Privilege - a film for Anglicans today

Privilege the 1967 film has been issued on DVD by the BFI. Looking at it again, it's a bit clunky and Paul Jones's acting not brilliant but the message could not be more relevant: the pop industry, the churches and government combining to use a popstar to control the masses, especially young people.
I put a note about it on the Anglican readers' forum about gay things with a comment about how appropriate it was at a time when senior bishops have combined forces with the conservatives to get the equal human rights law tampered with in the lords so that the churches remain exempt. How on earth can churches seek exemption from honouring human rights so they can avoid employing gays. It's bizarre and obscene and certainly not christian.
Inevitably, of course, ccthequinton, aka Clive, gave me a lecture on the rights question and totally ignored the film, also affirming this should have its own thread.
I "bowed" to his greater wisdom etc etc... and agree it should have its own thread.
I'm now resisting the temptation to go and see whether he's been silly enough to respond to that.

homophobia at work and its come-uppance

Just a quick note to say that the homophobic woman manager who caused me to complain about her, which led to my being moved to a different site to work in, is leaving at the end of January. I don't know the story; I don't care about the story. I just know that the site will be run better by the new manager when appointed. It couldn't be run any worse!

mindmapping, prejudice and commerce

It's fascinating to see how people try to manipulate the internet for their own purposes. A mindmap blog site this week did a piece on how a mindmapping software company had just added a page to their website where they outlined the uses of the software for various professionals. I added a response pointing out that Mindgenius have had this feature on their website for some time. I notice this morning that my comment had been deleted - as I knew it would. There is no doubt some good reason there somewhere but one wouldn't dare imagine what.
The odd thing is that Mindgenius was the software, presumably one of the earliest, used by Tony Buzan to illustrate mindmapping software in his Mindmap Book. Now he's got his own software and there are lots of others in the field, free and paid-for, Mindgenius seems to be ignored by all the self-appointed mind mapping software reviewers.
From what I've seen of the alternatives, they are clunky, finicky and produce less than attractive mindmaps, except for Buzan's imindmap, which produces maps which look pretty but not very grown-up for the business world, although their recent development has corrected that. Mindgenius is perhaps too easy to use: adding branches couldn't be simpler: just start typng for a child and hit return first to get a sibling. Now Mindgenius 3 uses the ribbon format for all the main functions so that formatting controls, for instance, are set out all together at the top of the screen, for ease of use. Best of all is the map explorer facility where again with one click of a button you can make any branch the focus so that attending to the detail is as easy as it can be. The explorer pane too is useful for presentations, allowing the presenter to select branches with one click. All that, with the recently added full range of exporting options make it so easy to do everything from timetabling to writing theses and reports. (And, no, I'm not paid by them; I'm just a very happy customer).
I've suggested to another blogger that he ought to include Mindgenius on his mindmapping software review site but I suspect he won't include it because. . .why? God knows.
It's a world I would never survive in. I'm too direct and too inclined to say what I think rather than what is commercially appropriate.

Certainty Christian Homophobia and Anglican Readers

In my last post, I mentioned how certain the man was who told me I could be gay and Christian and I was definitely not going to hell.
Apart from his certainty, the other sickening thing was the patronising way he wrote to me. As if i needed sympathy; as if just because I don't believe the bible is the infallible Word of God, I needed to be pitied and spoken down to; as if just because i was gay, the whole thing was really my fault: I was a victim, a terrible victim of homophobia and awful treatment at the hands of society (for which he apologised).
It did not surprise me that he patronised me: his sort patronise everyone: he comments on every forum thread on the website and I bet he patronises everyone on those as well. It did not worry me that he pitied me for not believing the bible is the infallible Word of God. Mutatis mutandis, the feeling is mutual.
What annoyed me was that, just as he had (intentionally?) misheard and misunderstood everything I said in that discussion, so when he read this blog (for he must have done or he would have had no cause to link me with any sort of homophobia) - for which I applaud him: no-one else does - he misread and misunderstood this as well but to much more devastating effect. In his eyes, wilfully distorting or not, I am a poor old gay who has suffered endless homophobia and abuse all his life and, I assume, in his mind, am clinging to my liberal view of the bible as a way of avoiding yet another source of abuse, namelym God or at least God's word.
The facts however are very different: I have encountered a minimal amount of homophobia that afected me personally and I have been very happy to exploit it and advertise and publicise it. Hence the previous posts dealing with the homophobia of my manager. The only other example was when I was banned - as I still am - from preaching in local methodist churches because I am gay. That I managed not only to get published in the LGCM's book on christian homophobia but also, in the form of a letter into Attitude, the gay style magazine.
In short I am anything but a timid little gay man who needs sympathy for the very occasions in his life when he has met very mild homophobia. When I have encountered it, i have fought back, made clear what I think of it and made sure the rest of the world knows about it as well. Well, perhaps not the whole world but as much as I can be bothered to manage.
It gives me something to do when i am not slaving over my still unfinished PhD - and dare I say it, much more fun.

Homophobia and Anglican Readers

I am so relieved. A reader on the anglican readers forum (see my previous post) has just assured me I am not going to hell and I can be gay and a Christian. How wonderful to have this confirmed by someone who knows for certain.

