PTT welcomes royal seal of approval for atheists

The British gay humanist charity, the Pink Triangle Trust (PTT), this blog’s parent organisation, has warmly welcomed the Queen’s recognition that people of no faith can lead moral lives and make an equally important contribution to society.

A PTT press release says:

Addressing the Church of England General Synod, the Queen told members that believers and atheists were equally able to contribute to the prosperity and wellbeing of the country.

The Queen, who is supreme governor of the Church of England, said: “In our more diverse and secular society, the place of religion has come to be a matter of lively discussion. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue and that the wellbeing and prosperity of the nation depend on the contribution of individuals and groups of all faiths and none.”

The PTT secretary George Broadhead commented: “This is a remarkable and very welcome recognition. Coming as it does from the Head of State, it is also extremely important. For far too long religionists, even relatively moderate ones, have tried to claim that only they can lead moral lives and that religious faith of some sort is vital to society’s wellbeing.

“The Queen’s words knock this on the head and should be a lesson to all those who denigrate unbelievers and – in the case of Islamists – threaten them with hellfire and death.

“We hope that the Queen’s words will be noted by those political parties who grant religionists completely unfair privileges, as well as the media which is often grossly prejudiced in their favour.”

Griffith Vaughan Williams, 1940–2010

Griffith Vaughan Williams,
who has died aged 70

We're sad to announce that one of the gay movement’s greatest friends, Griffith Vaughan Williams, has died. He was 70. Williams was lately secretary of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, one of Britain’s oldest gay campaigning organisations, and he was one of its longest-standing supporters.

Let’s let CHE itself have the first word. In a statement today, it says:

It’s with great sadness that we have to announce the death of Griffith Vaughan Williams, Secretary of CHE. He was 70 years old. Our condolences to his partner, Paul.

Griff was born on the 9th of November 1940 in Bangor, North Wales, and was educated at a local grammar school and then at a college of journalism in Cardiff. He worked for a number of magazines and provincial newspapers around the country, and later in the press office at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, which he left about 20 years ago to become a freelance journalist. After retirement he threw himself into many voluntary causes, serving on committees, attending conferences, and forever asking questions at company meetings.

Griff had been a gay activist since about 1964, and was a leading member of CHE from its very earliest days. In recent years, despite ill-health, he had continued to be the driving force behind many of CHE’s activities. He will be very much missed. His final act as Secretary was to sign the contract commissioning a new book about the history of CHE, a history which he had very much helped to make.

We hope to compile a fitting obituary for Griff, and we would very much welcome any memories and thoughts about him. The CHE reunion at Friends House on the 27th of this month will include a tribute to Griff.

Fellow blogger George Broadhead, secretary of the Pink Triangle Trust, said today of Griff: “He was best know in CHE’s heyday as its conference organiser and was mainly responsible for keeping it going when it declined some years ago.

“I had been friendly with Griff since I joined CHE in the 1960s and, with my partner Roy, set up one of its local groups – Chilterns CHE – in 1970. I’ve been in touch with him many times since then, notably concerned the cooperation of CHE and the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association in running the winter fairs at Conway Hall in the 1980s and their joint sponsorship of Winter Pride at County Hall and ULU later in that decade. This is described by Griff in detail in the book Out of the Shadows, which will be promoted at the CHE Reunion on 27 November.”

On a personal note, I’d known Griff on and off since 1978 when he did a recce in Coventry, where I lived at the time, in preparation for holding the CHE conference at the De Vere Hotel there. His beard was sort of brownish then.

I worked for a while on the CHE exec with Griff in the late seventies, and met up with him at various functions. Lately, it’s been only voice contact, because I’ve had some input into the CHE annual report and its review of the year.

With telephone contact, you could put the phone at one end of the room and listen from the other side, I remember, so clear (not to say loud) was his delivery. He was also annoyingly (though I say that with affection) averse to modern communications, never, as far as I know, embracing the Internet and email; and getting copy from him for any work I did on the CHE reports necessitated his having to pass it on to someone with a computer, who could then type it up and send it on via email. I think he relied on his trusty fax machine for several years, that being as technological as he got (unless he changed in the past year and I didn’t know).

When someone has been ill, it should come as little surprise that they might die, but it still has the power to shock. As soon as I saw the subject line of an email from George Broadhead this morning – just “Griff Vaughan Williams” – I guessed. When someone has died, that’s all you usually see at the top of an email that brings the sad news. If an email has just a person’s name in that line, I fear the worst.

