Category: Religion

Another Immaculate Conception

Billboard from an Anglican Church in New Zealand

When it comes to social issues, readers may think I’m a bit of a one trick pony – gay this, gay that, blah, blah, blah. In fact, as a bleeding heart pinko liberal, I come equipped with a range of predictable views on a range of predictable issues. People who feed and water me will attest to this. Apart from the fairy thing, I rarely use my blog as a platform to spread the liberal word. This isn’t why I started it. But (yes, here comes the ‘but’) there’s one thing that caught my eye recently that I just can’t resist commenting on. It’s been reported in the New Civil Rights Movement, an American online magazine, that Arizonan women are now legally pregnant two weeks before conception. Even though I agree with a woman’s right to choose, I’m not going to wade into the whole American abortion debate. It’s a divisive issue that stirs up an enormous amount of emotion on both sides of the argument. However, isn’t this all getting a bit daft? In effect, this means that a virgin can be pregnant (Hallelujah, it’s a miracle). Why stop there? What about those wet dreams of our teenage years? Or don’t we boys count?

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Tuscan Turkey

Home Office Consultation on Marriage Equality

I’ve just responded to the British Home Office consultation on same sex marriage. As I understand it, the original proposal was to make us all equal under the Law by allowing same sex secular marriage (replacing and/or supplementing civil partnerships) and to enable those religious organisations that wished to conduct a religious ceremony for same sex couples to do so. The Quakers really wanted their oats on this one: our Friends were at the forefront of agitating for reform. They will be disappointed; a collective ‘tut, tut’ will echo around the polite meeting houses of Blighty. Why? Because the proposed statute will introduce civil marriage equality but will also enshrine in law the notion that religious marriage is between a man and a woman only. Presumably, this typically British fudge is a concession to the meddlesome priests who think they have the divine right to call the shots. This is absurd. Where’s Henry the Eighth when you need him? Either there is marriage equality or there isn’t. A religious ceremony isn’t right for me but to deny it to the religious isn’t right either.

If there is to be a two-tier marriage system can we also have a two-tier tax system where I pay less for fewer rights? A kind of citizen-rights lite.

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Same Sex Marriage in the UK

Much I Do About Nothing  

Same Sex Marriage in the UK

Scratch the surface and stupidity lies beneath. The lunatics have taken over the asylum at the Turkish Living Forum. What is the subject that’s got the bigots crawling from underneath their stones? Why gay marriage of course. All this tedious religious claptrap from tossers who take their bible like they take their software – jump to the bottom and tick the ‘I accept’ box. They are in good company – kiddie fiddling priests, the British National Party and religious fundamentalists who talk in tongues and still murder witches. Where are the forum moderators? Running for cover and hiding behind some corrupt notion of free speech.

Personally, I have no wish to get married in church. Unlike the hettie hypocrites who keep the chapel tills ringing with their white weddings and solemn vows that only half will keep, I won’t pretend to be religious. No priest is going to make a phoney out of me. Liam and I have a Civil Partnership. That’ll do us for now. However, I would never deny the right of others to marry whoever they choose. It’s an equalities thing.

Let’s keep a sense of proportion. The proposed law in Blighty will simply give those religious organisations (the Quakers, primarily) that want to perform a marriage ceremony for same sex couples the freedom to do so. So really, what is all the fuss about? The bigots are fighting a losing battle. Don’t want to treat me as equal? Then don’t take my taxes. The days of second-class citizenship are over. Almost.

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Much I Do About Nothing

Gay Marriage in New York

Istanbul Angels

Pioneer Sabiha

Book Tour Intermission

Our flight back to Blighty a few days before Christmas was smooth and relatively uneventful. We flew to Stansted via Sabiha Gökçen Airport, Istanbul, with Pegasus. Sabiha Gökçen is an ultra-modern airport, all shiny and new, in stark contrast to Stansted which is looking distinctly shabby these days. The airport is named after a Turkish aviator who is reputed to have been the world’s first female fighter pilot and one of Atatürk’s eight adopted children.

