Today is the 20th anniversary of the repeal of Section 28. Finding that out sent me to my bookshelf to see if I still have my copy of AARGH! – Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia – the comic put together to protest it.
It’s really sad that we’re in the position where a mutated zombie version of Section 28 could be unleashed upon us. It may be time for AART! – Artists Against Rampant Transphobia.
I’ve got a basic understanding of the concept of intersectionality and how the prejudices against overlapping identities can stack and reinforce each other. But it’s always good to learn a little more.
An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 on Sochi is simply essential. Stage them elsewhere in Utah, Lillyhammer, anywhere you like. At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.
via An Open Letter to David Cameron and the IOC « The New Adventures of Stephen Fry.
Apparently Evangelo-freak* Richard Carvath is a satirical creation. That is what he means when he says his website contains satirical content, isn’t it?
Today, Ricky is playing the role of clueless homophobe who thinks he’s clever because he’s using cheap cultural references rather than coming out and saying what he means. It’s a tired cliche, and several years out of date, so not one of his better characters.
Sephton for Manchester Central: Matt’ll Fix It for you
Now then, now then… Matthew Sephton, my erstwhile rival for Salford and Eccles (GE2010) is the Conservative Party candidate for the Manchester Central by-election to be held on 15th November.If you’re a Manchester Central voter, Matt probably thinks he can fix it for you… you name it, from crime to unemployment to redefining marriage, Matthew Sephton is out to win your vote.
What’s the single most important thing every voter needs to know about Matthew Sephton?
IMO I’d say it’s the fact that he’s the leader of LGBTory – the Conservative Party’s affiliated group for homosexual-perverts.
Matthew’s a gayboy, and it seems to me that his main political passion is for pursuing ‘gay rights’ causes.
Do you wanna be in Matt’s Gang, Matt’s Gang, Matt’s Gang, do you wanna be in Matt’s Gang?
Oh, yeah?
Well, if you do wanna be in Matt’s Gang, be very clear that Matt’s gang is LGBTory. A vote for Matthew Sephton is a vote for the pervert-politics agenda exemplified by Stonewall.
Parents in Manchester Central should ask Matthew – a teacher – about his views on ‘sex education’ for little boys and girls. What kind of ‘educational’ pictures and videos does he approve of?
Voters should also ask Matthew why until recently he was banned from donating blood. What behaviour was it that Matthew engaged in with a man/men that caused him to be banned?
And voters should also ask Matthew about his views on redefining marriage.
Labour will win this by-election by a very comfortable margin, but for the record the candidates (source: Wikipedia) are: Lucy Powell (Labour); Matthew Sephton (Conservative); Marc Ramsbottom (Liberal Democrat); Chris Cassidy (UKIP); Peter Clifford (Communist League); Alex Davidson (Trade Unionist & Socialist); Lee Holmes (Peoples Democratic Party); Loz Kaye (Pirate); Eddy O’Sullivan (BNP); Clive Searle (Respect). Tom Dylan (Green Party) is also reported to be a candidate (source: MEN).
I haven’t bothered giving you a link to the original post, because Carvath has a habit of taking them down so his stupidity is only visible for brief periods at a time. It’s here as a record, in case anyone in the future is foolish enough to think he’s credible but sensible enough to do a search on his background.
Update I was right to not bother with a link- he took the post down whilst I was writing about it.
*Just trying out Dickie’s favourite tactic of sticking two words together to make some dumb attempt at a statement that’s really meaningless.
….Tim Montgomerie doesn’t have much to worry about. Montgomerie runs the ConservativeHome blog/website and is a key member of the Christian Conservative Fellowship. Despite such a dodgy pedigree he has come out to say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with gay marriage. In fact, it would be a good thing for society–
It is because I value marriage so much that I have come to believe it should be extended to gay people and not kept exclusive. Because it is so beneficial an institution it should be enlarged rather than fossilised.
The fossils are predictably upset by what is a fairly reasonable reading of the benefits of gay marriage. Richard Carvath- God’s self-appointed bigot in Salford- weighed in with his usual illogic (I’ve removed the link because the original post has been deleted and there’s no point sending you to an empty page. Luckily my RSS reader had it cached, so there’s a copy of it below).
