So we have the spectacle recently of a baker in Northern Ireland being threatened with the wrath of the Equalities Commission for daring to refuse to bake a cake supporting gay marriage for a client. This case must be as famous as King Alfred and the burnt cakes. It’s pretty obvious to anyone with an ounce of discernment that a Christian baker will not go along with gay marriage as the Good Book clearly condemns homosexual behaviour as sin, so it’s no surprise that our baker is making a stand, and all power to him, because he is simply being true to his beliefs. I am sure a lot of gay people are magnanimous enough to realise that their behaviour is not sanctioned by the Bible but they would not be spiteful enough to pick on an easy target such as Christians are seen as today. There is a general background of course to all this. The number of bizarre and far-fetched cases that seem to end up on the front pages just because of the golden triumvirate of ‘equality, anti discrimination and human rights’ has multiplied in recent years, especially since the reign of New Labour.

This is all so predictable due to David Cameron’s pushing through of ‘same sex marriage,’ a highly contentious and divisive policy. He has now uncovered a can of worms which will prove very ugly and nasty indeed. The craziness of all this is that he has created a problem and potential legal action where there was no problem before. And so the inexorable crushing of freedom goes on in western society, and the presence of an Eton/Oxford educated incumbent of number 10 has guaranteed this.

With the advent of this policy the political class have disqualified themselves from governing this nation, and all the more reason why they all need to be given a good kicking at the next elections, including the big one next year. Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin themselves would be proud of David Cameron, not because they  would have been particularly in love with homosexuality, but because pushing same sex marriage represents a battering ram to destroy Judeo Christian civilisation which they hated with a vengeance.

On the celebration of the first same sex ‘marriages’ recently a picture of two blokes kissing on the front of a Bristol newspaper to mark the city’s first same sex marriage led to a significant fall in sales, prompting an inquiry on the part of the editor as to why people had refused to buy the paper that day. Even in 2014 the universe he inhabits is a different world from the universe inhabited by many ordinary people. Hardly a surprise to me that it didn’t go down too well with some of the good people of Bristol. Plenty of people disagree with homosexual behaviour but have been bullied into silence by the politically correct high priests of the new counterfeit religion of equality and rights, who think they can just jettison the Judeo Christian moral framework sunk into these isles over centuries. However, they won’t be forced into buying newspapers whose front cover they find offensive and they’ll tell you what they think away from any whiff of liberal fascism.

This is possibly the issue that will do for the Conservative party i.e. finish them off as a major political force in the UK, and they will deserve it for this one act of cultural vandalism. But perhaps that is what is meant to happen. To bring in same sex marriage in my opinion is nothing less than deeply unwise and will bring trouble to our nation. Anyone who disagreed with this outrageous piece of legislation is accused of bashing gays in their quest for so called equality. You could not have got any worse than Nick Clegg calling those who disagreed with same sex marriage ‘bigots.’ But where were the street protests for gay marriage, where were the people chaining themselves to railings for the cause, where was the massive public campaign pushing for such a change? Absolutely nowhere, all the evidence being that this was pushed down from the top by an arrogant and ‘out of touch with their heritage’ elite. What on earth possessed David Cameron to pick up on this issue and to make it the lodestone of his modernising agenda I will never know, but one thing is sure, he has badly miscalculated and has encouraged an exodus from the Conservative party that may prove fatal. When a government tries to legislate in areas which govern fundamental relationships between people it has to be loath to get involved. No true statesman would dream of touching marriage by trying to redefine it to appease a tiny proportion of the population.

The most disturbing aspect of this whole affair has been the unholy haste in which the government pushed this measure through which also had no electoral mandate. How much pressure was there from impending legislation in the EU on this issue? There is almost something sinister about the conduct of the government. It is evident that this whole business has been internationally coordinated at a very high (or low?) level depending on which way you look at it. Same sex marriage has been brought in already in a small number of countries including Canada and South Africa, and also some states in the US. At the very same time that the measure has been pushed in the UK it has been campaigned for, and defeated, in Australia, pushed through against massive opposition in France under Monsieur Hollande, and has been enthusiastically embraced by Obama across the pond. It has even been an issue in Puerto Rico, a Roman Catholic country. The question you have to ask is, what do these people want or are trying to achieve by such a policy?

The affair demonstrates the clash we now have between the concept of ‘equality’ and a traditional understanding of what is right and wrong. Every culture needs a clear understanding of some sort of moral framework that the majority adhere to. Things are definitely moving against the traditionalists at present, as LGBT rights seem to trump religious rights or traditional norms almost every time.

