The question-and-answer session had started in unremarkable fashion.
As the 50 members of the public at the police liaison meeting were handed their electronic handsets to take part in a survey, an official told them: 'Let's start with an easy question to get us going.
'Press A if you're male or B if you're female.'
But it seems nothing is ever that simple. Someone asked: 'What if you're transgendered?'
'You could press A and B together,' quipped Conservative councillor Jonathan Yardley.
Not exactly incendiary humour, is it? If this is all it takes to get in trouble with the police, then free speech in England really is taking a battering.
Here is a more detailed description of what happened to the councillor:
He was then contacted by Tettenhall sergeant Mark Evans, who asked him to attend a meeting at the village’s police station with city centre Inspector John Smith.
Councillor Yardley said: “They put me through the mill and asked me to confirm what I’d said and told me that a complaint had been made and I could be prosecuted. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. They explained the legal process and what had happened and how the complaint had been made and they said I could be subject to a civil prosecution.”
How could this happen? I'm assuming (I could be wrong) that the councillor was threatened under "hate speech" legislation passed only last year:
The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 amended Part 3A of the Public Order Act 1986. The amended Part 3A adds, for England and Wales, the offence of inciting hatred on the ground of sexual orientation ...
In the circumstances of hatred based on religious belief or on sexual orientation, the relevant act (namely, words, behaviour, written material, or recordings, or programme) must be threatening and not just abusive or insulting.
If this is the relevant legislation, then consider how quickly it has been used as an instrument to drive a political agenda, rather than to deal with anything remotely "threatening". The legislation was only passed last year, but already it is apparently being used by the police to intimidate someone responding to a situation in a normal, light-hearted way.
Such laws are instruments of social engineering and should be repealed.
The police are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that some nit actually lodged a complaint under these provisions is bad enough.
But if the cops didn't step through the process, imagine the squeals and wails about dereliction of duty.
"Tell me Inspector - but without interviewing him, how did you know Councillor Yardley is not some vicious gay-bashing neo-Nazi ? After all, he is a Conservative and Complainant X states they were offended and terrified by his remarks ?"
And Complainant X is probably offended by every remark made by Tory pollie Yardley - but this is the easiest lever to use to deploy the power of the state against the political opposition.
And it probably fills out the day for the cops in an easier way by giving Councillor Yardley the third degree rather than, for instance, tackling anarchists head on in the streets during the G20 protests.
Seriously, duelling should never have been outlawed.
ReplyDeleteIf the gays want to intimidate everyone else, they should be forced to do it with duels.
Make an offensive joke at a gay party? Have them immediately issue challenge, proffer a choice of sabers, and fight it out to the death. It was good enough 500 years ago and it's good enough today.
Obtaining one's self identity and self worth based on a defensive and blatantly proffered sexual "orientation" or position in the human order is sad and self-defeating. Gays know that today no one in a white collar setting would DARE make a snide remark about their homosexuality. Yet this traps them because they are thus surrounded by egg shells much of the time.
ReplyDeleteAre those around them truly accepting of their demanding imposition? Without using their sexuality as a tool for manipulation or superfluous expression they might discover an entirely different basis for relationships with others.
April Fool's? I guess not.
ReplyDelete"Tell me Inspector - but without interviewing him, how did you know Councillor Yardley is not some vicious gay-bashing neo-Nazi ? After all, he is a Conservative and Complainant X states they were offended and terrified by his remarks ?"
True enough, isn't it? Would it kill the councilor to keep his mouth shut? Who else does he figure it's appropriate to go around making public jokes about, ie intimidate? If cavemen like this councilor refuse to learn some common courtesy they'll have to be disciplined.
What's the conservative principle in play here, Mark? God said fags and trannies are wrong?
The only one I've ever been able to think of is Permission vs Promotion. Conservatives might permit (heck, even like) fags and other deviants but liberals insist on promoting them -- flaunting them, shoving them down your throat, constantly, constantly, until you're so confused you forget what is normal, what isn't, which way is up, which way is down. (Where liberals are wrong is that there is most likely an innate component of the revulsion most people have for homosexuality -- if they dispute it, let them prove it by bending over.)
