Gay marriage

Although I am in favour of honouring the commitment of faithful gay couples to each other both by the state and the church, on a par with marriage, I remain ambivalent about government changing language at a stroke. Nowhere have I found a better explanation of my unease than in this article:

"Why Gay Marriage is not Marriage

To refuse homosexuals the opportunity to marry is on first sight discriminatory.  Why shouldn’t two people of the same sex who are fond of each other be allowed to marry?  It seems unfair and stigmatizes such relationships.  So ‘let them marry’ goes the argument.

Before examining the fundamental flaw in this argument, it is worth pointing out that there are restrictions on contracting marriage for heterosexuals as well. A man may not marry his daughter or other close female relative, however much they love each other.  A woman cannot marry more than one husband (at a time!), or a man more than one wife (at a time!).  Children under 16 may not marry.  So sexual attraction does not establish a universal right to marry

Now these unions are not banned capriciously, but because they do not fulfil some of the essential qualifications for marriage as traditionally understood.  Marriage is not something that involves only the couple concerned but the wider society as well.

If we consider not just the couple involved or even a particular society, tribe, or nation, but the good of the whole human race, we will note that its survival depends on sexual intercourse.  Every human being has a genetic mother and father.  One sex cannot reproduce on its own: a male and a female are both required to produce a child.

It is possible to envisage a ‘state of nature’ where relations between the sexes were completely unregulated, where people could enjoy sexual intercourse with whomever they liked, whenever they liked.  This would doubtless ensure the propagation of the human race by the birth of many children.  But instinctively we know that this would be a recipe for chaos and anarchy.  The Don Juans would have a ball having it off with whichever female they fancied.  But who would be disadvantaged?  Most probably the women and children would fare the worst.  Women would be reduced to sex toys and children would be neglected.

That this is not an imaginary scenario is demonstrated by the experience of the French and Russian revolutions, which promoted cohabitation instead of marriage.  The Russian Family Code 1926 encouraged cohabitation without marriage and allowed very easy divorce.  Contemporaries described it as a condition of free love.  But soon revolutionaries like Lenin, who had instigated the disparagement of marriage, realised their mistake as families disintegrated and women and children were abandoned.  Supreme court judges demanded an end to marital anarchy and urged the strengthening of the family.  This led to an edict in 1944 making divorce and cohabitation more difficult.  In 1959 civil wedding ceremonies were introduced in a further attempt to enhance the status of marriage.

This episode in Russian history illustrates an essential function of marriage: it is more than official recognition of a couple’s affection. It exists to restrain the strong from exploiting the weak and to produce a stable environment for children to grow up in. Or in the old-fashioned language of the wedding service, it is designed for procreation, the restraint of sin, and mutual love and support.

In this perspective marriage’s central function is to secure the survival of the human race both biologically and culturally in relative harmony.  This is why gay marriage is not marriage, as the couple by themselves cannot contribute to humanity’s survival.  A same-sex couple cannot by themselves produce any children: only through the aid of a third party can they have one to bring up.  Such a child will at best be related to one of the couple and not be the proof of the affection between the parties as it is in a true marriage.

For these reasons a same-sex union is not what people mean by marriage.  Gay people may enter a civil partnership to make a public declaration of their love, but renaming civil partnerships as marriage will not achieve the traditional goals of marriage, most notably the orderly survival of the human race. Civil partners already have all the legal rights of married couples. Calling a civil partnership marriage will not change biological facts, but it will upset traditional married couples, when they realise that the word marriage only refers to a public declaration of their love." (Professor Gordon Wenham)

Tonight, the Lords vote on the Government's proposal. May they be wise.

One Wednesday in Woolwich

I think it was the late Margaret Thatcher who talked about denying terrorists "the oxygen of publicity". In that she was wise.

The media machine and Westminster politicians have gone to town over the act of savagery that took place on the streets of Woolwich on Wednesday. It was a bloody and brutal crime with a young father being hacked to death in broad daylight and his murderers showing no remorse, but rather the reverse. It was an egregious crime. The two young men clearly wanted maximum coverage for what they had done and for their godless slogans of hatred. They clearly wished to be numbered with the dishonourable company of terrorists. And thanks to the media and the united declarations of our politicians - indeed of no less an ally than President Obama - their wish has been granted, beyond, I imagine, their wildest dreams. No doubt they will wear the title "terrorist" as an accolade for their rest of their incarcerated lives - with satisfaction.

