O tempora! O mores!

There's been a lot of 1977 retrospectives on the tellybox recently, what with it being the jubilee. Also a lot in the news has been lots of talk about marriage equality, "Gay Marriage" if you prefer, especially since St. Obama has played his hand in favor.

It got me thinking as to how much things have changed in 25 years. I was 12 years old back in '77 and I can still vividly recall that the very, very worst insult in the playground was to call someone gay, puff, bummer or any other word indicating that the target of the insult was a fan of musical theatre. Even though I'm pretty sure that 90% of the time we really had no idea what the words really meant it was certainly a cause for an immediate punch up. Certainly actually being gay was I am sure at the time social death and certainly not something spoken of in a positive light where I grew up. I recall my dad, commenting on an article in the paper about a police raid on a gay-friendly pub in the town, saying something along the lines of "they should all be strung up" which was a bit of a shock as he was normally a pretty tolerant guy. I think the mindset back then was very much gay = child molester or at the very least that being gay was some deep, dark perversion and only vagely acceptable if you were a "comedy" gay like Danny LaRue or John Inman's character in "Are You Being Served"

It's really quite strange how quickly things have changed and how far. Now it seems that if you're opposed to marriage equality you're the one that's the deviant. Looking across the pond to North Carolina it's quite surprising the opprobrium that's been directed towards the people of the state who voted in favour of denying gay couples even a civil union with many calling them "hicks" and "backward" at best. On a political note it's a shrewd move by Obama to come out in favour of gay marriage; a lot of the shine has gone off his presidency and he failed to deliver all that "hopey, changey" stuff in the storm of a recession and he's aligned himself with the "progressive", younger vote ahead of the presidential elections later this year.
 
Over this side of the shining big-sea-water we can see that it's mainly the religidiots who are hanging onto the "it's one man one woman" like a drowning man grasping at a straw, swimming against the tide of history and sinking their antediluvian beliefs further and further into irrelevance. Politically again Camoron really has no choice but to push this forwards, despite the grumblings from the blue-rinse wing of the party; he's in deep political crap as it is and scrapping his proposed gay marriage bill will just pin the "nasty party" label back on the Tories and right now that's the last thing they need.

Still, maybe in another 25 years we'll be twittering (using our neural interfaces whilst on a day trip to the moon) about "do you remember when gay people couldn't get married?" in the same way as we'd talk about mixed-race marriages now.* One can only wonder what'll be perfectly socially acceptable then.



* To be fair as far as I know the UK never had a race bar on marriage but they certainly did in the USA

No Blacks, no Irish, no dogs

Which, as Lenny Henry once observed "made it really difficult for a black irish wolfhound to get a room"

Which leads me to the ruling today that batshit crazy christian fundy nutjobs Hazel and Peter Bull have been giving a good shoeing to the tune of £3600 for not letting a couple of guys who were on the other bus stay at their guesthouse. Bad move Hazel, not only has this cost you a shitload of cash but looking at you and your place you could really have done with some make-over advice from a couple of gentlemen who are "good with colours".

Now personally I believe that as private individuals, with a private business, receiving no money from the state that they are fully entitled to do what they want with their property and it is no business of the state who they choose to let interact with their business and on what terms. Yes and that does include saying "No blacks, no Irish and no dogs and no pufters" if they want. That's entirely their prerogative as it is mine to call them nasty spiteful homophobes who are probably secretly turned on by the idea of bottysex.

Regrettably I'm rather torn because anything that puts the boot into the religious and makes them look like the reactionary fossils that they are makes happy steam come out of my nose but on balance I think it's wrong. I would happily, for private individuals and businesses, tear up every single bit of "equality" legislation. Don't want to hire black people, well that's up to you. Mind you if you do I'll boycott your business which won't last that long as you won't be able to hire from the full pool of talent out there and your competitors will.

But as that's not going to happen any time soon forgive me if I sit here giggling and bouncing up and down on my green scaly tail whilst the Xtians whinge and moan about "we are a persecuted minority".

Yeah sucks when the boot is on the other foot doesn't it! Hang on I'll call you a whaaaambulance.