Tim, understand that you are a traitor to Conservatism and, moreover, you are betraying Christ and mocking God in your support for the destruction of marriage and in your advocacy of evil perversion. You are in active rebellion against God; be very clear that in supporting the destruction of marriage you have chosen to place yourself at the right hand of Satan.
There’s never a coherent explanation of exactly how gay marriage is going to so completely and easily destroy “traditional” marriage when someone has one of these rants. Straight folk are still going to be allowed to wed. Those of us who aren’t pathetic bigots run the risk of going to more weddings- which’ll be a bit more expensive and tiring- but that’s the only way most of us are going to be affected.
[I have missed Carvath’s uninformed bigotry since he took some sort of sabbatical. Hopefully now he’s back to being a regular source of amusement.]
Update: Carvath has taken his post down. He does that a lot. Fortunately, my RSS reader has it cached-
Living a Lie: the Madness of Montgomerie
Over the last couple of years this blog has become a cult blog for mainstream British Conservatives. This blog’s popularity is partly down to the fact that I say what I say openly rather than anonymously, and partly because it is a platform which has given an online public voice to grassroots Conservatives’ offline views and discussions. Probably because I am an evangelical Christian – as well as a fellow conservative – I have to say I’ve been deluged by approaches from so many Conservatives in recent weeks in response to The Madness of Tim Montgomerie. Conservatives are appalled and horrified by Tim Montgomerie’s loss of the plot. I’ve been asked to write this blog on behalf of all genuine Conservatives – and evangelical Christians in particular – to urge Tim to come to his senses:
Dear Tim,
You identify yourself as a ‘Conservative’ and a ‘Christian’ and yet you support the destruction of marriage and endorse evil behaviour. On behalf of Christians and Conservatives throughout the UK, I must point out to you that you are not one of us.
We were horrified to read of Stonewall boss Ben Summerskill gloating over you when he said: “We’re delighted that, having heard the arguments, one of Britain’s most influential evangelical Christians is now able fully to support marriage for gay people without compromising his faith in any way.”
Tim, understand that you are a traitor to Conservatism and, moreover, you are betraying Christ and mocking God in your support for the destruction of marriage and in your advocacy of evil perversion. You are in active rebellion against God; be very clear that in supporting the destruction of marriage you have chosen to place yourself at the right hand of Satan.
Your support for the destruction of marriage is emphatically not God’s will; in seeking to destroy marriage you are doing the bidding of your real master Satan. Tim, you claim to be a Christian… but you are living a lie.
You were seduced away from the truth when you began to idolise your own status within the Conservative Party and put yourself and your career before God, before sound principle and before the best interests of the British people.
Have you any idea just how devastating the destruction of marriage will be if you get your evil way? Tim… Wake up! Repent!
Yours sincerely,
Richard.
I discovered Richard Carvath in the run up to the election. I’ve been following him, and fellow self righteous bigot Stewart Cowan, on and off ever since because they can be amusing, In a face-palming I-can’t-believe-anyone-can-be-that-stupid kind of a way. I started writing about them here because arguing with them on their own blogs was a waste of good material I should be sharing with my readers. I hope it has kept you amused. However, it may be time for some of Carvath’s family members to perform an intervention. It’s possible he’s finally slipped over the edge.
Carvath is so proud that the Conservative Party taking his money and sending him a card that he has invented a group called STRAYTory (formerly straightory, which had, for about ten minutes, a blogspot blog here. Apparently-
STRAYTory is the group of social conservatives which campaigns for LGBT rights – specifically the right of LGBT people to go STRAYT.
Which might sound menacing if it wasn’t coming from someone who looks like Mr. Bean’s embarrassing nephew.
STRAYTory’s equally made up leader Jemima Babesworth (given Carvath’s fascination with all things homosexual, surely Jemima Beard would have been more appropriate) has invited him to be a bit of rough for a party full of posh totty and he just can’t wait. I’ve done a basic check on all this- Googling the organisation, Ms. Babesworth and the location of the supposed party- and got no results.