What we actually witnessed too many times on Wednesday was no more than a grubby vicious murder by a pair of deluded and feral young men, who dressed up their murder most foul as a political quasi-religious act. The very broadcasting of the murderers themselves was questionable. The repetition of it ad nauseam was merely dancing to their agenda and in my view played to the basest instinct of voyeurism. The elevating (if elevation it is) of the crime to an act of terrorism has been merely to achieve the young men's aim on their behalf, to instil fear. The continual media headlining of the incident merely maintains the spotlight (as, in a small way, I admit, does this - my only comment on the subject).

The East End Imam, Ajmal Masroor, potently denounced the murderers on Sky News. I can't find the clip on YouTube, but the terms he used were very similar to his reaction to the tube bombers in 2005:

An imam talks about so-called terrorists, which is well worth listening to. 

From the Levison enquiry we learned about the positive symbiotic relationship that can exist between press and police - where the publicity given by the press is able to help with official investigations. In this case it seems that the publicity given by the two estates of government and the press have merely added oxygen to a horrible immolation on the streets of Woolwich. It wasn't great news. Last year about a hundred people were murdered in London. But Wednesday was a tragedy for one young man, Lee Rigby, his wife, Rebecca, their toddler son, Jack, and their close family. And they probably don't need to have the details of Lee's death endlessly pored over by the rest of us. May they all have some peace.

Where angels fear to tread

People sometimes ask me if I've ever been to Israel - or to the Holy Land. And the answer is that I have, in 1966! That was before the Six Day War, when the political map so radically changed. As a family we did something which would be impossible nowadays, I suspect: drove overland across Europe, through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, in a black Ford Consul 375, spending a week in East Jerusalem (as it then was) before crossing through the Mandelbaum Gate into West Jerusalem (as it then was). The political arrangement seemed to be working quite peacefully, as far as I in my teenage  years could tell. However the uneasy equilibrium was destroyed when less than a year later Israel launched preemptive strikes against the perceived threat of hostile forces gathering on all its borders.

I'm not one for pontificating on the rights and wrongs of the present situation in the Middle East. I do suspect that meddling by external "powers" only exacerbates the mess. The British establishment has not learned the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, it seems, with its careless encouragement of the Syrian uprising over two years ago. I've just been listening to Katie Melua's thoughtful song:
"If a black man is racist, is it okay
if it's the white man's racism that made him that way,
'cause the bully's the victim, they say?
By some sense they're all the same,
'cause the line between wrong and right
is the width of a thread from a spider's web...". Apportioning blame is a mug's, or a thug's, game.

One thing I am certain of is that isolation and non-communication is not a productive policy. Which is why I am sorry that Stephen Hawking has decided not to attend a conference next month in Israel. At first it was announced "for health reasons"; then it was because of a boycott of Israel by British academics - New York Times report. It's sad, because dialogue is always more productive than silence. It's ironic, because the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem appears to be on the threshhold of a breakthrough in an ethical stem-cell treatment for ALS/MND (from which he and I suffer) and other neurodegenerative diseases, and I personally wouldn't want Israel to boycott me or fellow MND patients with the fruit of their research. A further irony is his nifty speech-generation device which is so well known as his "voice" has at its heart "a fiendishly clever silicon chip that was designed in . . . yes, Israel" (Rod Liddle, in The Sunday Times yesterday).

I much prefer the Jewish conductor, Daniel Barenboim's approach with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which he co-founded in 1999 with Palestinian American, Edward Said, which brings together musicians from all over the Middle East, including Israel and Iran. "The aim of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is to promote understanding between Israelis and Palestinians and pave the way for a peaceful and fair solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Barenboim himself has spoken of the ensemble as follows:
'The Divan is not a love story, and it is not a peace story. It has very flatteringly been described as a project for peace. It isn't. It's not going to bring peace, whether you play well or not so well. The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance. A project (for) the fact that it is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it. I'm not trying to convert the Arab members of the Divan to the Israeli point of view, and [I'm] not trying to convince the Israelis to the Arab point of view. But I want to - and unfortunately I am alone in this now that Edward died a few years ago - ...create a platform where the two sides can disagree and not resort to knives.'" (Wikipedia) 

I was recently sent a link to this fascinating YouTube clip about Ulfat Khaider, an Arab-Israeli athlete. On Facebook, she's described as reaching high peaks "not only as a mountain climber, extreme sportswoman and volleyball player (she played for the Israeli national team), but as a remarkable woman striving for peace": YouTube Ulfat Khaider. This comment followed on Facebook: "Et on dit qu'il y a l'apartheid en Israel?! Pas seulement qu'il n'y a pas d'Apartheid, bien au contraire: dans quel pays arabe elle aurait pu devenir la champion qu'elle est? la femme libre et moderne qu'elle est? Bravo Ulfat et merci!" (And they say there's apartheid in Israel! Not only is there not apartheid - quite the contrary. In which Arab country could she have become the champion she is? The liberated modern woman that she is? Bravo and thanks!)

