The Thin Veil

First, something amusing. According to Reuters, the Polish government is going to initiate an investigation into the Teletubbies. Yes, you did read that right, I did mean to write the Teletubbies. Now, the question is, why? Why would anyone want to investigate the Teletubbies? OK, they’re annoying and they don’t speak English, but that’s no reason for a governmental investigation. Apparently the supposed homosexuality of the programme is grounds for a probe, though. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Polish government’s children’s rights watchdog wants to start an investigation to out the Teletubbies.
This very same idea was raised by the late Jerry Falwell, a US evangelist. Something makes me shudder whenever I hear the words “US evangelist”. I presume it is because of what usually follows. The now familiar diatribe of hatred, mixed in with a healthy dose of fire and brimstone and a condemnation of the populous’ apparent moral bankruptcy. We all know the score.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Christianity is being used by a set of ultra-conservatives professing membership of that religion to justify all sorts of hatred. Seemingly forgetting the part about “love thy neighbour”, the extreme Christian right campaign vigorously against rights for homosexuals. They are joined by the usual conservative suspects, who campaign because they don’t’ want homosexuals to have “special rights”. Since when is equal access to housing and education a “special” right? Since when is the right to raise a child a “special” right? Since when is the right not to be discriminated against, not to be attacked and victimised in the street a “special” right? In their all-consuming hatred of homosexuality, the conservative/Christian alliance has forgotten that these people are human beings. They have forgotten that their religion was based, in the main, on altruism, on helping your fellow man.
This became particularly apparent in the Catholic Church’s campaign to prevent homosexual couples from adopting. They claimed that they were not fit to raise children, because children require two loving parents, conveniently forgetting that we let single-parent families raise children, and that often these children do well in life.
They claim that it is offensive to their religion, that their God forbids it, and it is therefore wrong. It isn’t religion, there are many good, decent Christians who do not take this hard-line, what it is, however, is good, old-fashioned ignorant bigotry, covered by a thin veil of religious doctrine, religious doctrine that has moved on from being based on a book written back when it was acceptable to sell your daughter into slavery (as condoned by the Bible), when it was acceptable to execute people for working on the Sabbath (as condoned in the Bible) and when it was not acceptable to eat pork (as forbidden in the Bible). I don’t see many Christians complaining about this.
This problem is becoming increasingly prevalent, not just in the USA (where there are already purpose-built conservative Christian colleges), but in the UK. The Principal of Wycliffe Hall, a theological college of Oxford, believes that said conservatives should “capture” the theological colleges and hence influence future generations of the ministry. We have a government minister who not only is a member of an extremist Christian sect, but refuses to say that homosexuality is not a sin.
Make no mistake; such policies will lead us backwards, into a world of inequality, of hatred, of division. If we allow such things to take root, it will destroy every step towards a better society we have taken since we stopped burning heretics.

The Massive Over-reaction of the Highly Paranoid

It is not often that I comment on what would appear to be relatively minor incidents in foreign countries, but here's a little tale illustrating the terrible paranoia that can follow disasters, and must be guarded against. It is, of course, from America:

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, a boy was expelled from Clements High School in Texas. You may well ask what the reason was. Was he found carrying a firearm onto school premises? Was he taking or dealing drugs on school grounds? Was he victimising other students? No. His crime was to create, many years ago, a map for the internet game Counter-Strike based on his school.

The truth is I don't really know what I can say about this bizarre state of affairs. It should be immediately obvious to anyone thinking about the above paragraph for a minute to realise the utter stupidity of the school's decision.

Or so any right-thinking, sensible individual would believe. Unfortunately, it would appear that the school board directly responsible for Clements is not populated by right-thinking, sensible individuals. It would appear that it is, instead, populated by paranoid morons who cannot see the fact that making a map for a video game does not qualify as behaviour signalling psychotic predisposition. Now, I understand that after a tragedy involving a boy of a psychotic disposition (although this was not helped by his situation, as reported in the previous article) shooting many of his fellow students, schools are liable to be a little edgy, and I could understand if the boy had brought weaponry into school, or said that he'd planned to kill some people. But the fact is he didn't, he made a map for a video game. That's the security risk here. Apparently.

Now, to the school board's credit, they did organise a meeting to discuss the reinstatement of this unfortunate. Unfortunately, a quorum was not present as many of the board's members stayed away (for what reason I cannot be sure) including, and here's the surprise, the Board's President Steve Smelley, the man who called the meeting. Now, not attending a meeting that you've called is a pretty clear indication that you don't want that meeting in the first place, although again, I cannot fathom why.

Time was when you'd make a mistake, admit it and resign immediately.