It wouldn’t be too much to conclude that Carvath now lives in his own fantasy world, where he’s being revered as a God-loving heterosexual hero. Perhaps he’ll stage the special party all by himself and post pictures of himself in a room full of primly dressed Real Dolls gurning joyfully. Or maybe he won’t last that long and will be found wandering through Salford with a bedsheet as a toga declaiming on the sins of fornication and homosexual-perversion before October’s out. I did tell him months ago that he needed help. He should have listened to me.
More likely, just, is that this is all a jape, an attempt to satirise the Conservative’s gay group LGBTory. I’m not sure how the satire’s meant to be working. Maybe I need to be a Tory, or Richard Carvath, to understand the subtle points he’s making.
There is a third possibility. Perhaps it’s all an elaborate I’m Still Here style confection, and Richard Carvath doesn’t exist at all. He’s just a character being played by an actor and it’s all about recording the reactions to this bizarre and unlikeable character and his descent into delusion. If that’s the case then I have to congratulate the actor on his convincing portrayal of a gullible and bewildered homophobe/closet case.
Or maybe this shadowy organisation really exists and is operating behind pseudonyms and with great secrecy. Perhaps it won’t be long until gangs of Tory men, determined to prove their heterosexuality, roam through towns shouting “You have the right to be STRAYT!” at any well dressed men or women with short hair.
I’m going to have nightmares now.
My post a fortnight ago “How To Say Nothing With Numbers” generated a bit of a comment thread as the subject of the post- wannabe politician Richard Carvath- dropped in to prove that he couldn’t understand my point. He’s quite good at repeating his claims over and over after they’ve been shown up and then declaring it a victory. When he stopped doing that he did say a couple of things which deserve some closer inspection.
Carvath is adamant that only 1% of the population is gay. I used this figure in my calculations as well as the old “1-in-10” to get a spread of figures for take up of civil partnerships. The true pink percentage is somewhere between those two figures- different polling techniques in different countries return widely varying results. Carvath sticks to his 1% and implies that as they’re only a hundredth of the population homosexuals are too insignificant a minority to be listened to or to have equal rights extended to. Never mind that it’s how we behave toward the minorities, rather than constantly favouring the majority, which shows how good or bad we are as a society, Carvath is on very shaky ground when he starts dismissing small segments of the population. He describes himself as a “Hebraic evangelical Christian”. I’m not at all sure what that is, and Googling it doesn’t help. A strict search for that exact phrase returns one result (maybe two now). I’m not sure that being a Googlewhack counts as a religion. Maybe he can be put into the “Other Christian” denomination in the breakdown of British denominations, which would make the group he’s affiliated to 0.4% of the population. An insignificant minority, by Carvath’s standards, not worth paying attention to. However, as I’m not him, I don’t think we should limit their ability to marry.
More interesting, though, is a phrase that Carvath started using toward the end of the thread. Apparently, gay couples can’t marry because they’re not sexually compatible. All they can manage are “perversion activities”. Colour me intrigued. These perversion activity things sound quite interesting. What are they, exactly? I asked, but he wasn’t forthcoming with definitions. I really want to know, can anyone tell me what on earth Richard Carvath means when he goes on about “perversion activities”? Suggestions in the comments please.
Manchester councillor Pat Karney, who’s responsible for the city centre, wants to ban the Christian Voice demo from chanting vainly at future Pride parades. The tiny band of narrow minded protesters have been a fixture of the parade for a few years. Last year I filmed an interview with one of them before the parade started. Annoyingly I have yet to get the footage onto a computer to do anything with it. They’re something of a sad bunch- except in their own heads where they’re no doubt fighting bravely against a tidal wave of sin and perversion- but they definitely shouldn’t be banned.
Twenty or so homophobes with banners get lost amongst the thousands of people who’ve come out to see the spectacle, spot friends and enjoy themselves. It’s almost symbolic- a tiny minority calling for a return to bigotry and oppression surrounded by the mass of open minded and joyful humanity. They shouldn’t be banned, that just feeds into their self righteousness and imagined martyrdom, they should be allowed to come back every year and humiliate themselves. Perhaps the realisation will filter through to some of them that they’re missing out on the joys of being a decent caring human being and find a nicer denomination or (even better) none at all.