I try not to be naïve about the complexities of the Middle East and the Palestinian "question". Of course, I don't know the solution, but I would say, whether you're a scientist, musician or sportsman, that fighting ignorance is the better way than colluding with it. In Barenboim's words, "It is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it." 

Family-friendly government

If you choose to stay at home to bring up your children or care for your aged parents or an ailing spouse, things don't look too good for you, after yesterday's Queen's Speech. They were already looking grim for you, in fact, as a result of the government's child care plans.

Should you choose to do anything as old-fashioned and quaint as to keep your children at home until statutory school-age or even forego employment so that you are there when the kids come home from school or available when they are ill, it will affect your state pension - for the worse. How come? Hitherto, when you were a stay-at-home mum up until your children finished at school (or aged 20 if they were still in education), you were counted in on your husband's national insurance contributions (in effect his salary counted as both his and yours, which of course is what it was). That meant that the years you were busily employed caring for your children counted towards your state pension. This could be worth up to £66 per week, plus pension for years when you had been in employment up to a maximum of £110 per week. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/may/07/pensions-bill-flat-rate-changes-married-couples)

The new scheme will discriminate against those who stay at home to care for their children, as the state pension will be based solely on your national insurance contributions from employment. It's yet to be announced what the minimum number of years' contributions will entitle you to any state pension (between seven and ten?). If it was seven, you'd get £28.77 pension a week. Less than that, you'd get nothing. To me this sounds as though the Government, for all its fine words, sets no value on mums or dads staying at home for the sake of their children. Certainly the usual pattern of family life has changed since the 1940s, but the jury is still out on the benefits or otherwise of that change for children. Incidentally I heard this proposal first mooted, leaked, poisonously on the BBC as a measure to prevent immigrants cashing in on our welfare system - no contributions: no pension.

This morning I heard Laura Perrins, barrister and stay-at-home mum, talking on Woman's Hour about the Government's discrimination against people like her. She hit the headlines in March taking the Deputy Prime Minister to task over the double injury inflicted on those in her situation by the new child benefit and childcare policies. As a barrister married to another barrister, she took a big cut in income to stay at home. Since her husband earns over £50,000, they are now no longer entitled to child benefit (Fair enough, they thought; times are tough), even though couples who are both out at work earning up to something over £90,000 are entitled to child benefit. To add insult to injury, the Budget introduced a provision for up to 15 hours' free childcare - but only where both parents are employed.

To quote Laura in her exchange with the oleagenous Nick Clegg:

"Well, Mr Clegg, child benefit was a fair way of recognising everybody's legitimate choice either to work outside the home or to work inside the home. You've essentially abolished that for families like me and replaced it with this, which applies only to mums who want to go out to work.

"I've absolutely no problem with mums who want to do that – there are plenty of my neighbours who do that and I support them fully. But they also recognise that I do a difficult job at home, and by taking away our child benefit and not replacing it with anything you are clearly discriminating against us.

"And then, secondly, in relation to the 15 hours of free childcare or the free early-years education, which I knew you would say ... that doesn't just help stay-at-home mums, that is as you know a universal education provision that is for the children, not for the parents. That's like saying free primary education helps mums, or free secondary helps stay-at-home mums

"There is absolutely no provision within the tax system to help families like myself, and our family is no doubt a net contributor to the Exchequer.

"I just feel that this provision is to bump up the GDP numbers, because if I was looking after someone else's children that would count as a GDP number, which is all that I think the Treasury care about. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing." (Stay-at-home mother, Laura Perrins, talks to Nick Clegg)

I seem to remember Mr Cameron trumpeting his intention to lead "the most family-friendly government Britain has ever had". Well, it seems to promote the model of family of its leaders, where both parents go out to work and "delegate the care of their children to paid strangers" (Milli Hill, Letter to Nick Clegg), and to penalise the alternative. So much for the espousal of "choice" that we hear so much about. Choice - but it will cost you dearly. Of course it won't cost our PM or his deputy or his cabinet for whom state pensions and childcare costs are irrelevancies.

Spring hopes

Woke up this morning to hear a cheerful dawn chorus, notably blackbirds, with robins and pigeons in the background. Our small garden isn't a great wildlife haven but it's nice to be reminded that spring has arrived. In fact we were at a young friend's wedding in Oxford on Saturday, bathed in sunshine on the banks of the Cherwell river. It is true that spring is not as advanced this year as sometime, but I gather that fruit-farmers regard it as good news and anticipate good crops - assuming the bees survive the neonicotinoids. Certainly it seems to be a good year

The bride's mother embracing Jane

for primroses and the daffodils and narcissi in our garden. 