GVW was indefatigable in his efforts for the gay cause, and was, of course, involved with CHE for decades. He put in hard work and sustained commitment to the cause of gay rights for many years. I’m sure there will be tributes aplenty over the next few days, because there can’t be many in the gay community more worthy of such praise.

Griff was a hard worker, a good organiser, a committed campaigner. He’ll be sorely missed.

Make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise*

Some seem to be saying it’s a good thing that the supermarket giant Tesco, destroyer of many a good high street, has taken over a disused church building in Bournemouth in the South of England.

I’m not so sure.

Oh, yes, it’s good to see religion’s hold on us diminishing to the extent that buildings are falling into disuse. It’s good to see buildings put to a purpose other than propagandising on behalf of superstition.

However, if the religionists concerned – in this case it’s a former Methodist church – want to meet in a building to do their thing, I see no problem, other than that, by dint of being a religion, it gets special tax advantages paid for by you and me. If it weren’t for that, I’d say good luck to them. Just don’t try to impose your beliefs on me and others and on our schools, and don’t try to gain unfair advantage. Just enjoy your religion.

My main concern, though, is that it’s just another milestone on the road to total Tescopoly. Sometimes, yes, a Tesco store is the only place you can get this or that, although one can’t help but wonder whether, if it weren’t for the existence of an edge-of-town one-stop supermarket with handy free car parking, more shops would exist in the high street of said town to provide the this and that you can now get only at Tesco.

So – short of having it as something more useful such as a farmers’ market, selling local produce and helping the local economy – maybe the building would be better being used as a church after all (with all the above caveats, of course).

Having a bunch of people singing and doing their mumbo-jumbo is probably far less harmful to the fabric of our traditional shopping areas, which just cannot compete with Tesco on the fringe, sucking the lifeblood from them, as has happened in towns near where I live.

Now Tesco – in the guise, in this case, of its Tesco Express stores – is moving into hitherto untried territory in the form of churches, it’s just strengthening its hold.
__________
* John 2: 16: “And [he] said unto them that sold doves [in the temple], Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.”

Want to save money? Stop paying for kids to attend “faith” schools

Just the way to save money in these straitened times: stop paying for the Deluded Herd to send their kids to school.

It’s happened in Lancashire in England (and a few more places in the UK, too), and the county council there could save a couple of million quid by not paying for transport for kids to go to “faith” schools.

Quite right. If parents want to send their kids to “faith” schools, let them pay. It’ll cost them £2 per day per child. One “faith” school, St Christopher’s in Accrington, pulls pupils in from far afield.

Some bloke there says the move will hit parents with more than one child at a religious school. Then let them send the child to a school nearer home.

As more councils knock this silly nonsense on the head, it may just start a change in parents’ priorities, and “faith” schools may have to become like ordinary state schools, taking kids from their natural catchment areas, whatever their “faith”, or whether they have a belief system or not.

British ad watchdog cosies up to Catholic Church

If ever you needed proof that those in any kind of authority are only too pleased to accommodate those of odd persuasions, you need look no further than Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority.

On the strength of just half a dozen complaints it has banned an ad showing two male priests about to kiss.

You couldn’t make it up.

Blessed are the pillaged poor, but ‘listed places of worship’ are more important

Oh, whoopee! The “listed places of worship” in the UK have escaped the ravages of Chancellor George Osborne’s spending review (of which you can read oodles here, among many other places).

But the only thing so far, according to the think tank Ekklesia, that the Church of England has had to say about the review – which will mean mainly the poorest picking up the tab for the financial recklessness of the very rich – is “Thanks for saving our Listed Places of Worship Grants Scheme.”

And this isn’t just listed buildings, don’t forget. Not just buildings that are valuable to the national heritage. They are listed places of worship. That makes them more important, then, and is worth a few more pounds out of the pockets of those who can least afford it.

And religious lunatics keep going on about how marginalised they are.

This is what Ekklesia has to say about the selfish Church of England response:

In a statement issued just a few hours after George Osborne’s announcement of the cuts in public spending which will see an estimated 490,000 public sector workers lose their jobs, the Rt Revd Richard Chartres, Bishop of London and Chair of the Church Heritage Forum, said: “I am very glad that the Department for Culture Media and Sport has announced that the Listed Places of Worship Grants Scheme will continue. Abandoning the scheme, which affects every part of the United Kingdom, would have been tantamount to a tax on fundraising; a great disincentive to the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who care for our churches and a blow to the credibility of the concept of the Big Society.

“While I regret that the additional concessions on professional fees, organs and bells, secured in 2006 and already withdrawn, will not be reinstated, I very much welcome the Government’s recognition that church buildings make a large contribution to the community as a whole.

