Andrew Sullivan and the conscience clause

My illustrated tribute to Andrew Sullivan I drew for the Huffington Post.

Paul Givan, theo-unionism and the ecumenical religious right regard gay people as the greatest threat to religion.

"The worst discrimination has come from closeted gay men"

To the Guardian, Mark Harold wrote a letter and said, "The worst discrimination has come from closeted gay men." Following an interview with Lord Browne, the Guardian (@guardian) asked readers to share their stories about coming out as LGBT in the workplace. Here's what Mark Harold said in full:

"I am a senior executive of a FTSE 100 company in my early 50s, and have been out at work since my mid-30s. The worst discrimination I’ve come across has come from closeted gay men. They live with insidious lies, and are often ruthless in protecting those lies. It’s important that gay men support each other, so the more who come out of the closet in business, the better."

The story of Sam “Skelly” McCrory is remarkable. This is a racist, sectarian, homophobic skin-head turned open and activist homosexual. He said to Henry McDonald in the Guardian:

"Even before I joined the UDA, I used to pretend I was homophobic. I went along with the crowd who were then close to the National Front. I hated Catholics, blacks, Jews and gays - even though I was gay myself. I was hiding my true self. I used to lie to the rest of C Company that I was having a relationship with a policewoman. Only Johnny knew it was a man. The lads used to ask me "Who's that policewoman you are shagging?" I couldn't tell them it was a man, it was such a macho, homophobic culture."

Paul Berry of DUP was a similar character. A religious loud-mouth and virulent homophobic... who was caught with a rent boy. Wikipedia reports it like this:

"Just days before the [2005] election, the Sunday World newspaper claimed that [Paul] Berry had met a man for a massage, with whom he had made initial contact via a gay chatroom, in a Belfast hotel room booked by Berry under a false name. Berry claimed that he was seeking treatment for a sports injury, and said he was considering legal action against the paper. He was not elected and was the only DUP candidate to experience a fall in their share of the vote in favour of the Ulster Unionist Party. 

Weeks later the DUP who, since 1977 have maintained a Christian fundamentalist stance on gay rights, and launched a campaign known as Save Ulster from Sodomy, suspended Berry from membership and commenced disciplinary proceedings. Berry launched a legal challenge but in February 2006 dropped these proceedings and resigned from the party."

Polygamy is doublespeak and irrelevant to the equal marriage debate

Lord Wilson of the UK Supreme Court said:

"The introduction of same sex marriage is largely designed to avoid discrimination against gay people, whereas the introduction of polygamy would create discrimination against women even if some of them felt driven to escape poverty by marrying men on that basis."

The irony is that it takes religion and the religious to bring in polygamy. Where in the world can a man hold multiple wives, but in religious communities. Point in hand: Kenya has just legalised polygamy and you can thank the religious for that. Arit John reported in the Wire:

"The argument for legalizing polygamy is that the practice is part of Kenya's pre-colonial heritage, as well as sanctioned by the Bible. "Solomon never notified anyone," as one male member of parliament said while the bill was debated. "It is in the Old Testament."

Further, German Lopez explained here how the institution of marriage has long evolved and changed.

 

Christopher Hitchens - The "some Christians" excuse

In 2009 Christopher Hitchens & Stephen Fry stood in an Intelligence Squared Debate with the motion, the Catholic church is a force for good in the world. Christopher Hitchens tackle the classic Christian evasion and excuse for cruelty, prejudice and discrimination, that's just "some Christians." He said at 4 minutes:

"The same euphemism comes, in the term "some Christians". That is used in all the apologies about the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the anti-Semitic pogroms and all the rest of it. They say "some Christians" fell into error. "Some Christians" allowed themselves to be deceived in this way and to act against the gospel. Well, anti-Semitism was preached as an official doctrine of the Church until 1964. Do you think that might have something to do with public opinion in Austria, and Bavaria, and Poland, and Lithuania? That the Jewish people were accused collectively, as a people, of deicide. The crime of the murder of god, in the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. That anathema on them was not lifted until 1964, well after the perpetrators of the Holocaust had stood trial in secular courts and been rightly punished for their actions. How can this Church say it has any moral superiority? It has difficulty catching up to what ordinary people regard as common moral and ethical sense and it still can't make itself apologise properly."

Marriage Equality - Today it's a shout of "polygamy". Yesterday it was shouts of "male prostitution".

Cartoon of Peter Robinson, Ian Paisley and other members of the DUP. Originally published on Slugger O'Toole.

Debating marriage equality is debating the inevitable. The history of the West tells us that you cannot deny a minority community rights that a majority enjoy. The history of the West tells us that laws that stigmatise and marginalise a minority cannot stand.

Law after discriminatory law have been broken. Rights after rights have been spread. And at each stage the religious community are there to defend discrimination and oppose tolerance and pluralism. That is the lesson that needs to be shared as we face this challenge of bringing marriage equality to Northern Ireland. Namely: at each stage the religious will have you forget their previous failures in order to mask their present failure.

Legalising homosexual sex in the United States - Lawrence versus Texas [2003]

In 1980s Texas, "deviate sexual intercourse" - as homosexual sex was known - was punishable with prison or a fine. In 1981 a Texan court upheld a police department's decision not to hire a man because he was gay. 

The change to the law only came in 2003 when the landmark case - Lawrence versus Texas. John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were fined $200 for being caught caught allegedly having sex in one oftheir  homes. However, the Supreme Court declared the judgement "unconstitutional". In effect the Lawrence case legalised consensual, homosexual acts. This meant that the 14 US states that still had "sodomy laws" were rendered null and void.