Elton John - "Jesus can come and redecorate my flat"

Apparently the Lord and Saviour of mankind was a bit good with colours and probably liked musical Greek comedies and tragedies. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/feb/19/elton-john-jesus-gay

Well lets look at the evidence shall we. Never married, went around with 12 other blokes, his best mate Peter kissed him, he wore sandals... yep definitely on the other bus.

Predictable howling in the various news outlets that allow comments that "He would not have said Mohammed was gay would he".

Well no, that's because Mohammed preferred 10 year old girls.

(Mussies: Please place all fatwas over there in a neat pile for burning later. Thanks. Grumpy)

You're not welcome

Oi you.

Yes, you. The Hitlerjugend member in the dress.



Fuck off, you're not welcome.

You are the leader of a foreign state (a little pissant one in the middle of Italy guarded by people in stripey baggy pants carrying tactical nuclear halberds but a sovereign foreign power nonetheless). So we invite you to come by for a state visit. And then you have the fucking brass neck to tell your Sturmabteilung

The Pope has urged Catholic bishops in England and Wales to fight the UK's Equality Bill with "missionary zeal".

"...the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs."

"In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed."

Well boo fucking hoo. So just because you believe in some sky pixie you get to discriminate and persecute and you should be exempt from the law of the land? Well how about if I believe that to achieve communion with The Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUH) it is necessary for me to get rogered senseless by a shire horse stallion outside Ely cathedral on market day would it be fine for me to have an exception from the law too?

This line from one of his generals was a hoot

(Robert Mickens, Rome correspondent at the Catholic newspaper The Tablet) said "It's not that the Pope is wading so much into the particulars of British society or British law - I think this is very much a piece of his longstanding teaching."

Oh so that makes it OK then? Given these religious types get to sit in the house of lords and there are a number of Catholic MPs who are obliged to give Obergruppenfuhrer Ratzinger their loyalty I would have thought that rather than "longstanding teaching" he was giving them a direct order (vitch vill be obeyed at all times vizout question!)

The National Secular Society said it would mount a protest campaign made up of gay groups, victims of clerical abuse, feminists, family planning organisations and pro-abortion groups among others.

And there will be a small green dragon along as well.

Desperate Voices

You know I think that you must be able to get hold of a satellite channel for thruppence and a pickled egg these days. Having an arse about on a mate's satellite rig I managed to get hold of a channel called "Gay Chat". The premise of this channel seems to be if you are terminally shy with a lousy phone manner and you would like to get some botty action you ring up at 25p a minute, leave a message and presumably people ring in and ask to talk to "Barry in Stoke who likes dressing up and is flexible".

I sat there transfixed for ages. A parade of the lost and lonely, you could hear the desperation in the voices, "I'm Frances," said a chap probably called Sidney putting on his best husky female voice, "please come and dress me up." Then there were the poor sods who straight after saying "I'm Mike", probably then said "I like horsecock" and they edited it so all you got was "I'm Mike" which I'm guessing isn't going to get him many responses and the funniest one had to be the guy who came on and in a tired, bored voice simply said "I'm Pete and I'm in Derby".

I've been to Derby. I sympathise.

Call after call emphasising how they were not a timewaster, that they were "genuine", that they "could accomodate, looking for a meet tonight" which I am assuming for "I am alone in my little flat and I need some human company, please don't fuck me over like so many tossers have done before"

And the cruellest irony came after a few minutes when I heard "I'll be in Barnstaple this Friday, January the 9th"... the fucking calls weren't even current! Somebody somewhere was rolling around in fivers culled from the 10p a minute he got from every desperate twat who rang his 0898 number to be dissapointed yet again. I guess if worst comes to worst he can always pay for the company.

A couple of channels down were about thirty similar channels for heterosexuals, all the same, all just as desperate.

Who Killed Stuart Lubbock?

All through yesterday thanks to the humungous plasma screen tellies on the wall at work (now 70% owned by all you lucky taxpayers out there) which are permanently tuned to Sky News for some unfathomable reason every time I looked up I was treated to the sorry sight of this stupid fucker.



This is Terry Lubbock who yesterday was sporting the t-shirt you see in the picture which reads "Who killed Stuart Lubbock?". I am assuming it says that because the guys down at PrintaShirt told him that "I am a homophobe who cannot accept the fact that my son was into taking massive quantities of drugs and enjoyed getting rogered roughly up the arse" would not fit, even on an XXL shirt.