Contra yesterday's Countryfile on BBC1. Usually it's Tom Heap who specialises in doom and gloom, and, if we've recorded it,  through whose Cassandra-like reports we tend to fast-forward. However, yesterday it was the normally sanguine farmer Adam Hanson who was bemoaning the weather. Fair enough, he looked like losing his field of over-wintering oil-seed rape, but it won't actually ruin him. He had the gall to describe it as "a disaster" (originally a cosmic event of the destruction of a star). For one thing in our climate nature has a way of compensating - think of last year's transition from drought to flood. For another, it won't actually render him destitute. And for a third, did he not watch the wonderful programme also by the BBC, The Toughest Place to be a Farmer, in which Devon dairy farmer, Richard Gibson, went to work with a Samburu farmer herding cattle in the desolate northern part of Kenya?

As the write-up said,  

BBC photo

"British farmers have suffered from low milk prices and squeezed margins but it is nothing compared to the struggles of Richard's host, village elder Lemerigichen. In recent years drought has decimated the herds in this region, forcing many Samburu off their land and into the poverty of local towns. Richard launches himself into an alien lifestyle - sleeping rough in the wilderness, drinking cow's blood and digging and digging to find water. The two men form a touching bond through the love of their animals and the basic drive to support their families, whilst Richard gains an insight into what it is like to tend a herd when surrounded by lions, leopards and hyenas." In producer, Hannah Griffiths' story of meeting Lemerigichen, she wrote, "he’d lost cattle to drought, his brother to tribal warfare and a child to illness. He’d fought bloody battles to protect his herd, gone for days without food and water in times of drought and suffered prejudice and abuse when he’d gingerly ventured 200 miles to the city to find paid work. Yet he never gave up."  

Don't mistake me. I do not belittle the reverses that farmers have suffered this year, least of all the tragic loss of livestock that many hill-farmers have sustained. The sight of mounds of sheep carcases waiting to be disposed of from the Welsh border farm was shocking and distressing, and must have been devastating for the farmer, Errol Morris, whom we saw dragging yet another two of his decimated flock across the snow. It must take real courage to pick oneself from yet another reverse inflicted by the weather or by disease, and like Lemerigichen and Errol, never to give up. It's the farmer's territory, fate and gift. I trust and believe that better is to come. I hope so.

"Untouchable" - an antidote to self-pity

I have just sent this review off to our PMA/PLS newsletter; so if you normally read that, don't read on!
Our friends, Mandy and Charles, lent us the DVD of Untouchable (originally Les Intouchables, in French), saying they thought we'd enjoy it. We watched it last night with two very good friends. What a good evening, sharing Masterchef-winning food and a rich red Spanish wine. I wouldn't say I wet myself, except with tears of uncontained laughter down my face. It's an excellent film and a refreshingly sane view of disability, and Steve and Bev are such great fun.

We’ve just watched Untouchable for the second time.  It had me helpless with laughter on occasions – which is remarkable as one of the two main characters is a sad quadriplegic widower and the other is a fostered alienated gang-member from the Paris suburbs.  As the French title implies, both are examples of society’s outsiders.  They both are “untouchable”.  The film is based on the true story of Philippe Pozzo di Borgo (“Philippe”) and his carer, Abdel Sellou (“Driss”).

There are so many memorable scenes, it’s hard to pick out highlights.  It starts with a hilarious car chase through Paris at night, and then we see how the partnership began, with Driss simply looking for evidence for his job-seekers’ benefit.  His total unsuitability appeals to Philippe, a multi-millionaire disabled in a paragliding fall, who clearly and unsurprisingly is a difficult client.  There follows an unsentimental and funny induction for Driss into the business of caring, from exercises to compression stockings, from showering to evacuating bowels! 

Meanwhile you watch how their differing cultures and personalities (though they are both strong) enrich and change the other, and how in a sense they redeem each other’s hopeless lives.  I don’t want to give more of the plot away, but there are two bits of dialogue which remain with me.  One is when Philippe is being warned off Driss by his lawyer-friend who has “made enquiries” into his dubious past of petty crime.  “These street guys have no pity.”  Philippe replies, “That’s it exactly.  That’s what I want.  No pity.”  The other is near the end when Driss, reemployed after being sent to sort his cousin out, has driven Philippe to the seaside to a smart hotel, and is shaving off his beard – he’s “let himself go” in Driss’s absence – .  Philippe says, “A quick cut would settle it.”  Driss is unmoved, just replying, “You’re in great shape.  I love it.”  There follows a great scene in which he experiments with various styles of moustache, and then comes the film’s dénouement, which I won’t divulge.  What Driss learns for himself and then insists for Philippe is that we are not fated to be victims. 

