Two views on breastfeeding

Don't anyone say that LBC don't give airtime to diverse opinions. The fact that both Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage take part in a phone in on that channel each week allows those views an airing.

One subject that they both were questioned on this week was the case of Claridges asking a woman to cover up with a napkin while breastfeeding.

First up this week was the Liberal Democrat leader who said:

"We should create an environment where mums feel it is OK to breastfeed and we shouldn't somehow sweep it under the carpet. I think any mum listening who has breastfed in public would be spluttering with indignation at the implication that it is somehow an in-your-face thing to do in public. Mums all the time breastfeed in a discreet way in public that is not in any way offensive to other people whether it is two old men in their 80s or two young men who are 18."

Quite right too.

Therefore it was rather shocking to hear UKIP's leader today say:

"I'm not particularly bothered about it, I know a lot of people do feel very uncomfortable. This is just a matter of common sense, isn't it? I think that given than some people are very embarrassed by it, it isn't too difficult to breastfeed a baby in a way that's not openly ostentatious."

When asked if Claridge's were wrong he then said:

"Frankly, that's up to Claridge's. I think it should be. I very much take the view if you are running an establishment you should have rules, and be able to apply them."

For clarification he was asked just like some establishments ask you to wear a tie if you want to breastfeed you should go the ladies room or whatever. Farage then said:

"Or perhaps sit in the corner. It's not a matter I get particularly hung up about but I know particularly people of the older generation feel awkward and embarrassed by it."

Now personally I don't think breastfeeding is a showy display, designed to impress therefore I'm rather confused by how Nigel Farage thinks this is ostentatious unless he is envious of women's ability to produce milk. But surely the effect of getting up and leaving the party you are dining with to go and sit in the corner of what is still a public space to breastfeed is actually more ostentatious than doing it calmly with the child where you are sitting. After all parents will comfort a child at their seat (at least initially) should it start crying. Only if they feel it is becoming too raucous for other customers might they consider getting up to take the child outside until it calms down. Therefore to pick a child up and walk somewhere else in the restaurant is actually drawing more attention to the act that simply doing it where you sit.

All I want for Christmas is....

 This is Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. He is a man who it would seem has set himself up for a pretty busy advent season this year.

Why?

Well in his sermon on Sunday he said it was possible to cure the world of AIDS by Christmas. Here we were over 30 years after the outbreak of this disease and he apparently has the solution within 4 weeks. No wonder he is going to be busy.

He is going to have to produce his solution and distribute it to the 35 million people world wide living with HIV/AIDS world wide in a little over 25 days. Not to mention the 5,753 new cases who will be diagnosed every day during his quest.

But is he going to be handing out a vaccine and cure to those 35 million people of whom 3.2 million are aged less than 15? No.

His solution instead is to go out there and stone all the gay and bisexual men out there. Even my his own reckoning of 1.6% of the USA population being gay and 0.7% bi that is approximately 7,344,107 US citizens he would have to kill to eradicate the 2.3 million cases of HIV/AIDS in North America, Western and Central Europe. That is before he deals with the situation in Europe. And that is but the tip of the iceberg.

But in Sub-Saharan Africa with 24.7 millions cases and most of those countries cracking down on homosexuality hard finding 24.7 million gay and bisexual men is bound to be hard. Here of course the spread of HIV is largely through heterosexual intercourse, hence the large number of women infected and the large number who pass it on to their children as a result.

So merely getting rid of all the gay and bisexual men in the world would not be enough. He's also have to stone all the people who have had more than one sexual partner in their life just to be certain.

But the biggest task before he sets out to possibly kills probably over 50% of the world's population to be absolutely certain is one even taller order. However, it is one that I'm sure a Pastor whose church claims to be faithful the word would want to do. It is to obey the practical example of Jesus. When they brought an adulterous woman to Jesus wanting to stone her to death he responded to them "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

So I'll make a deal with Pastor Anderson. If he can find someone without sin to cast that first stone I will meet up with him. I'd like the local police to be present and a few television crews to witness his start of cleansing the world of AIDS. To see the effect that finding this righteous man stoning a gay man who is not living with HIV or AIDS will have on the 35 million who would still be living with HIV/AIDS.

BREAKING - Former Liberal Party Leader Jeremy Thorpe died this morning

Jeremy Thorpe the leader of the Liberal Party from 1967-1976 passed away this morning according to the Breaking News header on the BBC website.

John Jeremy Thorpe was born  in 1929 the son of  John Henry Thorpe who had been Conservative MP for Manchester Rusholme and Ursula Norton-Griffiths, whose father Sir John Norton-Giffiths was the Conservative MP for Wednesbury until the end of WWI and then Wandsworth Central. However, while he was reading law at Trinity College, Oxford he broke with family tradition and became President of the Liberal Club.