OK so it kinda sucks that your kid died but what do you fucking expect when he took a cocktail of drink, ecstasy and enough Colombian marching powder to open an artificial ski-slope and then, after a few rounds of coked-up bottysex, fell into a swimming pool when everyone else was similarly in a haze of pharmaceutical oblivion and probably, therefore, not at their most attentive.

Actually come to think of it... how come I never get invited to that sort of party?

So even though the Essex Filth made a complete Horlicks of the investigation, my guess is Terry that who killed your son was himself.

But that's not good enough for you is it Tezza, no we need to keep blaming the nasty queers because your son wasn't a queer was he? No could not have been, look here's a picture of him in a morning suit getting married to something dressed in a marquee. He really could not have possibly been on the other bus and fantasized about pulling a train of these guys...



... not your perfect son, no way. Must have been murder. Course it must.

Still, nice little handout coming to you courtesy of the public purse. When some granny in Basildon gets her head cracked open by some scrote who nicks her pension money because there's no copper on the street because that copper's salary is in your back pocket I'm sure that won't cause you any lack of sleep. You cunt.

Johnny has two mummies...

... three daddies and 10% of his DNA from a Charolais bull called Henry.

Religious leaders

Uh oh! You know this isn't going to be pretty don't you.

have expressed concern over plans to make it easier for lesbian couples to use IVF to become parents.

Incredible isn't it, it's almost a Pavlovian response. Say the world "lesbian" or "gay" to a "religious leader" and the dogs start salivating. Can't see what they are getting all wound up about anyway as all that book written by a bunch of stoned Arabs says is throw rocks at a woman who lies with another one; didn't say anything about "Oh and if they start arseing around with donor sperm and test tubes, throw more rocks!"

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor wrote: "The bill proposes to remove the need for IVF providers to take into account the child's need for a father when considering an IVF application and to confer legal parenthood on people who have no biological relationship to a child born as a result of IVF.

The key phase here, Moron-O'Connor is "Legal Parenthood", my birth certificate has as my legal parents two people who have no biological relationship to me whatsoever as I was adopted. Who gives a flying fuck what it says on a bit of paper; the law is a human construct and humans can change it when the old law no longer suits what society has become.

"This radically undermines the place of the father in a child's life, and makes the natural rights of the child subordinate to the desires of the couple. It is profoundly wrong."

What "natural rights" of the child are these? And what choice does any child have to come into the world. Surely every child is conceived as a result of the desires of the couple whether dishonourable (quick knee trembler outside the disco and you were too pissed to put a condom on) or honorable (we would like to have a child and we will love it and raise it to the best of our abilities)

Family campaigners are also stepping up their opposition to the Bill, with former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith warning it would be a "nail in the coffin" of the traditional family and "another blow" against fatherhood.

And we should listen to a failed slaphead politician like you because?

Look, it's quite simple. Two people want to offer a loving home to a child and are prepared to go through the hassle and (I imagine) pain of IVF in order to have one; that for one thing tells me that their relationship must be pretty strong and so, hopefully, likely to last. If you really want to have a kid that much then surely you are going to love him or her when it arrives. I'd much rather have a kid being brought up by two people who love it that by some 18 year old single mum who can't keep her legs together after ten Bacardi Breezers and whose idea of parenting is to stick junior in front of an X-Box.

Hey you want male role models for the kid... how about that old concept of a godfather? You get one of those when you get baptised. I hear Westminster Cathedral is a lovely place to get that done.



(Oh and I love that picture they keep using of the cardinal... as I mentioned in a post ages ago it looks as though he's about to get assaulted with a horse sized dildo)

God's aim sucks

Either that, or as Depeche Mode once observed, he has a sick sense of humour.

According to Bishop of Carlisle, the current flooding some parts of the UK are experiencing is all down to the amazing power of botty sex. Yes, God is pissed at us for passing a law last year which basically says "Treat people equally under the law regardless of what sex they make the two-backed beast with" and The Almighty lets loose a flood of not quite biblical proportions...

In Doncaster for fucks sake!