Istanbul’s airports provide an exotic visual banquet as travellers from across the Balkan, Anatolian, Caucasus and central Asia regions mingle around the highly polished halls in their ethno-religious finery. The most striking group this year was an angelic-looking troupe of people dressed from head to toe in bright white towelling and biblical strappy sandals. I don’t know which country they hailed from or what religion they observed (if any), but I was fascinated by them as they shuffled along through the rowdy crowds. Vive la difference!

Check out the book

Now That’s What I Call Old

Civilisation in Anatolia has deeper roots than most people imagine. The recently discovered ruins of Göbekli Tepe are among the oldest human-made structures yet discovered. The site is almost 12,000 years old, predating any other known civilisation by several thousand years. Eat your heart out Abraham (c1800 BC) Rameses the Great (c1300 BC), Nebuchadnezzar (c600 BC) and all those daft fundamentalist Christians who think that the world was created 6000 years ago.

 

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The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus | Bodrum’s Crusader Castle | Cappadocia, Then and Now | Rutting Reptiles | Communal Crapping

Mausoleum of Halicarnassus
Bodrum Castle
Cappadocia
Library of Celcus, Ephesus
Temple of Apollo, Didyma

Penny for the Guy

After an excessive Guy Fawkes Night with a wheelbarrow bonfire, fireworks to blow your hands off and the drunken Gümbet Gals Chorus (ladies, you know who you are), I’m suffering from mental paralysis. I have neither the inclination nor the energy to write anything remotely interesting, amusing or informative. It’s just as well that it’s Kurban Bayram across the entire Moslem world, a time where men are men and sheep are nervous. To celebrate the occasion, I am releasing a tiny snippet from Perking the Pansies the Book which tells of our first bloody encounter with the Feast of Sacrifice.

Liam answered a knock at the door. It was Tariq’s daughter. Selma was a pretty little thing, a fourteen year old girl with fathomless dark eyes and long brown hair, perfectly parted at the middle. Our contact had been minimal but we had exchanged half smiles and several hundred empty wine bottles: she occasionally helped Tariq with the rubbish disposal.  Selma handed Liam a bag of bloodied bones.

‘For you,’ she said. ‘Iyi bayramlar.’

‘Why… thank you. Teşekkürler.’

Selma smiled nervously and wandered off into the night. Sheep’s blood dripped through the bag and splashed onto Liam’s feet.

‘What the fuck?’

‘Who was at the door?’

‘Selma and a bag of blood.’

‘Fantastic. Anyone for spare ribs?’

‘You’re excited by a bag of bones?’

It was Kurban Bayram, The Feast of Sacrifice commemorating an Old Testament myth. God rather unreasonably commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son. Thankfully, Abraham proved his devotion and God provided a sacrificial ram instead. I had never read the book but had seen the Hollywood movie several times.

Liam was unmoved. ‘So hapless sheep across the entire Moslem World are being butchered as we speak? Revolting.’

‘And the flesh is distributed among family, friends and the deserving poor.’

‘So we only get the bones. What does that make us?’

‘Accepted.’

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A Take of Two Cite

Icing and Slicing

Punishing Percy

No Touching

According to loopy pastor Mark Driscoll, masturbation by men* is a homosexual act. (What, even when leering at a well-thumbed mucky girlie mag?) However, Mad Mark says it’s not a touch of lavender if there’s a woman in the room (even if she’s minding her own business and busy knitting in the corner, presumably). Mr Driscoll looks the very image of a modern Millie and I rather admire the precision of his immaculately pressed collar.

As I was reading his wacky words, memories of my misspent youth came flooding back. The teacher that taught RE (or Divinity as we called the subject at my traditional grammar school) told us emphatically that masturbation made you go blind. You can imagine the reaction from the post-pubescent boys. It nearly caused a mini riot. Despite the disbelieving groans from the self-abusing spotty adolescents, he was utterly unbending in his belief and warned us of the dire consequences of a quick furtive fumble under the sheets. If my fast fading memory serves me right, it was the only sex education I received at school. Mind you, since my glasses resemble jam jar bottoms, he may well have had a point.

* Mad Mark doesn’t seem to have anything to say about female masturbation. Presumably he thinks women are just non-sexual receptacles for male lust and so wouldn’t do that sort of thing. I’m thinking of popping a Sex in the City DVD in the post to enlighten him.

