Now we are sick

How many pathetic white flighters are there on the island, and how much would they pay to listen to a drunk they cannot even vote for?
The answers are 700, and £17.50. What sad lives some people must lead to hand over a day's worth of benefits.
Don't get it?
OK I'll try again.
Apparently Nigel Farage (the most notorious racist comedian since Bernard Manning did everyone a favour and died) is speaking at The Gaiety on November 11^th.
I'm not sure which joke is sicker, the date or the fact that the organisers can boast 700 tickets have been sold at £17.50. What, exactly, does a racist throwback who scrounges EU funds have to say to an island which can neither vote for his moronic party in the UK nor send one of his fellow parasites to Brussels, because we play no part in that assembly either? And what half-wit at the Department of Fun missed the significance of the date?
Anyways, when the half-cut one and his fans do show up so will some genuine Manx people. We will leave these no-hopers to bore each other to death inside, but leaflets from Hope not Hate will be distributed outside from about 6.30 PM. So if you don't spend much time in post offices, but secretly always wanted to know what a long queue of losers look like when not collecting benefits, come on down and join the fun.

Lazarus - raised and reburied with the living

For reasons some readers might know about, but which I won't go into here, I was otherwise engaged last weekend so could not share this (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/town-sermon-not-appropriate-1-6886645 ), which has had me giggling like a stoned loon for days.
My immediate reaction was that when only the living dead attend such drab, parochial bun-fights, then if people really did walk out the reverend doctor may have performed the best example of a miracle since his ultimate role model supposedly brought back Lazarus. Sadly, having raised the dead, he not only reburies them but their vaguely conscious pew-mates.
Honestly! A cleric gets an open goal – a chance to preach to the only right wing throwbacks in town likely to share his warped view of humanity – misses by a mile and even turns the bigots against him. As I understand it, he was recruited (using savings made by not replacing retiring professional clergy) as a missioner priest charged with getting younger, intellectually minded locals into churches. From his record thus far, his employers may be wondering if he ever intends to start work.
More seriously, I know socially committed clergy and Manx Christians and in my experience they never get the genuine support of “management” or even their fellow punters (though the same are always ready to take the credit or opportunity of public funds). For all I know (though thus far he has shown absolutely no evidence) Dr Gomes may well be, outside his “special project”, a dutiful and conscientious priest to his flock. But if so I cannot see believe he still accepts the kind of social myths he reportedly endorses – myths disproved ad nauseum over the last 60 years.
As a salaried priest, this man has an opportunity denied to most of us to support families and individuals struggling just to get by against a wall of prejudice. A wall which gets bigger every time a Manx government minister opens his mouth in public and vomits more effluent. I respectfully suggest it is time he started doing this, not aligning himself with the kind of tabloid-reading excuseniks whose prejudice is at the root of most poverty and social problems on this island.
In addition to his Christian and professional duty to do this, he has an intellectual duty to speak truth to power. As the learned man he is, Dr Gomes should not be reducing all morality to that sub-section of ethics any genuine academic knows as religious morality. If preaching to those without the benefit of formal education in morality and ethics, surely he has a duty to be more precise rather than play to simplistic stereotypes favoured by professional tub-thumpers of no integrity.
And finally, if 21^st century families do not choose the church, that is generally because, having made a reasonable effort to understand the arguments, they no longer believe in an omnipotent deity, or because even if they do they find the church itself wanting. In either case, that is not a failure of parenting or the community but a failure of the church, so it is for the church and its servants to do better.

Necromancy considered as a subsidised performance art

See http://www.iomtoday.co.im/what-s-on/manx-entertainment-news/manx-passion-play-to-be-performed-around-isle-of-man-over-easter-1-6552955 for the latest episode in “Year of The C Word”.

Sorry to go on about it, but however cretinous this whole exercise is panning out to be there is a serious point. Culture is now a bit of a buzz word, especially amongst conservatives and bigots, but it still gets used as ignorantly as the time when some chinless Cambridge inbreed or other misused the word in front of an uppity grammar school boy called Raymond Williams back in.. oh, maybe the 1940's. This led Williams to look into the matter rather more seriously and he went on to found what later became Cultural Studies (along with some similarly uppity blacks, gays and girlies who kept redefining the term on finding it didn't seem to include them either). And that was all good, intelligent and positive stuff.

So different to today, when anyone who tries to take politics seriously is told that “nobody talks about class”, though the “nobody” who isn't talking about it is also a tiny subculture - but sadly one which just happens to run everything. More precisely, that “nobody” does not want to acknowledge that class divisions are getting worse and the local nobody cannot acknowledge that Manx society has an underclass that is trapped from the cradle to the grave as surely as the Welfare State project (now abandoned) was supposed to be a safety net against such problems.