As pointed out by some of the commenters on the report, Karney’s call, if not outright hypocritical, does show a lack of joined up thinking. If hate laws must be used to silence a few delusional god-botherers why weren’t they used last year to keep the English Defence League out of Manchester? The EDL’s values are just as wrong, if not moreso, and they’re a far nastier bunch to have to deal with. If you try to stop evangelicals showing their ignorance in public then you’re giving the Catholic church room to call for protesters with valid questions about clerical child abuse to be hidden away when the Pope visits.
Let Christian Voice protest all they want. The crowd will prove how wrong they are.
As I’m in an ongoing comment argument (on this post) with a couple of homophobic morons who think their religion gives them special dispensation to be bigots I thought I should show that some Christians are decent people who view the world from an adult perspective rather than one tainted by a few sentences in the Bible. I don’t share their religion, and I’ll no doubt disagree with them about a lot of things, but I respect their mature attitude to others.
I used to analyse data for a living. It’s fascinating to take a whole load of numbers, postcodes and geodemographic data (in my case) and come up with something meaningful, particularly if it makes a pretty map or graphic. I haven’t done any hardcore number crunching for years, and sometimes I miss it. What I did this morning hardly counts, but it was a little bit of fun.
Religious-idiot Richard Carvath did some primary school maths and was awfully pleased with the result. In the last 5 years 80,000 people have entered into civil partnerships. If the population of the UK is 60 million then you just divide one by the other and multiply by 100 to find that a mere 0.13% of the British population is interested in civil partnership! This is so small that it really means that nobody is interested! Civil partnership is irrelevant so we should stop doing them! (We’ll pass over Carvath’s usual bleating about how civil partnerships are destroying the institution of marriage. I don’t think he can comprehend that it can’t be both insignificant and a clear and present danger at the same time.)
Of course, that number is meaningless. For a start,around 19% of the country’s population is aged under 16. Take them out of the numbers and you have an adult population of around 48.6 million. Do the maths again and now 0.16% of the adult population is in a civil partnership. Still a tiny proportion, you might say, but this is still a flawed number. Most of the population aren’t gay- the majority of people would qualify for a “normal” marriage.
Carvath has insisted that only 1% of people are homosexual, a more commonly held figure is 10%. So between 1.65% and 16.5% of those eligible have taken up civil partnerships since they were introduced. How many heterosexual marriages have there been in that same period?
Well the Office of National Statistics says there were 232,990 marriages in England and Wales in 2008. Perhaps the Scots don’t get married. Rounding that up to 250,000 to give the straights a chance, that’s half a million people getting married every year, 2.5 million married people within five years. Between 5.2% and 5.72% of the straight adult population has got married within the last 5 years. If homosexuals are really as tiny a minority as Carvath likes to think then the numbers actually show that they’re over three times more likely to get civil partnered than straights are to get married. More realistic figures give marriage the threefold advantage over civil partnership.
The article Carvath cribbed his figures from crows about an increase in the number of civil partnerships being dissolved- 351 in 2009. Per thousand people married, this means that around 8.75 will get divorced. For the record the equivalent number for straight marriages in 2008 was 11.2. So it’s not clear what they were trying to prove.
What has my data mining proved? Mostly that if you want meaningful statistics you have to do a little bit of work establishing context etc.. It’s not clear whether Carvath was behaving like a tabloid- working out the worst looking number and assuming his audience are too dumb and gullible to question it or spot the logical flaws- or he really thought he was doing some clever analysis. I’m normally a charitable chap, but experience tells me that the latter is more likely than the former, not that either speak well for the man.
During the election I subscribed to a load of political blogs’ RSS feeds. After it I unsubscribed from most of them. Foolishly, I revisited the two most obnoxious of them again recently.
Richard Carvath stood as an independent candidate in Salford and Eccles, the seat retained by Hazel Blears and polled 384 votes. He claims, loudly and repeatedly, that he would have done better if the media, the big parties and homosexual-perverts hadn’t conspired against him. Homosexual-perverts is a favourite phrase of Carvath’s. He can’t just say homosexual, it has to be homosexual-pervert. He may have read somewhere that you can reinforce your message by using your preferred phrases regularly until the reader starts thinking in them as well. But he’s gone overboard- the Carvath blog is overloaded with them, every sentence employs a piece of similar wordplay, all of it of a level which should embarrass anyone over the age of ten. Homosexual-perverts abound, homophobic registrars who refuse to perform Civil Pervertships are conscientious objectors honoured with the title of Decents. I’ve seen him use the phrase Guardian-perverts as well, and it should be obvious who Barack Obortion is. I’m sure he thinks it’s all very clever, witty even, but it just looks like the ever less coherent ramblings of someone with serious mental problems.
