Single Sex Marriage….

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Well, you know what they say about fools rushing in where angels fear to tread….here I go.  Normally I don’t post too much on social issues, but this grew out of a Facebook post I made on a friend’s wall, and it seemed to be sensible just to put it here as well.

On the practical side, this is a badly thought out piece of legislation (next up will need to be changes in the law on divorce, (the current definitions of adultery and non-consummation as grounds are meaningless, for example, with regard to gay couples). I’m also concerned that the area protecting vicars / priests against possibly being sued for not wishing to conduct a same sex marriage is not watertight. And until the ‘civil partnership’ arrangement is made available to straight couples, we don’t have true equality – just a change in the law. As an aside, equality does not necessarily mean identity. I believe in fairness, but believe that being fair in society doesn’t mean everything has to be the
same for everybody. That ends up in a form of totalitarianism.

On a personal side, and from my Godbothering perspective, I’m one of these folks who believe that the ‘New Covenant’ between Christ and mankind superseded quite a bit of the ‘lifestyle’ sections of the Old testament, particularly Leviticus, so I have less hangups than some of my bretheren about homosexuality. I’ve pondered this issue for a long time, using the three pillars of the Church of England; scripture, faith and reason. And PLEASE don’t conflate this argument with women Bishops, as many have done. Different issues. I’m a big supporter on all levels of Women Bishops, less so of the way that the SSM issue has been handled….

My faith, based on a loving God and the redemption offered by faith in His son, is not affected on a personal level by this.

Scripturally, ‘the jury’s out’ and will be forever and a day. As is often pointed out we shouldn’t necessarily be using a text written in the Bronze Age (OT) and Roman times (NT) to determine the in depth rules of society today; we’re not a theocracy, after all. However, for those of us who do have faith the books are there and we take on board what’s in there as central to our beliefs. Unfortunately, as someone said the other day, ‘Jesus didn’t say anything about same sex marriage; then again, he didn’t comment on space travel either….’

My reasoning powers try and make some sense of this. As I’ve said, it’s a half arsed piece of legislation that will need some tuning before it’s put in place. Years ago there was a significant difference in society’s attitude to Church and Civil weddings – to the degree that many people didn’t regard people married in Civil Ceremonies as married. The issues here are going to be similar. Whatever is said in the eyes of the law, it may be decades before many people in society regard SSM Cermonies as ‘proper’ marriages.

The ‘straw man’ arguments about divorce rates, celebrity marriages, etc. are not an issue. Saying that a social and cultural institution is invalid to force a change to it that does nothing to address those problems is not an argument in favour of change. The religious argument here in the UK is purely because of the interconnected nature of Church and State; if the Anglican Church wasn’t the established religion, I doubt that there would have been a lot of the outcry. As it is, I personally feel that there are likely to be wider repercussions from this apparently civil legal change that will impact on the position of the Church in ecumenical terms with other Christian faith groups.

Bottom line is that I’m in favour of fairness and equality, but not in favour of the way that this whole thing has been done. It’s poorly formulated law, put in to being at a time when there are massive social problems on the horizon that really need to engage our body politic rather than this. The question of ensuring that those churches who do not wish to conduct SSM don’t have to is wide open; someone, somewhere, will push the case, I’m sure. It will have an impact on the relationship between the Anglican Church and State (I’m in favour of reducing ties, btw) and with the position of the Anglican Church with its relationships with other Churches, purely due to it being the Established Religion.
On a religious / scriptural level I can’t yet determine a view point, but on a social and cultural level – bad move at this time, in this way.

The word ‘marriage’ is a culturally loaded word, and the nature of the institution harks back to a time when it was effectively a means of ensuring property rights, inheritance rights, child care and social cohesion. These issues are less significant today in the West. This whole business seems to have been fought over the use of a word.

I have no intention of getting in to a debate / argument about this as I think that no words I say will change other minds, and other folks won’t change my mind as I’ve done a lot of soul-searching and study in recent months. I appreciate that some folks may regard me as a bigoted homophobe, and if so, well, just un-friend me in the most appropriate manner and I won’t be upset.

So…congratulations to all who’ve fought hard for this change, and to anyone whose life will be enriched by it. But on a personal level, I think it ill-advised and potentially massively divisive, and my conscience prevents me from embracing it.

As Martin Luther said “I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. ” I think that sort of sums me up on this issue.

 

 

Seven of Nine and the Illuminati

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This blog post started life this summer, after the Olympics.  It was a time of great celebration in Britain; after all, according to some people we’d dodged at least three bullets over the Olympic period – a nuclear terror attack, the invasion of Earth by inter-dimensional aliens through a portal opened by the Olympic Opening Ceremony or an uprising of the forces of the Illuminati.  My original comments can be read in ‘Whoops, No Apocalypse’.

And in December we’re still here….although the Mayans are around the corner…

A day or two ago I again watched the episode of the TV series ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ that triggered this piece in the first place – The Voyager Conspiracy.  In this episode, ex-Borg drone Seven Of Nine attempts to download the whole of Voyager’s computer database in to her head, and in the process of doing so gives herself paranoid delusions in which she attempts to put together a narrative from various events that have taken place on the starship, resulting in her almost causing a mutiny as the Captain and her second in command are told different paranoid delusions in which other crew members are conspirators.

