Catholic Synod: Who Cares?

There’s really no need for most people in the gay community to care about what the Catholic Church thinks. And by continuing to do so, we’re validating these hateful views.

Do ethnic minorities wait in anticipation of that special day when the BNP may give them a scrap of acceptance? Of course not, their views are abhorrent and accepted as such. And it’s time the Catholic Church is dealt with in the same regard on gay issues.

As a community gay people should take the higher ground, and actually act in a more Christian way than it seems possible for the bigots who reject them.

Gay people to stop this fight for acceptance from the Catholic church; to stop engaging in this debate, this dialogue and ultimately this validation of outdated beliefs. The time has come for the gay community to turn the other cheek.

We don't need to retaliate, we don’t need to protest, we know that we are equal and who cares if Catholic bishops haven’t realised it yet? We don’t need their endorsement, and we should stop caring if they don’t get it...

Cristo Foufas (!) writes for the Daily Telegraph (!)

Wise words - let us pray this will be the end of this tiresome matter.

But what would their Religious Nuttery Correspondent, Cristina Odone, have to say?

Update: And yet... Ignore the PR, the Catholic Church continues with its grotesque homophobia, Terry Sanderson, Pink News.

Russia: Welcome To The Era Of Queer Imperialism

Have you tweeted, Facebooked, Instagrammed, YouTubed, blogged or in some other fashion publicly declared your love for gays and your loathing of Vladimir Putin? If not, why not? Everyone who’s anyone is at it. No sooner had the Winter Olympics in Sochi been declared open than Western newspapers and magazines were redesigning their mastheads to include the gay rainbow flag, Google was splashing the gay colours across its homepage, Channel 4 was running an archly camp skitfeaturing a fat man in hotpants dancing to Russian-style music, globally famous authors were penning angry letters about Putin, and virtually everyone with access to social media was making their profile pic super gay-friendly or was frantically sharing Buzzfeed’s ‘16 Most Homoerotic Photos of Vladimir Putin’. Forget curling or luge – the main event at this Winter Olympics is the mass wrestling match between gay-loving Westerners and redneck Russia...

The nodding-dog enthusiasm with which virtually every Western institution and publication has embraced Sochi as an opportunity to lambast backward Russians, and more importantly to demonstrate their own gay-friendly decency, has been extraordinary. Every day brings news of another corporation or outlet waving the gay flag, ostensibly to express fury with Putin’s recent passing of a deeply authoritarian law that forbids the promotion of homosexuality to under-18s, but really as a way of saying: ‘Look at me! I like gays! I am good!’ 

...

And now, through Sochi, the Culture Wars in general and the politicisation of gayness specifically have gone global. A West bereft of its old economic clout and lacking serious ideological beliefs now attempts to assert its moral authority in global affairs through tangential cultural issues, and most notably through being gay-friendly. So the UN is forever drawing up lists of non-gay-friendly countries, Washington has threatened to cut off aid to countries that are not gay-friendly, and Russia is today demonised not on the basis of its economic manoeuvring or ideological positioning but because of its attitude to gays. Where once the world was divided between the civilised and the savage, now it’s split between the gay-friendly and the homophobic. Welcome to the era of Queer Imperialism. How long before a Western nation goes so far as to bomb a country that is insufficiently gay-friendly?

Brendan O'Neill in Spiked gets it.

The good old days recalled at the Sochi Opening Ceremony

This''ll send the politically vacuous conformist gayists MAD!!!
Note Pink News readers predictably jump up and down, but not one actually engages with anything he wrote.
They just have lame sweary hissyfits, go for ye olde "He must be a closet case" idiotic retort, or - my favourite - "You can tell by that stare that he's a homophobe."

PS Adds obligatory; "Whilst I don't agree with everything he says..." rejoinder.

Oh Christ! The Daily Telegraph's god-bothering homophobe-in-chief Cristina Odone sums up the case for the opposition. You really could not make this up.
Bigots against Putin!

Christians: Big On Crucifixion

One of the prickly issues for a society that attempts to be liberal is how tolerant it must be of the intolerant. Writing in the last issue of this magazine, Cristina Odone says that she feels her rights as a taxpayer, a citizen and a Christian have been trampled on. She warns of a world around the corner in which religion will be a secret activity behind closed doors.

So, what is this dystopian vision of the future? A world where if you run a bed and breakfast, you cannot discriminate against gay couples, and you have to abide by the rules of the job you are contracted to do. That’s it, really.

No one in our society has it all their own way: as an atheist, I am just as much of a trampled-on taxpayer and citizen as Odone. I pay for the BBC, yet nobody non-religious is permitted on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. Humanists are not allowed to lay a wreath during the annual remembrance ceremony at the Cenotaph. There are 26 bishops in the House of Lords, there solely because of their religion.

