Of dead cats, engagements and babies

Ever since Boris Johnson romped into power with an 80-seat majority last December, he has created a cottage industry of dead cat-dumping. He got into training years before the election when he explained the art of dumping a dead cat on the dining room table to create a distraction when you're losing an argument in a column for The Telegraph in 2013. 

And last June, when he wanted to be the Conservative Party leadership frontrunner without any of the scrutiny, he took the heat off by claiming to paint wooden models of London buses for fun. As a bonus, this weird claim helped drop Google results about dishonest Brexit referendum claims emblazoned on buses, and his shameful waste of public money with the dreadful "Boris buses" when he was mayor of London, way down the list.

So it comes as no surprise that the PM's lust for dropping dead cats continues apace, now he has the job to which he has felt entitled since he was a boy. 

Reviving the ridiculous idea of a bridge between two remote points in Scotland and Northern Ireland a few weeks ago was a classic of the deceased feline genre. Johnson knows full well why it would be an expensive, dangerous engineering nightmare, although this probably won't stop him spending more of our money on a feasibility study even though the outcomes are a foregone conclusion. 

It took a serious brass neck to drop the big bridge dead cat - Johnson does not have a great track with bridges. The Garden Bridge debacle from his time as mayor wasted millions of pounds of public money, raised as-yet-unanswered questions about corruption and conflicts of interest, and the stupid project was ultimately, mercifully abandoned by an exasperated Sadiq Khan, his successor as mayor of London. It was the inevitable result of letting Joanna Lumley dictate urban planning.

But talking up a big, dumb bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland was an excellent distraction from big issues around that time, such as the Streatham stabbing, which could be directly attributed to the early release of terrorist offenders on the watch of the Conservative governments over the past decade. This dead cat also stalled any proper scrutiny of the UK's Brexit negotiation preparations ahead of talks with the EU, which are due to resume this month. What a handy fictional bridge that was!

And yesterday, we were treated to the news of Boris Johnson's engagement to Carrie Symonds, complete with an early summer baby on the way. But this does not necessarily automatically fall into the category of dead cat, despite Twitter last night exploding with claims of ex-pussies. There were a few appalling commentators urging Carrie to take advantage of Britain's liberal abortion laws - but here's the thing about being pro-choice. It means you do not condemn women for making choices that you wouldn't make for yourself. 

Even with Johnson's notorious virility, it is preposterous to suggest that he and Carrie planned a productive bunk-up late last year that would coincide with an engagement/pregnancy announcement to fall on a weekend where the Sunday papers had plenty of embarrassing front page options. 

Anyone who knows about female biology would realise they have been aware of the pregnancy for a while, and anyone who knows about the Conservative Party's need to appeal to social conservatives would realise the announcement would have to wait until after Johnson finalised his divorce with Marina Wheeler, his second wife. Who knows if they really did get engaged last December and, frankly, who cares? It was just a necessary part of the announcement to appeal to Tory pearl clutchers. And the pregnancy announcement obviously couldn't be delayed forever. 

In any case, if it was a dead cat, it was a pretty unsuccessful one. While the engagement/pregnancy made its way to most front pages - and it is naive to expect otherwise - it was really only The Sunday Telegraph which went for the full-on, Hello!-magazine-style gush-fest. I'm not surprised there was no byline on that story - any journalist with even the tiniest shred of credibility would be embarrassed to have that on their CV.

The Mail on Sunday ran the Instagram photo of a stubbled Johnson kissing the cheek of a beaming Carrie but tempered the soppy, sickly claim to an "exclusive inside story of their love" with a "CRIPES!", which was probably the reaction of plenty of people across the country yesterday. And across the bottom of the front page is a damning story about a leaked government memo that demonstrates that not being content to "fuck business", Boris Johnson may well be tempted to fuck farmers as well in his quest to give Dominic Cummings his wet dream Brexit.

The Independent ran an old photo of the happy couple with a discreet caption but went big, and rightly so, on Sir Philip Rutnam's departure from the Home Office amid claims of bullying, lying and intimidation by Home Secretary, Priti Patel.  Bizarrely, the apologists for this wretched government seem to think Priti Patel's existence as a powerful woman of Asian heritage is some sort of gotcha-headfuck for those who oppose this government. Nope, sorry, Johnson fans, Priti Patel does not get a leave pass from scrutiny because of her gender or ethnicity. How patronising.

The Sunday Times and The Observer also led with the Home Office troubles, with both pieces holding Priti Patel's feet to the fire. The ST added a teaser for an exclusive on the forthcoming budget with news of entrepreneurs losing a big tax break. The engagement/pregnancy headline was a wry "What a good day to announce a No 10 baby", while The Observer went with a picture caption of the happy couple, and a story at the bottom about Matt Hancock's absurd plans to pull NHS doctors out of retirement to deal with the coronavirus. 

The Sunday Mirror made the obvious "Carrie to go into labour" pun and described her salaciously as the "PM's lover" in a splash of barely disguised judgement. But the lead story was still an exclusive on Mo Farah's ongoing drug row.  

And The Daily Star, which exists in its own glorious bubble of madness, had no mention of engagements or babies at all. Instead, it went big with "QUACKERS - Plastic ducks barred from charity race to save the planet", along with some Love Island gossip.

So it was reassuring that, apart from the Sunday Telegraph, the newspapers weren't too badly distracted by the PM's personal announcement, news that was, in all honesty, as predictable as it is banal.

Of course, the ball is now in Johnson and Symonds' court - with wedding plans and a baby due in a few months, there are plenty of dead cats they could gleefully drop, especially if negotiations with the EU go as pear-shaped as many expect. 

There are golden opportunities for pictures of an engagement ring to be sent out into the ether, wedding dress design speculation is compulsory, maybe some hints will be dropped about the decor of a Downing Street nursery, and because every pregnant woman in the public eye must have her private choices exposed, there is plenty of scope for the "Will Carrie give birth naturally to whale music?" genre of intrusive journalism. 

Will they opt for privacy or will they happily let fluffy wedding-and-baby stories take on a life of their own next time Johnson cuts his own throat, fucks up, or would rather not face hard questions about the path on which he and Classic Dom are dragging the country?  

Photography by rawdonfox/Flickr

Kathleen Dehmlow: The sheer rage against women who leave

Kathleen Dehmlow's death notice went viral. Instead of the usual platitudes about being "much loved" and "sadly missed", Kathleen's children, Gina and Jay used the death notice for revenge against the mother who left them in 1962.

It didn't take long for Twitter to erupt in a self-righteous festival of online pitchfork-waving at a woman they never knew. A woman who dares to leave her husband and kids receives a special kind of ire that simply doesn't happen when a man does the same thing. Even if the first instinct is to condemn a man who leaves his wife and kids as a bastard, it's easier for him to rehabilitate himself - Will Smith, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Ted Danson are all better known for their careers rather than the fact that they all left wives and kids for other women. 

The fact that Kathleen was pregnant by her brother-in-law when she left Dennis, Gina and Jay added extra fuel to the fire around the virtual stake to which she was now tied. 

But Kathleen's death notice raises more questions that it answers. Firstly, it's not an obituary, even though people keep referring to it that way - obituaries are written by journalists and should not be used as a one-sided revenge attack. That is not how obituary journalism works. It is a death notice, a classified advertisement paid for by someone who wants to announce that someone has passed away.

But journalistic pedantry aside, it comes as no surprise that a relative, Dwight Dehmlow, spoke up, telling a newspaper that "there is a lot of stuff that is missing" from Kathleen's story. He said she was admitted to a nursing home a year ago and died with her sisters by her side, perhaps the first indication that she was not an evil witch who abandoned her kids on a whim or ended up in a sexual relationship with her brother-in-law for frivolous reasons.

Was her first marriage abusive? Did she find happiness with Lyle Dehmlow? Why were Gina and Jay then raised by their grandparents rather than their father?