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The End is Nigh

Hell and Damnation

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

My Anatolian dreams are frequent and intense, bordering on the nightmarish at times. This was not the case in Blighty. I wonder why? Was it something put in the water or something left out? Or perhaps I used to be too tired to dream, preoccupied with kiss-my-arse bosses and keeping the wolves from the door. My sleep pattern has radically altered since our exodus. Before, I’d be lucky to catch six hours. Nowadays it’s closer to nine, occasionally supplemented by a catnap after playing hide the sausage. The chances are I used to suffer from long-term, low-level sleep deprivation. Now my cycle is longer and shallower, and my dreams are richer and more vivid. This seems to be a common phenomenon. Liam says the same. Most people forget their dreams soon after waking. I wrote mine down as soon as got up this morning. It went like this:

I was introduced to a young Danish1 woman who composed Christmas carols for a living. Lovely, I thought and did my usual exploratory banter to show a bit of interest. I mentioned that Liam had won a Christmas carol competition way back in the eighties and had appeared on local television2. I also mentioned that he’d written various pieces that were sung by well-known choirs in Wales. Our Danish visitor seemed utterly disinterested and completely dismissive. She told me she was a devout Catholic and that we would burn in Hell. I launched into an anti-religious rant telling her that she’d been conned by ancient fairy tales and followed a faith that practiced witchcraft and cannibalism every Sunday (well, how can else could you describe the Catholic rite of transubstantiation – the actual turning of bread and water into the blood and flesh of Christ?).

I woke up with a jolt. Jesus, what does it mean?

1Apart from Cnut, our ex-neighbour I’ve nothing against the Danes and spent a wonderful weekend in fabulous Copenhagen. I also know most Danes are Lutheran.

2Some of you Brits may remember the glory days when ITV was a regional network. Liam appeared on HTV Wales. Liam’s winning entry was called Bethlehem Star and you can listen to the jolly hymn  here. The recording is a bit ropey as it was transferred from an old tape recording.

More on Scandinavians

King Cnut

Burning Bush

Sweet Swedes and  Wretched Russians

Remembering 9/11

You’d have to be in a coma or living in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea not to know it’s the 10th anniversary of 9/11. There are a number of momentous events that have characterised modern history and changed our world forever – Waterloo, the Great War, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, Stalingrad, Hiroshima and then the Twin Towers. These events define the age. Almost all involved brutality and slaughter – man’s inhumanity to man. Few will forget that fateful day. Most can remember where they were and what they were doing. I know I can. I watched in silent horror. This changes everything, I thought with typically restrained British understatement. The Cold War may be over but a new ideological conflict was about to start in deadly earnest.

Not since January 1815 when 1,500 British troops attacked a thinly defended American battery on Georgia’s coast* has any foreigner attacked the American mainland. To be sure there had been terrorist atrocities before but the scale of the aerial strikes on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were of an entirely different order using two of the most potent symbols of western technological supremacy – the passenger jet and the skyscraper. It’s made America jittery and defensive. Moslems across the West are vilified as the new reds under the bed and the loose talk of jihad and crusades makes our fragile and fractious world an infinitely more dangerous place. Be afraid.

*The British then proceeded to sack the nearby town of St. Mary’s and burn its fort before departing just weeks later. The hostilities marked the last invasion and occupation of the U.S. mainland by foreign troops. The fighting was all the more remarkable because the War of 1812 (when the British tried to burn down the White House) had ended a month earlier with the Treaty of Ghent. By the time the invaders pulled out, even Andrew Jackson’s victory over the British at New Orleans – often considered the final battle of the war – was history. It had taken a month for word of peace to make its way across the Atlantic to both British and American forces.

Source: The Archaeological Institute of America

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Letter to America

No Arab Spring for Syria

Wake Up Gay

I think our little drummer boy has got a bit bored with his morning call to the Faithful. The first day of Ramazan he banged away with enough gusto to wake the dead. This morning he wandered along the street to the erratic beat of a random limp tap. It’s a bit sad but at least Liam and I awake from our slumber refreshed and ready to face another sweaty day with gay abandon.

Thank you Dina for the Ovaltine ad

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