As for education, schools in England and Wales are mandated to have daily Christian worship. What sort of state schools are forbidden in England and Wales? Despite the presumed anti-religious jackboot ruling over us, it’s not Catholic, Anglican, Muslim or Jewish schools: it is secular schools. You won’t find parents pretending to be atheists to get their children educated: “We had to go to lectures about Bertrand Russell every Saturday to make sure that we could get Cyril into our local atheist school.”

We can all play the victim game if we fancy it. Just as some men bleat that they are the oppressed because of feminism, Odone confuses a loss of advantage with an act of oppression. This is the shock of those who are losing their divine right to dominate...

Great piece by Robin Ince in the New Statesman.

Cristna Odone writes for the Telegraph - and has written rather a lot about those poor Christians and that horrid gay marriage thing.
She is a former editor of The Catholic Herald, and somewhat inexplicably was once a deputy editor at New Statesman.

Fagburn: Worse Than Hitler!!!

Not much gaiety in the papers worth commenting on today, so in the interests of furthering intelligent, informed, reasoned, unhysterical, and highly sophisticated political debate here's a picture of Putin where he looks like Hitler.
Case closed!

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one..." - Godwin's law.

PS The Telegraph sends Catholic anti-gay nonsense-machine Cristina Odone to Milan to interview Dolce & Gabbana - with boring consequences. 
UND! The Mirror celebrates 20 years of winsome, orange broadcasting legend Dale Winton on the tellybox - this is quite funny, actually.
Good morrow!

Cristina Odone: That's Gay!

Banning the term 'gay’ is an insult to free speech

Catholic loon-nut, Cristina Odone, continues to bore for England in the Telegraph.
Despite the headline, Odonut doesn't actually say anyone's saying we should ban the term "gay" - as no-one actually is, and that would be stupid.
Even stupider than believing there's a god in the sky with a beard sitting on a cloud.
Or not believing Catholic priests don't systematically rape kids.
Hard to know what her point is, though.
Yes, the arrest of your fellow Christer loon at Wimbledon the other day was silly and draconian - and I say that as someone who's been arrested under Section 5 of the Public Order Act myself.
Where were you then, Cristina????
Apart from that, another great piece, you pious moron.

Update: Video - annoying Christian street preachers get confronted at Seattle Pride. Haha!

Cristina Odone: Christian Ordure

It's become a familiar pattern. The man in the public eye comes out against gays – and then comes out as gay himself. We've seen it with televangelist Billy James Hargis and more recently with Cardinal Keith O'Brien. Now it's the turn of Alan Chambers, who has been running the Exodus International ministry for 37 years. The "pray the gay away" minister has had to admit that actually he IS gay. He's gone on to apologise to any of those whose life he has made a misery...

Liberals today, on both sides of the Atlantic, take it for granted that everyone loves being gay. They are wrong. The Alan Chambers of this world do exist – and they are everywhere. We should have pity for them.

Cristina Odone in the Daily Telegraph.

Leading Catholic loon Cristina holds the record - after Brendan O'Neill - for writing the most articles against gay marriage.
Maybe she IS secretly a gay man?

Update: Queerty does a list of ex-ex-gays.

Update2: 'When Anti-Gay Bigotry Is Just Another Lock on The Closet: Is it surprising that those obsessed with gay sex may have a fondness for men?' Owen Jones, Independent.

I admire much of Owen Jones' writing, but, one thing about being gay and getting older is you feel you've read articles on themes likes this 10,000 times before.

Cristina Odone: PS I Am Mad

Well, it's nice to keep things in perspective, isn't it?
Cristina Odone, there - former editor of The Catholic Loon, writing in her Telegraph column, on The Gay Marriage, which she hates.
She does this almost weekly - if I was her editor, I'd ask her to write about something else for a change, lest the readers die of boredom.
She tries to support her argument by quoting some book by some gayer that - literally - no-one has ever read.
Not even right-wing Christians like her, who keep quoting it out of context.
Regular viewers may know I've recently come to the conclusion that people like this are so knee-deep in looneyville, it's not even worth trying to enter into rational debate.
Be a bit silly anyway, as they say they believe in a God in the clouds and that a man walked on water, and are thus - literally- incapable of rational thought.
Banana-fana fo-fistina etc etc.
Bye.

Marriage: The Uncommitted Commitment

David Cameron to offer MPs free vote on gay marriage plans 
The Independent.