Introducing same sex marriage is offensive to many people who are married who will wonder what on earth has taken possession of their Prime Minister that he can decide to redefine the meaning of the word ‘marriage.’ There are limits to the concepts of equality and anti discrimination. Marriage is just not permitted for certain groups of people e.g. if two people are too young to get married, if you are close relations like a nephew and aunt, a niece and uncle, or if you fancy some sort of communal marriage. We do not say that those people are discriminated against. Likewise marriage is just not for two men or two women. Any such relationship you have to call something different.

We have a responsibility to pass on what was been bequeathed to us by previous generations, a common culture that means something, that is almost unconscious to our senses but that we understand naturally. It is a given. Our heritage is a Judeo Christian one whether we like it or not, and at the heart of that culture is the union of a man and a woman to nurture the next generation. You tamper with this at your peril. If you change the meaning of a word such as marriage you will introduce a spirit of confusion into the nation which not least will harm our children and grandchildren. Marriage will be not only between a man and a woman, but also potentially between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. The way will also open for virtually any relationship that expresses ‘love and commitment’ to push for marriage rights. It is disingenuous to oppose this argument because already polygamists have been pushing for marriage rights in Canada, and polyamorists doing likewise in Australia. Then there is the position of children. All the evidence supports the view that children brought up by a mother and a father have the best outcomes. Yet how many combinations of marriage partner will be able to bring up children as traditional barriers crumble? Is it wise to legitimise any and every form of relationship in the eyes of the law so as not to offend anyone?

You are also adding layers of legislation to our society that will further diminish our freedom as a people. The government has had to go back hundreds of years to amend legislation to make allowances for his unwise step. Whatever is said by the government, pressure will be on to protect the concept of same sex marriage by trying to shut down free expression of opinion on the subject and to prevent various organisations from ‘discriminating’ against same sex marriage in their ethos and employment law. It is sad but true that pandering to the LGBT agenda by successive governments has increasingly proscribed speech and behaviour in the UK. Brendan O Neill picked this up recently in the Telegraph.

Finally, in the eyes of many people, both religious and non-religious, we are dealing with a moral issue, and no matter how you dress up same sex marriage as an ‘equality’ issue, homosexual behaviour is morally unacceptable for those people. And when I say behaviour I think this strikes at the heart of the whole way in which people think of this issue today. In my opinion we have confused identity with behaviour. The whole concept of identity politics has a lot to answer for. Human beings are people first and foremost, that is their identity, male and female. Whether they are homosexuals, heterosexuals, or whatever is a secondary issue. These things are expressed as behaviour but are they really core identity? The jury is still out on homosexuality. At the very limit it may be a mixture of nature and nurture, but what percentage of each? What you are in effect doing in the eyes of many is state sanctioning immorality, enshrining behaviour at the heart of our national life that has been seen as immoral and fringe sexual behaviour over the history of western culture. Again is this really what we want for society? There is a right and a wrong meaning of the word equality. The right meaning is that we are all equal in value, no one is worth more than any other despite all our differences, and everyone is worthy to be treated with the same respect and dignity as any other person. However, that does not mean equality of behaviour. Some behaviour is still moral, and other behaviour is immoral. State sanctioned immorality is no less immorality.

In this regard the church in the UK has to look at itself on this issue. If anybody in society has a responsibility to give a clear sound on moral issues it is the church. You cannot just have a moral free for all, somebody has to give a lead for the majority of people for the majority of the time. Sadly the Church of England is agonising over this issue when the Bible is crystal clear. In the end this does no one any favours. In a free society people should be able to do what they want behind closed doors provided it is of a concensual nature, but don’t push such sexual individualism to the heart of our society in the form of same sex marriage.

In evaluating this issue, it may be offensive to many, but there is a bullying and intimidating spirit behind the militant gay rights agenda which will do great harm to the country if continually appeased. The aim of that agenda is to ‘normalise’ gay behaviour so that it is fully imposed on society, if necessary through the full force of the law. You have to understand the spirit that is driving militant gay rights, it is totalitarian in its mandate. Some people would like to criminalise criticism of homosexual behaviour. This is the direction in which we are going, and the bringing in of same sex marriage will only accelerate this process.

If we want a relatively peaceful and united nation we have to rub along together somehow. That means physical and verbal abuse of homosexuals is totally unacceptable. But it also means that people who disagree with homosexual lifestyles or same sex marriage must be completely free to express that disagreement. Because surely freedom of speech has been cherished in Great Britain but is now under enormous threat. You have no freedom if people are only free to express one point of view. You cannot make ‘offence’ the measuring rod for what is acceptable and unacceptable speech, otherwise you have lost the battle for freedom.

If Great Britain wants to recover its tarnished reputation as a nation of liberty the awful imbalance that has developed in this area has to change to make proper room in the public space for more than one point of view. At present we are sending out a confusing and oppressive sound to the rest of the world by harassing a Christian baker over a cake! Perhaps things will find a more healthy balance, as this article suggests:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2702229/Public-backs-bakery-gay-cake-row-says-poll-Six-ten-believe-proposed-court-action-owners-refusal-bake-cake-wrong.html?printingPage=true: .