It is important to look at Kathleen's life in historical context. Assuming the dates in the death notice are accurate, she was married by the age of 19, had two children in less than five years - by this time, she was just 24. It was around this time that she fell pregnant to her brother-in-law and left her first husband and two kids.

If her marriage was abusive, either physically or psychologically, or even if it was just plain miserable and there was no hope of it ever becoming a joyous union, she may not have had many options in the Minnesota of the late 1950s. 

Today, Minnesota is a no-fault divorce state with "irretrievable breakdown of the marriage relationship" as the only grounds for divorce. This is a good thing, especially for anyone in an abusive or loveless marriage. But this did not become law in Minnesota until 1974. When Kathleen left her husband and children, anyone wanting a divorce in Minnesota would have to prove that their spouse was guilty of one or another of a list of grievous offences toward the other spouse. If Kathleen's marriage was violent, her options were probably limited - the Domestic Abuse Act wasn't passed in Minnesota until 1979. Roe vs Wade, which enshrined the right to abortion in the US wasn't passed until 1973. The birth control pill was not approved by the FDA until 1960.

This is by no means a criticism of Minnesota or indeed America - the late 1950s and early 1960s did not exactly comprise a golden era for women in terrible relationships in most places. 

It could also have been the case that Kathleen was suffering from post-partum depression or she was struggling to cope with motherhood at a young age - again, she was living in an era where mental healthcare for new mothers was not exactly brilliant and, if this was the case, she may not have had many options, short of being dismissed with a bottle of pills or nothing at all by a doctor. She may have been fobbed off as "hysterical".

The 1950s was the start of a busy time for research into depression but it is debatable as to whether those findings would have turned into good treatment in Wabasso, Minnesota.  

Admitting that motherhood is difficult can still be a tough thing to do. The expectations have always been ridiculous, whether it was automatically engaging angelic 1950s motherhood mode or today when women are expected to be invincible supermums, juggling multiple commitments with aplomb while raising perfect kids. 

But Kathleen will never get the right of reply - all we have are testaments of people who have known her for a long time coming to her defence, people who are able to acknowledge that none of us are perfect.

Nobody reasonable would argue that going through the experience of one's mother leaving the family home would ever be easy. It would mess with the minds of young children in 1962 just as surely as it does today. But, with the benefit of the intervening 56 years of changed divorce laws and social mores, as well as better research into mental health and relationships, it is unfortunate that Gina and Jay do not appear to have benefited from the modern trend towards talking through family issues and seeking appropriate counselling. We may well be living in the age of the overshare, but when it means people actually communicate and seek sensitive, professional help for the problems that affect every aspect of their lives, that is no bad thing.

I remember spotting a book at home called The Heartache of Motherhood  by Joyce Nicholson - my mother bought it sometime in the 1980s, when I was in primary school and when my sister and I were probably more of a handful than we realised. As a teenager, I read Joyce's account of becoming a mother in Australia around the same time as Kathleen did in the US. She wrote of how she felt as if she didn't fit in with other mothers at social gatherings. She would gravitate towards men at parties so she could discuss something other than child-rearing, only to get told, sneeringly, that she "liked the men". It was easier to shame her rather than consider the boring truth that she simply liked conversation that was not about nappy rash.  

Joyce Nicholson did not leave her husband until she had been married for 35 years. Obviously, by that time, her children had left home and when a marriages ends after such a long time, people are generally a bit more sympathetic. "Oh well, you gave it a good shot," you'll probably be told in such circumstances. Joyce would not have been branded as an abandoner of children in the way Kathleen has been.

For my own mother, I am sure there were large swathes of the book to which she related. I remember one morning when I was about seven and my sister was about four, Mum became so frustrated with our constant fighting that she grabbed her car keys and handbag and said she was leaving us. She was a woman of her word, driving off in her Mini, leaving my sister and I alone in the house and aghast. She was probably only gone for about five minutes but it seemed like eternity to me. As a seven-year-old, I didn't yet have the logic to realise Mum wasn't going to be gone for too long or get too far with nothing but her handbag and an ageing car for company.

The incident is nothing like the experience of abandonment that Gina and Jay went through but I bet plenty of people will read that and be horrified at my mother's behaviour. I'm not. I don't blame her. I remember how awful my sister and I could be when we fought as kids. Something must have snapped. She just needed a few minutes to drive around the block and calm down. I am not psychologically damaged by it. That's a ludicrous suggestion.

There are probably plenty of mothers out there who have had the urge to drive away from their kids, even if it is only for a few minutes. Equally, plenty of mothers over the centuries have probably wanted to leave awful relationships even if it meant leaving children behind too. The very notion of maternal abandonment offends people so mightily because it's about women not fitting into the ideal of motherhood, that they are somehow belligerently defying nature if they have children and then realise it's difficult or depressing - or it was not the right decision because of time or circumstance.

If Kathleen was 19 today, her life may have been completely different. Would she have married so young? Would she have had two children in relatively quick succession? Would something drive her to leave her family? 

We will never know. But we can be pretty sure that, thanks to the age of the internet, we will probably hear from Gina and Jay again. One can only hope that they find some sort of peace in taking out a hatchet-job death notice and that perhaps they try and find out more about their mother's early life, even if it is too late to tell her she is forgiven.

Photography by Johannes Plenio

In defence of anger

People across the world are angry. They are rising up in response to the actions of President Donald Trump. And they are told that American politics are none of their business unless they are actually in America. Never mind that American foreign policy affects the whole world and we are part of the world, as much as we'd like to get off it some days. That sort of global view doesn't wash with the current tribe of Trump apologists.

Angry women in particular are being told to calm down, especially if they have the temerity to be angry while living in a western country instead of being angry in Saudi Arabia.

Apparently, women can only be angry if they live in repressive shitholes and therefore women have absolutely nothing to be angry about if they live in anything resembling a democracy. This always seems to come back to some intellectual bankrupt yelling "BUT SAUDI WOMEN CAN'T DRIVE!" as if western feminists think this is OK and as if none of us have ever spoken out about this, or countless other oppressions against women in Saudi Arabia and other restrictive states.

Apparently, women are not allowed to care about issues that affect the lives of women in countries other than the one they live in. 

Apparently, women who lead comfortable lives should just shut the fuck up and not speak out on behalf of our sisters in countries where they may not have a voice. 

Apparently, our ladybrains are so tiny, we can't care about more than one thing at a time in more than one place at a time.

Frankly, I've had enough. Mansplaining has reached Everest-like heights. In recent weeks, more than one man has tried to tell me I should hail Kelly Conway as a feminist heroine because she successfully managed a presidential campaign. Yeah, get back to me when you can tell me why helping a self-confessed sex pest win high office is some sort of victory for women. Equally, I am not about to get my blue stockings out in support of Theresa May's embarrassing sycophancy to Trump, something that could have been replaced by diplomatic caution if only we'd voted to stay in the EU.

Then there was the genius-with-a-penis who told me women were already equal where he comes from (Turns out he comes from India... Yeah, sure, honey. That is another column for another time as I'm sure my Indian female friends would agree.) and that we should wait and see what happens with Trump's reinstatement of the global gag rule and then we can "discuss" whether women should be angry about it. Never mind that there is plenty of evidence that girls and women in developing countries have suffered when funds that are used for essential healthcare are taken away for ideological reasons.

Today, some twat on Twitter told me that because I am a feminist, surely I must be a student, a vegan and unable to cook, Er, no, no and no.

And another bloke had a pop at me because I pointed out that it was poor media strategy for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour to do a public protest on the NHS on the same day as the women's march. Cue further explanations on how feminism should be done along with accusations that I - and by implication, other women - don't care about healthcare. Again, we are capable of caring about more than one thing. 