Last time I was in Doncaster it was full of decidedly heterosexual Yorkshiremen and certainly not a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, well no more than any other northern industrial town. So I can safely conclude that either Jehovah meant to hit the Canal Street area of Manchester and his aim went low and right, in which case he sounds an ideal candidate to replace Flintoff in the England bowling line-up, or maybe, just maybe, this is a natural phenomenon caused by a lot of unseasonal rainfall exacerbated by silly buggers building houses on flood plains.

The bish has got some choice quotes:

The bishop, who is a leading evangelical, said that people should heed the stories of the Bible, which described the downfall of the Roman empire as a result of its immorality.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that Rome at the height of its powers worshipped Pagan gods, drank and ate itself stupid, staged fights to the death for entertainment and a statue like this one was regarded as being in exquisite taste and at the time the empire finally crumbled and the Visigoths strolled off with the loot it was Christian.

"In the Bible, institutional power is referred to as 'the beast', which sets itself up to control people and their morals.

Er... pretty much like the church did for about 1800 years then.

Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want," he said, adding that the introduction of recent pro-gay laws highlighted its determination to undermine marriage.

Disregarding the fact that our present government seems to be keen to pass as many laws as possible to specifically stop people being free at all we're back at the amazing power of bottysex again! Let the gays get wed and suddenly those promises that you and the Mrs made all those years back are suddenly null and void so you might as well just get a divorce and get the years of bitter argument over child custody under way right now.

"The sexual orientation regulations [which give greater rights to gays] are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God's judgment.

So how come God can't just judge those he doesn't like and leave the good citizens of Doncaster who, lets face it, didn't have a whole heap of input into the formulation of the Civil Partnerships Act, alone. I dunno, hit Battersea Park with a tidal wave on gay pride march day or something?

He expressed his sympathy for those who have been hit by the weather, but said that the problem with "environmental judgment is that it is indiscriminate".

Hang on a minute here? What's with the environmental judgement thing. God, being omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent can (with allowances for human free will depending upon your theological position on predeterminism) do anything he damn well pleases so surely whistling up a flood the trashes the naughty and spares the innocent is a walk in the park? Either that or he just unleashes the environment to do what it wants - doesn't sound like a very loving act to me?

The West is also being punished for the way that it has exploited poorer nations in its pursuit of economic gain. "It has set up dominant economic structures that are built on greed and that keep other nations in a situation of dependence. The principle of God's judgment on nations that have exploited other nations is all there in the Bible," he said.

So was the Boxing Day tsunami the poor nations of the East being punished; look at all those dead fuckers, he must really be ticked off at them. And what are they being punished for, giving western tourists poor service at the poolside bar? And how come all these poor countries get hit with natural disasters all the time? In the UK last year the number of fatalities from flooding was about three, in Bangladesh it was in the thousands.

On the same subject we last had a major flood with loss of life in 1953, around 300 people died. No global warming then and I really can't think that God was upset about the government passing the Agriculture (Ploughing Grants) Act in 1952 (mind you the old Witchcraft act was repealed in 1951 so maybe it was that and God just had a lot on in the early 50's)

Somebody desperately needs to give Bishop Dow a few whacks round the head with his crozier, might jump-start his brain if we're lucky.

At least there was one minor note of sanity...

The Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, said: "We are all part of the problem and part of the solution. Instead of living as if we owned the earth we need to recover a sense of being participants in a web of life with responsibilities to other life forms and to our children."

Well yes... except that it was your lot who told us for years that the we humans were touched by god and above all that natural world stuff which was ours to do with as we pleased and the pagans who kept saying we had to respect the natural world. Nice to see at least some of you are coming round; about 18 centuries late but at least you're getting there.

An error in your moral compass has occurred, please reset

I see over on Yahoo (I get my news from all the best places) that our wierdybeardy druid archbishop has stuck his oar into the muddy waters of the "debate" (read "vicious backstabbing slanging match") on homosexuality¹ and said that many of his co-religionists are misreading the bible. Yeah like that doesn't ever happen.