He first stood for Parliament in 1952 for North Devon but failed to unseat the Conservative MP Christopher Peto. he stood again in the 1955 General Election when Peto stood down and halved the majority Peto's successor James Lindsey held. It was in 1959 that Jeremy finally won the seat with a whooping majority of 362. It was a seat he would win 5 more times before losing it in 1979 back to the Conservatives and Tony Speller, his biggest majority being the 11, 072 of the February 1974 election when he was leader of the Liberals.

But considering he was due to have faced trial for conspiracy to murder Norman Scott the week before the 1979 election, although he got a 2 week delay until after the poll, the chances of success must have been slim. Scott had claimed that he and Thorpe had had a homosexual affair from 1961- 63 when such acts were still illegal under UK law. An investigation into this was held by the party in 1971 which exonerated Thorpe. However, when he was being vetted as the possible best man for Anthony Armstrong-Jones wedding to Princess Margaret he was turned down due to homosexual tendencies. The accusations from Scott carried on even after his second marriage in 1973 to Marion, Countess of Harewood, whose first husband was a cousin of the Queen.

In October 1975 Scott's dog was shot by Andrew Newton while the two and the dog were out on the moors before turning to Scott and saying "It's your turn now". The heat was on Thorpe because of a history of allegations and threats with relation to Scott which culminated on his resignation as leader 10 May 1976. He was replaced by Jo Grimond whom he succeeded as caretaker before the election of David Steel as the new leader. On the 22 June 1979 six weeks after Margaret Thatcher had won the General Election that saw Thorpe not returned by the people of North Devon the jury ruled he and his co-accused not guilty of conspiracy.

The then Liberal leader David Steel commented on the verdict hoped Thorpe "after a suitable period of rest and recuperation ... find many avenues where his great talents may be used". Although acquitted the party felt he had not behaved well during the whole affair and refused to allow him to return to party politics. In 1982 he was appointed to Amnesty International as director of their British Section, but soon after he started to show signs of Parkinson's Disease that led to his eventual dropping out of public life in the mid 1980s.

After the merger of the Liberals and Social Democratic Party in 1988 he was made an Honourary President of the newly formed North Devon Liberal Democrat Association. In 1997 his appearance at the Liberal democrat conference led to a standing ovation and in 1999 he finally opened up about the trail in his political memoir In My Own Time.

Ursula his wife and companion for the last 40 years passed away in March this year. His son Rupert from his first marriage to Caroline Allpass, who died in a car crash in 1970, and his step-sons David Lascelles, 8th Earl of Harewood, James and Jeremy all survive him.


John Jeremy Thorpe Politician, former Liberal Party leader  29 April 1929 - 4 December 2014

Are we the new Victorians*?

Are current politicians turning into the new Victorians? I ask as in recent days there has been an increasing case of prudishness in a number of things that have been done.

Of course firstly the UK has decided to bring in line what is allowed in online pay on demand pronography with what is produced in DVD in this country. The new law bans scenes of caning, aggressive whipping, penetration with an object "associated with violence", physical or verbal abuse (regardless if it is consensual), urolagnia (ingesting during "water sports"), female ejaculation, strangulation and face sitting. This list seems more an arbitrary list of things the panel dislike rather than based on any reasoning as to dangers etc.

Over in Northern Ireland this week we have the latest stage of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill, which somehow is actually the introduction of the Nordic model on all sex workers including those that aren't trafficked or exploited. One of the amendments on Monday even raised the question, which the DUP refrained from answering were they now looking to ban lap dancing, strippergrams or kissograms with the clause of B touching themselves for the sexual gratification of A, whilst B is in physical proximity to A.

Of course with also all the moves as well to bring in a minimum price for a unit of alcohol it seems that those in power are trying to restrict people's morality to suit their perceptions.

So are our politicians becoming modern day Victorians with their attacks on the modern day equivalents of whore houses and gin joints? Are we entering the early stage of prohibition on a number of activities that the free market always seems to have provided through time immemorial.

Somehow, somewhere people will still access the sex workers that they want to, although by pushing it underground you are making it less likely that victims will come forward for support when they need to. People will still find ways to consume cheap alcohol, though if they are forced to set up illicit stills will what they produce be safe. As for porn, well as Avenue Q famously tell us, "The Internet is for...PORN!" somewhere out there in the unmanageable back streets of the interwebs there will still be British productions of all the porn that has just been made illegal. How you find it? How you determine it was made in a room in the UK (when all rooms can look alike)? How you can persecute the content creator who may well use a foreign domain? These are the questions that politicians have not and will not answer through their prudishness.

* Apologies to the all the debauched, drunkard and promiscuous Victorians that lived. Some of your generation gave your entire era a bad name as goody two shoeses. Though if you are viewing this in the UK terms and conditions now apply so maybe the Internet isn't quite so great...