The current storyline of "Home and Away" is a good example. Burly (blonde, blue-eyed -- naturally) rapist is cowed by runway-hot female copper. Copper becomes the love interest of rapist's lesbian victim. Copper initially rejects her [not the first time said lesbian has been rejected on the show]. Unable to cope with the dejection, lesbian leaves town [not easy being a lesbian]. Copper tracks down lesbian and saves lesbian's life. Copper is forced to confront the "hurt" she has caused lesbian. Reconsidering her "feelings", copper leans in and plants one on lesbian's lips [anyone can be gay] [male viewers in unison: all right!]. Stay tuned for the steamy finale.
'True enough, isn't it? Would it kill the councilor [sic] to keep his mouth shut? Who else does he figure it's appropriate to go around making public jokes about, ie intimidate? If cavemen like this councilor [sic] refuse to learn some common courtesy they'll have to be disciplined.'
ReplyDeleteOh dear...
Look. What you're defending here (don't deny it, you are, even if you don't realise it) is a legislative agenda that establishes and enforces manners. It is like criminalising burping at the table. These things may may be discouraged in polite society, but if you want to codify them in criminal law, then you will create a legislative and judicial tyranny.
Moreover, your alikening the making of a joke to intimidation smacks of the typical liberal hyper-over-sensitivity on progressive pet issues. By your own standard, the humour at the end of your own post makes you a 'caveman' too, does it not? Or are you exempt from your own high benchmark of public sensibilities?
Besides, anyone who get's 'offended' at a joke like the one in this example needs to be treated by a pathologist, not be given access to the police services. It's a mystery to me that people who spend their evenings getting their back-sides pounded would be so sensitive anyway. If you can take a foreign object in your colon, you should be able to take a whole lot less.
Sue me.
That's actually a pretty good joke. And I'm willing to bet that it was just some bastard public servant who thought they were doing good, and who took offense on the part of gays (and it's a nice political manouvere, isn't it, to try and take out the opposition by legal means instead of going through all the effort of beating them at the ballot box).
ReplyDeleteI reckon 99.9 per cent of homosexuals and transgenders wouldn't take offense at this at all.
Bullshit incidences like this will work well for the Tories come next election - it's bound to backfire on the PC brigade.
ReplyDelete(Where liberals are wrong is that there is most likely an innate component of the revulsion most people have for homosexuality -- if they dispute it, let them prove it by bending over.)
ReplyDeleteThat's the single most revolting comment I've seen all year. And no, I don't find gayness revolting.
Nobody will convince me that ejaculating into the anus of another man is 'normal' or somehow equivalent to procreation. This is inherently, patently, obviously a psychosexual dysfunction. Period. No debate. It's self evidently true. Therein the revulsion.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite easy to like things which are defined as 'abnormal' or 'unnatural'. I like coffee, but drinking a mixture of hot water and ground beans which have been previously roasted over a hot flame is not particularly natural. How I must revolt all those poor delicate souls who only do that which is 'natural' and 'normal'!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteLook. What you're defending here (don't deny it, you are, even if you don't realise it) is a legislative agenda that establishes and enforces manners. It is like criminalising burping at the table. These things may may be discouraged in polite society, but if you want to codify them in criminal law, then you will create a legislative and judicial tyranny.
Kilroy, nobody ever goes around physically bashing burpers or people with bad table manners, so there is no need for the law to take an interest in protecting them. Fags and trannies, on the other hand, have been and I'd be willing to believe still are the targets of physical and verbal abuse. Laws against publicly mocking them are certainly open to abuse but their mere existence is hardly the equivalent of suffocating judicial tyranny.
I don't really buy that the authorities were simply tripping over themselves to slam somebody with the new legislation if they only managed to snag this conservative "luminary" twelve months after it was enacted. (And what was the upshot? Was he clapped in irons or just given a stern talking to?)
By your own standard, the humour at the end of your own post makes you a 'caveman' too, does it not? Or are you exempt from your own high benchmark of public sensibilities?
I was obviously kidding around. I don't like the idea of regulating speech but I've long been troubled by any principle I could oppose it with in cases where it seems warranted and largely benign.
Nobody will convince me that ejaculating into the anus of another man is 'normal' or somehow equivalent to procreation. This is inherently, patently, obviously a psychosexual dysfunction. Period. No debate. It's self evidently true. Therein the revulsion.
And yet people do it. They've always done it and they'll probably always do it. Fags and trannies are here and they're not going away and they deserve a bit of peace. You don't have to like them (I sure as hell don't), but I really cannot see the point of targeting them at all. It's entirely proper to protest having them shoved down your throat, but don't conservatives have more pressing items on the agenda than registering their disapproval of homosexuality per se for the ten millionth time?
PS - look up the accepted spellings of 'councilor'.
