane.

Now back to the subject we are supposed to be discussing ... it's your very own thread, after all ... do you approve of the Employment Tribunal upholding Miss Ladele's human rights regarding her beliefs and against the appalling treatment meted out to her by her employers, or not.. ?

Yes or No ... don't worry, no one here's going to bite you ..

[amateur51]

I never mentioned anything about the Pope's visit to Spain, amateur ... that was you, don't you remember?

Rather than be accused of ignoring your irrelevant question, general amnesties issued by the Pope are indeed rare as are their political equivalents. If those who disobeyed Church teaching and now have the opportunity to re-join the Church en masse by now abiding by the Church's teaching that seems to me entirely compatible with the Catholic tradition of forgiveness and redemption. Perfectly logical and thoroughly humane.

Now back to the subject we are supposed to be discussing ... it's your very own thread, after all ... do you approve of the Employment Tribunal upholding Miss Ladele's human rights regarding her beliefs and against the appalling treatment meted out to her by her employers, or not.. ?

Yes or No ... don't worry, no one here's going to bite you ..

Nice try, scotty but as you know things are rarely Yes/No in this life. I think that the tribunal was misguided or even uncertain & voted for the status quo thus looking to judges for guidance

You're absolutely right about your not mentioning the Pope's visit scotty (I wonder why) but I did mention it and when you had a conniption fit in #10 I assumed (always tricky ground where you're concerned, scotty, you Jesuit you) that you were responding to that - my mistake.

Would I be right in assuming that, given that you tell me that forgiveness of sexual misdemeanours is entirely within 'the Catholic tradition of forgiveness and redemption. Perfectly logical and thoroughly humane.' , the rush to beatify (is that the correct term?) Blessed John Henry Newman is a sign that his homosexual relationship with Ambrose St John was now forgiven?

[scottycelt]

I take it that's a roundabout way of saying 'No', amateur ... at least now we know that your idea of employee 'human rights' doesn't necessarily apply to those horrid Christians.

Unlike you, I haven't the foggiest idea about the private life of John Henry Newman, though I've always found that anything Peter Tatchell & Co say is almost certainly later discovered to be, er, 'misinformation' ..

I sense the following might be somewhat more accurate, though, of course, unlike your informed self, I cannot possibly be certain ...

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2008/sep/08090306

[amateur51]

I take it that's a roundabout way of saying 'No', amateur ... at least now we know that your idea of employee 'human rights' doesn't necessarily apply to those horrid Christians.

Unlike you, I haven't the foggiest idea about the private life of John Henry Newman, though I've always found that anything Peter Tatchell & Co say is almost certainly later discovered to be, er, 'misinformation' ..

I sense the following might be somewhat more accurate, though, of course, unlike your informed self, I cannot possibly be certain ...

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2008/sep/08090306

Magnificently twisted scotty - you ARE a Jesuit!

I think Fr Ker needs to lie down & loosen his garters. You can't libel someone for being homosexual in Britain these days, I'd suggest because it is widely accepted and legal (even in service provision, scotty) However that would not apply to a country where the strictures of the past still apply (Ker-land is one such place, clearly ).

Where's all the forgiveness gone? Such an inconsistent faith - one minute you're chastised & excommunicated, the next you're forgiven & accepted back, a child doesn't know where she is.

That's often the case with those who would make rules, isn't it - don't do what I do - do what I say

[scottycelt]

We've come a long way from EHRC, amateur, though I strongly suspect that was your real intention all along ...

As you well know, libel has nothing to do in itself with being homosexual, heterosexual, asexual or anything else. It is all to do with alleging something about someone that is false, and continuing to claim it as fact when there is no evidence whatsoever to support the allegation. It is a particularly nasty ploy when it is used for propaganda purposes involving a long-dead person obviously unable to refute the allegation.

Hardly surprising to some of us, therefore, to find that eternal schoolboy, Peter 'Pan' Tatchell, very deeply and mischievously involved ...

[french frank]

You can't libel someone for being homosexual in Britain these days

More to the point, under current defamation laws you can't libel the dead. But scotty is right to point out that the matter of the legality or otherwise of what is alleged is irrelevant. The point is whether what is alleged would damage the reputation of that particular person with regard, for example, to a position held, in the eyes of others. To claim that a Catholic priest is an active homosexual would damage him in the eyes of members of a church which holds such behaviour to be sinful.

As we all have our propaganda issues , I was interested in this article in the, erm, Grauniad. It suggests that there's a certain amount of news management going on in the media. Some stories are 'better' than others and will get more coverage because they go with a current fashion. Others are ignored. A claim (however bereft of evidence) that Newman was a homosexual is a better story than the reality which is that there is no evidence to support the story at all. Just as the thousands protesting against the Pope's visit to Spain is a better story than the million and half young people arriving to see him.

[I fight the cultural battle that the minority who want in-depth criticism and analysis, challenging programming and a more comprehensive coverage of classical music should be catered for by the BBC/Radio 3 just as the majority who want easy listening, familiar pieces and nothing to frighten the horses. But 'elitist' is out and inclusivity and accessibility is in. Even at the Guardian, apparently.]

