Census: Dawn Of The Bottom Inspectors

The next UK Census may include questions about sexuality and gender identity for the first time, after the government said questions must be added...

Pink News.

Why?

What business is it of the state who anyone's shagging?

George Orwell must be spinning in his urn.

PS The only journalist to find this sheet-sniffing state snoopery sinister was Andrew Pierce at the Daily Mail.

Brighton: Much More Likely To Be Unmarried

The Office For National Statistics have an online thingy where you can find what the census tells you about people who live in your neighbourhood by entering your postcod - via the Mirror.

This is what it says for the area around St James's Street, in Kemptown, Brighton.

The census doesn't ask about sexual orientation, thankfully - it's none of their business.

Census: Count Me Out

Households could be asked if residents are straight, gay or bisexual in the 2021 census, in the last old-style national paper survey conducted in the UK.

Up until now a simple male/female question has been included. The precise wording of the new question will be the subject of an online consultation, which starts today.

The Office for National Statistics said that if consultation suggested that it was an invasion of privacy or put people off filling in the form, they would consider dropping it...

The Times.

It's not any of the state's fucking business who I'm fucking fucking.

Freedom Of Speech: A Bad Ad For God

Below is the Westboro Baptist Church's predictably charming statement marking the Supreme Court holding up their first amendment right to freedom of speech.
Fagburn agrees with the ruling - that freedom of speech also means freedom of hate speech.
I kinda agree with much in this piece in the LA Times; The Right To Be Vile.
One thing it doesn't cover is when does something like this - serial picketing of funerals with offensive placards and chants - become harrassment; if a work colleague or neighbour calls me "fucking faggot" every day that's not protected as a freedom in the UK or the US, surely?
Whatever, the God Hates Fags guys and gals are such a bad ad for the anti-gay Christian Right, I say let them do some more damage to themselves.
Talking of ads and god... The British Humanist Association has just started an ad campaign running on buses and billboards across the UK; "Not religious? Say so on this year's census form."
It's been banned outright by CBS Outdoors - the company that owns advertising space in UK railway stations.
The BHA poster will still run elsewhere, but this one is also a censored version.
The Committee of Advertising Practice told them the original had the potential to cause "widespread" and "serious offence".
The offending slogan? "If you're not religious, for god's sake say so."
Which surely means they found the word "god" offensive.