The British have their weaknesses but can suss out a bully instantly. There will be plenty of sympathy for those who wish to protect rights of conscience.

It’s always a pleasure when someone from the other side of the political spectrum agrees with something that you have believed all along. One thing worth mentioning in the debate is that we have to be humble enough sometimes to realise that people on the ‘other side’ as it were might just have a point in some areas. Political discourse is enhanced with a good dose of seasoning of salt sometimes, as insults, abuse and downright intimidation sometimes seem to dominate the narrative these days. It’s easy to allow that log just to be embedded in our own eyes for a long time and not see the good sense other people might have. We are all a complex jumble of different beliefs, experiences and motivations, and you can learn something from virtually anybody. My own conviction is that politics should involve doing what’s right regardless of whether you are considered to be on the ‘right’ or the ‘left.’

Some people take a ‘journey’ from one side of the political spectrum to the other, believing that they have received greater enlightenment in doing so. I have certainly read of those who have moved left to right, not so sure how many have moved the other way.

Famous luminaries who have made the journey from the left to the right include Melanie Phillips, who although seen as shrill by some has her finger on the pulse of the main issues of the day in a way that few others have. Not bad for someone who started their journey on the left as a Guardianista. Perhaps those who have made such a journey are the most effective spokespersons for their resulting worldview. Winston Churchill famously said that if you are not a liberal when you are 20 you have no heart, if you are not a conservative by the time you are 40 you have no head!’

Now we have a famous feminist, lesbian author and social critic, Camille Paglia, supporting some of the beliefs of the conservatives. I picked up two articles in the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Mail.

Camille Paglia probably has more perception than a lot of conservatives, although she is certainly not about to give up her feminist principles and has evidently chosen an unconventional lifestyle. But she has nowse in spades in certain areas that are vital to the West’s survival.

One issue of great prescience is that it is one thing enjoying western freedoms and liberties, it is entirely another defending those freedoms and liberties to the death. Lots of us are Premier League exponents of enjoying the liberties we have inherited, doing virtually what we want, but we are not so good at understanding the roots of those freedoms in the first place. There never has been a time in history when men and women don’t have to fight for their freedom. The danger is that we have enjoyed such a long period of freedom and prosperity in the West that we have become too soft and unable to defend our culture or what is left of it if necessary. Sometimes you have to lay off the mantle of a peaceful unassuming citizen and take on the cloak of a warrior, and this especially applies to men.

Camille understands that men need a tough fighting spirit to draw upon in times of peril to literally defend their civilisation and culture. Men need a warrior mentality to deal with existential threats. To acknowledge this you have to recognise and accept the fundamental differences between men and women.

Camille has this to say about the West right now, ‘What you’re seeing is how a civilisation commits suicide.’ She gets really passionate about the efforts of modern society to undermine the basic biological differences between men and women. She is very concerned that many of the leaders in society, the elite, don’t have any background in military service so don’t think in military ways, having no clear conception of good and evil, that there are evil people out there and that you cannot be nice to everyone.

She says of that elite, “These people don’t think in military ways, so there’s this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we’re just nice and benevolent to everyone they’ll be nice too. They literally don’t have any sense of evil or criminality.”

She sure has a point there. A lot of the problems the US faces are similar issues in the UK. Many British for instance are trained to be nice to a fault, not to offend anyone unnecessarily, and that is a problem we are going to have to get over pretty quickly if we are to survive as a nation.

She argues that the softening of American society begins in the kindergarten “Primary-school education is a crock, basically. It’s oppressive to anyone with physical energy, especially guys,” She goes on to say, “They’re making a toxic environment for boys. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters.” Here she laments the shortening of ‘recess’ in American schools, or ‘break time’ as it is called in the UK, when boys can go and let off steam.

She sees the issues with her own son who she is raising with her ex partner, a female, hardly a traditional family. ‘She sees the tacit elevation of “female values”—such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation—as the main aim of teachers, rather than fostering creative energy and teaching hard geographical and historical facts.’

We can see this pattern in the UK where primary schools are dominated by female teachers and the home situation is far from ideal in many households, with no father figure because women are bringing up boys on their own in single parent households or where the father has abandoned the family. The epidemic of fatherlessness in the UK is nothing less than a national disaster. No one is condemning anyone, we are where we are.

She goes on to say, ‘And the process goes on as education progresses “This PC gender politics thing—the way gender is being taught in the universities—in a very anti-male way, it’s all about neutralization of maleness.” The result: Upper-middle-class men who are “intimidated” and “can’t say anything. . . . They understand the agenda.” In other words: They avoid goring certain sacred cows by “never telling the truth to women” about sex, and by keeping “raunchy” thoughts and sexual fantasies to themselves and their laptops.’