Christian Homophobia and Anglican Readers

As one way of avoiding getting down to completing my PhD, I am spending far too much time defending gay christians and anglicans on the anglican readers forum. There under the guise of correctly interpreting the Bible and applying the Bible as the only true authority in all things, otherwise serious men (I must admit I haven't encountered any women take this point of view, mainly because I suppose they have also been the subject and still are so in many places of such sub-christian bigotry) tout their homophobia as a god-given right. They remain resolutely blind and deaf to any argument which demonstrates how and why the bible should not be used to adjudicate on matters of morals in the 21st century in circumstances which could not have applied at the time when any of the bible was written. Like the gay question for instance, where throughout the period during which the bible was being written and edited and indeed for many centuries afterwards, there was no understanding of the fact that people are born gay (as is a proportion of creatures in almost all animal species on the earth) and that this is a radically different thing from Paul's bete-noir for instance, which is the problem of those who deliberately and against their own natures turn to homosexual practices as part of their regious worship or out of sheer perversity. Moreover, the fact that even the most apparently clear texts are anything but when examined at the level of cultural context, language and vocabulary.
Arguing with these people whose pettymindedness is no more than a cover for a very nasty level of homophobia because it is attached to religious belief seems pretty pointless when you think of the gay people of Africa, many of whom live in fear of their freedom and their lives if it is discovered that they gay in countries which are institutionally homophobic to an extent that Britain's homophobes could only dream about.
But then you realise that the homophobia of these people at liberty to preach in our english churches is directly linked to the homophobia that is killing people, even teenagers, in Africa and Asia. We cannot ignore the homophobes on our doorsteps and let their dreadful opinions go unchallenged. If we do, it will be our fault that that poison spreads across the world to be picked up by some very eager hands and used against gay people who live in a far more dangerous situation than ours and do not have the luxury, for all their faults, of our legal system and human rights legislation.

Homophobia

In August I challenged my manager's homophobia and ended up being moved to a different hostel while my complaint was dealt with: she apparently did not mind me being gay - she knew I was when she employed me - but like so many homophobes, she objected to any instantiation of my gayness in my life at the hostel. In short, she objected to my leaving a copy of a gay magazine in the sitting room in the staff flat - in case visiting staff talked about us, she said. And then she objected to my showing the magazine Attitude - the issue with Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) on the cover - to a female member of staff who wanted to look at it.

Unfortunately, the girl was bullied (I suspect) into not making a statement, so my grievance was dropped. But I gather she is being heavily sat upon to rethink the views she expresses if not her views themselves. I luckily have been left at the hostel to which I was moved: had the organisation insisted I return to the original hostel, I would have refused and considered legal action.

And then, today, on the DNA (the Australian gay magazine) website, I saw an article about young gay men being executed in Iran for effectively just being gay, not even necessarily for sodomy. That puts my experience of homophobia into perspective, rather. But it makes it all the more important that we have a zero tolerance attitude to homophobia wherever we encounter it. What happened to me and what is happening to men in Iran is part of the same spectrum. My own experience, since I came out 30 years ago, only includes losing the occasional friend, being banned from preaching in local Methodist churches and this latest incident with my manager. Nothing compared to what was done to Alan Turing (although I underwent aversion therapy while I was at university because I took advice from a fellow student whose professional view as a probation officer and his Baptist christian faith combined to make me think I should and could be cured) and to these young Iranians but enough to convince me that silence is not an option.
Especially when I meet men who in their 30s or 50s who are not out and have to seek out all their gay friends and acquaintances in secret, terrified of being discovered.
And this is why, in conversation and in the pulpit, I regularly refer to my late partner. Not to do so would be a denial of our 20 years together and a betrayal of all those victims of homophobia far harsher than any experienced by me.

News from a southern county

It seems like years - it almost is - since I last wrote anything here. And life has changed immeasurably. No longer trying to teach those who don't want to learn. Now serving the public at a youth hostel where the youth rarely appear and even when they do, rarely willingly.

But the issue is still there, the misuse of the word issue. And the lifestyle is still there, still gay to the core, but irritatingly straight on the outside.

My PhD is coming to an end, except for a serious case of writer's block. And it is nohing like the proposal I first made six years ago. Now it is about patronage and social anthropology, business and commerce.

James Joyce is still at the top of my reading interests and Finnegans Wake has still not been surpassed.

The Church of England is gradually falling apart as the evangelicals refuse to admit gays into the company of the saints let alone into the priesthood or the episcopacy. Rowan Williams is trying to preserve God-knows-what but I am sure it is not worth it. The church will still be there when he longer has anyone to be arch over.

Meantime, I am still reading at my local church and even about to undertake some teaching of other readers, which is all very ironic as I would not be allowed to follow any of them into the priesthood which is where many of them would really prefer to be.

At the weekend i went to a Metropolitan Community Church service and found it refreshing and attractive. It makes a bit difference to know that there is no-one there who questions the validity of one's sexuality. It is good to be valued as gay rather than in spite of being gay.