46 years after Stonewall

On the last Saturday night of June, 46 years ago, white New York police raided a queer bar in the Village, called the Stonewall inn, and the intended victims – black and Hispanic, trans and genderqueer – fought back.

That night and the name of the bar became a gay icon: not just the US, but around the world.

In 1969, in England and Wales, sex between two men in private if both were over 21 had been decriminalised. Police harassment had stepped up: the police now believed they had been given specific limits on where and who they could harass for being gay.

LGBT people would not be allowed to serve openly in the UK armed services until 1999: until 2003, it was completely legal for an employer to fire an employee for our sexual orientation. Last year the ban on same-sex marriage was lifted in Scotland: this year Ireland became the first country in the world to declare marriage equality by majority vote in a national referendum: Northern Ireland is the standout anti-gay land in the British Isles, but perhaps not for too much longer. (Although the Supreme Court decision overshadowed it, yesterday a Belfast high court judge granted judicial review to couples who wanted to be able to convert their civil partnership to a marriage.)

On the last Friday in June, yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that nowhere in the US can same-sex couples be banned from marriage.

Personal: no connection with WWI

I mentioned on 27th June that blogging would be light in July, and this is why:

Tolerance and politics

There were two big arguments going on in non-party-political politics the past two years: lifting the ban on same-sex marriage (England and Wales, 29th March: Scotland, sometime this autumn after the Commonwealth Games and this other thing: Northern Ireland as soon as they lose the court case).

Making it legal for same-sex couples to marry, matters hugely to people in same-sex relationships, obviously, but to everyone else aside from a small number of seriously homophobic fanatics, it’s no big deal: two-thirds of the population of Scotland agreed that gay marriage should be made legal in a 2012 poll.

This other thing that is happening in Scottish politics: the referendum. In the US, where they have referendums whenever they can get enough voters to sign off on one, they went through a phase of holding referenda in which voters were invited to agree that “marriage is between a man and a woman”, which was then held to mean that marriage between a man and a man, or a man and a woman, was unlawful. In the UK we referend much more rarely, and only – so cynics say – when the government thinks they can get the public to vote the way they want.

Just think: this could be your next MEP

David Coburn, who is UKIP’s London Regional Chair, is the leading UKIP candidate for Scotland in the European elections in May.

@ReachEd Your views on Gay marriage and Equalities prism are Jacobin

— David Coburn UKIP (@DavidCoburnUKip) March 2, 2014

This being Scotland, UKIP are polling better than the LibDems, who are still sliding into their slow electoral wipeout for giving Scotland a Tory government at Westminster again. (It’s not that we’re vengeful. It’s quite possible that LibDems will recover in Scotland. After the last of the current batch of politicians has lost their seats, MP, MSP, and MEP, and Nick Clegg is kicked out and the LibDems after 2015 start pulling themselves back together again and trying to figure out what they’re for, well… sometime after that, Scotland might start voting them again. It’s not that we’re vengeful. It’s just that we think cheating politicians who put Tory governments into office should suffer humiliating electoral defeats until morale improves.)

Bears and woods

There in a scene described in the New Testament where Jesus, having been asked who will be greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, calls a small child to him, and tells his disciples “This kid is, and you guys need to become more like little kids, and furthermore, anyone who hurts little kids should have a big stone hung round his neck and dropped into the deepest part of the sea, am I clear?”

(I’m paraphrasing.)

No one knows how many priests in the Roman Catholic Church have abused children and are still active as priests in their communities. In each diocese, there are files on the priests who worked there which would make that clear if all of them were opened up, but the Catholic Church has steadily refused to do that.

Four hundred priests who have been accused of child molestation by the secular law authorities have been defrocked. I know of no instance where the Church has defrocked a priest and turned him and the evidence they had uncovered of his abuse of children over to the secular law authorities so that the legal authorities could act.

Scotland’s for marriage

Elaine Smith MSP, deputy presiding officer in the Scottish Parliament, argued for polygamy in her written evidence to the Equal Opportunities Committee last year, as the Scotland on Sunday anti-gay marriage story this morning quotes:

“Whilst the government has said that it has no intention of allowing polygamous marriages as part of this legislation which changes the essential nature of marriage, it has not explained in any detail and with research analysis its reasons for taking that position.

“Further, if the government is sincere about its support for ‘equal love’ then it appears to have a contradiction on its hands.”

There is “no logical reason” for discriminating against more than two people getting married if the redefinition of marriage is driven by love, Ms Smith adds.

Undecided Scot decides

I still don’t know how I’ll vote in autumn 2014. But a few days ago, one thing at least was made definite for me: the Better Together vote is going to win. I’m certain enough of that to lay a bet on it, if I were the gambling sort.

What made me so sure?

It’s not just that the SNP are saying blithely that Independence Day will be March 2016, though that is a highly-unrealistic timescale. (It’s also not a binding decision.)

On 11th May I predicted, correctly, that Barack Obama was going to be a two-term President. My certainty was founded in Obama’s own sense of political security: that’s when Obama opted to come out for repealing DOMA and in support of lifting the ban on same-sex marriage recognition: for gay marriage.

For the most part, there are two sorts of politicians who come out for LGBT equality: the very principled, who will stand up for what’s right regardless of what this does to their future career, and the very confident, who are sure of their future career regardless of what they say. Barack Obama is not the first sort of politician (that sort doesn’t become President of the United States) but he is superb at the job of getting elected. I was sure Obama was going to win.

I’m now sure that the SNP leadership is certain they won’t win the referendum in 2014: they can set a date of March 2016 for independence because that’s not in their plans. They can separate off the “Yes Scotland” campaign as officially not-really SNP, and the morning after the votes are counted and the result is published, the SNP can move on with their plans for contesting Scottish seats in the May 2015 Westminster election.

On 2013

Things that will happen in 2013:

• It’s a beautiful morning in Edinburgh today: the sun is shining. It’s cold but not too cold. The weather in 2013 will be terrible with consequent knock-on effects on harvests and food supply. This in combination with legalised gambling on the price of food will mean food prices will be even higher by the end of 2013 than the beginning.

The Christmas Message

This year the Archbishop of Westminster, the leader of the Catholics in England and Wales, took the opportunity of his bully pulpit on Christmas Eve to tell his congregation that God hates LGBT people and does not want us to have equal civil rights. Peace and goodwill to all is so outdated: modern Christians are expected to hate as directed.

Vincent Nichols

told worshippers that the Government has no mandate for the change and had not followed the proper rules of British democracy.

“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,” he said.

In an apparent reference to the totalitarian state described in the novel 1984, he added:

“From a democratic point-of-view, it’s a shambles. George Orwell would be proud of that manoeuvre, I think the process is shambolic.”

Nichols told lots of lies about the lack of public support for equal marriage, but his key objection is – he claims – that in England & Wales, this was not done properly.

Gandalf for the Firth

This is a bit of a story, so have patience.

Kreetch is a fan of The Hobbit: as am I. Due to her shift-patterns, it was impossible for us to go any earlier that Sunday 23rd December, so I booked two seats in the Dominion Cinema, Gold 1 (because she’s worth it) for the 3.20pm showing.

The Dominion is described as “Edinburgh’s most unique and luxurious cinema”. Gold 1 isn’t quite as snazzy as Gold 4, but you get utterly comfy seats in a gorgeous building in Newbattle Terrace that’ll remind you of what cinemas used to be like before they went multiscreen and boxy. (Facebook has some photos.)