‘Politically correct, inadequate education, along with the decline of America’s brawny industrial base, leaves many men with “no models of manhood,” she says. “Masculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There’s nothing left. There’s no room for anything manly right now.” She does have a point!

The UK’s ‘brawny industrial base’ has been dying a death for a long time. Years ago Britain was full of coal miners, factory workers, farm labourers, skilled craftsmen, those that used their physical strength and skills to make a living. And those old trades were male dominated. Now the UK has become an economy with seven or  eight out of ten workers in the service sector where often more feminine skills are needed for success.

I have to say that I have noticed completely apart from this article over recent years that a lot of American men that I hear on the radio or in the media, especially on the radio, do not sound very masculine, in fact worryingly feminine, or even effeminate. Perhaps we should be thankful that both The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry who will play prominent roles in our nation in the future have both had military experience which should go against the grain of Camille’s fears.

She is a bit more impressed with the energy and enthusiasm of the guys she hears on sports radio, ‘If we had to go to war,’ the callers are the men that would save the nation.’ Again for the UK maybe there’s hope for us to be found on the football terraces every Saturday afternoon.

A key part of the remedy, she believes, is a “revalorization” of traditional male trades—the ones that allow women’s studies professors to drive to work (roads), take the elevator to their office (construction), read in the library (electricity), and go to gender-neutral restrooms (plumbing). Gender neutral restrooms are of course open to dispute! Surely such restrooms are blurring the gender differences she is pointing out.

She is just arguing for the place of good old apprenticeships in skilled trades for young men, who will never take to the academic world but are itching to get out to work on something worthwhile.

As she says, ‘Michelle Obama‘s going on: ‘Everybody must have college.’ Why? Why? What is the reason why everyone has to go to college? Especially when college is so utterly meaningless right now, it has no core curriculum” and “people end up saddled with huge debts,”

By denying the role of nature in women’s lives, she argues, leading feminists created a “denatured, antiseptic” movement that “protected their bourgeois lifestyle” and falsely promised that women could “have it all.”

Camille is nothing but brutally realistic about the nature of life and the role of men and women, she could probably give David Cameron and Nick Clegg some pretty sound advice.

‘But men, and especially women, need to be honest about the role biology plays and clear-eyed about the choices they are making.’ Quite. ‘Our culture doesn’t allow women to know how to be womanly,’ she said. She is rather scathing about elite middle class women, ‘clones’ condemned to ‘Pilates for the next 30 years.’

She goes on to say, “I want every 14-year-old girl . . . to be told: You better start thinking what do you want in life. If you just want a career and no children you don’t have much to worry about. If, however, you are thinking you’d like to have children some day you should start thinking about when do you want to have them. Early or late? To have them early means you are going to make a career sacrifice, but you’re going to have more energy and less risks. Both the pros and the cons should be presented.”

The feminist movement can win converts, she says, but it needs to become a big tent, one “open to stay-at-home moms” and “not just the career woman.”

The feminists have been criticized for not being robust enough by far when it comes to the way women are treated in certain parts of the world, such as in India where the issue of gang rape has topped the agenda and in Islamic societies, where they are basically second class citizens. Ms Paglia has something to say about this as well.

‘More important, Ms. Paglia says, if the women’s movement wants to be taken seriously again, it should tackle serious matters, like rape in India and honor killings in the Muslim world, that are “more of an outrage than some woman going on a date on the Brown University campus.”’

To add fuel to the fire, she’s supportive of Duck Dynasty Star, Phil Robertson and his right to hold ‘homophobic views.’ Well, this old firebrand of the left keeps surprising us. Again here’s what she said:

‘In a democratic country, people have the right to be homophobic as well as they have the right to support homosexuality – as I one hundred percent do.’

‘If people are basing their views against gays on the Bible, again, they have a right of religious freedom there.’ In my humble opinion you either have freedom of speech or you don’t. Once you legally start proscribing peoples’ speech on the grounds of offence you are on the road to hell.

You have to say this is pretty refreshing stuff. It shows how in reality it’s impossible to stereotype people in the rigid way we love to do, and is a lesson to those politicians who are obsessed with identity politics, trying to neatly pigeon hole everyone into a particular ‘victim group.’ Camille represents a hotch-potch of views taken by both the traditional left and right.

If you take Camille’s logic to its conclusion, if nothing changes it’s a scary world ahead, men emasculated of their manhood and incapable of defending their culture, and women not being presented with an honest debate about choices of career and family. In the end whatever happens, if families don’t have those babies, there is no future anyway.

 

Sources

Wall St journal:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303997604579240022857012920

Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530741/Theres-no-room-MANLY-Controversial-feminist-writer-Camille-Paglia-speaks-against-loss-masculine-virtues-negative-impact-society.html