It's quite easy to like things which are defined as 'abnormal' or 'unnatural'. I like coffee, but drinking a mixture of hot water and ground beans which have been previously roasted over a hot flame is not particularly natural. How I must revolt all those poor delicate souls who only do that which is 'natural' and 'normal'!
The "normalness" objection is a non-starter. If it's natural for some people to feel an innate urge towards homosexuality it's just as natural for others to be innately repulsed by it and that's all that really needs to be said.
Dear oh dear -people defending homosexuality on a 'conservative' blog.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to know why western society is so f**ed, look no further than 'conservatives' defending and promoting homosexuality.
Here's the deal - if you defend or promote homosexuality, you aren't a conservative - you are nothing but a delayed liberal. In fact, the liberals thought homosexuality was normal 50+ years ago whereas some 'conservatives' are only embracing it now. This makes you a stupid delayed liberal.
What exactly is the point of being a 'conservative' if you simply end up agreeing with the liberals 50 years later? Either conservatism is a philosophy made up of core beliefs or it is nothing.
Guess what 'conservatives' - the MAJORITY of people accept big government and the welfare state. In fact pretty much the entire western world is based on this model so I guess then that the only thing to is for 'conservatives' to now also embrace big government and welfare - it's the 'popular' thing to do.
TimT thinks that just because one person find things revolting, doesn't mean they are wrong. But there is a good reason we find certain practices revolting - things like bestiality, incest, pedophilia etc. But I guess because some people don't find those things revolting, they must also become part of our big tent 'conservative' philosophy. Tax cuts and free horse sex - a surefire electoral winner.
As for Silver, I seriously hope this person is a member of the Greens or some other equally useless left aligned party. Never have I heard such touchy feely emotional claptrap masquerading as an argument.
So what if homosexuality has been around since the beginning of time? So has murder, so has rape, so has stealing. We don't consider those behaviours worthy of respect or promotion.
So what if people have an 'innate urge' to commit homosexual acts? Pedophiles also have 'innate urges' So do serial killers. But we as a society realise that certain behaviours should be constrained because it is not in the common interest of society that they be promoted.
The same should go for homosexuality. If two people are gay and want to screw each other - fine - do it in your own home. But dont call that 'normal', dont demand respect, dont claim that it is a 'marriage'. We are well beyond 'tolerance' here. Hello - we are at the point where people are now being questioned by police for expressing opinions contrary to the Moral Doctrine of the Left. Spanish Inquistion anyone?
In the vast majority of human cultures, homosexuality has been banned, condemned and suppressed. In every single major religion (and no, left wing social justice Christianity is not a religion), homosexuality is viewed as immoral - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism etc
Why is that? Why did nearly every single cultural tradition develop a prohibition against this behaviour? And no, it's not because every single person since the beginning of time was a bigoted homophobe. It's because humans have realised through experience what happens to a culture when homosexuality is promoted.
Note I said 'promoted'. Homosexuals have human dignity, just like everyone else. However, in the west homosexuality is not just treated as normal- it's elevated and 'celebrated'. You MUST celebrate homosexuality - not just 'tolerate' it or accept it - but CELEBRATE it. No condemnation or criticism will be allowed and this is enforced buy the law.
Kilroy is 100% right. Homosexuality is disgusting - it is a sickness that should be treated, not a cause to be celebrated. I feel sorry for homosexuals and what they must go through, but I do not in any way think their relationships deserve recognition or respect.
What the ancient religions realised, and what the oh so progressive 'conservatives' are too enlightened to realise, is that when you promote things like homosexuality, or abortion or contracption or euthanasia - you destroy your own culture.
This is why no western civilisation currently has a replacement level birth rate. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. None.
If your liberal ideas are SO good, then why don't they work?
And what do you think happens, you oh so tolerant, diverse and inclusive 'conservatives', to a culture that does not reproduce itself? It dies out. Simple. Game over.
So by all means, keep embracing and promoting homosexuality - in a few generations you and you dead end ideas will be dust in the wind.
Thanks for coming
There are two issues to be addressed here.
ReplyDeleteThe first is homosexuality itself. My own view is that homosexuality tends to occur when there is a failure to bond with a particular parent at a critical stage, so that the child doesn't accept the usual sexual identity as a boy or girl. Once this is out of place, then it's difficult for heterosexuality to occur later in life.
It's possible that some children are more physically predisposed to react in this way than others.