I do think it’s the most positive and affirming film about disability I’ve watched, and for me has been a great antidote to self-pity.  It’s beautiful, gritty and funny, with lots of witty dialogue.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

It's sad, I feel, that all of us, however disabled, do not reject victimhood, and insist on life even in the minutiae of existence. After his conversation about pity, Philippe goes on to say, "True, he (Driss) isn't compassionate for me. But he's strong, with arms and legs. His brain works; he's healthy. So, for the rest, given my 'state', as you call it, his background and so on, I don't give a shit." It strikes me this is a different way of looking at compassion from that bandied around so freely in the media and among the mass of phoners-in to radio shows. Driss does not show the sentimental "I feel so sorry for you" mentality which so often passes for "compassion". That is not what Philippe is looking for or needs. He needs pragmatic compassion, which is the word Driss adopts to describe himself, pragmatique. That is true compassion, standing with someone, through thick and thin, and doing practically all you can to enhance their life. It seems clear that we're in for another round of pro-euthanasia campaigning with Paul Lamb's identifying himself as the late Tony Nicklinson's unnamed co-litigant this week and Lord Falconer limbering up for another attempted round of legislation in the Lords. Watch out for that wishy-washy sentimentalised use of the C word! It's not true compassion. It's a substitute emotion, not the real thing. In occupied Jersey during the war, they used to grind up lupin seeds to make ersatz coffee. Well, beware of ersatz compassion. Watch Untouchable to see what true caring really looks like, how gritty and how positive it is.

Readjusting perspectives on disease and death

I enjoyed this picture which I saw on Facebook this week. 

Talking of which there was a very counterintuitive blog from Dr Kate Granger, the young elderly medicine specialist who has a rare aggressive form of terminal cancer. I listened to an interview with her by Stephen Nolan on Radio 5 a couple of weeks ago. She really is a remarkable and winsome character. Her post on Monday was entitled "Is cancer inherently evil? I think not...".

She wrote: "On our DSRCT (her form of cancer) Facebook page there are several patients and parents of patients who post regularly about how they are going about 'beating the tumour' or 'conquering the beast' afraid 'to give up the fight'. The treatments in the US are particularly barbaric with multiple intensive chemotherapy sessions, frequent surgery, radiotherapy and trials of newer treatments. It is as though people are expressing their anger and grief about the situation by blaming the cancer itself. I find this hard to do myself. This is going to sound really strange but I quite admire my cancer. It’s a clever entity that has fooled my body conning the usual systems that living organisms have to suppress tumour growth. When I look at histology slides of DSRCT I cannot help feeling it is somehow beautiful. Maybe I’m just weird!

"However it does raise the point that cancers originate from within us as human beings and therefore by referring to them as evil do we think as ourselves as evil? I think not. I think of my cancer as a part of me and it is unfortunate it has happened to me at a young age, but I cannot change this so acceptance and living as well as I can for as long as I can is definitely going to be my game plan, rather than waging a holy war…".

I do, by the way, recommend her whole blog, http://drkategranger.wordpress.com/, which is quite the most insightful and paradoxically beautiful writing I have come across on a subject which usually makes for rather grim reading. She didn't profess to a particular faith when Stephen Nolan asked her about life after death, though she admitted to believing that there is something "more than this" - perhaps partly from her experience of palliative medicine.

At the other end of life, and very much from within a faith tradition, a friend drew my attention to this moving story from Italy, Goodbye for young mother who died for her unborn child. It comes from June last year and concerns a young couple, Chiara and Enrico Petrillo, who had lost two babies with birth defects. "In 2010, Chiara became pregnant for the third time, and according to doctors the child was developing normally. However, Chiara was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and was advised to begin receiving treatment that would have posed a risk to her pregnancy.

"Chiara decided to protect the baby – named Francisco –  and opted to forgo treatment until after his birth, which took place on May 30, 2011." She survived a year.

Enrico, the boy's father, is quoted as saying, when his son grows up, he will tell him “how beautiful it is to let oneself be loved by God, because if you feel loved you can do anything,” and this is “the most important thing in life: to let yourself be loved in order to love and die happy.”

“I will tell him that this is what his mother, Chiara, did. She allowed herself to be loved, and in a certain sense, I think she loved everyone in this way. I feel her more alive than ever. To be able to see her die happy was to me a challenge to death.”