The liberal Inquisition

At the Telegraph Jonathan Wynne-Jones is in complacent mood, suggesting the lack of reaction to the consecration of a lesbian Anglican bishop in America shows that "liberals have won the battle over the place of gay clergy in the Church".

As I've noted in two recent posts, the liberal (maybe that should be "liberal") orthodoxy isn't taking any chances, though. The Inquisition is in place. Christian dissenters can count themselves fortunate if they suffer nothing worse than being represented by Bishop John Spong's glib rhetoric as God-Hates-Fags bigots. The less fortunate, or less cautious, face being sacked or arrested. Burning at the stake is not on the menu - not yet, anyway.

Really it's much safer to be a daring radical like Bishop Spong, isn't it?

It's Christian Aid Week

(thanks to eChurch Christian Blog for cross-posting this post)

If you have overlooked the fact that this is Christian Aid week I'm sure you're in good company. There have been one or two distractions around. No little gnashing of teeth at CA HQ, I suspect.

Not that such a very political charity can really complain about being upstaged by politics, though. And in writing an update on Christian Aid I shall have no difficulty in making topical connections.

Actually my last big Christian Aid post, written in October, doesn't need very much updating. On their website a new policy paper on Gaza has increased the total of papers on Israel and Palestine from seven to eight. The combined total of papers on African regional conflicts, the Chinese occupation of Tibet, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Zimbabwe and Burma continues to stand at zero.

There is plenty to catch up on concerning someone who had a starring part in that October post, and this is where it gets topical. Take a bow Baroness Tonge, member of and former frontbencher for what is now our junior governing party.

In October her Ladyship was still a Lib Dem health spokesperson. Though fired by Charles Kennedy and reprimanded by Menzies Campbell, it seemed that Nick Clegg was more indulgent towards her extremist views. But in February she finally went too far for Clegg. To recap, Palestine Telegraph, a website of which she was then a patron, carried an allegation that IDF members supposedly delivering humanitarian aid in Haiti were in fact harvesting body parts. Quizzed about this by the Jerusalem Post, Tonge did not denounce the accusation as a disgusting anti-Semitic slur. Instead she called for an independent inquiry. Whether she felt the inquiry should also cover the killing of Christian children to provide blood to be baked in matzos was not clear - personally, I think there should be an inquiry to clear her name. Anyway, the upshot was that she was sacked - again.

I was with those who thought it was high time for Baroness Tonge to have the Lib Dem whip withdrawn from her. How many strikes does it take before you're out? But at least Nick Clegg did something. That's more than can be said of Christian Aid or the churches which sponsor it. It was business as usual at Friends of Sabeel UK, the Israel-demonizing partner "charity" of Christian Aid which still includes Tonge among its Patrons.

Let's be fair to the Baroness, though. Fast forward to 22 April:-

'Baroness Jenny Tonge has withdrawn her patronage of the Palestine Telegraph after the paper posted a video of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke claiming that Israel is a terrorist threat to America.'

Evidently even Tonge didn't feel that Duke could be covered by the "it's not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel" line. Commendable, though given that by this time we were in the thick of an election campaign, I'm not sure we can exclude the possibility that she had some help from a Higher Power in reaching her decision. Note that her fellow patron, the then Respect MP George Galloway, who is entirely is own master in such matters, has felt no need to resign.

Galloway also got a name check in my October post. Will his Klan connection move Friends of Sabeel UK to distance themselves from him? What about Interpal, whose coordinator Ibrahim Hewitt also continues to serve as a FoSUK Patron?

It may be that the members of my church who are collecting for Christian Aid this week share the fondness for Hamas of Baroness Tonge, George Galloway and Ibrahim Hewitt. But I really don't think so. I think they just want to give help to people who need it. If I believed the only way of doing that was to support Christian Aid, I might have signed up for some tin-rattling despite all my reservations. But it isn't.

I do continue to make generous donations to Christian Aid via the Inland Revenue. I'd like to think the change of government will lead to some rather more rigorous questions being asked about what it is they do. It certainly doesn't look as if the new man at International Development shares their pet obsession:-

'Andrew has a strong interest in conflict prevention, resolution and reconciliation. He served as a UN peacekeeper in Cyprus, and has twice visited Darfur, Sudan, with Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague MP and Conservative Party Leader David Cameron MP. He has also visited the Democratic Republic of Congo. His experience in these countries informed his 2007 pamphlet "The UN and the Failure to Protect", which made a number of suggestions for reform of the UN’s peacekeeping efforts.

