Small Victories

So often human rights are won a small piece at a time, not with a loud and big victory beloved by Hollywood films. One of those small victories was won, here in England, last month.

In September 2008, Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy (a gay couple and civil partners) booked into a Guest House just outside Penzance. When they arrived the Guest House’s owners, Peter and Hazelmary Bull, refused to let them share a double bed because it went against the Bull’s Christian beliefs. The Bull’s said they didn’t allow unmarried couples to share a room but they plainly refused Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy a double room, even though they were civil partners (which for all intents and purposes gives them the same legal rights and protections as a married heterosexual couple), because they were a gay couple.

Last month, Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy won their case of discrimination against the Bulls, and rightly so. They used the Equality Bill to bring their court action for discrimination and the judge agreed with them. (http://tinyurl.com/4zxggoz)

The Equality Bill has come in for a lot of attacks almost since it came into law but to me it is one of those very just laws. Read simply, it says that anyone who provides a service for the public can’t refuse someone goods or service because of the person’s sexuality or their perceived sexuality. This includes refusing a gay couple a double room where you’d offer one to a heterosexual couple. For me, this law has taken away that shadow which would hover on my shoulder. The fear that if someone realised I am gay they would refuse to serve me, help me and even treat me. The fear that I would be turned away from the hotel or restaurant, the taxi would refuse my fair, the shop assistant wouldn’t serve me, the doctor or nurse or dentist or podiatrist would refuse to treat me, all because I’m gay.

The Equality Bill gives me protection against that fear and I am so grateful for that, unfortunately not everyone feels the same.

Evangelical Christians didn’t like The Equality Bill even before it came into law, when it was before Parliament they were trying to get an exemption from it. Now, it seems, the right wing pundits have also turned their bile onto the Equality Bill. Following this, Melanie Phillips (A nasty bigot at the best of time) has called gays the “new McCarthyites” in a Daily Mail article (http://tinyurl.com/66g76dq) and further accused gay activists of trying to “brainwash” children (http://tinyurl.com/6ho4lv9). When challenged, she said she’d defend gays from “true prejudice” – I wonder if she even knows the meaning of the word. Then we have a Daily Mail cartoon portraying a couple as skinhead thugs with Nazi tattoos (http://tinyurl.com/659h3bl). Now, we have the former Tory Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay of Clashfern saying Christians should be able to act on their “consciences” and ignore The Equality Bill (http://tinyurl.com/66wqflu) – that would quickly strip us of all the protection the bill gives us.

The greatest irony is that The Equality Bill extends to sexual orientation the protection already, in law, for religion and belief. Christians are fighting to deny Lesbians and Gay Men the protections they already enjoy in law, it sounds all too familiar to my very jaundiced ear.

Drew

It’s That Time of the Year, Again

This week saw the publication of the Nursing Standards’ Lesbian and Gay History month special. I started this blog, four years ago now, with an entry about my first Guest Editorship of the Nursing Standard, for their first Lesbian and Gay History month special.

 

It had come about as a reply to a very homophobic letter they’d received from a Christian Nurse. There was an outcry against this letter, especially from the RCN’s Out Group, who I was involved with. The upshot of this was that they ran their first Lesbian and Gay special and by a series of lucky connections, and being in the right place at the right time, I was the guest editor. It’s still one of the proudest things I’ve done, as far.

 

This year, my contribution was only a review but I’m still very glad they’re running the special. We’re seeing an increasing backlash against Lesbian and Gay equal rights, especially from many Christians. It almost feels as if anyone who stands up against homophobia is being called a “fascist” – the irony is unbelievable.

 

Healthcare, in this country, is still not the safe and prejudiced-free place it should be. There is still a lot of underhand and overt homophobia, especially among Healthcare Professionals – I know because I’ve lost count of the times I’ve witnessed it, first and second hand. This Nursing Standard special is one good step against this.

 

Drew.

The Month of January

This isn’t my favourite time of the year, the dull and dead time that is January. No plants are growing, the landscape is brown and lifeless, the winter is cold and dull, and everything feels on holding, waiting for the year to start. Work is lifeless, no one is making plans or decisions. I always feel I’m just treading water, waiting for something to happen, in January.

Also, few publishers seem interested in submissions to them in January. Fortunately, this year, my writing career hasn’t got off to a slow start. I’ve got three different commissions for articles, all of which are due the end of this month and the beginning of the next. So I’m busy writing them.

I’ve also submitted an essay for an anthology. The book’s theme is about defining moments, that moment in our lives when an event or an encounter leaves a lasting impression or even changes our lives.