I'm the first to agree that I am not personally the victim of horrific oppression. I am nobody's sex slave. I can drive. I have a management job. I have access to every women's health service I need without cost. I don't need to ask my husband's permission to do anything. I married a man of my own choosing. I have money of my own. I dress how I please. I have an excellent life.

But why should I, or countless women like me, stay silent? Why shouldn't we speak out? Why shouldn't we use whatever platforms we can access to shine a light on issues we think are important? What is wrong with speaking out, especially if it is on behalf of women who are held back from doing so?

Of course, mass movements are always messy, not always coherent, and can be perceived as lacking focus. The women's marches which happened around the world in response to Trump's elevation to the office of POTUS were not always perfect. There were events where sex workers, trans women and women of colour felt excluded - these are issues that feminists need to deal with if they are to be successful about changing the world. But it is no surprise that there were conflicting views - that is the inevitable result of intersectionality.

And there was a very real sense among the women marching globally that this was not just about an obvious sexist ascending to power. It was a chance for more localised women's issues to come to the fore, for women to have a chance to speak out against multiple bees in multiple bonnets. There were women who took to the streets having never marched before.

The real challenge now is for people to take real action beyond the marches to happen. It is all too easy for people to look back on marches over the years and ask what was achieved. Wars still happened, it looks like the UK is still leaving the EU, last night's marches won't on their own bring down the Trump presidency.

But everyone who marched last night and the day after the inauguration showed the world that there are places where we have the freedom to publicly protest, to see where the power of free speech might lead, to set an example for countries such as Saudi Arabia where there is no freedom of assembly, to quite simply be heard. Hell, I'm a militant pro-choicer but I'll even throw the recent March for Life into the mix here - not because I am anti-abortion, quite the opposite, but because I believe that even those with whom I disagree have the right to peaceful protest. 

And that is what is happening - protests are making headlines, the pictures will live on in years to come, this will be taught in history classes in the coming decades. Actions are just as important as marches but, regardless of your politics, if you live in a country where angry people can march, where peaceful protest is a right, you should be proud and grateful. 

Photography by Chris Brown/Flickr

Keith Vaz and the veneer of respectability

Everything old is new again. There is a Conservative woman at 10 Downing Street. The opposition leader is reminiscent of Michael Foot. I keep seeing teenaged girls in jeans similar to the ones I wore in about 1986. And, thanks to Keith Vaz, we have a good old-fashioned MP sex scandal all over the front pages once again.

Vaz has a long history of slipperiness. Time and again, he has remained in politics despite multiple scandals and became the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee. But this latest scandal, exposed by The Mirror, involving male escorts, may well be the one that brings him down.

Based on the available evidence, Vaz has not broken any laws in relation to prostitution. It is not illegal to pay for sex. Soliciting is only illegal if it happens in a public place. It is not illegal for the escorts involved to accept payment for sex when it takes place in private or if they visit clients on outcalls. It does not appear that anyone involved in the party was underage. As far as we know, nobody was coerced or trafficked, although plenty of people have been disturbed by the text message exchange published by The Mirror in which the group plans to get a fourth man involved and Vaz texts: "Someone will need to break him tonight."

The poppers he took were not illegal. In fact, Vaz helped see to that when poppers were left off the list of banned once-legal highs in the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 and commented on their usefulness in facilitating anal sex. In the Mirror's sting, Vaz offered to pay for cocaine for two of the escorts but said he didn't want any himself. He could have been charged for carrying or buying the Class A drug if he had been caught handing over the cash in exchange for it or it was found on his person or in a bag he was carrying. But this does not appear to be the case either.

In short, most people are shocked because he has sold himself to the public as a married family man, a father of two who married his wife in a white wedding in a Roman Catholic church. Vaz himself is the one who created the veneer of supposed respectability.

Are we at a place in British society where the family man with a couple of kids is considered more respectable than an openly gay man? For the most part, most people probably don't give that much of a damn. Crispin Blunt, the openly gay Conservative MP for Reigate, outed himself as a user of poppers and this has not affected his political career. He is the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Ben Bradshaw is the popular, openly gay Labour MP for Exeter and his name is regularly cited as a potential leader, someone who might help steer Labour away from the hard left.

Coming out may not be considered an easy thing to do for a Roman Catholic man of Goan heritage. In India, homosexuality is still an offence and can be punished by a life sentence. It is unclear whether Vaz is gay, bisexual, likes men for sex but not necessarily for a relationship or whether sex with men is something he has started doing recently. We don't know if his wife knew any of this before the story broke, whether she was happy to help Vaz maintain his veneer of respectability (after all, she was heavily implicated in relation to interference with a citizenship application and a financial relationship with the Hinduja brothers at the centre of that particular Vaz scandal), or whether her inevitable embarrassment is now being compounded by complete and utter shock.

And the male escort sting may well be this scandal that finally ends his political career.

His backing of 42 days of detention without charge for terrorism suspects would not lose him too much support in these paranoid times. Like both Jeremy Hunt and Jeremy Corbyn, he has supported funding homeopathy on the NHS. This makes his an anti-science bunkum pedlar but it won't affect his career. He helped Anglo-Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi in his bid to avoid extradition to France to face fraud charges and he was a director of the British arm of Auchi's company, General Mediterranean Holdings. He has been suspended from the House of Commons for making false allegations about a former policewoman. He has been investigated by the Parliamentary standards watchdog over failing to declare several thousand pounds received from a solicitor. Shortly after being elected in 1989, he joined a march of Muslims in Leicester calling for Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses to be banned. So he is also a pro-censorship buffoon.

But he has censored his own life, edited his public persona and now he may finally come undone.

And here is where it gets interesting, here is where we find out what really shocks the British public or, more accurately, what attitudes still bubble below the surface. If he was more open about his sexuality, there probably wouldn't be the same level of vitriol and shock.

The Mirror's revelations have revived calls for Vaz to step down for helping shut down a probe in the 1990s into allegations of child sex abuse by Lord Janner, the former Leicester MP who died last December. In April last year, it was decided that because of his advanced dementia, he was unfit to stand trial on 22 counts of child sex abuse. But to link a scandal involving gay sex to a paedophile scandal that is entirely unrelated to Vaz's personal life is to perpetuate the harmful, awful lie that all male paedophiles are gay or to consistently link homosexuality to paedophilia. If Vaz really did stop justice being properly served in relation to Lord Janner in the 1990s, he should have stepped down a long time ago, regardless of what he gets up to private.

To bring up Lord Janner now, tying it to Vaz's latest scandal, is bogus, it builds yet another pathetic veneer of respectability that is as hollow as the one Vaz created for himself.

Vaz is also being accused of hypocrisy in relation to the Home Affairs Select Committee's recommendation that laws on soliciting and brothel-keeping be relaxed. The report found that while there was no clear evidence that decriminalising sex work reduced demand, it would make it easier for sex workers to report crimes such as assault and make it easier for sex workers seeking to quit the industry to change jobs. The report also recommended zero tolerance on exploitation. Vaz was quoted as saying it is wrong to penalise and stigmatise sex workers.

Is his own use of prostitutes enough to constitute a conflict of interest? After all, if there was a parliamentary committee into the effectiveness of, say, the NHS, something we've all used in this country, it would be nigh-on impossible to find someone whose views on the state of the nation's healthcare had not been coloured one way or another by their own experiences, either positive or negative.

Perhaps Vaz would have been more useful to the inquiry as a witness rather than the Chair?

Will the unearthed disgust at unfaithful husbands, at using multiple male prostitutes at the same time, at the lurid details involving a cavalier attitude to condom use, and even deep-seated homophobia mean the end of Keith Vaz? He may well be a hypocrite but, as far as we know, he has not actually broken any laws.

His political career should have come to an end years ago. He has developed a startling ability to climb down from his mountain of scandals and to thrive. But I suspect this one may be a bridge too far in the court of public opinion. We'll see.