The gay marriage-bashing Daily Telegraph predictably recasts this as; 'No 10 backs down over David Cameron gay marriage plan.'
But did anyone seriously think this would not be a free vote - that's if it comes to a vote, of course.
And how can this be squared with;
'Mr Cameron's spokesman said the Government was "committed to introducing same-sex civil marriage" by the end of the current Parliament, in 2015. Asked whether the normal rules of collective responsibility would apply, he said: "It is a government commitment."' (The Independent, yesterday. Emphasis added).
Anyone might think they're making all this up as they go along.
What an utter shambles.

Update: Matthew Parris' column in The Times; "Very slightly odd that Owen Paterson, the Northern Ireland Secretary, should be telling a constituent now that he cannot support gay marriage.
But nobody will be requiring him to. No legislation has yet been proposed and if or when it were, the measure would certainly be put to a free vote in the House of Commons, with MPs voting according to their consciences. That is how the 1967 Act (legalising homosexual relations between consenting adults over 21) was passed, with Margaret Thatcher voting in favour. That, too, was how the 1982 Order in Council was passed, bringing Northern Ireland (where all homosexual relations were a criminal offence) into line with the rest of Britain..." Thank you, Matthew.

Update2: And a predictably dumb and wrongheaded Telegraph blogpost on this appears from Cristina Odone. You can always count on papist fartbag Cristina Odear to grab hold of the wrong end of the stick and start beating us round the head with it.

Daily Telegraph: Bobbins Headline Of The Day

'Why Should Gays Get Special Treatment?'

This is the title to an unthink piece in the Telegraph by Cristina Odone.
She's one of their main columnists, and a former editor of The Catholic Herald.
Erm, how on earth is asking for equality wanting "special treatment"?
How does that work exactly?
I presume the picture editor was mocking her by accompanying it with the above photo.
And if anyone can figure out what in the name of Jupiter she's trying to argue in the article, then please, please, please drop me a line. 
Odone and the rest of the anti-gay marriage brigade have a top celebrity supporter who gave a speech over the weekend that repeated many of their favourite cliches; "Centuries of tradition... one of the main building blocks of society... it's in the Bible... won't somebody please think of the children!"
Yes, Robert Mugabe - come on down!
Here's a report from yesterday's Mail On Sunday about Mugabe's "rambling anti-homosexual rant" at his fun-packed 88th birthday do.
The article is very critical of the old dude, which is strange cause the Daily Mail usually gives oddballs who make rambling anti-homosexual rants their own column.
Is it cause he is black?

•  Coalition For Equal Marriage petition and rinky dink website.

Wikileaks 2: Alan Duncan & William Hague - Oops!

"The leaked US diplomatic cables reveal a particular intelligence interest in Alan Duncan, at the time shadow minister for prisons. Duncan, a former oil trader who is now international development minister, is gay. He once shared a London flat with William Hague, who has felt obliged to deny public speculation about his own sexuality.
"A 22 January 2010 cable was signed off by Elizabeth Pitterle, head of intelligence operations. She thanked the London embassy for its intelligence on Duncan's "friendship with ... William Hague", saying it was "particularly insightful and exceptionally well timed, as analysts are preparing finished products on the Conservative leadership for senior policymakers".
"The cable called for further intelligence on "Duncan's relationship with Conservative party leader David Cameron and William Hague", and asked:"What role would Duncan play if the Conservatives form a government? What are Duncan's political ambitions?"
Oops!

From The Guardian's The US Embassy Cables
I've posted the cable in full in the comments section below - intriguingly it's dated January 2010.
Amusingly as Foreign Secretary, Mr Hague has to try and clean up after the wonderful shitstorm unleashed by the latest Wikileaks leaks.
Mr Duncan has been demoted to Minister for Paperclips after a few gaffes unbecoming a multi-millionaire - though did step back into the limelight to defend his friend hague over those terrible gay rumours about him and Chris Myers.
There is a retrospectively interesting - and amusing - profile of Duncan from The Independent in 1997 when he was gaff-prone press agent to Hague here. "One member of the Shadow Cabinet described Duncan's latest political standing in lavatorial language: "Margaret Thatcher said `every Tory leader should have a Willie'; our leader has a prick."
"...He was President of the Oxford Union in the Thatcherites' annus mirabilis of 1979, and he got to know William Hague on return visits to Oxford. The two hit it off instantly, and Hague became a kind of camp-follower. He shared a flat in Battersea with Duncan, and, like his mentor, became a graduate trainee at Shell Oil. Their paths diverged, but they remained close. When Duncan bought a house close to Parliament in Gayfere Street, Hague moved in. His monthly rent was a case of champagne..."
A kind of camp-follower, eh...

Update: In a blog for The Daily Telegraph, Cristina Odone argues the American intelligence services are mainly interested in Alan Duncan just because he's gay, "a Cold War relic [they] seem incapable of ditching."