Why I’m on board for the homophobic bus

London has long since lost its allure for me — altogether too many cars, foreigners, cyclists, middle-class liberals and people who, like me, work in the media, as they call it. I was born in London but only feel truly at home in the north-east of England, an area of the country within which the constituents of that list I quoted above are almost nonexistent. But I am thinking now of moving back to the city — it’s possible that I could afford a flat in somewhere such as Brockley, or perhaps Catford — to take advantage of a radical new development in our capital. Because rumbling along the streets of London quite soon will be homophobic buses.

I’m well into my fifties now, and jaded, so nothing much that happens in the world induces a sense of marvel and excitement. But homophobic buses really do it for me. As the Proclaimers once sang, I would walk 500 miles — just to sit, proudly, on a homophobic bus. It would not matter where the bus was heading. It’s the travelling that’s the thing, don’t you think, not the arriving?

The Court of Appeal, rather wonderfully, has called for an investigation into the Mayor of London’s decision to ban homophobic buses from the streets of the capital. These were buses upon which the Core Issues Trust, a Christian charity, had placed an advert reading: ‘Not Gay! Ex-Gay, Post Gay and Proud — Get Over It.’ The adverts had been placed there in response to one from the gay pressure group Stonewall, which read: ‘Some people are gay! Get over it!’ Both adverts seem a little bit camp to me. Anyone who says ‘Get over it’ (especially with an exclamation mark), I tend to mark down in my little red book as ‘probably bats for the other side’, or some similarly dated and off-colour euphemism.

In any case, Stonewall’s advert seemed, at first, entirely superfluous to me. We know that some people are gay, I thought to myself when I saw the ad — all we have to do is turn on the TV and there they all are, jabbering excitedly to one another, or telling us that it’s going to rain tomorrow and we’d better take our ‘brollies’ out with us. I may have been wrong about this, however. The latest census returns suggest that there are far, far fewer gay people in Britain than the gay campaigners would have you believe. Indeed, Britain’s population of lesbians is apparently vanishingly small and even endangered — and it might be that one of these days we shall need to set aside an area of the country where they can be successfully re-introduced, for reasons of biodiversity, much as the RSPB has done so gloriously with red kites in Buckinghamshire and beyond. It would be a magnificent spectacle, to watch lesbians soaring hither and thither in the skies above the Chilterns on their outstretched wings, fierce gimlet eyes perpetually on the alert for carrion. But I am getting ahead of myself here.

The Court of Appeal adjudicated that Boris Johnson, the mayor, and formerly of course great panjandrum of this parish, may have acted improperly by banning the anti-gay advert. Political reasons, it was suggested. In other words, Boris didn’t want to hack off the gays when he was standing for re-election as mayor, and didn’t really give a monkey’s about the Christians, presumably because they were electorally insignificant or already voting for him. Well, sure, that’s London for you, I suppose. But now we are to have an investigation into our mayor’s motives with the possibility that the Christian charity’s advert could be reinstated on the side of a bus. Hopefully one that runs through Islington, or down the middle of Old Compton Street.

The clincher seems to be that while gay people have their rights protected by the 2010 Equality Act, so too do people who were once gay but are now gay no longer, perhaps having settled down with a nice girlfriend, or having taken a somewhat fundamentalist version of Jesus Christ into their hearts. That’s paragraph 98 of the act, Boris me old mate, if you’re thinking of looking it up. And then there’s paragraphs 80–82 of the act, which suggest that Transport for London would have been better off not running the Stonewall advert in the first place — keep everything politically neutral, and so on. The thing is, Stonewall probably think their ad is politically neutral.

As you might guess, I am hugely in favour of homophobic buses. Not because I hold any animus against gay people — far from it. There isn’t an economically more successful section of the country, nor one less disposed towards criminality. But I think it is vital that everyone, regardless of who they are, or what they do to one another under the cover of darkness on Hampstead Heath, should be afforded the chance to be offended on a daily basis, in the hope that it will enable them, eventually, to ‘get over it’. And to get over it without recourse to lawyers and legislation; just to abide by someone else’s view and accept that they are hideously misguided, or plain wrong, or possibly right but you don’t really care — and not to worry about it any further. The right to be offended. I think it might catch on, you know.