Photography by George Hodan

"Lifestyle choices" - a term of belittlement

The angry online mob tore down the pregnant woman like a pack of anonymous wolves in need of a life. All she did was criticise fellow commuters for being reluctant to give up their seat for her. The way people turned on her, you'd think she had demanded to be personally chauffeured to work in a mink-lined Bentley at taxpayer expense.

She identified herself only as Lauren, a 31-year-old pregnant woman who was eight months pregnant and commuting between Crawley and London. On the Evening Standard Facebook page, the comments were a trip back in time, and not in a good way. Some morons asked what the hell she was doing going to work while she was pregnant, as if being knocked up means you automatically become incapable of working, suddenly lose the desire to go to work, or magically don't need the income any more. "My mother didn't work when she was pregnant!" was a common retort.

And then there were the people who said they shouldn't have to give up their seat because of her "lifestyle choice". True, there is no law in the UK that compels people to give up their seats on trains and buses for pregnant women, but it'd be nice to think we live in a society where good manners are still a thing.

But to merely describe pregnancy is a "lifestyle choice" is reductive. It is an insulting way to shut down debate, to demean pregnant women who are asking for just a little consideration as they gestate the next generation.

As someone who is militantly pro-choice, I support whatever decision a woman makes when she pees on the stick and it comes up positive. And when a woman chooses to carry to term, whether the pregnancy was planned or not, I stand by her and understand that sometimes accommodations need to be made, such as giving up my seat on the tube or being understanding if a pregnant colleague is late for work because she has a scan. It's called not being an arsehole.

Yes, I am talking about choices here, but I would not describe going through pregnancy and childbirth as a "lifestyle choice". That puts the rigours of maternity into the same box as buying a sports car or taking a skiing holiday. Someone fighting for the rights of people in sports cars to drive at whatever the hell speed they like would be met with ridicule, just as a petition to lengthen the opening hours of a bar in Klosters during the ski season would be roundly lampooned.

But a pregnant woman asking for a little common courtesy, for us to not degenerate into brutes, is not in the same category. To the people refusing to give her a seat because getting pregnant is apparently a "lifestyle choice", would it make any difference to you if she conceived through rape or if she had suffered multiple miscarriages and this was her last chance at motherhood? Would you parse her circumstances through your tiny mind before getting off your bum or are all pregnant women simply birthing babies for a lark, giving it the same seriousness that they'd give a trip to the seaside?

And would these same stubborn sitters give up their seat for someone on crutches on the train or bus? I'm guessing plenty of people would do so. What if that person was on crutches because they broke their leg on a skiiing holiday? Or is that "lifestyle choice" acceptable?

It's the same idiocy that leads people to talk about the "gay lifestyle". These people generally don't want gay couples to get married or have equal rights to heterosexual couples because they see it as condoning the "gay lifestyle".

Frankly, even if being gay was a lifestyle choice, so what? Why would anyone care if sexuality was a lifestyle choice and this led to two people falling in love and wanting to get married or having equal inheritance rights or end-of-life decision rights as a heterosexual couple? Why do bigots never talk about the "heterosexual lifestyle"? It is because they don't seek to diminish that of which they approve.

I suspect the "gay lifestyle" mentality gained traction because of stereotypes, such as gay male couples always having fabulous apartments (having cleaned the apartment of a gay friends while helping another friend house-sit for them, I can assure you they are not all living in spotless, minimalist abodes that belong in magazines...) or lesbian couples always being yurt-dwelling vegans (again, utter bullshit).

Once the word "lifestyle" is tagged on, there is a sense that it is silly, flippant, nonsensical, whimsical.

As such, it makes it easy to reduce gay couples to superficialities rather than growing up and recognising that a civilised society lets people marry whoever makes them happy, regardless of sexuality. And this same society also offers their seats when pregnant women board trains. That's the one I want to live in.






Image by Richard Davis

Marriage equality, Germaine Greer, and those who think of the children...

Ireland voted in favour of marriage equality for gay couples. Excellent news. Here's hoping my home country of Australia follows suit very soon. Many thought the power of the Roman Catholic church would be too strong but, given that just over 61% voted in favour, plenty of people who most likely identify as Roman Catholic also believe that if gay people want to get married, there should be no problem. Plenty of gay Roman Catholics will no doubt take advantage of this wonderful, historic change.

No Roman Catholic church in Ireland will be forced to conduct same-sex marriages. Nobody's religious freedoms will be impinged upon. Contrary to popular mythology, the Republic of Ireland does not have a state religion. It is known as a "Catholic country" because a lot of Catholics live there. Similarly, Turkey is a secular country that happens to have a lot of people who are Muslim, either observant or nominally so. The current government over there is doing all it can to piss on Ataturk's secular dream but, at the time of writing, Islam is not the state religion of Turkey.

The way in which the church will not be affected by same-sex marriage is a good example of why the further apart church and state are, the better it is for all concerned. Compare this to the absolute dog's breakfast that happened to the Church of England when the UK legalised same-sex marriage in 2012, except for the special snowflake that is Northern Ireland.

Maria Miller, who was at the time the utterly incompetent Culture Secretary, announced that the Church of England would be banned from performing same-sex marriages. The official religion of Great Britain would be exempt from this new law - which would be great, except that there are plenty of vicars in the Church of England in the UK and beyond who would love to perform same-sex marriages. This should be a matter for the Church of England to deal with as it sees fit. Whether this would mean a split in the church or a whole new church being formed is irrelevant. If the UK had separation of church and state, the Church of England could sort it out amongst themselves and there would be no daft ban enshrined in law.

In hindsight, marriage equality was inevitable for Ireland. In 1993, homosexuality was decriminalised and the age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual sex became equal. In 2009, same-sex civil partnerships were introduced. The sky didn't fall. Perhaps now Northern Ireland might consider going down the same path instead of being given absurd religion-based privileges despite being part of an allegedly united country.

The "No" vote campaigners in the marriage equality referendum's main argument (aside from the fringe-dwelling loons who used the irrational "Next, people will marry dogs and toasters!" non-sequitur...) was that to legalise same-sex marriage would spell a decline in the traditional family, that all children need a mother and a father.

However, since 2000, lesbians in Ireland have had access to IVF and now gay couples can jointly adopt both non-biological children and step-children. There are, no doubt, plenty of people in Ireland who are horrified by this. In general, these are the same people who are horrified by abortion and want to preserve the ban in Irish law.

If a lesbian in Ireland falls pregnant, either by accident or design, these religious conservatives would not give her the right to have an abortion and they do not want her to be happily married to her partner either. I guess the only thing that would make these people happy is to force such women to give up their babies for adoption. Because that worked so well in the era of the Magdalene Laundries. Yeah. You'll have to forgive me for not being entirely convinced by their concern for keeping families together.

There is now talk that this new era of progressiveness for Ireland could lead to legalising abortion, or at least loosening some of the restrictions. If this happened, again it should be a clarion call to Northern Ireland to change abortion laws so they're in line with the rest of the UK. Of course, this would lead to the inevitable cries from the conservatives about how gay marriage leads to abortion when, for obvious reasons, gay people are not particularly responsible for causing too many abortions anywhere in the world. Indeed, when gay couples decide to become parents by whatever means they choose, it is usually a spectacularly well-planned process resulting in much-loved, much-wanted children.

Which brings me to Germaine Greer, bless her. This week at the Hay Festival, she became the accidental hero of religious conservatives when she used the example of Elton John and David Furnish and their children as an example of the "deconstruction" of motherhood. Really, Germaine? The cult of motherhood is bloody everywhere, especially if you manage to look hot while you're doing it. That is where the deconstruction is going on, where mothers are being insulted and degraded on a daily basis. It's not being deconstructed because some gay men are now parents. And it won't be deconstructed because gay people can now get married in Ireland. Get a grip.