[scottycelt]

More to the point, under current defamation laws you can't libel the dead.]

Yes, that would seem rather more realistic, ff, ... it did occur to me that 'libel' may well be a legally (if not morally) inaccurate term regarding the Newman allegations and I would and should have preferred a rather more accurate alternative.

[Simon]

...that there's a certain amount of news management going on in the media.

I don't believe I'm reading this from ff, who no doubt knew it from years back. I certainly realised it from my teens. Of course there is. For "news management" read propaganda, spin and lies. They all have their own agendas and on many stories they're all as biased as ****

[scottycelt]

I don't believe I'm reading this from ff, who no doubt knew this from years back. I certainly realised it from my teens. Of course there is. For "news management" read propaganda, spin and lies. They all have their own agendas and on many stories they're all as biased as ****

Or more likely they simply pander to the assumed prejudices of what they consider their core readerships. That's what I like about the much-maligned internet. You can get the same news from a dozen different angles then make up your own mind as to the likely truth, which may well be a mixture of most if not all!

I stopped buying newspapers some time ago ...

[Simon]

Well that's more or less the same thing scotty.

But I agree with you about the net and making up your own mind.

At the local garage I occasionally call at, the papers are outside in compartments, and I generally look at the front pages. Interesting, if hardly edifying, most of them, when one sees which particular stories they have decided to feature as leads.

[amateur51]

Well that's more or less the same thing scotty.

But I agree with you about the net and making up your own mind.

At the local garage I occasionally call at, the papers are outside in compartments, and I generally look at the front pages. Interesting, if hardly edifying, most of them, when one sees which particular stories they have decided to feature as leads.

Does Simon have a car?

Or is he just 'cruising the forecourts'?

[amateur51]

Or more likely they simply pander to the assumed prejudices of what they consider their core readerships. That's what I like about the much-maligned internet. You can get the same news from a dozen different angles then make up your own mind as to the likely truth, which may well be a mixture of most if not all!

I stopped buying newspapers some time ago ...

The facts are that the Blessed John Henry Newman specifically asked for his remains to be buried with those of Ambrose St John with whom he had enjoyed an intensely close relationship. Now he either didn't think it mattered one fig; OR he felt that it was time that people, specifically the Church, understood about the intensity of his relationship with his chosen one in a way which they were not able to express in life.

Whatever way you choose to see it, I don't think that either of them was 'the marrying kind'

Two recent judgements seem to wrap the whole Christian Islington Council worker & Relate counsellor things up:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/apr/29/law-christianity

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/375.html

I'm thinking of having Lord Justice Munby's judgement (the latter one above) set to music

[scottycelt]

The facts are that the Blessed John Henry Newman specifically asked for his remains to be buried with those of Ambrose St John with whom he had enjoyed an intensely close relationship. Now he either didn't think it mattered one fig; OR he felt that it was time that people, specifically the Church, understood about the intensity of his relationship with his chosen one in a way which they were not able to express in life.

Whatever way you choose to see it, I don't think that either of them was 'the marrying kind'

Two recent judgements seem to wrap the whole Christian Islington Council worker & Relate counsellor things up:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/apr/29/law-christianity

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/375.html

I'm thinking of having Lord Justice Munby's judgement (the latter one above) set to music

The fact that Newman had a very close relationship with his 'dear friend' is beyond dispute, In his time it was perfectly normal to talk about 'loving' another person in a way that had absolutely no sexual connotation, heterosexual or homosexual. We still use it today regarding, say, parents and children, but, because the word is now widely associated by others to be connected to the sexual term 'making love', many people nowadays baulk at using it to describe a close relationship for that very reason. Similarly if one never marries, because they simply prefer to remain single, they are now hit with 'not the marrying kind' (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, eh?) from the Amateur51's of this world.

Nowadays some people appear to prefer things to people when expressing love. For example, a football fan wishing his ashes to be sprinkled on the ground of his favourite football club. It is a statement of love, however bizarre that might seem to others in such cases.

Newman obviously considered his close friend 'as a brother' and expressed his feelings and wishes accordingly, and the claim there was a sexual relationship involved is totally without foundation and drummed-up purely as a tool of false, Joseph Goebbels-like propaganda against the Catholic Church, which people like Tatchell hate and detest with a passion of their very own.

As to the main subject of this thread, I am in complete agreement with Carey. The following I found quite remarkable from atheist Andrew Brown's quoted text from the judgement of Lord Justice Mumby ...

"The promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified … It is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary. We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs. The precepts of any one religion – any belief system – cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other."

It would appear then that the basic human right to 'opt out' of a practice that one considers morally wrong has now been discarded. Even in conscripted wartime we have (or had) a facility for 'conscientious objection'. It is not a question of 'speaking louder' but having any sort of muffled minority voice at all!

[amateur51]

Similarly if one never marries, because they simply prefer to remain single, they are now hit with 'not the marrying kind' (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, eh?) from the Amateur51's of this world.

Scotty did you have an irony by-pass at some stage? Lesbians and gay men have been referred to as 'not the marrying kind' by prissy mouthed people for decades - my using it was my little revenge. 'He never married' was for a long-time code for a gay man in the obituaries in certain newspapers.