'In March 2007 Andrew became the first senior British politician for many years to travel to Burma and meet the ruling junta. He delivered a robust message to the military regime about the need for a transition to democracy. He also met senior members of the National League for Democracy and leaders of the 1988 protests, and visited a camp for displaced people on the Thai-Burma border. He has followed recent events in Burma closely, and remains in touch with key figures in Rangoon. Andrew’s covertly-filmed video diary from the trip can be viewed on YouTube.'

Another bigoted man

More in the same vein as my last post: the Pub Philosopher has a neat take on the latest story. Equally symptomatic of the way we're governed and hence deserving of being pondered on the way to the polling station.

One can only marvel at the potential this nonsense has to stir up ill-will where none was before. I've always taken what police officers get up to when they take off their uniforms as being a matter of supreme unconcern to me. But when gay coppers start getting allocated to special jobs where they don't have to bother with mundane stuff like clearing up burglaries because they're too busy taking DNA swabs from preachers...

A bigoted man?

Here's how it could work. A taxpayer-funded organization offering relationship counselling recruits counsellors who reflect the diversity of opinions on relationships to be found in our society. When it comes comes to counselling gay couples on enhancing their sex lives, many will have no problem whatsoever, some will prefer not do it. So couples seeking this service are matched up with counsellors who are happy to provide it - and why would the couples in question want it to be otherwise?

Everyone's happy. All the diversity balls are still in the air. It makes no difference to the principles at stake, but have you noticed that Gary McFarlane happens to be black? Actually, of course, it's rather more than coincidence. Members of ethnic minority groups are, on average, markedly more conservative about these matters than white Brits. More specifically, black Christians tend to be more conservative than white ones.

The reality is somewhat different from my imaginary scenario. Why? How are we better off? It's no answer to say that the law's the law and we can't go round making exceptions for all and sundry. The whole problem is that the law is not the law. For it's not as if Mr McFarlane is claiming a Biblically-endorsed right to engage in burglary with impunity. The law which has cost him his job has been created by politicians pursuing an ideological agenda, and in this it is typical of a large part of the avalanch of legislation unleashed on us since 1997.

We can test this claim by putting a simple question. Does Gary McFarlane's unwillingness to provide sex therapy for gay couples mean that he is unfit to work with the large majority of Relate clients who do not require this service? Naturally the answer is "No". There is no reason to doubt that he is an excellent counsellor, and if he is his sacking has done a disservice not only to him but to all the clients who are denied the benefit of his skills. So the law is the enemy of the common good.

There's nothing surprising about it having panned out this way. It was widely predicted when the legislation was going through Parliament. But its' sponsors were undeterred because their purpose was ideological. The law was to be used to enforce conformity, to suppress diversity in the name of diversity. Any Gary McFarlane who might dare to challenge it deserved to lose his job and to be made an example of. The right of conscientious objection could be granted in 1940 to those unwilling to help defend their country against Hitler, but the New Labour zealots will not exempt anyone from service in the war against political incorrectness.

Our rulers have pinned a label on Gary McFarlane. It says "just a bigoted man". Mr Brown, Ms Harman and the rest of you, your mike is live.

Election fever hits Curmudge - more incisive commentary

Now the small fry are making their presence known.

First off we have the Curmudge Socialists ("make the wbankers pay"). Their candidate looks as if he last smiled on the day Margaret Thatcher announced her resignation. This is the effect Trotskyism so often has on those who can't kick the habit in time. There but for the grace of God...

OK, even if your candidate doesn't exactly radiate good vibes you've pretty much got to show the punters what he looks like lest they suspect you are concealing even worse things. What you don't have to do is gratuitously compound the offence by subjecting them to a mugshot of Bob Crow. I regularly wake up screaming in the small hours having dreamt that Bob Crow was running the country.

Moving swiftly on, UKIP's man looks more the sort of bloke with whom one could contemplate sinking a tolerably agreeable pint. Indeed, his communication has the feel of having been composed shortly before chucking-out time on Saturday night. The greenish tinge of his mugshot suggests it might have been taken the morning after, displaying the after-effects of indulgence in a dodgy doner on the way home.

On to more serious matters: the Lib Dems' man, who will indubitably be our next MP unless he forgets to look both ways while out canvassing. Whereas the Green candidate (not to be confused with the green man from UKIP) has adopted an arboreal name, this one has sought to inject a much-needed touch of glamour into the campaign by borrowing the surname of a French film star.

I feel he makes rather too much of the endorsement of the retiring MP: "David who?", I hear the voters cry. They are pictured standing under a large black umbrella (didn't they have an orange one?) held by the MP, next to the cycle racks at Curmudge station, and looking less than enchanted with the situation. "Climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity", we read below this, so you would think they would be looking a bit happier about the fact that it is still possible to get really cold and wet on an April day in Curmudge. But no, they have the unmistakeable air of two men who would rather be on the beach at Cannes with the divine Isabelle.