Let me put it differently. If you grow up as a boy rejecting a masculine identity, then how can you later be heterosexual? Heterosexualty is about the complementary attraction between the masculine and the feminine. If a boy isn't securely masculine in his identity, then why would he feel attracted to the feminine - to women? He is likely to feel "confused" in his sexuality.
Is this a desirable life outcome? I would have thought: clearly not. Imagine not having a masculine identity to match your embodied masculinity. Our identity as men and women is very important in forming our sense of self - and this won't be as secure for those lacking a normal sex identity.
What does this mean? First, we shouldn't pretend that homosexuality is equal but different. It's not. It's not something that you would wish for.
Second, we have to be careful about homosexual political activism. Some homosexuals wish to push their own norm on society. They want to reject what they call binary models of sexuality (male/female, heterosexual/homosexual) with a more confused model in which there are many genders and a "continuum" of human sexuality.
Let me also put this another way. A heterosexual culture will always emphasise the masculine and the feminine. This fits our basic sense of the natural order of things. Our culture cannot coexist with one demanded by homosexual activists in which the binary division is considered to be an unreal error. Only one culture can dominate and it should rightly be the heterosexual one.
Do any of these arguments justify a hateful attitude toward homosexuals? Certainly not. The conclusions to be logically drawn are that parents should be careful to maintain close and positive relationships with their developing children and that the majority should continue to uphold a heterosexual cultural norm in society.
The second issue to be addressed is the legislation under which the councillor was threatened.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tim T that the councillor's joke was harmless and witty and that most homosexuals wouldn't have thought it offensive.
And yet the police felt obliged to go through the motions of warning the councillor about inappropriate humour and the possibility of going to court.
This suggests to me that the real effect of the legislation won't be to protect homosexuals from real threats but to put in place a more general self-censorship in which the majority allows itself to be silenced. Clearly, this must be what the transgender activist thought the legislation was for, otherwise he would not have lodged a complaint with the police.
As for Silver, I seriously hope this person is a member of the Greens or some other equally useless left aligned party.
ReplyDeleteWrong.
So what if people have an 'innate urge' to commit homosexual acts? Pedophiles also have 'innate urges' So do serial killers. But we as a society realise that certain behaviours should be constrained because it is not in the common interest of society that they be promoted.
I was really interested in how you'd propose doing that. You came up with:
If two people are gay and want to screw each other - fine - do it in your own home.
Ah, I see. You'll "constrain" it by turning a blind eye to people consensually engaging in it in private. Gee, that runs completely contrary to everything I set forth. Thanks for straightening me out.
Note I said 'promoted'. Homosexuals have human dignity, just like everyone else. However, in the west homosexuality is not just treated as normal- it's elevated and 'celebrated'.
How is that any different to what I said?
Read it again:
The only [principle] I've ever been able to think of is Permission vs Promotion. Conservatives might permit (heck, even like) fags and other deviants but liberals insist on promoting them -- flaunting them, shoving them down your throat, constantly, constantly, until you're so confused you forget what is normal, what isn't, which way is up, which way is down. (Where liberals are wrong is that there is most likely an innate component of the revulsion most people have for homosexuality -- if they dispute it, let them prove it by bending over.)
Kilroy is 100% right. Homosexuality is disgusting - it is a sickness that should be treated, not a cause to be celebrated.
If it's innate, how do you propose to "treat" it? If you think they're owed a basic level of dignity, then leave them be. And if taking an official, legal position on discouraging public disparagement of them (jokes, taunting etc) eases their lot some, well, I don't see why it's an idea a conservative must remain closed to -- I mean, apart from upholding the image of no-nonsense blowhard that seems so important in some quarters.
More importantly than any of this however, why insist that opposition to homosexuality per se (read that again: per se) be some sort of centerpiece of conservative strategy? Surely the track record suggests it's a monumental loser.
The Group is spot on.
ReplyDeleteThe ultimate test of any Idea is whether it can exist on its own and replicate without the intravenous drip of some supporting Other Idea.
Homosexualism is a case in point. Sodomites may think its all fine and dandy to consensually sodomise each other, but at the end of the day, they will need to recruit from a society that still subscribes to those old fashioned arcane oppressive notions of heterosexual coupling to survive as a 'culture' (if you could call it a culture).
Comparing sodomy to drinking coffee betrays the inanity of those who continue to live in denial of the obvious truth: look around you progressive morons: your nations are dying, and its because you're getting exactly what you've all waned.
