deep and Crisp and even

More exciting news from the world of Crisp - they're making a sequel, An Englishman in New York, which was the title of the second part of Quentin Crisp's memoirs; though I can't hear that phrase without humming the Sting song inspired by it.

Alas and alack

John Coulthart's excellent blog and website have disappeared - temporarily I hope. Oddly though, the RSS feed still seems to be working. I hope this is not a case of ISPs getting prissy and prudish. All URLs under the www.johncoulthart.com domain currently redirect to http://esc01.midphase.com/suspended.page/

Bring it back, bring it back
Don't take it away from me
Because you don't know
What it means to me...

there's nothing magical about fathers

The Guardian reports on the discussion of whether lesbian couples should be allowed IVF treatment:

But "there's nothing magical about fathers," says Susan Golombok, professor of family research and director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, and co-author of Growing Up in a Lesbian Family. "Fathers who are very involved with their children are good for children. But fathers who are not very involved - they aren't as important, and can even have a negative effect. It's a very simplistic notion to think that fathers are important just because they're male."

Don't boys need male role models? "The thing is that fathers make absolutely no difference to their children's development of masculinity or femininity," she says. "Studies that have looked at single-parent families have not found that boys are less masculine or girls less feminine. In fact, it seems that parents make very little difference to the masculinity or femininity of their sons and daughters. The peer group is more important, and the stereotypes that are around them in their day-to-day life. Even in families where parents try hard to influence their children's gender developent, where they try to stop their sons being very masculine, for example, and try to make them more gender-neutral, actually find that whatever they do makes no difference whatsoever. Fathers are important more in terms of emotional wellbeing, not in terms of role models."

As for the lesbian issue, says Golombok, "There's now been more than 30 years of research in Europe and the US, that has found very consistently that children raised in a lesbian household are no different from children in heterosexual families, both in terms of their psychological adjustment, and also in terms of their gender development, and in terms of their relationships with other children.

In (neo-, meso- and paleo-) Pagan societies, there are and were many models of bringing up children (and many models of gender). Some tribal societies don't bother to keep track of who is the father of which child; some are patrilineal, some are matrilineal. In India, they have a saying that "It takes a whole village to bring up a child." We should be much more worried about the loss of the extended family, and the tribal community in which a child can get advice and help from any member of the community, not just its parents. The 'nuclear family' model seemingly advocated by the Conservative party is claustrophobic and probably dangerous to children on the grounds that abusive practices can happen within the four walls of the home without anyone else finding out (especially if the family is outwardly respectable). Other traditional societies have extended families to share childcare. Even if a child did need a role model of the same gender (which Professor Golombok's research seems to show is unnecessary), you could aways have a gay couple and a lesbian couple sharing the parenting.

So we need to rethink our society's model of what a family is; and we also need to rethink the primary position we give to gender in considerations of many issues where it is irrelevant.

Of course, individual dads may well be very magical indeed - but it's not their maleness that makes them so, but their unique style of parenting.

Go California!

Yay! The State of California has re-legalised same-sex marriages. I particularly like this bit of the ruling:

there can be no doubt that extending the designation of marriage to same-sex couples, rather than denying it to all couples, is the equal protection remedy that is most consistent with our state’s general legislative policy and preference

Also available from the New York Times (with photos of happy couples celebrating).

And according to the BBC,

The decision is expected to re-invigorate the fight for same-sex marriage rights nationwide, say gay activists and legal experts.

This makes me so happy.

IDAHO

Tomorrow I am going to IDAHO:

There are 77 countries in the world today where it is a criminal offence to be gay. These countries punish women, men and children because of their sexuality and in seven countries the punishment is death.

An International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) provides a platform for everyone to make a powerful statement to demand improvements for the quality of life for LGBT people both overseas and here in the UK. The 17th May can be used to raise awareness of homophobic issues that are negatively impacting on people’s lives and to showcase success stories where a positive change has been achieved.

IDAHO, the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, takes place on May 17th every year. It was on this date, in 1990, that the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from their list of mental disorders.

a new decalogue

Pope Crys at the Complaints Department has issued a list of commandments. This seems like a fun thing to do, so I'm going to join in...

1. Thou shalt not exceed thy carbon footprint
   
2. Thou shalt worship Ceiling Cat and all his furry minions
   
3. Thou shalt not build inaccessible webpages
4. Thou shalt not wear too much perfume in a built-up area
   
5. Thou shalt not drum into the wee small hours
6. Thou shalt not write interminable bad poetry
7. Thou shalt not put the toilet roll back-to-front on the holder
8. Thou shalt not pollute thine ears with Chris de Burgh
9. Thou shalt honour LGBT people, especially the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
10. Thou shalt not publish thy rants upon YouTube, unless they are about contraventions of the first nine of these commandments.
    

Justice is done

I am extremely glad to hear that the evil Westboro Baptist Church, who spew hate at funerals of both gay people and soldiers killed in Iraq (claiming that God is punishing America for its "tolerance" of gays - not that it is entirely tolerant towards us) have been fined $10,900,000 for their actions at the funeral of Matthew Snyder, a soldier who was killed in Iraq. As they have been behaving like this for over a decade, it is a shame that it has taken their appearance at soldiers' funerals for something to be done about it. Fortunately the good people of Angel Action have been there from the start, shielding the mourners from the hate-mongers.

If the mere mention of the evil of Westboro has left a bad taste in your mouth, then I recommend a visit to the SoulForce website, which is all about LGBT and straight people of faith working together to end prejudice and discrimination against LGBT people.

Romaine Patterson, founder of Angel Action

crisperanto

Shockingly, the youth of today seem to have no idea who Quentin Crisp was. Even the gay youth of today. Ooh, they don't know they're born. And they evidently don't speak crisperanto. Surely the wittiest and most charming man since Oscar Wilde. A friend of mine called him on the phone in New York once, and Mr Crisp invited him for tea. Apparently Sting's song An Englishman in New York is about him, as well.

gay animals

The Oslo Natural History Museum has put on an exhibition of photos of lesbian, gay and bisexual animals. I saw a programme on Channel 4 about this a few years ago - apparently there are thousands of hours of footage of gay animals which never make it into the natural history documentaries in case it upsets the poor little viewers' delicate sensibilities.

So what if the motivation behind the exhibition is political? People need to be made aware that it's natural to be gay. Some evil bastard in the southern states of the USA beat his dog to death for being gay, so it's a matter of preventing homophobic cruelty to animals as much as preventing homophobia against people.

I know a couple who have a lesbian cat. I also remember the documentary on the BBC where David Attenborough claimed that a female dolphin was "buzzing" another female dolphin to see if she was pregnant, when it was obviously done to give pleasure.

Online exhibition of gay animal photos