Have DUP criminalised lap dancing?

Today there was Further Consideration Stage on the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill but there were some very loosely worded amendments from Lord Morrow to his own Bill.

I beg to move amendment No 5:

In page 9, line 13, at end insert

(1A) In the heading to Part 5, after "PROSTITUTION" insert "AND PAYING FOR SEXUAL SERVICES OF A PERSON".". The following amendments stood on the Marshalled List:

No 6: In page 9, line 23, at end insert

"and A knows or believes that the payment is made or promised by a third party."

No 7: In page 9, line 26, leave out "level 3 on the standard scale" and insert "the statutory maximum".

 No 8: In page 9, line 29, leave out "not exceeding the statutory maximum". 

No 9: In page 9, line 33, after "services" insert "(other than sexual services)". 

No 10: In page 9, line 38, after "sexual" insert

; or(d) B touching B in a sexual manner for the sexual gratification of A, B being physically in A’s presence.".

The last of this is particularly vague. Something that Alliance MLA Stewart Dickson picked up on and asked:

If we are going to legislate as loosely as to say that person A commits an offence if they obtain sexual services from person B in exchange for payment and that this includes circumstances where person B does not touch person A but touches themselves for the sexual gratification of person A, would that not also make it an offence to, for example, watch lap dancers or strippers or purchase a strippergram or kissogram for a party? While many would regard such activities as morally questionable, I doubt that many think that they would be illegal. However, it appears that this amendment would make their purchase illegal. 

We could even go further: what about cases in which someone goes to see a play with sexually explicit scenes? Some people may go because they consider it art, but what about those who go to enjoy particular scenes for sexual gratification? If my reading of this amendment is correct, then when an actor or actress touches themselves in a sexual manner in the presence of an audience member who has paid to watch it for the purpose of sexual gratification, that audience member has technically committed an offence. For example, are we to have 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' banned from the stages of Northern Ireland once more? 

This highlights the type of problems which will inevitably arise when we try to use the term "sexual services" without a proper statutory definition. We simply cannot draw clear parameters of the offence. It might be useful to share an example from Canada, where the Supreme Court struck down its prostitution laws last December. A lawyer who was involved in the case said that: 

"I think it's both a key thing and an example of a bigger problem with the bill when the thing that's being regulated — it's described as sexual services, [but] the Bill doesn't contain a definition of what it is. That's a real vagueness problem." 

That Bill was not dissimilar to this one.

Instead of answering these concerns Lord Morrow simply said:

If there are some who, even after this debate, feel that they cannot support some of the amendments, that is a matter for them, but I urge them to rethink. I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that, when I was dealing with amendment No 10, I spoke to the Attorney General. If someone can direct me to a higher court or a higher authority on these matters, I am ready to listen. If so, that person can tell me, "You shouldn't have gone there with it; you should've gone somewhere else". If so, I would like to hear from you; maybe you will come to me privately afterwards. 

First, the Attorney General is very clear that amendment No 10 will address the need to cover demand for the scenario where a person is exploited to provide sexual services in the form of the sexual touching of themselves observed by the client. Secondly, he is very clear that amendment No 10 will not criminalise lap dancing and stripping, as some have tried to insinuate here today. 

Mr Dickson said that the amendment would cover that type of activity and even watching films. I suspect that, no matter what I say, Mr Dickson will be of the same opinion when he walks out through the door today, because there is none as blind as those who will not see and there is none as deaf as those who will not hear. There are some who, no matter what I say today, have their minds made up that this measure will not be effective or that it will go into other territory. As I said, I cannot go anywhere else for advice, other than the channels through which I went. Amendment No 10, and I urge the House to consider it, is crucial.

It is shocking that an Attorney General can allow such loose terminology without definition to enter into law. But then the Northern Irish Attorney General has already shown that his understanding of the law is lacking in areas. So for him not to realise that judges and lawyers prefer to have a clear definition of the law, firstly so they can determine if it has been broken, second to consider if there is a case to be answered to.

But then for there to be concerns about the wording on an accelerated passage bill, in other words one that isn't getting that much scrutiny. So yet to amend at this stage when there is only an hour of consideration for this group of amendments shows that the DUP are slipping in loosely worded definitions into law without proper scrutiny or sane advise.

The interpretation is potentially wide and far outside the remit of the Bill. It is not clear where the boundary ends. The touching merely in the presence of someone else for sexual gratification. This is wishy washing and the DUP managed to get the UUP and SDLP to back it as horrifyingly it passed 52 votes to 35.

We live in times that moralists are narrowing the definition of what is allowed and too many people in Northern Ireland would be shocked to find just how loosely they are going about it, opening up a great many seemingly innocuous activities open to the vagueness of new law and the interpretation of the court.