I have a fantasy: that these fagtards be put on an island along with suburban Islamists from the West. Now that's a reality game show I'd love to watch.
No prizes for the right answer as to who'd come out on top.
Silver said: "I was obviously kidding around."
ReplyDeleteNo, you were obviously being a typical liberal: manifest a double standard and then just dismiss it as a trivial flourish when called to account by a conservative.
This is why you progressives are so impossible to take seriously. You've created a suicidal counter-culture, act like parasites on the rest of traditional society (what's left of it), and then wave your hand and say "chill man, get with it." Well quite frankly, if you want to inject yourself with poison, go right ahead - be my freaking guest, look, I'll even hold the syringe for you dooshbag, but do not promote this in my family. Rancid degenerate.
Kilroy, I agree with your basic position, but I'd rather you eased back on the ad hominem.
ReplyDeleteSilver, I'm not against the "leave alone" principle (within reasonable limits). However, I don't think you've grasped what the police cautioning the councillor really means.
The transgender guy wanted a third option to be provided in the responses to the survey: man, woman and something else. This is an attack on heterosexual culture. It's an attack on the idea that male and female are the basic, natural distinctions in society. It's an attack on the natural order of existence.
The councillor disarmed this proposal with a bit of non-hateful humour. And for this little defence he was summonsed to the police station. There is a message here for others who might also challenge, no matter how good-naturedly, the transgender agenda.
I do not want the society I live in to be further hollowed out. Already we are not allowed to assert natural forms of communal identity, nor are we allowed to assert as communal standards the traditional virtues and we have reached a point too in which it is daring to positively express our masculinity or femininity (in certain social contexts anyway).
Are we now to accept another imposition, another repression, another hollowing out? Are we to allow that transgender guy to get his way and force a public recognition of additional sexes?
We ought to be ridiculing the use of the law against the councillor and not permitting ourselves to fall into the usual culture of self-censorship.
Silver, I'm not against the "leave alone" principle (within reasonable limits). However, I don't think you've grasped what the police cautioning the councillor really means.
ReplyDeleteMark, I grasp very well what it means. I don't think you've grasped how difficult communicating what it really means is to others.
Please observe the reaction on this very thread, in which the issue is supposedly fags and trannies: how dare poofter-loving progressives transgress against our right to put sodomites in their place!!!
The real issue of course is as you said:
This suggests to me that the real effect of the legislation won't be to protect homosexuals from real threats but to put in place a more general self-censorship in which the majority allows itself to be silenced. Clearly, this must be what the transgender activist thought the legislation was for, otherwise he would not have lodged a complaint with the police.
But you can't address that by making the issue homosexuality or transgender. That just invites diversionist "conservatives" to "take a stand for society" on what amounts to a triviality, and one on which conservatives have been getting trounced for decades, meanwhile ignoring far larger and far more important issues (which I trust I don't need to spell out). The upshot is conservatively-minded people are given a false sense of security that someone is on their side and looking after their interests when that in fact is not remotely the case. In turn, "liberals," who are made not born and would otherwise be open to conservative ideas, are turned off by having their suspicions confirmed about conservatives simply being "haters" of people who are slightly different but pose no threat to anybody (eg homosexuals).
Silver, we're talking about two problems on this thread.
ReplyDelete1.) Self-censorship based on bogus (leftist) morality. Apparently, you get this one, though I don't understand how.
But self-censorship isn't the problem. That leads us to the second issue being discussed,
2.) the abolition of the distinction between man and woman and its replacement with a "spectrum" of gender(s), etc.
Mark describes it well here:
The transgender guy wanted a third option to be provided in the responses to the survey: man, woman and something else. This is an attack on heterosexual culture. It's an attack on the idea that male and female are the basic, natural distinctions in society. It's an attack on the natural order of existence.
Understood?
I should have said
ReplyDelete"Self-censorship isn't the only problem." etc.
Also, Mark:
ReplyDeleteYou wrote,
This suggests to me that the real effect of the legislation won't be to protect homosexuals from real threats but to put in place a more general self-censorship in which the majority allows itself to be silenced.
Just a clarification here. You don't have a problem with self-censorship and self-government per se. You just have a problem with us self-censoring and self-governing on the basis of leftist lies, right?
After all, how on earth can you have a free society unless the people can get along well enough without government intrusion? And how can they all get along unless they follow a common set of rules?
Traditionalists point out that the leftists' internalized rules are bogus, not that there shouldn't be any self-enforced rules in the first place. Right?