Motherhood is still considered by many to be the pinnacle of female achievement, as if women without kids have somehow not fulfilled their full potential until they have bred. I remember a time when that was the kind of attitude that would appall Germaine Greer. Did she not notice the unseemly womb-watching of the Duchess of Cambridge? Did she somehow miss the endless media fawning as Kate and William emerged from the hospital with Princess Charlotte in an idealised, heavily styled tableau of heterosexual family values?

For good measure, Germaine criticised IVF, the very process which helps gay and straight couples become parents. She had the makings of a good point when she said that in some places, women don't know what happens to all the eggs that are produced by IVF and this is something women tend to care about. This is not the case in the UK where it is made perfectly clear what will happen to each and every egg harvested in the IVF process and this should be the global standard.

But then she went on to claim that the 1967 Abortion Act was only introduced because of lobbying by the fertility industry. Did she not notice the women marching in the 1960s to demand the right to choose? Does she think they were all there because they were getting kickbacks from the fertility industry? There may well have been lobbying by the burgeoning fertility industry at the time but that does not change the fact that a lot of women wanted the law to change and are glad that it did. Apart from a failed attempt to tighten abortion law by Nadine Dorries in 2012, abortion in the UK is not a hot button political issue as it is in Ireland and the US.

The sting has been taken out of the tail of the anti-marriage equality movement in Ireland. Maybe the sting will one day be taken out of the tail of the Irish anti-abortion lobby too. But in the meantime, we have a curious world indeed where Ireland is doing better on gay rights than Australia and Germaine Greer is echoing the sentiments of groups who have spent decades being horrified by the loudest voices of feminism. In the midst of it all, the kids will probably be all right.

 

To the jihadi brides: Stop being so stupid and come home

Honestly, I just want to give Shamima Begum, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana one of my tough-love-cut-the-shit-and-get-your-act-together talks.

Something like this...

Shamima, Amira, Kadiza, you are three intelligent teenagers. You have everything going for you. You have been doing well at school. You have families who love you. You are not homeless. You have enjoyed the financial and educational advantages of growing up comfortably in Britain. And now you are throwing it all away to be "jihadi brides".

Do you have any clue what you are letting yourself in for? Being a jihadi bride is moronic. It sure as hell isn't romantic. Do you think you will be marrying handsome warrior princes like some sort of warped extremist Disney movie? Do you think you will have a choice in the men you marry? And once you are married to these repugnant men, do you think you will have choices about things such as when you have sex, how many children you have, whether or not you have to do tedious household chores, what you can wear, whether you can leave the house, what books you read, what you can see online, what music you listen to, who you can talk to?

You won't have any more choices. You will be silenced. You will become invisible. You will never reach your full potential. You will have no freedom of movement or speech or expression.

You will be marrying men who think women are inferior, who are profoundly anti-education, who use rape as a weapon of war on other women, who think that beheading people and burning people alive are perfectly acceptable things to do.

You will be marrying into a form of extremism that bears no resemblance to the lovely Ahmadiyyan Islamic community in my neighbourhood. The people who attend the mosque in my neighbourhood conduct themselves magnificently with their commitment to education for all, to working with the people of Merton rather than against them, to volunteer for a wide range of charities, to condemn and reject violence, to welcome non-believers as friends into their mosque, to be a part of Britain.

If you come home, you could be part of multicultural, positive Britain. You could join the people who seek to unite rather than divide our communities.

But instead you have chosen to be a part of an evil force that thrives on hatred, that depends on people hating all Muslims, that seeks to undermine everything great about living in Britain.

Here in Britain, you are able to go to school without fear of being shot. You can go on to university, again without worrying that some lunatic will gun you down for daring to be educated. You can marry for love. You can have a career. You can be a mother. You can drive a car. You can travel. You can vote. You do not have to marry the revolting men who are doing their best to make the world a horrific place. You can come home and appreciate how good you have it here in Britain.

I was once your age. And at that silly, wonderful age, I thought I knew everything and that the ridiculous things I did in 1992 were very clever and sophisticated. Like you, I did well at school but I was not a grown-up and neither are you. I am sure you think you are being very clever, daring and heroic. But now I am old enough to be your mothers and I look at the three of you and despair. I have more than 20 years life experience on you. I can see what you are doing and I can see how ridiculous you look.

It'd be easy for me to sit here in judgement of your families, to wonder out loud how the hell they didn't notice something was up. After all, fleeing the country to marry terrorists is an outrageous form of teenage rebellion. It makes sneaking into pubs, smoking a sly cigarette behind a bus shelter or wearing a parental non-approved outfit seem pretty pathetic. Teenagers are good at hiding stuff from their parents, especially their internet browsing history. There is not much to be gained by slagging off your very worried parents.

Governments, airports and airlines will look into how they can stop girls like you from leaving the country to do something as stupid as become a jihadi bride. Your legacy will not be one of religious heroism, exemplary devotion or piety. Your legacy might be something truly pitiful such as new regulations for unaccompanied minors travelling out of British airports. It will be on par with the regulations that require us to hand over nail clippers and 110ml tubes of toothpaste at airports after we've removed our shoes and belts. They will be the kind of regulations that are dubious in their effectiveness and cause people to irrationally curse all Muslims when they are trying to get on a plane to Alicante. For that you deserve a slow hand clap. You will help breed more stupid hatred.

So come home.

There is still hope for you. I believe in redemption and rehabilitation. I do not believe you should be locked up for life if you return to Britain. I believe that you are still young enough to build lives that do not involve joining a terrorist organisation. You three have taken teenage rebellion to a whole new level but you can still come back from this ridiculous path you've all taken.

Or can you?

I am not sure where any of you are right now, or who you are with, or whether you are safe. If you ever read this, I will be amazed. You may find yourselves in appalling situations very soon, unable to escape marriages to men who condone rape and murder. Your freedoms will be lost, your voices will be rendered silent.

But if any of you happen to read this, if you are not already entrenched in marriages that are about propagating violence, if there is any way any of you can turn around, please do so. You will not regret it.



Photo by ColinBroug

And a second World Of Stupid for the week. Just because...

Hot on the heels of yesterday's World Of Stupid, which led to someone deeming me a worthy contender for Moron of the Year for daring to say women in developed countries probably aren't menstrually oppressed, I figured I'd wade back in for some more fun...

Here are a few more examples of idiocy that need to be exposed.

1. Cyclists versus motorists versus pedestrians...
I work near the dangerous Vauxhall gyratory. And the reason it is dangerous is because every day, I see multiple examples of stupidity. Three weeks ago, I walked past the tent that covered the body of the latest cycling fatality on my way to the office. There are people who blame cyclists, people who blame motorists and people who blame pedestrians. Frankly, after three years of crossing the road at the Vauxhall gyratory en route from the tube station to work, I have decided that the stupidity is evenly spread across all three groups. For every sensible cyclist/motorist/pedestrian there is inevitably a dickhead cyclist/motorist/pedestrian.

Since 2011, I have witnessed the following: Drivers who are incapable of working out how to get out of the way so ambulances can get past, a cyclist who called me a "fuckwit" for crossing the the road when the pedestrian light was green, cyclists running red lights, drivers who think the gyratory is Le Mans, drivers who almost mow down pedestrians by accidentally driving into the bit for buses, pedestrians who don't realise that the brief lull in traffic at the South Lambeth Street lights is always followed by a rush of cars driven at warp speed, an old woman nearly getting knocked over when crossing against the lights, a woman who stuck her pram-with-baby out into the traffic as some sort of test run to see if it was safe to cross (Hint: It wasn't) and today at lunchtime, a bloke walked into me while crossing the road because his face was buried in his phone.

Basically, if people are going to stop dying here or at any other London accident blackspot, everyone needs to use their brains.