“We owe a debt of gratitude to those who have campaigned tirelessly within the Church of England for the scheme to be maintained and also to the Heritage Minister for his informed concern and determination to find a solution which balances economic necessity with a recognition of the role and potential of our church buildings.”
The Church of England has so far issued no other statement following the spending review.

And he has the gall to regret that concessions on organs and bells and “professional fees” (for whom?) won’t be reinstated. Even if we allowed that old churches can be valuable parts of our heritage as pieces of architecture, not all are, and there is certainly no need for a working organ or a working bell just to keep a building up to scratch.

But that is to ignore that the Church of England is such a huge landowner that it can well afford the upkeep of its churches. If they were owned by the state, that would be a different matter.

Methodists come off a bit better in their response to the big spending review. In a statement yesterday, the president of the Methodist Conference in Britain said the government’s cuts strategy should be judged primarily on how it impacts upon the poorest in society.

Where to draw the line?

CatholicCulture.org tells us:

Cardinal Ricardo Vidal of Cebu, who retired on October 15 at the age of 79, said on the eve of his retirement that he was willing to go to prison rather than accept the provisions in proposed Philippine legislation that provide for widespread distribution of contraceptives, including abortifacients such as the IUD.

A man of his word, then.

“God forbid, but if they succeed I would be the first to go to jail because I will break the law,” Vidal is quoted as saying. “We’re not supposed to talk against it once it becomes a law, but I am wiling to go to jail because I will continue to talk about and go against it.”

He says the law does sanction those who speak out against it. I can’t say whether he’s technically right or wrong; but, of course, the law shouldn’t so sanction. He should be allowed his free speech, and the best way to counter it is by debate and, if necessary, ridicule, satire, lampoon. These are, or should be, the rights of a free society – but so, too, should this chap’s opinion on contraceptives, nutty though it is.

What he shouldn’t be allowed to do is somehow prevent a lawful act in an unlawful way. Mind you, what is unlawful there is anybody’s guess, if citizens really aren’t allowed even to speak about contraception.

If he seeks to dissuade people from using contraceptives merely by expressing an opinion, then he ought to be within his legal rights, and I say that as a supporter of contraception for anyone who needs it.

But we’ll always meet fuzzy lines. What if he spoke from the vantage point of a very powerful pulpit (I’m using that word in the widest metaphorical sense) and succeeded in stopping people from using contraceptives, possibly even putting their lives at risk? His church is powerful in some places, because it captures the minds of the faithful and threatens them with excommunication and tells them they’ll probably go to hell.

So maybe talking about it in his case would amount to more than the same act by some bloke in a café.

But, then, where do you draw the line?

So I’m vacillating. Hmm.

Oh, OK, then, send him to jail!

On second thoughts . . .

It’s OK to rape your wife

So it should not be considered a crime if a husband rapes his wife, eh? This is the opinion of some Sharia Council chap here in the UK.

The link above is to Digital Journal, where a few people in the comments section below aren’t too pleased, either. One commenter says, “Three words. THROW. HIM. OUT.”

Let us continue to go forth and multiply, then, eh?

From today’s Independent:

In an authoritative and ominous warning, the 2010 Living Planet Report of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the definitive survey on the state of the planet’s health, signals that that tropical ecosystems are being degraded and tropical species are declining at an increasingly rapid rate, with the world’s population now consuming the output of one-and-a-half sustainable Earths [our emphasis].

And ridiculous Catholics will continue to tell us that we must continue to breed and will not let a little thing like overpopulation sway them from their strict line on family planning.

Claire Rayner: a friend to gay people, a friend to secular humanism

We’re sorry to hear today of the death of Claire Rayner. She was a friend to gay people and a friend to secular humanism.

Rayner died at the age of 79, and, she told relatives that she wanted her last words to be, “Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I’ll come back and bloody haunt him.”

Claire Rayner

She had intestinal surgery in May, and has been ill since then. She died in a hospital near her London home.

Rayner has praised our sister publication, Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine, and has often been in contact often with members of our parent organisation, the Pink Triangle Trust.

Of G&LH’s return as an online publication in 2008, Rayner said:

Great to see you’re back. This beats any other resurrection (Lazarus? Eat your heart out!) about which you may have read in the Bible – which of course, sensible atheists read from time to time so that they can stop believers in their tracks with apposite quotations. What with this and the emblazoned bendy buses all over London, I begin to think we may be getting somewhere – and the other indication is the growth of religious fundamentalism. It shows the religionists are running scared!

Here’s to happy godless future where people matter more than popes and their like. Every power to your elbows!

