The Government's Lobbying Bill, (Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill.) is causing concern in the charitable and not-for-profic sector, because there are draconian measures in Part II which will effectively gag everyone except political parties for a whole year before any and every election - European, County, District, Parish, National - every single one.
My sister's response to Chloe Smith, the minister responsible for the bill, is the most eloquent I have come across. Please read on:
"This is what I have written. Please please do not copy my words, as Chloe Smith needs to hear from us individually, but please do have a look if it will help. Best to all.
"Please could you reconsider how this bill is worded? I understand the need to regulate how people put pressure on the government, but the likes of 38 degrees, SumofUs and AVAAZ are not the same as trades unions nor minority parties.
These on-line organisations really have given us a voice at last. These organisations help me to feel that I can make the government of the day (whichever one is currently 'in power') listen to the ordinary voices of ordinary people. We work hard, we love our country, but some of the decisions taken by some politicians make me wonder if they are living in the same time zone (and financial zone) as me. Clearly some are not.
It is SO important that these organisations are free to comment on what is happening, and give us our voices. If thousands of us sign a petition, it truly is because that MEANS something to us, we FEEL worried/ aggrieved/ disenfranchised.
If I DON'T feel strongly about a petition, I DON'T sign it. Believe me: the petitions I sign I feel strongly about.
Organisations like this CANNOT exist without our little contributions. I send £5 a month to 38 degrees and $4 dollars odd to AVAAZ because I WANT to be able to have my voice heard, I don't belong to a political party. I don't belong to a trades union. I DO wish to live in a democratic state.
I urge you please not to cancel my voice."
If you also want your voice heard, use this link to write to Chloe Smith:
38 degrees speakout to Chloe Smith
Read NCVO’s statement here: http://blogs.ncvo.org.uk/2013/08/18/transparency-of-lobbying-bill-unintended-consequences-or-trojan-horse/
And HOPE not hate’s here: http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/article/2976/the-government-is-trying-to-gag-hope-not-hate
Saturday, 24 August 2013
Wednesday, 2 January 2013
Bishop of Exeter on "Gay Marriage"
Bishop of Exeter: 'Gay marriage is not a faith
issue – it is a challenge to our society'
Saturday, December 29, 2012
The Bishop of Exeter the Rt Rev
Michael Langrish debates redefining marriage.
Humpty Dumpty sat on his wall
talking to Alice: "There's glory for you," he said. "I don't
know what you mean by glory," Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled
contemptuously. "Of course you don't till I tell you. I meant there's a
nice knock down argument for you." "But glory doesn't mean a nice
knock down argument," Alice objected. "When I use a word it means
just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."
That is precisely how it appears
to be with the Government's use of the word 'marriage'. A shared common
meaning, with its roots deep in all cultures and faiths, is to be thrown aside
and the term re-fashioned to mean what they wish it to mean, though reading the
Government's response to the Consultation and the Secretary of State's
Statement to the House of Commons, so many questions are left unanswered that I
am not sure that the Government knows what it wants to mean!
Maria Miller has spoken of how
marriage has evolved through human history; and it is true that it has, but one
thing and one thing only has remained constant and that is that it relates to
the union of a man and a woman. There have been many other restrictions on such
unions which have varied from time to time and place to place with different
laws relating to age of consent, number of permitted spouses, termination and
what is allowed or prohibited or allowed between members of the same family
group. What has stayed constant is an understanding that marriage is between
male and female, based on the complementarity of the two sexes.
Those who advocate 'same sex' or
'equal' marriage have sought to define opposition to this development as a
'faith' issue. That is simply untrue. It is a societal issue, as it redefines
marriage and that will have consequences for us all. For example, common to the
definition of marriage up until now accepted by both Church and State, has been
an understanding that the making of a marriage is not completed in the marriage
ceremony – wherever that may take place. It must be 'consummated' in the sexual
union of male and female, an act which also brings with it the potential for
the creation of new life. Failure to consummate has been one of the grounds on
which a marriage may be declared as invalid and annulled. What does
consummation mean in the case of two people of the same gender? The Government
has said that this is a matter that will be left to the courts. But then either
there must be two separate definitions of marriage, which ministers say there
cannot be, or else these judicial decisions will shape how any marriage
including those already in existence, will be said to be a true marriage.
In spite of this huge difficulty,
until this point I thought I could see where the Government was coming from.