2. Hand-wringing over homeless spikes
The spikes outside expensive blocks of flats and a Tesco, aimed at deterring the homeless from sleeping there, caused much outrage a few weeks ago. And fair enough - treating homeless people like pesky pigeons merely moves them elsewhere. But this is not new. Narrow seats in bus shelters that are really only comfortable if you have a Kate Moss bum, park benches divided into individual seats with hard, metal armrests, reduced access to public toilets... There are all manner of surreptitious ways that the government and private companies have tried to deter rough sleeping and it has been going on for years. But all this really tells us is that (a) we are no closer to finding any real solutions for homelessness and (b) while the spikes outside a Southwark block of flats and a Tesco have now been removed, it won't stop them popping up elsewhere. And then they will probably only be removed if a resident of an apartment building drunkenly trips up on them, lest a lawsuit be filed by someone who can actually afford a lawyer.

3. Labour's lurch to the right
Instead of offering a genuine alternative to Conservative policy, Labour seems intent on mimicking it with a pinch of pandering to UKIP thrown in for good measure. Seriously, how is today's announcement about cutting Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) for people aged 18-21 (because suddenly 18-year-olds don't seem to count as adults...) any better than the Coalition policy of cutting housing benefit for people under 25? And like any populist policy aimed at appeasing the Daily Mail while cynically hoping that young people won't bother to vote, it doesn't actually do a damn thing to create any more new jobs.

Frankly, the owls-for-everyone accidental tweet by Labour today makes more sense.

4. Forced marriage made illegal! Except it already is...
With much fanfare, it was announced this week that forced marriage is illegal in Britain. Hurrah! Yay, human rights! Er, except that it is already against the law to force someone to get married. It is already the case that both parties to a marriage must do so freely and give their consent. And there is a glaring loophole in the law that makes it fairly easy for forced marriage to be hidden in a veil of legitimacy. People aged 16 or 17 can get married with their parents' consent. It doesn't take Einstein to work out how this archaic law could be easily abused. It would make more sense for the legal age for marriage to be 18 across the board. (Even though you're not really an adult at 18 under Labour's JSA policy...).

The only real change is that parents who force their children to get married can now be jailed for up to seven years, which seems like a reasonable punishment for a terrible crime against one's own offspring. But will this, as the Home Office claims, make people more confident about coming forward to report such crimes? Will children report their own parents or aunts or uncles more readily if they know they will face jail? Hell, will this law even be properly policed or enforced? Such laws are notorious for a low rate of prosecutions. You've only got to look at the rates of prosecution for female genital mutilation in the UK (no prosecutions in almost 30 years despite more than 140 referrals with the first prosecutions only happening in March this year) to realise that all the laws in the world are fine and dandy but they need to be accompanied by education, awareness, safe places for people to go if they come forward to report such crimes and then fear for their safety, and wholesale, fearless cultural change.



Photography by Peter Griffin

International Women's Day: The good, the bad and the smug...

It's International Women's Day. Should we celebrate? Be really angry about stuff? Argue about shit that doesn't actually matter? Ignore the whole damn thing and take a nap?

Every year, someone always asks why there isn't an International Men's Day. There is one on November 19. You can read about it here. But what about today? What are we meant to do about it?

Today, there has been an outbreak of women arguing over whether we should take our husbands' surnames if we get married. This was largely in response to this Jill Filopovic column in the Guardian - the insane thing is that I kept my name when I got married but I still think Filopovic wrote a smug and sneering piece that ends on an asinine note about Facebook.

Seriously, this nonsense has to stop - it is a debate for the privileged. Ironically, in many Middle Eastern countries, the kind of places often flagged up by western women as beacons of oppression, it is common for married women to not take their husbands' name. If you get married, take his name, don't take his name, go double-barrelled, blend the surnames, it's entirely your choice. And feminism is about respecting all women's choices, even ones you wouldn't make for yourself.

Moving swiftly along...

If International Women's Day makes people think about their attitude towards women, about how they treat women and how they can do better from this day forward, that is a good thing.

If International Women's Day raises awareness of serious issues and is the catalyst for people to actually do something about them rather than getting outraged for a day and then forgetting about it, that is a good thing.

If International Women's Day raises money for causes that help women, such as education and healthcare programmes in developing countries, that is a good thing.

If International Women's Day helps people realise that feminism is not about being perpetual victims and that feminists come in all shapes and sizes, that is a good thing.

But if the day is spent arguing over minutiae, when there are women who are truly suffering, and possibly even dying, because of truly oppressive conditions and because their rights have been eroded or never existed in the first place, we have a problem. When feminism is seen as smug women sniping at each other, trying to outdo each other and win some imaginary feminism trophy, we have a problem. That is when feminism starts to look stupid. That is when real issues fall by the wayside.

No matter what you do or don't do to mark International Women's Day, we will not wake up tomorrow to a world of gender equality, a world free of rape, a world where girls and boys have equal access to school education, a world where female genital mutilation has been consigned to the dustbin of history, a world where women are not trafficked into sexual slavery, a world where women everywhere have freedom of movement, a world where both sexes are treated equally before the law, a world of equal employment opportunities, a world where women and men will always earn equal pay for equal work, a world of reproductive freedom, a world where female politicians will be judged on merit rather than appearance, a world where girls and women are not forced into marriages against their will and so on and so forth...

Celebrate women's achievements today and reflect on how much progress has been made for many women in many places, by all means, but don't kid yourself that one day a year will make everything OK.   

Marriage equality and a long afternoon of talking...

At the time of writing, the House of Commons is embarking on a long debate on marriage equality - we will have an afternoon-long gabfest after which the bill allowing gay couples to marry is expected to pass. It is about time this happened although the bill is not without its flaws, chiefly that Church of England vicars will not have the option of marrying gay couples.

Culture Secretary, Maria Miller - who almost was brilliant on this issue and then jumped the shark on the issue of religious freedom - responded bizarrely when Green MP Caroline Lucas rightly pointed out that the Church of England will not be given the option of performing same-sex marriages. Miller said the Church of England is not being treated differently. Except it is. And she also said that the church has "different duties from other faiths; they have a duty to marry people." This is a moot point given that marriage is an important part of every religion that has a presence in Britain.

It turns out there are plenty of angry vicars out there who'd like the option of being able to marry same-sex couples. As it stands, assuming the bill is passed tonight, the right to say "no" to same-sex marriages will exist for churches, but not the right to say "yes". It will be interesting to see if Labour party policy for the next election will involve plans to reverse this part of the legislation, or if adjustments are made at committee stage or in the House of Lords.

Also interesting are American critics who say that the government should stay the hell out of marriage altogether - intriguingly, this is seen as a fringe argument to the bigger debate here in Britain. It seems that British people are quite happy to sign a civil document on their wedding day, regardless of the venue.

In the meantime, there are still people sticking their heads over the parapet with the usual non-arguments. It seems that every MP who is planning to vote against is doing so because of the Bible. If ever there was a solid argument for the separation of church and state in Britain ASAP, that'd be it.

And then there are the other idiotic arguments...

"Gay marriage? Next we'll be legalising incest!" No, we won't. Incest is currently illegal regardless of the genitals of the participants. This will not change.

"Gay marriage? Next we'll be legalising paedophilia!" No, we won't. Homosexuality is not the same as being attracted to children. Also, this ignores the high rates of paedophilia involving adults and children of the opposite sex.

"Gay marriage? Next we'll be letting people marry their pets!" No, we won't. This is a disturbing leap of logic and it equates animals who can't sign legal contracts with consenting adults who can. See also, "Next we'll be letting people marry toasters!"

"But the Oxford English dictionary defines marriage as being between a man and woman!" And dictionaries are not set in stone. This is why dictionaries are constantly being revised as use of language evolves along with society. If this is your best argument against marriage equality, you need a new dictionary. See also, "But the Bible says it's wrong."