My entry can be viewed at: http://www.smithmag.net/moment/story.php?did=178421

Please visit it and leave a comment, I’m sure that the pieces that get the most attention stand the best chance of being included in the anthology.

January is supposed to be the month were we look forward and back, I’ve being doing that. The three articles I’m writing are all advice articles, looking forward to improve someone’s life or situation. The essay I’ve submitted is looking back on something that happened to me as a teenager.

But I’m still looking forward to spring, at least our garden will have some life in it.

Drew.

A Conversation Overheard…

It’s that great device used in so much fiction, the overheard conversation. It usually takes place in a public place, often on a train, were one character listens in to the conversation of two others, this conversation gives away details or facts that set the plot in motion.

The other literary story is that a writer overhears a conversation, usually in a public place, and that sets their mind off on a tangent to create an idea for a piece of writing. In the Agatha Christie novel Third Girl, Mrs Ariadne Oliver (A crime writer, who many believe was based on Christie herself) tells a story of overhearing another woman on the bus. This sets her imagination off and she creates a whole character and plot around this woman.

Today, Martin and I went shopping in the West End of London. On the tube there and back, and as we wondered around the shops, I overheard many conversations but none of them had fascinating tips of information or set my mind off on any creative tangents. There were parents with their pretentious children, lost tourists, complaining shoppers, elderly women more interested in the company of their friends than anything else, teenage boys showing off to their mates like strutting peacocks and a young woman who could have moved to Greece if she didn’t have so much “stuff”.

Today was not one of those days when my imagination runs wild, not a typical day then, but I have enough writing ideas and projects on the go already so I am not too worried.

Drew.

Another Thought for Today

Today saw the first time a Pope gave a broadcast on BBC Radio. Pope Benedict's Christmas message for the UK was broadcast as the Thought For The Day on Radio 4's Today program, the God-slot on an otherwise very secular news and current affairs program.

After listening to his broadcast, all I can say was that it was very dull.

It was the kind of Christmas homily I heard as I child at church, over thirty years ago. It was dull, uninteresting and uninspiring. Rather than making me angry, as so many of his pronouncements before have done, it almost made me fall asleep, it was so flat and lifeless. There was no reference to the world today, the only modern reference was to his visit here in September, it was exactly like the Christmas addresses I heard thirty years ago.

I am now convinced that Pop Benedict is completely out of touch with the real world. If this is the best he can do, with such a prominent platform, then he’s of no relevance to us.

The most important question is why did the BBC give the Pope such an unopposed opportunity to preach at us (even if he failed at it)? Yet again, the BBC gives the Catholic Church biased coverage. There was no one on the Today program challenging the Pope’s right to be there.

The majority of the time the BBC covers Lesbian and Gay rights they seemed to find some awful religious bigot to pour out homophobia. Would the BBC ever let Peter Thatchell deliver a Thought For The Day?

Drew

In The Bleak Mid-Winter...

Snow is here and the country is blanked in white cold. Being British, the country has almost ground to a halt, and parcels aren’t arriving anytime time too.

For me, though, the snow creates a whole different world. It muffles the general sounds of a city, blanketed in snow my home is made strangely quiet. Gone are the normal sounds of the city. It changed the quality of the light and darkness. During the day the sunlight was so much brighter, but it’s once the sun has set that the snow deeply changes the atmosphere.

At dusk the red sunlight is bounced off the snow creating a red/orange glow to everything, as if the whole area is bathed in failing red light, from a dying light source. At night, after the sun has rapidly set, the snow glows blue in the moonlight, giving the view a deeply strange and epithelial feel. At night, I look out at the views, from our house, and almost expect to witness some other-world creature. A hunched over, pale and thin daemon creature tip-toeing across the landscape or jumping from one blue/black shadow to another; or else a translucent ghost drifting across our blue light garden, leaving not a mark on the cold snow.

Yes, my mind is strange. Most people see snow and think, “What a lovely, Christmas Card landscape.” I see the snow, especially at night, and think “This has such a potential for a supernatural theme.”

Drew.

P.S. The picture, at the top of this blog, is of our back garden at dusk, taken by my partner Martin. To see more of his pictures go to: http://martins-day.blogspot.com/

Merry Christmas

This is our own Christmas E Card. All the pictures in it were taken by Martin, mostly of our local area but with a few of the park by his office. Some were taken this weekend, of our garden in the snow, but the majority of them are from the snow fall in January.

The music accompanying it is Tori Amos' Snow Angel, another of her beautifully lyrical songs.

Turn your computer's sound on, take a minute to enjoy this animation and a Happy Christmas from Martin and I.

Drew.