Why was it that civil partnerships were insufficient for those of the same
gender who wished to make a public commitment to a permanent sharing of their
lives? As we know, the law already provides for those in civil partnerships to
share in the same legal benefits of marriage, and if there are remaining
differences, it is easy to tidy up the law. However it seems that something
more is being sought here because a civil partnership is simply an act of
registration. Marriage however, in law, is seen as a 'performative act'
bringing something new into being, something that until the exchange of vows
and consummation did not exist. A desire for such a performative, celebratory
act are aspirations I can understand and there are ways in which the law could
be changed without depriving the concept of marriage of its single, central
meaning.
But then Maria Miller suggested
that an existing civil partnership could be transformed into a 'marriage'
simply by signing a register. And if one marriage is simply a matter of civil
registration with no vows, no performative acts and no criteria for
consummation, then for every other marriage it must be the same; and each of us
who is married will have seen that to which we have committed ourselves – some
of us over many decades – irrevocably changed.
The Government has been keen to
portray any difficulties with what they are proposing as an issue of faith, but
it is a matter that touches one of the key building blocks of our society and
therefore affects us all. It is not just a matter of special provisions for
churches and other faith communities. Exemptions from conducting 'gay
marriages' are being offered to churches, but nothing is being said about the
education that is to be offered through Church schools. In Devon 30% of Primary
School pupils attend Church Schools, and our presence in the Secondary sector
is growing. Are Church schools to be allowed to teach a traditional
understanding of marriage while in non-church schools a different understanding
is to be taught? Or will Church Schools be forced by law to conform to a new
understanding which has no roots in the doctrines of any of the major faith
communities? If so this sets an extraordinary precedent for the State's power
to determine articles of faith, unparalleled in history apart from in those
repressive ideological states of the extreme right and left. At this point we
will have left the realm of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland for the land of George
Orwell's 1984.
Whatever the humane desires and
good intentions that may have led Mr Cameron to embark on this project, there
are so many unanswered questions and unforeseen consequences that ought to
suggest caution before serious damage is done to the very thing that has been
so precious a part of our social fabric – the lifelong union of one man to one
woman to the exclusion of all others for the creation and nurture of the
generations to come. It is possible that what is created may not even end up
fulfilling the hopes of those couples it was intended to serve.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
An Irish Girl in England
 |
| The Yorkshire Lady and her small poodle |
Life was quiet, which was good up to a point. After that point, one is pleased to have visitors. I liked it when the Yorkshire Lady came. She had a small black poodle, who made me feel very big and confident. He liked to sit on her lap, and if I went up to her, he would growl.
If I could have laughed, I would have. This grumpy old man had no idea how small he was. I used to give him a lick on the nose, which only made him grumble some more. Then I would leave him alone, and lie on my bed, or sit next to the English Lady to be stroked and petted.
I was safe. I should have been perfectly happy. Safety was what I had always longed for. But still I was beginning to yearn for something. I couldn't see or smell
 |
| The Irish girl |
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Hate Crime
It’s a normal day in the
office,
mostly boring with nothing great
planned
When the phone rings, not
routine any more,
nor boring, nor quiet, nor bland.
But a man disabled and
living with pain,
whom the locals have started
attacking-
Name calling at first, then
throwing things,
coming closer when punishment’s
lacking.
There’s no choice to be
made,
it’s just not hard to know
That it’s wrong, and a
crime,
and I tell the man so.
I call the Police, go as
high as I can,
And find a policeman,
who’ll visit that man.
And I long to know
that the cowards were caught,
And taken to court
and a sharp lesson taught,
Though I don’t really think
that it’s so.
It’s a normal day in the
parish,
assembled on Sunday to pray
And the man who’s leading
the prayers
is ever so clearly gay.
We think we know his value
–
musician we love to have play
But we didn’t know how much
we’d hurt him
til we heard what his prayers had
to say.
“We pray for those socially
unacceptable people
who long to be who they are.”
Unpartnered now maybe for
ever,
he will celibate go to his grave
Because we couldn’t allow
him
the love that it’s human to
crave.
I wonder if Jesus will
bless us,
as Bibles held firmly in hand
We march in our holy
procession
towards his promised land
Or whether he’ll say that
Aquinas
was simply a man of his time,
And explain that he’s told
Paul of Tarsus
what the God of love thinks of
his crime.