"Teachers will be forced to promote gay marriage!" No, they won't. There is a difference between explaining what is legal in this country to school students of an appropriate age and actively campaigning for people to marry someone of the same sex. Anyone who tries this argument on fails to understand human sexuality.

"But what about fixing the economy? Why do we care about gay people getting married?" Uh, yeah, firstly tell that to any gay person who wants to get married and would like to see this last hurdle of discrimination fall. It's not about gay supremacy, it's about equality. Also, if our elected representatives are incapable of dealing with multiple issues, they are probably too stupid to be members of Parliament.

"Allowing gays to marry means straight people will be less likely to marry!" Say what? Giving someone else the right to marry will make me less likely to exercise that right? And I guess if they let women drive in Saudi, less men will learn to drive?

And now it is time to get the popcorn and see what unfolds this afternoon before the bill's inevitable passing at around 7pm tonight. A staggering 71 MPs want to speak on the bill so speaker John Bercow is allowing a maximum of four minutes each. It promises to be a long afternoon where enough hot air will be produced to end winter fuel poverty. But hopefully at the end of today, we can proudly say: "Yes. We live in a country where being gay is no impediment to getting married."

UPDATES (most recent at the bottom)

- Nadine Dorries (the whipless Conservative) has happened again. Without a blush, she has said that same-sex marriage does not require faithfulness and thus it is meaningless. She is labouring under the misapprehension that vows of faithfulness in heterosexual marriages are always effective... Ahem. As you were, Nadine...

- Jim Shannon (Conservative) is speaking against the bill because "the government should leave faith groups free from persecution." Ironic, given the only faith group who is actually being persecuted for their beliefs on this one is the group of Church of England vicars who want to be free to conduct same-sex marriages.

- Simon Hughes, the deputy leader of the Lib-Dems (who we've all heard of, right?) wants more time to be set aside for debating this bill. Superb!

- Sir Roger Gale (Conservative) made absolutely no sense with his incest analogy. None. At all. Not a bit.

- Craig Whittaker (Conservative) demonstrates for all the world to see that he fails to grasp that all marriages are first and foremost a civil contract and the religious bit is a matter of choice for individual couples.

- Labour MP for East Ham, Stephen Timms says he will vote against the bill because marriage revolves around children. He is given the smackdown very nicely by fellow Labour MP for West Ham, Lyn Brown who points out that he was at her wedding which took place after her childbearing years were over. Brown asked her colleague if her marriage is invalid. Timms then goes on to score a spectacularly asinine own goal by saying he was referring to church teaching from hundreds of years ago. Which is clearly so relevant to a debate that is happening in 2013. He is referring to an era when rape in marriage was still legal.

- Welsh Conservative Cheryl Gillam echoes Jim Shannon's idiocy on religious freedom...

- Jonathan Reynolds (Labour) and Stephen Williams (Lib-Dem) both talk sense. Hurrah!

- Conservative Mike Freer also talking sense and rightly calling out those who say same-sex marriage makes them feel sick.

- Labour MP Michael McCann joins Cheryl Gillam and Jim Shannon in the religious freedom chamber of buffoonery.

- Peter Bone would like a referendum on marriage equality added to the 2017 referendum on Britain's EU membership. Here's hoping that by then, this whole debate will seem quaint. And that politicians will quit saying "Let's have a referendum!" every five minutes.

- Peter Bone plumbs new depths when he says that today is the saddest day of his career as an MP. So not when cuts were made to the NHS or tuition fees put a university education out of reach for many or whenever Michael Gove has said anything about schools...

- And Sir Gerald Howarth adds to the growing crowd whose main objection to marriage equality is "I don't like it because the Bible says so!"

- John Glen, Conservative MP for Salisbury, says he has "tried hard" to reconcile himself to the gay marriage laws, but he cannot. He does know that if the bill becomes law, he doesn't have to marry a man, right?

He goes on to say he has "stood up to homophobic bullying" but "redefining marriage is the wrong way to tackle prejudice." I see. So removing a form of prejudice won't help reduce prejudice? Good to know!

- Fiona Bruce, a Conservative MP for Congelton, reduces the equal marriage issue down to very specific minutiae by speaking out on behalf of Christian guesthouse owners who are registered to hold civil ceremonies being forced to hold same-sex marriages. Here's the thing, Fiona - when you sign up to hold civil ceremonies at your guesthouse, you are signing up to hold them regardless of the law.

- David Burrowes, Conservative MP for Enfield Southgate, says redefining marriage to include gay couples would downgrade marriage. A law that would create more married people would downgrade marriage? Dave, marriage isn't the same as an exclusive club.

And like Peter Bone, Burrowes is "sad" about letting gay people get married. I'm sad about the downgrading of Lewisham Hospital, but hey, clearly I'm an emotional cripple.

- Stewart Jackson, a Conservative MP, reverts to Daily Mail-speak in lieu of an actual argument when he says that marriage is being "smashed at the altar of political correctness." He then says he is "personally offended that David Lammy, a Labour MP, used civil rights campaigner Rose Parks to justify the argument that gay and black rights are similar."

Stewart, here's a fun game for you. Say out loud: "I oppose black people getting married." And then say out loud: "I oppose gay people getting married." And then ask yourself whether one is more offensive than the other and, if you seriously believe the answer to that question is yes, ask yourself why.

- David Simpson, a DUP MP, actually uses the pathetic "it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve in the Garden of Eden" argument to oppose marriage equality. Wow. He has actually used an ancient allegory that also tries to convince us God made the world in a week, that women were made from a bloke's rib, and a snake talked two naked people into eating an apple and thus we are all evil sinners.

Simpson also says that marriage is a matter for God, not government, a popular argument against marriage equality put forward by many American conservatives. But in this context, in Britain, it seems weird and out of place.

- Sarah Wollaston and Stuart Andrew, both Tory MPs, speak in favour of the bill and restore some hope for humanity after much idiocy this afternoon. Wollaston, a self-described "non-believer", has received much "hateful" mail suggesting gay people need treatment. She eloquently speaks out, saying: "Homosexuality is not forbidden love and it is time this House recognised that. And that you cannot be a little bit equal."

At last! Some secular sanity!

Stuart Andrew, an openly gay MP, says he has been coming to terms with his sexuality and his faiTh for many years and says he would like to "live in a society that does not discriminate. But I do want to secure personal choice for marriage as well as religious freedom." A moving speech indeed.

- An another sanity failure, this time from Northern Ireland's Ian Paisley Jr, who says same-sex marriage is "against the nature of life and is not close to being on par with marriage between a man and a woman." He also goes on to say marriage is "not defined by love" but hastens to add that he loves his wife. Awkward...

Nice one, Ian! Let's go back to the days when marriage was merely a transaction, or something kings and queens used to do to secure power and conquer other countries. Yay, traditional marriage!

- Commonsense from Tory MP for Battersea Jane Ellison as she says religious people do not own marriage. Finally, someone who understands history and isn't in the business of bothering God!

- And, kapow! Andrew Selous, Tory MP for South West Bedfordshire, starts clutching his pearls over "the collapse of family life." Clearly, it's not all those heterosexual couples breaking up that harm the children. Oh no, it is gay couples causing all this to happen!

Selous thinks he is being dead clever by pointing out that David Cameron once said Britain is a "Christian country."

Yes, Andrew, Church of England is that state religion, but it does not hold sway over the population in the same way, say, Islam does in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. This is a country with freedom of religion, which not only gives non-Christian faiths the right to establish themselves here, but also guarantees freedom from religion for those who are not interested. Church attendance is not compulsory, there is no compulsion to state your religion on government forms or human resources forms, as is the case in the United Arab Emirates (just ask a former colleague of mine who wrote "atheist" on a form for HR...).

We can pretty much agree on certain items in the 10 commandments, such as the one about not killing and the one about not stealing, because they are dick things to do. It doesn't mean we all need to believe there is one God and if any of us want to worship false idols we can. Also, being a "Christian country" has not resulted in the "thou shalt not commit adultery" commandment being followed fanatically, especially by certain MPs.