“In 1996,” says the BBC website, “she was awarded the OBE for ‘services to women’s issues and health issues’.

“She was involved with 50 charities, and was a member of the Prime Minister’s Commission on Nursing and the last government’s Royal Commission on the Care of the Elderly.”

Rayner was also an honorary associate of the National Secular Society and a vice-president and former president (1999–2004) of the British Humanist Association.

On its website, the BHA quotes Rayner as having said, “I was a humanist without knowing it for many years before I found the Association – when I did, it was like finding a sort of home. Here were people with a range of views that matched mine, who shared my respect for life in all its forms and who, above all, did not in any way try to bully other people to follow their beliefs.”

Another quotation the BHA cites is: “You think for yourself, and work out your own morality . . . I’m fascinated by the idea of trying to find your own way through the world with your own maps rather than someone else’s . . . All I know is there is no God in my universe. I’ve looked and looked, and there ain’t no God there. But I don’t want to be a dogmatic atheist. I like mythology, and a life without stories doesn’t bear thinking about, just let us not have supernatural beings. What is natural is awe-full enough. We don’t need a First Cause.”

Rayner, agony aunt to many, friend to many more, will be missed in many sections of British society. You’ll find tributes today wherever you look, no doubt, and we think they’re well deserved.

Appealing for the right to discriminate

When will the more extreme religionists learn that they’re losing their grip on the freedoms of other people?

You’ll remember that the Charity Commission here in the UK ruled against a Catholic adoption agency – Catholic Care – which wanted to discriminate against same-sex couples who wanted to adopt children.

After lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth, the agency – the last remaining one in England – has filed for appeal against that decision.

Simon Caldwell writing in the Catholic Review says:

The agency, which serves the dioceses of Leeds, Middlesbrough and Hallam in northern England, had sought to continue its policy of assessing married heterosexuals and single people as potential adopters, which means it will not deal with gay couples . . .

Lawyers for Catholic Care are arguing that Section 193 of the 2010 Equality Act allows charities a limited right to discriminate if it represents a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”.

The commission has argued, however, that such “discrimination can only be permitted in the most compelling circumstances.”

Such a lot of energy, not to mention money and time, put into trying to do the dirty on people just because they have a sexual orientation that isn’t the one recommended in desiccated old scriptures written by ancient herders.

It’s a funny thing, life.

Stating the bleedin’ obvious

A Vatican official is objecting to the awarding of the Nobel Prize to a pioneer of in vitro fertilisation.

Well, he would, wouldn’t he?

The Vatican a valuable partner in fight against poverty? Pull the other one!

The National Secular Society points out fittingly that the damned Vatican is supposed to be a big partner of the UK in its fight against global poverty and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, and yet it does everything in its damned power to thwart said goals.

So much for its being a valuable partner. The whole thing stinks to high heaven.

We probably know more about religion than the religionists do

Atheists and agnostics know more about the major religions than Catholics and Protestants.

Well, it’s not surprising when you think that so many people call themselves this or that when it’s just a habit. Their parents were Catholic, say, so they identify as Catholic. Even many of those who go to church probably don’t know much about what’s happening – just lots of bells and smells and men in fine and fancy frocks and magnificent music and rousing ritual and seductive ceremony.

I remember my brother – a professing Christian – saying to me one day that I probably knew more about his religion than he did. When he said to me, “I’m a Christian,” I wish I’d asked him, “How do you know?”

Ah, l’esprit de l’escalier, eh?

Blue plaque for Tatchell

Peter Tatchell gets a blue plaque tomorrow. It’s part of the scheme – running in the UK, other European countries and the USA – that recognises notable people by putting a distinctive blue plaque on the outside of their homes.

Actor Ian McKellen will do the honours tomorrow, unveiling the plaque and saying a few words.

Tatchell said today:

Ian McKellen

“It is a big honour. I am very grateful to the people who voted for me, especially since there were other notable, worthy and deserving nominees. I hope my receipt of this award will encourage others to campaign for human rights. I have lived in Southwark most of my life and I am very proud to be part of its long, illustrious history of distinguished authors, playwrights, scientists, inventors and social reformers.

“I appreciate this award, but the greatest honour I’ve had is the privilege to know and work with so many amazing, courageous human rights defenders in Britain and around the world. That’s the real, true honour to me.”

Religion = good habits?

So abandoning “faith” leads you into bad habits, and therefore sends you on a downward spiral towards being an unhealthy wreck? Hmm.

Well this is a “finding” of a study reported in Christian Today.