How do you know you’re right about homosexual expressions of love?
Deciding other people that they are not only wrong in their thinking but sinful in their behaviour can be a form of oppression if you hold all the power in a decision that affects their lives. Reaching that position requires great care.
Biblicism
The simplest Biblicist approach sees the
Bible as infallible because it contains the very words of God. Biblicists tend
to assume that the Bible not only contains but is intended by God as a set of
rules that will provide an answer for every situation in human life. (Messer, 2006) For them Romans 1:14 -31 is a clear
condemnation of all homosexual acts and relationships. (Alison, 2004)
Even among those who would be happy to see
the Bible used as a kind of moral compass, some would feel uncomfortable with
this. Fee and Stuart (2003), for example, offer two rules and a number of
problems to show why we cannot always simply lift a sentence or even a
paragraph from Paul’s epistles, and apply it as if it were written specifically
to us yesterday.
Alison (2004) adds a further caution from
the Roman Catholic perspective, which is from the teaching of the Pontifical
Biblical Commission, 1993 :
‘Clearly to be rejected also is every attempt at
actualization set in a direction contrary to evangelical justice and charity,
such as, for example, the use of the Bible to justify racial segregation,
anti-Semitism or sexism whether on the part of men or of women.’
Larson (2009) cites Hays as offering “five
good ways to read the Bible:
1. As a story that it is primarily
about God;
2. As a coherent narrative from Genesis
to Revelation, requiring each portion of it to be read in light of the whole;
3. With awareness that specific texts
can have multiple meanings;
4. In collaboration with others in
contemporary Christian communities; and
5. A willingness to be surprised,
challenged, and transformed.”
Hays’
position is here approaching that of virtue ethics, as we shall see. In
recommending that we read collaboratively, he deprives us of what seems like an
advantage – instant access to God’s word, and so an apparently ready answer,
but also guards us against the error of misguided readings.
Alison’s own reading of Romans 1 is that it
is a diagnosis of the human condition, with its punch line in Romans 2:1:
‘Therefore you have no excuse, O man, whoever you are,
when you judge another; for in passing judgment upon him you condemn yourself,
because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.’
On this basis, he argues that Romans 1 is
not primarily about homosexuality at all.
Hays reaches a different conclusion, based
both on New Testament scholarship and on conversations with a homosexual
friend:
‘Both of us had
serious misgivings about the mounting pressure for the church to recognize
homosexuality as a legitimate Christian lifestyle. As a New Testament scholar,
I was concerned about certain questionable exegetical and theological
strategies of the gay apologists. As a homosexual Christian, Gary believed that
their writings did justice neither to the biblical texts nor to his own
sobering experience of the gay community that he had moved in and out of for 20
years.’ (Hays, 1996, p.380)
Hays recognises, however, a distinction between exegesis – which leads
him to say that Scripture is entirely univocal in condemning homosexual acts
- and hermeneutics, the application of
Scripture to our present-day situation. Hermeneutics will necessarily take
account of experience. He is aware of
“Individuals who live in stable, loving homosexual relationships and claim to
experience the grace – rather than the wrath - of God therein.” (Hays, 1996, p.398) However,
“claims about divinely inspired
experience that contradicts the witness of Scripture should be admitted to
normative status only after sustained and agonising scrutiny by a consensus of
the faithful.” (Hays, 1996, p.399 – author’s emphasis) We shall see that
virtue ethicists seem to share this conclusion.
Clements (2005) appears to offer a clear way forward for Biblicist
deontologists when he suggests that we need to distinguish between
considerations that are primary, and worth standing firm about, and those that
are of secondary importance, where we need simply to remember Paul’s advice
about being considerate of the scruples of our “weaker brethren”. The three
traditional rules he supports are:
In things essential - unity.
In things inessential - liberty.
In all things - charity.
Not all, however, would accept his paradigm, which is Paul’s view on
permissible diet, (an inessential in Paul’s view) as applying to the issue of
homosexuality. Alternatives might be the
woman taken in adultery (“Go now and leave your life of sin.” John 8 11) or tax
collectors and sinners (“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”
Mark 2:17) which would suggest a need for repentance and/or healing.