- Oh joy. Matthew Offord, a Tory MP for Hendon, opposes the bill because polygamy and bigamy are potential future implications. Can he provide any evidence that there is a groundswell of support for legalising polygamous and bigamous marriages in Britain? I am going to go out on a limb and say no.

- Thank you Crispin Blunt, an openly gay Tory MP for Reigate, for welcoming the bill and being personally grateful to everyone who has campaigned for gay rights over the decades. So glad to live in a country where this can be said openly in parliament without fear. Thank you also to Gavin Barwell, another Conservative supporter of the bill, for saying that marriage equality will not undermine marriage.

- And with the vote now less than an hour away, three more Tory MPs, John Howell, Ben Gummer and Kris Hopkins, have spoken in favour of the bill.

Therese Coffey, Conservative MP for South Coast, however, is opposed. She says: "People who work for councils will not be able to discriminate." Huh? People who work for councils are already barred from being discriminatory. She has also started pushing the family-procreation barrow. She clearly hasn't noticed that gay people come from families and can already be parents by a number of different means.

Bizarrely, although in keeping with other MPs who have seen fit to use ancient examples despite it being 2013, Therese Coffey tweeted this: "It was Henry VIII who criminalised homosexuality by law in 1533. Catholic Queen Mary repealed it. Elizabeth I reintroduced it."

What is her point? That she wishes more modern day Catholics were like Bloody Mary? That she supports a separation of church and state in Britain given Henry VIII's apparent homophobia? I have no idea but I'd love for her to get in touch and enlighten me on her weird little history lesson.

Good grief, can we just vote on this already? The idiocy levels are starting to go nuclear.

- Is there anything more mealy-mouthed than the abstentions? MPs cannot formally abstain but can vote for both sides to show they are sitting on the fence. Such as Andrea Leadsom, Conservative MP for South Northamptonshire, who is voting "yes" to show she supports gay rights but also "no" because the thinks the legislation is ill-considered (on the quadruple lock for the Church of England, she would be right...) but also because the government does not have a mandate for it. I'm pretty sure they don't have a mandate for systematically privatising the NHS by stealth either, but hey ho...

- Bob Blackman, Conservative MP for Harrow East, is opposed to the bill. Guy Opperman, Conservative MP for Hexham, is in favour and says the House is "on a journey".

- It's a rare day that I am moved by multiple Tories but my hat is off to Iain Stewart, Conservative MP for Milton Keynes South, for sharing his poignant coming-out story.

"I often recall the day a few years ago when I finally plucked up the courage to tell my parents that I was gay. I began the conversation with the line, 'You know, I'm never going to be able to marry.' I used that form of words just as a way of broaching an awkward conversation and I didn't really think much of it at the time. But I often reflect on them and it makes me very sad that for so long that was a factually correct statement."

- Kate Green, shadow equalities minister, reminds the House that marriage is not just about procreation. Thank you, Kate! She adds that what children need most is "stability and love". The good news is that gay parents are just as able to provide this as heterosexual ones.

- MPS NOW VOTING! RESULTS EXPECTED IN 15 MINUTES!

- PASSED WITH 400 VOTES! Now for the House of Lords to do the right thing...

British readers, check here to see how your MP voted.

And behold! The Merciless Prism of Equality! This wins the internet.


Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com

Another world of stupid because there's just so much of it...

My Zero Tolerance of Idiocy policy is already taking a hammering this year. Here's a summary of the latest tidal wave of stupidity to come my way. Honestly, stemming this tide is like trying to stop a tsunami with a tampon...

1. Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham has wondered out loud if sugary breakfast cereals, such as Frosties, should be banned.* No, they shouldn't. This is a free market economy and there is clearly a market for Frosties. Yes, sugary cereals are gross - but the responsibility for what goes into the mouths of British kids lies with parents. How about education, awareness and parents taking the time to read the nutritional information on food packages? It is all there on the box where anyone can see it.

If reading labels on stuff you are going to feed your children is too hard for you, you're not going to win a Parent of the Year prize any time soon. Assuming the parents of Britain are that stupid and lazy, perhaps a clear, brightly coloured label should be introduced for foods high in sugar, salt and fat. To make it really clear that Sugar Puffs contain sugar. Frankly, there should be a stigma associated with feeding your kids nothing but Sugar Puffs for breakfast, when healthy cereals are just as affordable. But if you're an adult, you have every right to eat whatever the hell cereal you like.

And there's nothing to stop you putting sugar on your kids' All-Bran when you get home. Or perhaps we just need to ban sugar as well. And The Great British Bake-Off...

2. Ann Coulter, queen of non-sequiturs and false equivalencies, says that if the names and addresses of gun owners are made public, as suggested by some Democrats, then it is only fair that the names and addresses of women who've had abortions should be made public too. There's idiocy all round here. Publicly naming gun owners could backfire, if you'll pardon the pun - burglars may target houses of people they know to be unarmed, or if an intruder wants to target the house of someone they know to be armed, they'll probably just rock up with a gun of their own. Guns should be registered**, but it isn't terribly productive to have the list easily available via, say, a Google search.

Equally, the details of women who have had abortions should not be available for all the world to see because, just like records for any other medical procedure, it's nobody's damn business.

3. Prince Charles has stuck his head over the parapet and said he is concerned for the future of the planet, especially as he has a grandchild on the way. That's great, Chuck. How about you start by telling your mother she probably doesn't need to drive a Range Rover. And you could always set an example by flying economy class when you travel internationally and insisting your family does likewise.

4. And while we're on the topic of royal ridiculousness, Prince Charles is apparently*** also concerned that the consequences of allowing a firstborn daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to ascend to the throne or allowing heirs to the throne to marry Roman Catholics haven't been properly thought through. Good grief. The fact that this is still being discussed in 2013 is beyond absurd. Republic, anyone?

5. And while we're on the topic of non-news invented by the Daily Mail, that excuse for a newspaper is still trying to create a controversy where none exists over Jack Whitehall's jokes on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year. Not content with reprinting the allegedly offensive gags and trying to imply that Gabby Logan and Richard Ayoade were uncomfortable with it all, the Mail published a bizarre article about the price of houses in the Whitehall family, ex-girlfriends of Jack Whitehall's father and other such stalker-like material. Did Jack Whitehall spurn the advances of someone in the Dacre family?

6. And speaking of pearl-clutchers, there has been a predictably hysterical reaction to an excellent article about paedophilia in the Guardian by Jon Henley. The charge of poor reading comprehension was led by ex-MP Louise Mensch who started a Twitter storm over it all. Except the article doesn't actually condone paedophilia or say it's acceptable. Henley has instead offered a balanced, even-handed account of how there is still much disagreement among experts on paedophilia, its definition and its consequences - and why understanding paedophilia is important when finding ways to protect children. Read it here and judge for yourself.

7. I've received a press release for wedding chests. Wedding chests that cost £2,600, to be precise. The press release, spruiking on behalf of Tom Aylwyn, claims this is a modern take on the wedding chests of old. Except it's not. It's still a box in which to put housewifely stuff. This seems a bit insane if you've already moved in together. And even if you haven't shacked up, surely you'd rather spend £2,600 on useful stuff for the house rather than a goddamn box.

Here is one of the chests. You can't even sit on it without getting a weird pattern on your bum...

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* Despite this idiocy, I'd prefer Andy Burnham to be Health Secretary instead of Jeremy Hunt. Yes, Jeremy Hunt really is that unsuitable for the job. Or for Parliament.

** Yes, I know criminals will always get their hands on guns, but that is not actually a reason to give up on registration.

*** This is according to "friends" of Prince Charles who told the Daily Mail. So it could be a total load of bollocks. But my point still stands that such discussions should have ended some time in the 16th Century.