It reminds me of a time years ago when I had this Christian friend I used to talk religion with. I'd say something like "Hey, you believe this bible thing so how come you eat cheeseburgers when the bible says you shouldn't?" he would get this sort of fatherly "I love my son but he's making a mess of trying to ride a bike so I'll help him" expression of kindly sorrow and say "ah, you are in error..." and proceed to go through a bunch of tortuous logic that you could drive a coach and four through to try and show that while the bible might actually say in black and white that eating meat and milk together was not allowed that the bible actually says it is. However this chain of shoddy logic which explained why it was no longer necessary to stone disobedient children to death although the bible clearly says you should somehow didn't work where botty sex was concerned.

Anyway back to Archbish Rowan. Now I took a look at the relevant bit of bible verse that is being spoken about here (Romans 1:27 in case you want a look yourself) and it does seem pretty clear that botty sex is a bad thing in Paul's mind. However interestingly enough if you read around this verse what Mr Road to Damascus seems to be saying is that "Because people, who should have known better, worshipped the creation rather than the creator God made them all 'Good With Colours'". So it's God's fault that there are gays because he made them that way. Can't see I follow the logic as I've come across some very heterosexual Pagans in my time but we'll let that pass for now.

Either way I'm struggling here to see Rowan William's point that this passage is all about not being a smug, self righteous prick but apparently that's all in chapter 2

Certainly starts in a promising way...

"Therefore you are without excuse, whoever you are, when you judge someone else. For on whatever grounds you judge another, you condemn yourself,"

And then it all goes downhill...

"because you who judge practice the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment is in accordance with truth against those who practice such things. And do you think, whoever you are, when you judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape God’s judgment?"

Seems clear to me what is being said is "If you rant and rave about gays but are really indulging in a spot of sausage up the bum activity yourself my Invisible Friend will know and beat you up." rather than the whole thing being about not to condemn people. Basically it's saying "Don't be a hypocrite" which is fine but it certainly is our Paul saying that being gay is bad, so bad in fact that if you don't worship him, god will make you lust after other men's willies.

However I am probably (kindly smile) "in error" once more.

It would be nice if the Xtians could make their minds up on this once and for all but I suspect that this one will run and run.

In the meantime I'll continue to put my willy wherever I like so long as it's welcome.

My invisible friend told me to hate you

Oh my God, twenty gay bears armed with horse dildos have just come round the corner!

Amen brothers. At least there are some people in government, at cabinet level no less, with a bit of gumption to stand up to our closet catholic prime minister who would like nothing better to act under orders from an ex-nazi in Rome (who incidentally may well have tried to shoot my grandfather when he was an anti-aircraft gunner in the Hitler-Jugend (the pope that is, not my grandfather who was, as far as I know was trying to drop bombs on the future pope in 1945)).

What this comes down to is "We have an insvisible friend who talks to us and we follow some ancient book (well, bits of it anyway) that says we have to hate bum bandits so we don't want the law to apply to us." Well I happen to believe that catholic priests, especially the paedophile ones, deserve setting on fire but you don't see me going whining to the government for an exception to the laws on Arson to apply only to Dragons because setting fire to people who so richly deserve it is a deep and ingrained part of my draconic heritage! This one quite clearly fails the "Jew" test - that's the one where you take the word "homosexual" out of what Cardinal Faghater O'Murphy is saying and substitute the word "jew" and see if it makes you feel uncomfortable. The very worthy Pub Philosopher has a good take on it here that's way funnier than I could write.

Mind you given that it would seem that a goodly number of the leaders of this organisation seem to have a rather unhealthy interest in children (and their top management has a record of trying to hush it up) I do find it rather ironic that the organisation is even allowed to run adoption agencies. The xtian church is dead keen on sheep and shepherd analogies but that does rather seem like putting the wolf in charge of the flock.

Anyway for any readers reading this who think that an invisible man in the sky talks to you and who are upset that you're not going to be able to be mean to gays any more I have some good news for you¹. If you just skip forward one verse from Leviticus 18:22 that you seem to have become fixated upon you will find that there's a whole new group of people that you can hate. I'd get a wiggle on though because give it twenty or thirty years they'll change the law for these folks too and then you'll have to let Mr Jones and his lovely wife Dobbin the Horse adopt a kid from you as well.


¹ I would also reccomend a course of antipsychotic medication as voices in your head telling you to do stuff is a symptom of schizophrenia - I'm told that Largactyl is very good.