Virtue ethics
The starting point for virtue ethics is not with any authority, nor with
any question about what actions are right or wrong, but rather with the
question of what kind of person I should be. (Messer, 2006) Aquinas, for
example, recognised the “cardinal” virtues of prudence, courage, justice and
temperance, and the “theological virtues” of faith, hope and love. (Messer,
2006) Today’s proponents of virtue ethics are inspired to this approach by
MacIntyre’s brilliantly argued thesis that his predecessors had been doomed to
failure from the Enlightenment onwards.
This was because the Enlightenment philosophers sought to free
themselves from what they saw as the dead hand of authority based on tradition
and religion, and tried to base their ethical arguments on reason alone. MacIntyre’s analysis of the tradition they
had abandoned was that it formed an interlocking, self-consistent and rational
system of thought with three main propositions:
·
human nature is not as it was meant to be
·
human beings need to attain to that state of being for which
they were intended
·
the purpose of ethical reasoning is to enable human beings
to move towards the state which is their true end.
The “true end” was defined by culture and, in
Christendom, by the Church. It was
exemplified in stories which illustrated what good character was. Thus Hauerwas
stresses the importance of Biblical stories as part of the cultural context in
which ethical thought can make sense, and denies that ethical reasoning can
make sense if divorced from its proper context. He argues that if we seek to
reach agreement internationally or cross-culturally, we need to be explicit
about where our ethical values are coming from, rather than assuming that any
culturally neutral ethic based solely on reason is possible.
The “Enlightenment project” failed, according to
MacIntyre, because the logically necessary third strand of the classical
ethical argumentation, the idea of a proper telos
or end purpose for human beings, was rejected. This left philosophers with what purported to
be reasoned argument, but in fact was or became simply “emotivism”, as they vainly
sought to support by reason alone those conclusions, inherited from the older
tradition, that they still believed to be true.
Virtue ethicists suggest that we can best cultivate a
virtuous character in the context of a community. For Hauerwas, that community
is the worshipping church (Hauerwas and Wells, 2006). In “The Peaceable
Kingdom” (2003) he has written about the church as “A Community of Virtues”,
particularly stressing peace, patience and hope:
‘ The church must learn time and time
again, that its task is not to make
the world the kingdom, but to be faithful to the kingdom by showing to the
world what it means to be a community of peace. Thus we are required to be
patient and never lose hope (…) in God and God’s faithful caring for the world.
(Hauerwas, 2003, pp103-104)
It is therefore not surprising that he would seek to locate any
discussion about homosexuality within a community’s self-understanding. Olasky
(2007) reports him responding to an interview question about homosexuality by
saying:
I do not think that
the issue of homosexuality can be determined by any one verse of Scripture.
Rather it has to do with how a community understands the significance of having
children. Christians believe that marriage is the normative practice necessary
for being able to welcome children into the world. That's where you have to
begin to think about homosexuality.
This seems to refer to a debate within his own church, as illustrated by
“Duke” magazine’s January-February issue of 2002. In a transcribed and edited conversation,
Hauerwas begins:
The
problem with debates about homosexuality is they have been devoid of any
linguistic discipline that might give you some indication what is at stake.
Methodism, for example, is more concerned with being inclusive than being the church. (…). Even worse, the inclusive church
is captured by romantic notions of marriage. Combine inclusivity and
romanticism and you have no reason to deny marriage between gay people.
The ambivalence of this response continues to its end:
For gay
Christians who I know and love, I wish we as Christians could come up with some
way to help them, like we need to help one another, to avoid the sexual
wilderness in which we live. That’s a worthy task. I probably sound like a
conservative on these matters, not because I’ve got some deep animosity toward
gay people, but because I don’t know how to go forward given the current
marriage practices of our culture.
This is consistent with his position that ethical
reasoning - or even better, ethical
behaviour – needs to take place within the church community. If the church community’s practice and
thinking about sexual relationships are disordered – and Hauerwas seems to say
that they are – then its ethical reasoning cannot hope to be anything but
confused and confusing.
Hursthouse (1995), addresses the criticism that virtue
ethics may never be able to give us an answer to our ethical queries. Her
argument is that we may indeed sometimes face “tragic” problems (where only
undesirable choices are available), but that if we have developed a good
character by our practice of virtue ethics, we shall behave with more grace and
integrity than someone who has not done so.