And as for race..............

In the Isle of Man nobody in government (either the politicians or civil service mandarins) wants to talk about race, for fear of having to consider how racist the island still is. So maybe “culture” is little more than an excuse to continue racist prejudice now that a more open system of apartheid is no longer possible.

And eventually, who decides what “Manx culture” is anyway? Certainly not ordinary Manx residents, to whom this crap is about as relevant or recognisable as Moon rocks.

“Ours”? No, just “theirs” - and “they” are neither many nor approachable.

Which brings us to this shining example of Culture as something that is a bit icky-poo and badly needs spoon-feeding. This event has been subsidised to hell and back, so on that basis we can safely identify it as the art bore equivalent of a Nil By Mouth hospital patient.

Though, of course, in the worlds of art and culture attitudes are so Catholic. Everything that might otherwise get quietly knocked on the head seems to be a cause celebre for some vociferous Right To Lifer. Considering how dominated proceedings will be by acolytes of the Zombie Carpenter, turning up to watch this show will be like being trapped in an advocate's waiting room after a hospice death.

It sounds like the kind of gig most would pay to get out of, not into. Be grateful, then, that most if it takes place in the kind of god-forsaken bat sanctuaries most of us in these enlightened days will never even be seen dead in.

No steps forward, two steps sideways

I found this (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/52042/disarray-over-gay-bishops-embarrassing- ) quite amusing, as much for the detail left out as for the admission of failure thrown in.

As is not explained by Manx Radio or the Bishop, but I’ve mentioned before (after the UK’s religious press picked up on a prominent C of E press release and effectively asked me ‘Who the hell is this Paterson bloke and why does the C of E trust him to solve the ‘gay question’?”) the “small group” he chaired was a committee of fellow bishops charged by Anglican ‘management’ with finding a way out of the whole mess. In fact, so high profile was it that there were even talks about talks about who should choose such a committee. It was also stacked in favour of the homophobic minority to stop them whining…and yet even their hand-picked golden boys couldn’t manage a hateful enough ‘compromise’. Just how lip-poutingly pathetic can this bunch get?

Oh, and I wouldn’t take that letter to Sentamu as any kind of rebellious gesture either. As regular readers will already know, but newcomers might not, previous to his current post Robert Paterson was personal chaplain and assistant to John Sentamu. The committee of five which selected him as Bishop of Sodor & Mann was (quite coincidentally we must be sure) chaired by John Sentamu, otherwise comprised two brain-dead Manx politicians and two Anglican stooges, and it didn’t consider any other candidates.

But is all this ill will towards gay men the true Christian view?

Well, one suggestion that it is not can be found on Ekklesia (see http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17737) and is written by the excellent Symon Hill, a fellow anti-militarist (indeed leading light in Campaign Against the Arms Trade) and all round nice guy. I recommend you read it, if only to remind yourself that not all Christians foam at the mouth.

Marriage advice from Hell

It seems I’m not the only one raising an ironic eyebrow at the news that a notorious ‘family values’ group is being allowed to run a marriage workshop at Ramsey Town Hall.
It’s tempting to get serious, and write a letter to the Commissioners checking if they have a policy on preventing the promotion of hatred, because strip away the veneer and Care for the Family seem to dislike a lot. The track record of their parent, CARE, suggests either discomfort or flat out disgruntlement around gays, and pretty much anyone and anything else that stands for decency, compassion and, in general, a happy, self-disciplined existence that doesn’t subsidise religious parasitism.
Probably not worth the bother, because this sad bunch have done a pretty good job of putting themselves out of business anyway, which is the only thing to thank them for. Take away any losers they’ve picked up from Living Hell’s Grammar School ‘outreach’ and the organisers will be talking to themselves. Mind you, evangelical headbangers spend so much time talking to invisible friends they might not notice the difference.
What might be funny is if some gay couples turned up and joined in – not that any well balanced couple planning to marry for love rather than outright desperation would hang around for more than five minutes.
Actually, what would be much better would be if people who could not be less qualified to 'advise' on personal relationships took advice from other people instead of being not only arrogant enough to offer it, but dishonest enough to charge for knowledge they simply do not have. Particularly, they should learn from those who have struggled for years against bigotry to maintain such relationships.
Who knows, if they actually listened they might even learn something. And considering the sorry mess that most evangelicals pass off as 'family life', many of them need to learn a lot - and fast.

