tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post1733896635835212540..comments2023-04-11T09:46:53.479+00:00Comments on anticant's arena: Muscling in on Gay Prideanticanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18135207107619114891noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-35030943585623561482009-07-06T13:57:20.444+00:002009-07-06T13:57:20.444+00:00Good Lord, the Guiness-bit is classical double-SOM...Good Lord, the Guiness-bit is classical double-SOMETHING...!Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-7863218069438785552009-07-06T05:17:58.636+00:002009-07-06T05:17:58.636+00:00Having been educated at Eton, Harrow and other pub...Having been educated at Eton, Harrow and other public schools, English upper class men certainly weren't ignorant about homosexuality, however much they pretended to be. They usually reacted either by embracing it - and each other - enthusiastically, or else by administering sadistic disciplinary ritual beatings to the 'culprits'.<br /><br />I don't know about Lord Halifax, but his son, the Hon. Richard Wood, was one of the Conservative MPs who strongly supported the 1960s law reform. He was a very nice man. <br /><br />There's a story - probably apocryphal - that a member of a famous brewery family was expelled from Eton for displaying one of his firm's posters on his study door. It read: "You don't know what life is until you've had a Guinness". The school authorities took the view that you should either ignore homosexuality or take it seriously, but that you shouldn't joke about it.....anticanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18135207107619114891noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-22108356922816921532009-07-06T02:26:01.335+00:002009-07-06T02:26:01.335+00:00Aunty, have you any idea what Edward Wood (Lord Ha...Aunty, have you any idea what Edward Wood (Lord Halifax) should have made of it all? C of E was such a /social/ passion of his, I mean in the aristocratic and ritual sense. It seems to me that that sort of anglicanism is scarce discernible from pagan feelings, for racial cult and place. Mind you, I'm not trying to do down the fella, I'm just saying....Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-24353543498095139212009-07-05T21:45:43.348+00:002009-07-05T21:45:43.348+00:00Thanks, Longrider. These buffoonish bishops are in...Thanks, Longrider. These buffoonish bishops are incredibly tiresome. A recently retired one (Carlisle) solemnly announced that the floods in his city had been caused by homosexuality! Presumably he was just catching up with Justinian, who declared that sodomy caused earthquakes.<br /><br />In the 1960s I knew, and profoundly respected, two outstanding bishops - Michael Ramsey, 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, and John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich. Both were stalwart advocates of liberalising the law on homosexuality and other social issues. I shudder to think what they would make of the reactionary views prevalent in the Church of England today.anticanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18135207107619114891noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-39489236573472409762009-07-05T20:29:08.737+00:002009-07-05T20:29:08.737+00:00I've known some lovely religious people - and ...I've known some lovely religious people - and I'm not being ironic - whose rock-bottom personal creed was that Goodness (God) will ultimately triumph over Evil (the Devil). Maybe that will be the case after countless aeons have run their course, but right here and now I see little hope of witnessing this Divine version of Armageddon - though a man-made nuclear version sparked off by religious feuds seems plausibly on the cards during my short remaining lifetime.<br /><br />Am I pessimist? No. But neither am I a naive optimist like my godbothering friends.anticanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18135207107619114891noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-7891395136068927602009-07-05T20:11:21.487+00:002009-07-05T20:11:21.487+00:00And, History is as well the no-less vile tale of l...And, History is as well the no-less vile tale of little people getting on top, kicking ass & taking names in turn. I expect I am being, well, ironic about this "all-loving" human critter....Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-66107960256626709622009-07-05T17:29:28.454+00:002009-07-05T17:29:28.454+00:00I wish I could share Wook's optimistic faith t...I wish I could share Wook's optimistic faith that "all" in the world global society desire only peace and harmony with eveyone else, but patently that isn't so. <br /><br />I'm sure it's what the vast majority of us 'little people' all over the world want - but the rich and powerful and faith-driven have not only a wish but also a compulsive need to dominate and subdue others in order to feel 'safe', which they can only do by becoming ever more rich and powerful - if necessary by force, fraud and war. <br /><br />History is the record of powerful people's violence and oppression. There have been very few instances of truly benign dictators, and democracy is a hazard-fraught attempt to give the more peaceful majority a bigger say in how things are run. It frequently comes to grief because of ignorance, apathy and inertia. That's why the only possible motto for democrats must be "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance".anticanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18135207107619114891noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-48007227324099979842009-07-05T15:04:47.034+00:002009-07-05T15:04:47.034+00:00I noted Nazir-Ali's comments. I did think of p...I noted Nazir-Ali's comments. I did think of posing on it, but not sure I can add anything to what you've said here.Longriderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15139120804208136012noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-39456619259798438102009-07-05T14:37:57.508+00:002009-07-05T14:37:57.508+00:00All that said, /tolerance/ however grudging is pra...All that said, /tolerance/ however grudging is practically all that one may hope for on a constitutional or legal level. Equal protection in law is no mere bagatelle, however, and as the father of a gay stepson I too care very much for the work of, now, generations of gay rights acitivists. But the goal of "all" in society "truly" loving one another (our real dream & longing, nicht wahr?) is the task indeed not of law nor even of education but, properly speaking, culture. This last however is a slippery archetypal thing and in any case we can not let down our guard. As to the horrific prejudice in some quarters in Islam and the Catholic Church, there are indeed many longterm operations in human culture that are conducted latently and specifically as /teaching/ operations. In practice, the church and ulema boils over periodically with hordes of indeed evil child molesters, and this is the precise penalty in hypocrisy, of all the strident clinging to outworn prohibitions. The whole function of /taboo/ is to stimulate resistance, violation and hence maturation. Needless to say it is a miserable circumstance for the victims of abuse that as a creature we do seem on average to continue no better at learning than this. One need only gaze at all the doltish hydrogenated waxy faces in the London and New York subways to see that this is so. <br /><br />Alas, the victims of all of this "teaching."Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-26842329121785818152009-07-05T12:56:47.809+00:002009-07-05T12:56:47.809+00:00Sage words indeed, from a veteran activist who mig...Sage words indeed, from a veteran activist who might be termed the instigator of Sage Rage (screamer optional). Telling, perhaps, while the half million from yesterday are probably back in their closets nursing a hangover, that these words would never be published in the "gay" media in Britain, because it's too busy selling the idea of homos as warrior shoppers from outer space to its advertisers. As to the political parties, their pursuit of the "pink" vote is no less cynical than their pursuit of the Asian vote, and I am heartily glad that several seas now distance me from the moral morass in which these creatures swim.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com