“The study was conducted by Christopher Scheitle,” the online outlet says, “a senior research assistant in sociology at Penn State University, and is published in the latest issue of The Journal of Health and Social Behavior.”

This is what he says: “Strict groups typically require members to abstain from unhealthy behaviors, such as alcohol and tobacco use.

“These groups also create both formal and informal support structures to promote positive health.

“The social bonds of belonging to the group might be another factor for better health.”

So far, he’s talked of groups – not religious groups. OK, he goes on to describe two cults – the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses – as strict religions. But so far – according to this Christian Today report, anyway – he hasn’t said that a strict group that keeps people on the “straight and narrow” has to be a religious strict group. Just a strict group.

The fact that there may not be many nonreligious groups that insist on no smoking, no drinking, no other potentially unhealthy activities is neither here nor there. The implication here is that it’s religion that’s holding people together when it comes to living “safe” lives (just how boring those lives may be isn’t mentioned). It’s not. It’s adherence to a code.

Anyone could adhere to a code. It helps if you belong to a group, and have peer pressure and peer support.

There are, of course, groups that deal with individual behaviours, such as Alcoholics Anonymous and various drug-dependence help organisations. Maybe there are secular groups – here in the UK and in the USA, where this study came from – that are designed to keep people off all potentially harmful substances, legal or otherwise.

But it’s nothing to do with religion, as the Christian Today says later:

“The sociologist said more studies need to be conducted to determine the correlation between leaving a religion and health. He emphasised that the study does not show that leaving a religion directly results in bad health.”

Oh, well there’s nothing like leaving the salient bits till last, hoping no one will read that far, is there? Most readers of this story will go away thinking it’s religion wot does it.

Are you getting cruelly killed meat? Perhaps you won’t be told!

“Britain goes halal . . . but no-one tells the public: How famous institutions serve ritually slaughtered meat with no warning”, says a Mail headline.

Yes, it’s really quite disgusting. It’s a longish piece, but interesting. And it’s also rather disturbing that some places that sell halal and kosher (i.e. cruelly killed) meat as a matter of course don’t see the need to tell their customers.

Dawkins on video

Big turnout at the Protest the Pope rally in London Saturday. That’s heartening.

Meanwhile, you can see Professor Richard Dawkins’s speech on the vid we’ve embedded below. Enjoy!

Gay cardinal on the road to sainthood – but his love will be ignored

Ratzo is beatifying Cardinal John Henry Newman today – the last day of his highly expensive (to the British taxpayer) four-day visit to the UK.

But there’ll be no mention of his having been gay, and much in love with Father Ambrose St John, with whom his remains were buried.

And there’ll be a demonstration, too, as there have been throughout Ratzo’s four-day visit to the UK at enormous expense to the taxpayer.

See Digital Journal’s take on the story here, and our own previous posts:

Dem bones, dem bones, dem gay bones

Dem bones, dem bones, dem gone bones

Dem bones, dem bones, dem bones of contention

Were the Nazis atheists? Is the Pope a Protestant?

The UK gay humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust (owner of this blog) has robustly challenged the claim by Pope Ratzinger that the Nazis were atheists.

“In his opening address to the Queen at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh on 16 September, the Pope referred to ‘a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society’,” says PTT secretary and my fellow blogger George Broadhead in a news release. “This is rubbish. Hitler himself was born, and remained all his life, a Catholic. The church never excommunicated him.

“In 1933, he signed a concordat with the Vatican. The church agreed to keep priests and religion out of politics while Hitler, among other things, granted complete freedom to confessional schools throughout the country – a notable victory for German Catholics.

“The Vatican even asked God to bless the new German Reich! It ordered all German bishops to swear allegiance to the Nazi regime with an oath that ended, ‘In the performance of my spiritual office and in my solicitude for the welfare and the interest of the German Reich, I will endeavour to avoid all detrimental acts which might endanger it.’

“So much for the Nazis being atheist,” Broadhead continues. “The Vatican was fully, if not enthusiastically, complicit with the Nazi regime. In Italy the Vatican state was set up under an accord (the Lateran Treaty) reached between the Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, and the Catholic Church in 1929. The accord not only created the state of the ‘Vatican City’ with full diplomatic rights but made a substantial financial payment to the Church and recognised Catholicism as Italy’s official religion.

“Bishops took an oath of allegiance to the Fascist dictatorship and the clergy were ordered never to oppose it or incite their flock to harm it. Prayers were said in churches for Mussolini and for fascism. Priests became members of the Fascist Party and were even its officers.

“The history of the Catholics’ collaboration with the German and Italian Fascist regimes is irrefutable,” he adds.