The facts of what happened to the ship were correct; the interpretation placed on them by Seven was totally delusional, caused by her mind’s attempt to see connections and causality where non existed.  As her theories were questioned by other crew members, she would change them to add new facts, never lying but working things around to support her own point of view, ultimately ending up with the crew not knowing who to trust and going around carrying sidearms!

And I’m afraid that that’s what we’re seeing from a lot of people these days.  The Internet has bought a lot of information to a lot of people, and I’m afraid that many folks don’t seem equipped with the critical faculties needed to differentiate between a scientific fact and a stick of rhubarb.  And if you dare to suggest that there might be a more simple explanation than the conspiracy theorists are offering, you’re described as a sheep, already brainwashed in to believing what ‘they’ (whether they are lizards, zeta reticulans, organised crime, CIA mind controllers, etc.) wish us to believe.  Only the people pushing the right line of conspiracy are truly awake and aware; the rest of us are either unwitting dupes, fellow travelers or part of the enemy.

This isn’t to say that conspiracies don’t happen; they do.  But we all need to get a grip on facts as well.  Sometimes a gunman is just an evil or insane, rather than being someone who has been conditioned like Jason Bourne to be a killer.  And whilst the mind-manipulation techniques of programmes like MK-ULTRA no doubt exist, they’re not used on every bat-shit crazy lunatic.

Cock-up is usually more likely than conspiracy.  I have no doubt that on 23rd December when we’ve dodged the Mayan Apocalypse bullet  the conspiracy theorists will be coming up with any number of reasons why they’re still right.  We can expect calendar issues, successful interventions by aliens or enlightened ones, or even that it DID happen but we didn’t notice it.  Me? I have no idea what’s supposed to happen but my money is on nothing at all….

But these conspiracies, propagating around the world and in popular film and TV shows, cause some people a lot of fear and uncertainty. At a time when the world is full of real problems – crashing economies, poverty, hunger and war – perhaps these very capable minds might think how they can apply their intellects to solving a few real-world issues, rather than playing games in which they see themselves as something special – enlightened ones better than the rest of us because ‘they know’.

Whatever it is that they think they know, I’m convinced it’s simply the  production of an under-employed, over-fed and over-stimulated mind.

 

 

The end of the road for paper maps?

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Planisphere I’m always a bit behind with what I read online, and this is a story from about a month or so ago.  Are paper maps dead? For those of us of a certain age who did things like the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme or were Scouts or did military service, we can be put in to one of two groups; those who could fold and unfold maps with skill and confidence and not  rip them or get them blown off in to the mid-distance during the attempt, and those who…well…couldn’t.

I had my moments when I almost got it right – that’s why my paper OS maps are creased and crumpled in places where they shouldn’t be creased….

But I still have those paper maps – the Peak District, Sheffield and Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire.  In other words, the areas I walked and cycled around when I was a kid.  And about 5 feet from where I’m sitting writing this is my Silva compass with which I navigated my way around using those maps.  And in a cupboard downstairs are a couple of maps which I used when I did my ‘macho’ thing of travelling from Vancouver up to Prudhoe Bay and Point Barrow in the mid-1990s.

And the house is well equipped with Atlases – some are old enough to show large swathes of the world in ‘Empire Pink’ as I used to call it – and AA road maps and such.

Of course, at the click of a mouse or the swipe of a finger I can call up electronic maps on phone, iPad and computer.  I can zoom in, zoom out, get directions.  On my Blackberry I can even see where I am when wandering around courtesy of GPS. I even have an application on the iPad that gives me a star-map that updates in real time.

And funnily enough, it was when using this electronic star map the other night that  I was reminded of the article mentioned above and impressed by the fact that sometimes a paper map is needed.  Although I’ve had a lifelong interest in star-gazing and amateur astronomy I still can’t find my way around the heavens above without assistance – especially in the summer skies. So the other evening I wanted to do a little star gazing and decided to use the iPad to orient me….and failed miserably.  It updated in real time, showed me all I needed, but I just couldn’t get comfortable with it.  After 10 minutes I dug out my Phillips Planisphere (shown above) and got myself sorted with that in no time flat.  OK, I’ve been using such a gadget for years, so am rather used to it, but it just felt…right.

And there’s definitely what can only be called ‘the romance of old maps’ – as a kid I use to draw maps of imaginary countries on rolls of wallpaper, and used old maps to fight imaginary battles as part of my wargaming hobby. The Lands of Middle Earth and Narnia were mapped on paper, not digital screens, and the other day I saw prints of old maps being sold as wrapping paper in a local branch of Clintons Cards.  We’re going to buy a couple and frame them as decorations.  There is something wonderful about the idea of depicting landscapes on paper – something that electronic maps can’t match.

And, of course, on the day that the Governments of the world pull the GPS system down, or when a massive solar flare nukes all our electronics, we’ll still be able to use the paper maps to navigate by…although if the latter has taken place we may not be able to rely upon compasses anymore…..