Others, however, have
sought to show how an issue can be resolved. Johnson (2007) in America and Jones (2010) in England
Bibliography
Alison, J. (2004) A Catholic Reading
accessed 17.3.10
Alli, W. (7.3.2010) A victory for religious freedom
accessed 18.3.10
Cavanaugh, W.T. (2002) Faith Fires Back – A Conversation with
Stanley Hauerwas, in Duke Magazine, Vol.
88, No. 2 Jan-Feb 2002, published at:
accessed 1.4.10
Clements, R., (2005) Weaker
brothers, damnable heretics - and how to tell the difference
from:
accessed 17.3.10
Coward, C. (6.3.2010) James
Jones, Bishop of Liverpool calls for Anglicans to “accept a diversity of
ethical convictions about human sexuality”
from: http://changingattitude-england.blogspot.com/2010/03/james-jones-bishop-of-liverpool-calls.html
accessed
1.4.10
Fee, G.D. and
Stuart, D. (3rd edn. 2003) How to Read the Bible for All its Worth, Grand Rapids , Michigan
Hauerwas, S. (2nd
edn.2003) The Peaceable Kingdom, London
Hauerwas, S. and Wells,
S. (2006)
Christian Ethics as Informed Prayer, in
Hauerwas, S. and Wells,S. (eds.) (2nd edn. 2006) The Blackwell
Companion
to Christian Ethics, Oxford
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
The Friendly Enemey
My new Lady was OK. I’d got fond of her quite quickly. That was all down to the walks, of
course. In the first days when I lived
with her, there would be breakfast, and then walk. Then came my midday dental chew and walk.
Later there was my evening meal, followed by a walk.
As time went on, other things were introduced. Sometimes I
had to be a Good Girl through meetings. Once I even found myself in a place
called a vestry! When I got bored with that, I trotted out onto the nice red
carpet, where I lay down in comfort, and watched the Lady and the other people
standing up, sitting down, and singing.
They were all very obedient. I
thought they did well.
So life was pretty relaxed for me, until Lily came. Can you imagine? Another bitch, younger than
me, smaller than me, and on my territory! I was very angry, and let her know
it. My Lady and Lily’s Lady made us walk
up and down together, They insisted we sniff each other. Not my idea of fun, I
assure you! Then they expected me to allow Lily to sit in my kitchen!
Of course, there was no way I could tolerate that. I attacked as soon as Lily sat down. As I was
on my lead, we were soon pulled apart, to the sound of some very cross words
from my Lady. Finally, the two Ladies
made a line of chairs to divide the kitchen into two, with Lily on one side,
and me on the other. It looked like
this:
Chair
Lady Me
Lily Chair
Lady Table
I lay on my tartan bed and sulked. Lily curled up in her round brown bed, and
lay still. Slowly, her scent permeated
the kitchen. To my amazement there was no fear in it, no aggression. That was
one relaxed, calm little bitch!
We were fed on either side of the chair-line that evening.
Then Lily disappeared to go upstairs with her Lady. I relaxed, and I too slept.
Maybe, just maybe, I could make friends with this peaceable, curly-haired
little schnauzer. Maybe we could hunt together. I could show her the best
smelling-places. We could form a pack.
I dreamt of a hunt and a teamwork kill; crunching bones
between my teeth, play fights and chasing games.
JCG Blandford, 23rd January, 2012
Monday, 23 January 2012
Moonlight Mystery
It wasn’t unusual, that summer,
for the collie and I to walk in the dusk, or even the dark. We would stroll out
onto the downland with the bright banners of sunset fading on our left, and the
last rooks settling into the trees that lined the trailway below us.
That evening, we trod quietly,
because we were hoping a patrolling owl would thrill us with a hunting pass. He
didn’t appear, so at last I set the collie free to run and race and bounce and
dance. How she loved that! Her piebald face would turn to me at the end of a
racing circuit of the grass, and seem to laugh for very joy.
That was when I spotted the
German shepherd trotting northwards, and then turning east towards us. Suddenly anxious, I bent to my panting dog,
to re-attach the lead to her collar. “We’ll meet this big dog together,” I
assured her, and she licked my hand in understanding.
I looked up, to locate the German
shepherd. But he had utterly
disappeared. We looked for him that
night, and for many nights to come, but never saw him again. Yet in my mind, I can see him now, loping
towards us, silvered by moonlight, beautiful.
JCG
Blandford, 22d January, 2012
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