|
|
In Scotland and, to a much lesser extent, England and Wales, a debate is raging, the main purpose of which is for as many people as possible to try and prove they're a bunch of bigoted morons. The focus of this debate is the proposed repeal of Clause 28, part of (I think) the Education act. The clause itself bans the promotion of the acceptability of homosexual relationships. You or I, being intelligent people, realise that this clause is a bad thing and getting rid of it is a very good thing, however, there are people that aren't quite as intelligent and seem to have completely the wrong idea as to what repeal would mean.
This is all thanks to a gentlemen called Brian Souter, an extremely rich man and owner of the Stagecoach bus company. He's also, surprise, surprise, a devout Christian and has a habit of spouting biblical rhetoric whenever Clause 28 is mentioned. He's the founder of the Keep the Clause campaign and, along with the Daily Record, the propagandist in chief and general spreader of lies about what would happen if Clause 28 was actually repealed.
It's not actually that much of a surprise that around about 2/3 of the country are against the repeal, given the amount of negative publicity that the Keep the Clause campaign has been giving to it. As far as they're concerned the minute the Clause is out of the picture pupils will be forced to indulge in anal sex in front of their classmates, teachers will be coming in dressed like the village people and preying on the young children, and however many members of the class will be forced to become gay so as to satisfy the statistical average. This is clearly bollocks. But it is genuinely what is believed by the more prominent members of the campaign.
Brian himself is clearly a man who doesn't have the brains he was born with. Actually, thinking about it, he has exactly the same brains he was born with. They haven't developed much beyond a primary school mentality so he's still the sort of person that considers being called gay one of the worst insults that can be conferred upon a person. This is about as much of an insult as being called blue eyed when your eyes are green.
One of the arguments about keeping the clause is that homosexuality can and indeed, already is discussed in schools. With this being the case why do we need to get rid of it. This is fair enough up to a point, except that homosexuality cannot be discussed in anything other than negative terms. Should a child at school have a gay member of their family, they will be told that he or she is a freakish unnatural person and should be sent out of their family and forced to live a life of shame and poverty for daring to test God's wrath. They would no doubt also be told that the shame will be passed down throughout all members of the family for the next ten generations. It's pretty much the same train of thought that considers menstruating women to be dirty and not allowed to cross running water.
What is slightly interesting is the double standards that this has brought up. The same people who believe that gay people should be strung up by the balls (and it's always gay men who are talked about. Gay women are generally considered to be erotic as long as they're good looking. But then, there are a certain group of men who believe that if a womam won't go out with them they're gay) until they learn to use their penis in the manner god intentded, are exactly the same people who will happily watch the slightly camp antics of Michael Barrymore. They'll enjoy the slightly risque comments of Julian Clary. They're exactly the same people who will talk about how brave it was of Stephen Gately and George Michael to come out, despite being in the public eye. As they do this, they will happily forget the fact that it is their attitude towards those of a sexuality different from their own that caused them to put off coming out until they were forced to due to circumstances beyond their control
However, this campaign of misinformation does have a serious side with it's attempts to make homophobia a respected way of life. The Daily Record is getting worryingly close to advocating gay-bashing and is attempting to claim that all those support the repeal of clause 28 are not only gay, but evil creatures, spawned from Satans scrotum and determined to force the children of Scotland to listen to the Tom Robinson band and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. They think there's going to be a campaign of breaking kids wrists so that they cam have a suitably limp wrist. This is clearly bollocks. I am straight and am quite happy for kids to grow up listening to any sort of music as wrong as it's not bloody Lolly. I just think that kids at school should be made aware of all aspects of modern society. I also want a society where people who write into a newspaper and say "If gays are orchestrating a ban on Stagecoach buses then that makes me even happier about travelling on them" should be treated with the contempt they deserve, rather than, as they were in this situation, treated like a beacon of common sense.
And so, with Stagecoach, we return to Brian Souter, the man who has a worryingly large bee in his bonnet about this whole affair. And also worrying large pockets. He's bankrolling the campaign, to the tune of millions of pounds. Quite why he wants to spend this sort of money when he could have easily gotten a bit of cardboard, a marker pen and using the marker pen (well, we need to make this simple. Brian clearly isn't the brightest button in the box) written "I'm a homophobic twat. I am an idiot. I am a fool. I have more money than sense and feel the need to prove my imbelicity to a watching world" and achieved exactly the same result for a lot less cash.
Unfortunately instead of doing that he decided, first of all, to set up a poster campaign which basically said "We, as a bunch of bigots, clearly know better than a bunch of politicians. Listen to us. We're better. All gays bugger little boys. And probably dogs as well." Unsurprisingly the politicians at the Scottish parliament ignored this campaign and pushed ahead with the first stage of getting the repeal through parliament. Keep the Clause, seemingly undaunted by the fact that the intelligent sectors of the country were treating them with the contempt have no decided to stage a referendum on the issue to get the views of the Scottish public. This they claim will not only a)prove to the the Executive that we're all against the repeal, but also b)force the Executive to not only keep Clause 28, but upgrade it so that being gay in a public place becomes an offence. Punishable by death.
It's just a shame then for Souter that this so called referendum is a complete and utter farce. First of all it's not a referendum, it's an opinion poll with only one side of the argument doing any advertising for their cause. It's similar to some company asking you whether you've seen their advertising and asking you if it swayed your opinion in anyway. It counts for nothing. Secondly their distribution is a little bit ummm... skewed. They claim to be using the Electoral roll from 18 months ago. So, ignoring the fact that that is rather out of date, the majority of the electorate should still be getting ballot papers? Well... I know for a fact that I'm on the roll at that time at my current address and I haven't recieved a ballot paper, in fact no-one in my household has recieved a ballot paper either. Or indeed, anyone I know. But this is OK though as it all balances out as a number of people have recieved more than 1 paper. One person has so far recieved 39 and a car showroom has recieved 200. Yep. That's what I call a democratically sound ballot. So the ballot is already not worth the paper it's written on, and that's before we mention the fact that the vote is not secret, there are no mechanisms to stop people getting hold of extra ballot papers, it's an affront to democracy and so on.
But, assuming you have recieved a ballot paper you might be wondering what to do with it. Well, one thing you could do is choose whether you would like to "Repeal Clause 28" or "Retain Clause 28" which is how the ballot paper puts it. This is not qite the question that Souter wished to put on the paper. His orginal draft was "I am a good true god-fearing Christian who loves children more than life itself. The last thing I want is for their pure minds to be tainted by thoughts of unnatural acts. Please keep Clause 28" or "I am an evil child hater, even more evil than the Child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. As I fill this form in I am forcing a young child to lick marmite off my private bits. Please repeal Clause 28 and let Satans minions take over the earth". However this was felt to be slightly too biased towards their campaign. But if you are thinking about actually filling in the form and handing it back then I hope you are the sort of person who stops and chats to those people in high streets that are doing market research surveys as that is all this is. If you normally walk past them claiming you're too busy then don't fill it in. You don't normally do opinion polls, why do one now?
Some people have been advocating putting your ballot papers straight in the bin which is a fine, fine stance. Treating it with the contempt it deserves is always good, but personally I reccommend just sending back the reply paid envelope completely empty as this way you not only show your contempt for this pointless and offensive ballot, but it also wastes more of Brain Souters money. OK, so he doesn't really need much help to waste it, but it's always nice to lend a hand every now and then. But no matter what you do with your paper, don't even let the thought of voting against the repeal even cross your mind. Don't let the bigots win, and don't let Brian Souter consider himself to be anything but a sad, bitter and twisted man. We're doing this for the children.