As Stewart Dickson said and I'll add slightly "I am not sure whether the consequences are simply not appreciated by the DUP[, UUP and SDLP] or whether it is trying to drag us back to a Victorian era in which we will all have to cover up our piano legs. 

Bigots on every side

Today is World Aids Day and although I am not personally living with HIV I have friends who are.

But my day has taken an interesting track today.

For a start the letter that I had published in this morning's Belfast Telegraph led to one of my Christian friends in Northern Ireland telling me that they felt they could no longer remain my friend on Facebook and the unfriended me. I sent them the link to my blog post which gave the full version of my original letter to show them that I did not and would not have a go at Christian's per se, but I was having a go at those with privilege extending it to others. I also asked them to tell me in each of the examples that I listed which side was most of the churches or churched on at the times that equality was extended.

I hope they realise that the church has been behind on a number of occasions from slavery to other believe systems to women and that LGBT is just the latest manifestation.

But over the weekend I also posted a sad story about parents who sent their gay son to reparative therapy. Only for him later to rebel and seek to find himself, sadly in a way that would eventually kill him. But the happy ending is that they are teaching that the dangers of reparative therapy are more than the dangers of a LGBT child falling in love with someone of the same sex and settling down.

Sadly one of my acquaintances on Facebook without reading this attacked the article as being Churches attacking LGBT people. It led to some friends messaging me in private to tell me that they felt unsafe on commenting on this post to my time line. Friends who are in the church and supportive or leaning that way in relation to accepting LGBT people within it. When people like that, who are supportive, feel unable to speak up because someone else takes ownership of a thread despite their own ignorance as to the specifics that is as dangerous as reparative therapy. The reason is that some of those supporters get turned off from helping LGBT young people in their midst and the end result is that more of them will feel more isolated until they find others like themselves, if they do, and it is not too late.

So I make no apology for listing both these people as bigots and they exist on both sides of the debate over church and LGBT. But there really shouldn't be sides of this. However,  many church people cannot see LGBT individuals and issues as things that concern them, despite Jesus saying go into all the world. At the same time many LGBT people see no point in talking civilly to people who are religious, despite many of them being supportive and the best people to make sure other religious people become supportive too.

But while there are isolated incidents such as the ones I faced today there are far more people of faith or who are LGBT who are supportive of the stance that I take on this issue, treading a careful line between the two because both are part of who I and others actually are.

But while I felt a little stigma for being me today that is as nothing to the stigma that some who live with HIV feel everyday. But while we still have ignorant comments such as those of UKIP's deputy leader Christopher Monckton the other day many will continue to do so.

We need to stamp out bigotry and the stigma than involves and that goes both ways.

The debate continues in the Belfast Telegraph

I have another letter in this morning's Belfast Telegraph because my last one garnered a response from a fellow reader. I spent almost a full day redrafting the letter to get the right balance only for part of that balance to be edited out of the published letter. I am including the cuts from the original in red especially as sadly I think some of the editing makes it look like a Christian baiting letter.

Here then in the letter:

I would like to thank Dermot O'Callaghan (Write Back, November 28) for proving my point about those with privilege here holding all the power over equality.

Sadly, we have seen those with privilege down through history continually not being prepared to open up equality to those without it - whether it was slave-owners giving all men freedom, landowners giving all men the vote, or the established Church giving rights to non-conformist churches, or to other faiths. Men giving women the vote, rights to people of race, giving Roman Catholics the same voting rights as Protestants.

Now we see people proud to be British in all aspects but LGBT equality parading their flag, but ignoring the fact that they keep some British people as second-class citizens while, once again, things move on elsewhere.

Mr O'Callaghan says that all of us in Northern Ireland have the same rights and prohibitions as to whom we may marry. If by this he means that I may marry someone of the opposite sex, I feel it would be unfair to her as, at some point in the future, she would realise that I am not attracted to her. This would leave only hurt in the wake. Surely he would not want me (or any other lesbian or gay individual) to do that to someone else?But this is what has happened all too often in the past.

My original letter did not focus solely on equal marriage, which seems to be the only hang up for Mr O'Callaghan, but also referred to the science denial over the continuation of the MSM life time blood ban and the legal appeals against that and same-sex couples adopting. Issues that are designed to help others and give something to society. We are falling behind on equality measures not only with the rest of the country we belong to but also the the rest of the island we exist on.

What has been considered equality has been extended numerous times through history, what has happened in England, Wales and Scotland is just another manifestation of that. 

Many people here want to be treated fairly because of their faith, but use that to prevent others from being treated fairly.

Jesus spent time with those religious leaders considered unclean and told the parable of the Good Samaritan. He showed what equality really is about, treating those with as much respect as your loved ones.