Carvath is on a mission from God, the voice in his head. He recently had a nasty accident whilst climbing, breaking several bones and damaging his back. If it had happened to any of his growing list of homosexual-pervert enemies (which is anyone who points out how nasty his beliefs are) he would no doubt be crowing about how God had punished them for their sins. Because it happened to him it’s somehow a form of blessing and all part of his invisible friend’s holy plan. I can only hope he gets better mentally at some point as well as physically.
Real Street is the blog of Stewart Cowan, a Scottish evangelical christian who has yet to meet a conspiracy theory he doesn’t like. Recent favourites include a bus advert which is going to turn us all into Muslims and how trying to cut down homophobic bullying in schools is secretly a plan to legalise gay paedophilia. Cowan doesn’t mangle language as much as Carvath, but he does like to grasp at anything which he feels supports his prejudices whilst dismissing all evidence against them. The Daily Mail and conspiracy loving tabloids are right and anyone answering him with facts and basing their replies upon reality is obviously deluded.
Cowan has a couple of tame commenters who’ll up the frothing at the mouth quotient when necessary. English Viking hates foreigners who come over here to work and improve their, and our, lot. Ancient Danes and Norwegians who popped over for a little recreational raping and stealing are obviously okay, though. Len wants you to know the Truth and accept God, because science, reality and not hating people just because they’re different is obviously the work of Satan.
The natural response to the likes of Carvath and Cowan is this-
But in the long run that’s just a waste of time. They enjoy being wrong, and feel that having all the flaws of their arguments pointed out somehow proves their case. It’s far better to ignore them or point out elsewhere just how stupid they’re being today.
Which is what I know I should do, and what I shall try to do, but I’m not making any promises that I won’t pop over there occasionally and slap them on their own blogs.
Rev Peter Mullen, chaplain of the Stock Exchange and rector of St Michael’s Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City, has “joked” that homosexual men should be tattoed with messages such as SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and FELLATIO KILLS. And Jews should wear yellow stars, gypsies should be rounded up and shot, Communists……
Update I forgot to mention that the link is to a Daily Mail article, so if you do read the comments be prepared for a lot of frothing “political correctness gone mad”, “homosexual agenda!” type stuff. Apparently it’s good that he has stood up and chosen to counter all the homosexual propaganda that’s out there. Where is this homosexual propaganda exactly? I’d love to see some, just to find out what it looks like. I guess those perfume adverts with David Beckham could be guerilla gay propaganda- it can claim to be about something else, but smelly stuff is a bit gay isn’t it?
I can’t believe that I’m so much less aware than the average Daily Mail reader that I can’t see the great big billboards that must be out there emblazoned with catchy mesages like “Become a poof- it’s good clean fun”. I assume that’s what they mean by homosexual propaganda, because they can’t possibly mean calls to treat homosexuals equally when they go on about it. Can they?
At least, that’s one of the messages I get from a typically dumb attack on gay marriage by Orson Scott Card–
When they are able to create children together, married people then provide the role models for those children to learn how to become a man or a woman, and what to expect of their spouse when they themselves marry.
When a heterosexual couple cannot have children, their faithful marriage still affirms, in the eyes of other people’s children, the universality of the pattern of marriage.
When a heterosexual couple adopts children who are not their genetic offspring, they affirm the pattern of marriage and generously confer its blessings on children who might otherwise have been deprived of its benefits.
He also manages to contradict himself at least once, implying at the end that the “biological imperative” is one man, one woman for ever and ever but earlier commenting on the “nearly universal male biological desire for diversity in mating”. So, which is more compelling to your dirty little genes? I feel it’s spreading your seed. It’s telling that Card likens marriage to property laws, because his interpretation of marriage is all about owning his wife, children and grandchildren rather than entering into some sort of equal partnership.
I’ve never read any of the man’s books, and don’t intend to.