"Gordon Brown has failed the people of Curmudge" is illustrated by a photo of the PM shaking hands with the other GB. Damning evidence indeed! But methinks if Nick Clegg gets his hands on the levers of power he will find that he needs to go through the motions of basic courtesy with people far, far more unpleasant than George Bush.

In the interests of balance I would like to make sport of the Tories at this point. But I've had nothing from them. Doesn't augur well.

Stirring up apathy

So here we are again. In passing, I had ever such a strange dream last night. I dreamt a volcano erupted somewhere, and somehow or other it stopped me getting home for a week. Whatever was that about, I wonder.

Well, I've missed a large chunk of the election campaign. By way of making up for lost time, here are the impressions I've garnered in Curmudge over the past 24 hours.

The Green candidate has rather charmingly displayed his commitment to the cause by naming himself after a tree, but I suspect this may not be enough to swing it for him.

So far only Labour have actually been round. Their man introduces himself as 'an experienced politician, ready to represent Curmudge'. The other things he says are mostly not quite as inspiring as that, though. His desperation has now reached the level where you start calling the other side Nazis; apparently he doesn't have a minder with sufficient sense to warn him that stiff-armed salutes are best avoided if you happen to be half Austrian.

It's not looking good for Cameron, is it? I know Curmudge is different - an extreme case of the nationalization of the middle class, where anything in the way of belt-tightening is not going to be a vote-winner unless Education, Education, Education is ring-fenced, ring-fenced, ring-fenced. Nevertheless, it must be ominous for Dave that even in the posher bits there are occasional splashes of orange but no Tories coming out. Clegg certainly seems to have set at naught all DC's efforts at cornering the touchy-feely-alternative-to-Labour vote. Might he actually have done better to present himself as a conservative?

So it's a less than nail-biting contest in Curmudge, which the Lib Dems have held since 2001*. One good thing about the prospect of a hung Parliament is the hope that we may at last get a slightly more grown-up electoral system. As it is, I'm not sure I'll manage to summon up enough willpower to get dressed. Do they let you vote in pyjamas?

*Only since 2005 actually - shows you how much I know. But with a respectable 10% majority.

Intermission

Off on my travels tomorrow so even less prospect than usual of any postings over the next couple of weeks. However, I hope I shall be visiting my favourite CD shop, which will give me the opportunity to select a recording by the Jerusalem Quartet.

Easter blessings to all readers.

Who says there are no good guys in the Middle East?

Certainly not the BBC. Here's their woman in Damascus feeling the pain of Iraqi Baathists exiled in Syria.

'"There are hundreds of thousands of supporters of the former regime among these refugees. What should we do... jail them all?" asks Samir al-Taqi, an analyst with a pro-government Syrian think tank.'

Pity all the anti-government think tanks were unavailable for comment.

'Mr Taqi argues that what is radicalising many Baathists further is the failure of the Iraqi government to involve them in the political process.'

Yes indeed, whereas the willingness to reach out to its opponents is the secret of Baathism's enduring popular appeal. Look at the al-Assad dynasty - they haven't lost an election in 47 years.

It's funny, I thought the progressive complaint was always that the post-war denazification of Germany was much too lax. By this reasoning it shouldn't have been attempted at all.

Seriously, though. I'm not saying that it was very clever to make an enemy out of every ordinary Joe who joined Saddam's party to get a job. But compare and contrast the understanding and sympathy we are being prompted to show towards these ordinary Joes with the apoplectic reactions to those other ordinary Joes, not so far away, who want homes even if they're built on land which, in the eyes of the rest of the world, doesn't belong to their country.

Why does Hamas get such a good press while Israel gets such a bad press?

It's as simple as this. Gaza welcomes indignation tourists and useful idiots. But not investigative journalists.

Nothing new about the technique, of course - it worked a treat for Stalin.

And note how the Beeb lends a helping hand with a headline assuring us that the glass is half full - 'Hamas releases', not 'Hamas deports and bans'. The bit where the Hamas accusations against Paul Martin are attributed to Associated Press can probably be put down to sloppy sub-editing. Probably.

Is this the ultimate epitaph for Blair's Britain?

'In late 2005 the government appointed Mr Blair's former private secretary, Francis Campbell, as ambassador to the Holy See after the post was advertised.

'It was the first time a British ambassador had been recruited from open competition. One hundred and twenty people applied for the job, according to the Foreign Office.'

(from)

Yes indeed. Equality for us, open competition for them. Sooner or later you realize that the more some things change the more they stay the same.

'The [119] creatures outside [(clutching the utterly futile CVs they had sweated over)] looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.'