Faith-biased apartheid

Off into town on domestic duties first thing this morning, and the first thing I spot is more evidence that the deluded herd gets preferential treatment by our government, both local and national.
I live two streets from a main road, and most of my neighbours are ordinary decent workers. Yet it took until Wednesday evening for the Department of Transport or Ramsey Commissioners staff to grit anything in the area. Even that was only because the bin lorry couldn’t drive in on Wednesday, and the bin workers wouldn’t push the bins 50 metres to the nearest spot the lorry didn’t slide across.
As a result, none of us made work for two days. This because there are no jobs in Ramsey and as we couldn’t move our cars and the buses didn’t run until Wednesday lunchtime we couldn't get to Douglas. By which point most of us had settled for looking after kids because the schools were also closed and anyway, the pavements also being iced up, we couldn’t safely deliver them to relatives elsewhere in town.
But as we’re not public sector workers and actually have consciences, by the time the bins were being picked up and the bin-workers were grumbling to the DOT about the lack of grit we’d already cleared the pavements, sorted out elderly and vulnerable neighbours and so on. That left the DOT to grit the road, which they did so badly we ended up shovelling up the little grit they’d scattered and redistributing it at points which would actually enable us to drive cars round the corner, slide down the street they completely neglected and on towards the main road on Thursday morning.
At that stage it just looked like business as usual. Except I didn’t know about the other ‘business as usual’ until walking into town down the main road this morning.
By this I mean the point when I discovered that while the pavements are as iced as ever outside housing for young parents, pensioners and low income workers, every church on the way has been gritted. Not just a sprinkling around the entrance, but what looks like a sackful or so of grit scrupulously spread around each one. It must have taken longer for workmen to do any of the faith hovels than they spent on the entire area between here and the nearest one.
So, what… six or so superstitious halfwits who may or may not bother to attend a barn of banality this Sunday are worth more than a few hundred ordinary folk who won’t (but do work and pay taxes)?
How sane is that?

Knit yer own trannie

There’s a lovely article about Richard O’Brien, creator of the Rocky Horror Show, over at http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article6799279.ece.
Anyone of about my age who had to spend part of their life in a right wing backwater has fond memories of this show, and will have taken O’Brien’s advice to “Don’t dream it, be it”.
While the US and the rest of Europe were happily dressing up, joining in and throwing toast at the cinema screen, even in the late 1980’s things were different when the film eventually got to Moaners Isle. No wonder me and a few other dissidents were slung out of the Palace Cinema for using our loaves!
For a start, homosexuality was totally illegal and redneck attitudes so ingrained that not even a kid in punk gear walked alone into an island pub. To compound the stupidity, Anderton’s protégé was running the Manx police and bringing ‘pretty policing’ entrapment tactics to the island (leading to a spate of suicides which handily avoided the police ever having to defend such tactics in court).
How much things have changed. For instance, the WI are the very pulse of middle class decency, so when you read of them knitting a 6ft Frank N. Furter for the local carnival (no, really, see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/west-news/WI-knit-6ft-transvestite.5526438.jp if you don't believe me), you know it’s all over……
Except amongst a few politicians who are convinced that, just because one or two godbothering flat-earthers can’t cope with humanity in all its varieties, we should be the last place in Europe to allow civil partnership ceremonies.
So, we are now officially the Third World, but the funny thing is, these days if I see a bloke with shaved legs walking round here in a basque and fishnets I just yawn, instead of fearing for his safety.
Honestly, what is it with these chartered accountants? Can’t they just loosen up a little?

IDAHO - a Manx perspective

Today is IDAHO (International Day Against Homophobia), a chance to annually take stock of local or international battles to rid our communities of a blight on humanity. On the Isle of Man few community leaders are openly homophobic any more, but compared to the UK we’re still rednecks.
Take Liverpool or Belfast for a comparison. In both cities the council openly supports gay pride and IDAHO events. In the Isle of Man the nearest we got to a gay pride event was in about 2005, when the local gay group (now pretty much defunct) held a coffee morning with local employers and government officials at which they tried to lay out the current situation.
In schools the situation is similar. We should take heart that during the public debate about equalisation of the age of consent one of the strongest reprimands to the dimwit lay preacher posing as an Education Minister at the time came from sixth formers at a local school. On the other hand, it was the only secondary school on the island where an evangelical Christian isn’t at least second or third in charge. The situation is now so bad that when the island’s only C of E primary school advertised (strictly speaking illegally, incidentally, in Manx law) for a ‘committed Christian’ head teacher they had to settle for a sheep from one of the island’s two most extreme evangelical flocks instead.
So, determined on this day to find someone Manx doing something positive on the issue, let me direct you to a letter written by a veteran gay activist who at least grew up over here to the UK’s Secretary for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls.
George Broadhead’s family kept a large and classy boarding house in Douglas in the ‘bucket and spade brigade’ era. He moved away to university and, as many bright folk do, did not return. But he did go on to help found GALHA and be involved in many of the classic gay rights struggles late last century. While officially ‘retired’ as secretary of GALHA (a post he held from the start) he is still very active.
George was also, I think, the first Manxman to openly declare himself gay in a Manx newspaper. That was during a quite nasty era leading up to partial decriminalisation in 1991. It was so bitter, and the resentment so long lasting, that even I’m still blacklisted from involvement or employment by some major public sector and voluntary groups. My ‘crime’ was just to say then in local print that decriminalisation would indicate Manx civilisation was not an oxymoron.
On behalf of the Pink Triangle Trust, George recently wrote to protest about further exemptions to faith schools which will let them get away with preaching superstitious poison about sexuality.
The full text of that letter reads:

