Homophobia and the Christian Right

Salon has an essay today from a Presbyterian minister on how he went from opposing gays in the church to supporting them. It's pretty usual stuff, but he has a nice insight at the end. He notes "the mean-spirited nature of the anti-gay movement, and the naked way large Christian organizations used the 'gay threat' to raise money", and then goes on to say,

So why had we singled out homosexuality as a litmus test for True Christianity in the first place? Why had it become such a lightning rod for self-righteousness?One reason, I think, is that it's easy to condemn homosexuality if you are not gay. It is much harder than condemning pride, or lust or greed, things that most practicing Christians have struggled with. It is all too easy to make homosexuality about "those people," and not me. If I were to judge someone for their inflated sense of pride, or their tendency to worship various cultural idols, I would feel some personal stake, some cringe of self-judgment. Not so with homosexuality. 



It's an interesting point. I think it's one factor - although, frankly, I think the money is a bigger factor. Conservative Christianity is a big market, and there's no shortage of people keen on tapping into it...

Nick Clegg and AV

I don't usually find Polly Toynbee's Guardian column very interesting, but this week's is an exception. She's writing about the upcoming AV referendum - for American readers, this is a referendum on the "alternative vote", a kind of instant-runoff system that would make it easier for smaller parties to get seats in Parliament.

She's got a good argument. She argues that First Past the Post has split the vote on the Left between Labour, the Lib Dems, the nationalists and the Greens, allowing the Conservatives to rule with a majority in Parliament based on a minority of the vote. With electoral reform, the Tories will never be able to govern alone again - and without a partner on the right, they will be pulled toward the center:

[F]or those tempted to vote no out of a low urge to give Clegg a kicking, consider this: Clegg is a minor distraction who will soon be gone. If you want to be tribal, keep the real enemy in your sights. The Conservative party, Rupert Murdoch and the rightwing press are ferociously against reform – and for good reason. First-past-the-post may have failed them this time, but they know it's their only chance of ruling alone again, despite a permanent minority of votes. They know this country has no Conservative majority: electoral reform threatens to unite its essentially progressive heart.

I don't totally buy it. It strikes me that AV basically guarantees the Lib Dems a permanent place in government, and given their performance in the coalition I am not happy about trusting the Lib Dems with that kind of power. There's also the risk that AV will bring about more of a realignment in politics than Polly is thinking. Sure, it will let the Greens and other progressives into Parliament in a bigger way, but isn't the same also true of UKIP and the BNP? PR allowed Nick Griffin to get elected an MEP - I don't think that AV will get him into Westminster, but we should be prepared for the possibility. But who's to say that the next Tory-led government won't feature Nigel Farage in the cabinet?

And I must admit that I'm in the "give Clegg a kicking" camp. I think that the AV referendum is the one big concession that the Lib Dems got out of the coalition agreement, and if electoral reform is denied them it will cause a crisis in the party. I think the Lib Dem backbenchers are the weak link in the Coalition, and a rebellion among them is, in my opinion, the best bet for a Lib Dem walkout and an early election.

But that's obviously kind of a pie-in-the-sky scenario, and Polly's got a good point about thinking long-term. I'm still not convinced. But she's made me think.

Lansley starts the long walkback...

The Telegraph, The Times (paywall) and The Independent have all got on the front page Andrew Lansley's announcement that there might be a rethink on the NHS reforms in the face of ferocious opposition from the BMA, the Lib Dems, think-tanks, the health select committee, medical journals and, The Independent notes, "even David Cameron's cardiologist brother-in-law." Why this isn't on the front page of The Guardian (or, for that matter, the FT) is beyond me.

But the point is the same as on the forests - if you fight these bastards long and hard, they'll back down. Lansley is no expert and everyone knows these reforms were cobbled together last minute. He hasn't got the courage  of his convictions - he'll blink before you do. Remember Egypt - don't leave the square until you've got everything you asked for. Don't give up until they give in.

Don't confuse me with the facts

The Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith (IDS, or, as Jeremy Hardy entertainingly calls him, Irritable Duncan Syndrome), has this wonderful insight in the Telegraph today:

[Duncan Smith] said that Labour’s failure to help British unemployed people compete for and win jobs had fuelled immigration in recent years.
The last 13 years saw the number of people in employment increase by 2.5 million, he said. Yet today there are around 5 million people on out-of-work benefits.
“So who took all the new jobs? Over half of them went to foreign nationals. This isn’t about immigration. It is a simple question of supply and demand,” he said.
“We had a supply of labour – the unemployed. We had a demand for labour – all the new jobs. But we couldn’t match them up, so we had to import people who could do the work.”

Never mind that all the way back in 2004 the Centre for Economic Policy Research found that "Research for the US and other European countries finds, with very few exceptions, modest or zero effects of immigration on employment and wages of residents."

It is, of course, easier to scapegoat immigrants than to deal with the structural economic problems leading to such high unemployment. But then, did we expect anything less from the Tories?

U-turn if you want to

Caroline Spelman announces a u-turn on the government's plans to privatize forests in England. Proof that if you fight these people hard enough in an organized way, you can get them to back down. Let's just hope that this is only the first of the government's unworkable policies to fall apart. This gives me hope in particular for a climb-down on Theresa May's draconian, probably unenforceable immigration proposals, which would do huge harm to British companies and universities (as well as to my own chances of getting back into the country...).

Big society tsar Lord Wei 'doesn't have enough time to perform role', by Polly Curtis

Irony much?

The man appointed by the prime minister to kickstart a revolution in citizen activism is to scale back his hours after discovering that working for free three days a week is incompatible with "having a life".

"Leave the libraries alone. You don’t understand their value." by Philip Pullman

This is as good a starting point as any. Philip Pullman with wit and passion laying out the case against small(-minded) government and showing why precisely it is that markets are necessary but not sufficient, and are capable at once of great good and tremendous harm. The article really is a must-read for all, but especially those libertarians and small-government conservatives who think that the state is a mostly malignant force.