‘As a gay educational charity, we were shocked to learn that the new government plans to compel all schools to teach sex education will allow faith schools to educate pupils in line with their religious beliefs.
It seems that a get-out clause for faith schools will permit them to present sex education “in line with the context, values and ethos” of the schools and clearly this will permit them to tell pupils (in line with the teachings in their holy books) that lesbian and gay sexual relationships are morally wrong.
Homophobic bullying plagues the majority of our schools and shocking levels of bullying are meted out to school pupils and teachers who either are gay or perceived to be gay. That is the conclusion of a wide-ranging study carried by the gay equality organisation Stonewall. The study found that nearly two thirds of lesbian and gay pupils reported instances of homophobic harassment and significantly this figure jumps to 75% for those attending faith schools.
When this survey was issued, you yourself pledged to stamp out all forms of bullying in schools.
It is surely unacceptable that a large proportion of our schools should be allowed to tell their pupils that same-sex relationships are wrong with the inevitable consequence that anti-gay bullying will increase.’

As of the publication a few days ago of the latest issue of G&LH, there had been no reply from Ed Balls or his office.
For more on the letter, go to http://www.gayandlesbianhumanist.org/May%202009/Balls%20Up!.htm.
But why stop there?
The entire issue is, again, a rich mix of well argued opinion, vital information and humour. So just read it all at www.gayandlesbianhumanist.org .

What tradition?

I have been interested, though hardly suprised, at the results of Peter Tatchell's efforts to reveal UK Catholicism's rewriting of history with Westminster help.
Catholicism has two problems. It needs a new UK saint to keep the punters interested, but the best recent candidate seems to have been gay.
In brief, the favoured candidate is Cardinal Newman, who not only quite openly had a 30 year intimate friendship with a Father Ambrose St. John, but at his own request was buried with him a century ago.
After several enquiries under the Freedom of Information Act, Tatchell seems to have established that recent Catholic attempts to have Newman reburied in a more 'fitting' manner had a fair bit of behind-the-scenes help from the Ministry of Justice. This even seems to have included a 'media plan' to enable a whitewash should the facts ever come out.
For a good up to date summary of the story look at today's Pink Triangle Trust blog (http://ptt-blog.blogspot.com/).
Now of course, on the Isle of Man church/state lovey-doveyness notoriously helps to perpetuate common prejudice.
We still have no Civil Partnership Act, despite 'public consultation' prior to a promised drawing up of a bill which was timetabled last year.
Faith-based schools and 'community facilities' are openly homophobic - even when getting public money to deal with issues motivated primarily by faith-based homophobia, such as teenage homelessness.
Unlike the UK, nothing in our legislation requires either charities or businesses to avoid discrimination, and to offer services fairly and (in the case of charities/voluntary sector bodies) to all who need them.
There's only been one 'unofficial' civil partnership ceremony here that I know of - between two women, held in a country hotel lounge and conducted by an off-island clergyman.
It was interesting that they were both Methodists, and that their church friends and relatives were 'advised' to stay away but didn't, despite attending one of the most hardline village churches on the island.
That the event involved quite down to earth country folk, who effectively told their lay preacher and other village worthies to sod off, is quite encouraging.
But has Manx church and community always been as unforgiving towards gays as we think?
There is some evidence that in simpler times they just didn't worry.
A few years ago I had to do a local history project for a Manx magazine which involved (amongst many other things) pottering around village graveyards. I was astonished to find several 18th and 19th century graves where 'lifelong companions' of the same gender were buried together. They weren't hidden away at the edge of graveyards with shipwrecked foreigners, criminals and other 'outsiders'. Presumably clergy and churchwardens were fully involved in the burial arrangements. They just seem to have worried less about what folk got up to with the human plumbing system.
Such a shame 'educated', office-working, financially secure 21st century Christians and church leaders aren't as wise as their illiterate, farmworking forefathers, who respected loving friendships for what they were and generally just minded their own business.