TaggedAdvertising, Boris Johnson, Buses, Core Issues Trust, Court of Appeal, homophobia, London, Offence, political correctness, Sexuality, Stonewall

Show comments

Arden Forester

I quite agree that people are too touchy these days. Sometimes too touchy about touchy-feely as well. However, Rod, the bandying about of the “homophobic” word has got me a bit touchy. The ad was not inciting hatred of homosexuals or abusing them. Just suggesting they “may change their ways”. I’m not much in favour of this ad but I do not think they should be banned anymore than the Stonewall ad should be.
- Kitty MLB
  
  Indeed.
  Why can’t people have a difference of opinion.
  I do not approve of homosexuality ( my opinion)
  as long as I am not offensive, that is my right,
  they also have the right to not approve of me.
  I do have one issue though, if gay people want to be treated
  the same way as everyone else, why do they make
  an issue out of their sexuality, I am not forever going around
  saying I am straight- it really does not matter, peoples lives
  are their own business.
  - Colonel Mustard
    
    That’s the crux of it.
    - Kitty MLB
      
      some like to make life far too complicated.
      - Swanky
        
        It’s a way of life for them, Kitty. Like belonging to a political party or joining the military or playing daily golf. This is why the ad and the group behind it are so dishonest. What they’re really doing is shouting ‘Look at us!’.
  - Fred Scuttle
    
    I would say that the Christians that ran the B&B were the ones that were making an issue of it.
    - Ridcully
      
      No, they made an issue about marriage.
  - Ridcully
    
    When you think about it it’s quite sad that some people feel the need to use their sexual orientation to define themselves.
    - Jeffrey Vernon
      
      The B&B owners felt the need to make an issue of their orientation. It’s perfectly symmetrical, you know
  - Dhimmitude Ishere
    
    Indeed – when the Gay Priders take over central London for their annual bash I’m very tempted to walk around wearing a T-shirt proclaiming “You’re gay, I don’t care – get over it!”
    - Jeffrey Vernon
      
      I think they’d take this in good part.
  - Jeffrey Vernon
    
    Well…until very recent years, the state took a great and prurient interest in the private sex lives of gay men. In other words, it was the state that made an issue of it. It is only very recently that British people have become post-Diana about the whole thing.
- Jeffrey Vernon
  
  The ad suggests that gays might change their ways…as if they are deficient in some way. This would only be comparable to the Stonewall ad if it had said ‘Are you straight? You’d be much happier if you weren’t’
ReefKnot

Stonewall receive funding from Government, I.e. The taxpayer, I.e. ‘You’. Yes, that’s right, you pay towards their campaigning and promotion of homosexuality as a way of life. They even produce literature for schoolchildren.

They are one of the thousands of Fake Charities in Britain, busily campaigning and lobbying for their pet causes and funded by your taxes.

Meanwhile, real charities who do real charitable work, like RNLI and Air Ambulance don’t get anything. An absolute scandal.
- JackBlack1
  
  Firstly to clear something up homosexuality isn’t a “way of life” it is who people are, it can’t be changed, it can only be suppressed by systematic psychological abuse (generally by more fundamentalist sections of Christianity and Islam).
  
  I do agree that Stonewall shouldn’t be government funded as I also believe no charity should unless it is one set up as a government initiative.
  - Baron
    
    If homosexuality cannot be changed, JackBlack1, why don’t you and they shut up about it, get on with life, ha?
    - Vlad
      
      They can’t get on with life because at every corner they are attacked by righteous christians who can’t but meddle in the lives of others. If everyone would learn to NOT interfere in other’s lives we would have a much easier life on Earth.
      
      Like one famous British philosopher once said (Thomas Hobbes or John Locke – “Social Contract” or “Leviathan” can’t remember exactly): “Your liberty ends when it starts to interfere with someone elses liberty”. Don’t remember exactly the formulation nor the author, but you can understand the main idea.
  - GraveDave
    
    I used to work for a gay bloke in the 90s, and other than his endless memberships to boy band clubs, and having Steven Gately pictures up everywhere, you wouldn’t have known. He was a sweet bloke. Neither did he mind if you said his shoes were a bit gay.
  - zakisbak
    
    it can’t be changed –
    But it can,and does change with some people.
    it is who people are –
    And therefore can,I said can,be a dysfunctional trait,a result of childhood experiences,conditioning etc etc,like any other thing that constitutes who people are.
  - Rocksy
    
    All charities should be privately funded. Individuals may give to any organization they feel does worthwhile work but the taxpayer should not be funding them. This has also the benefit of getting rid of the dross and means the taxpayer doesn’t have to wonder if he’s helping to support radical groups and controversial ideals or even just causes he doesn’t care about.
    It’s much easier to defraud the taxpayer.
    Individuals may give more if they know the cause has no other funding.
  - John Smith
    
    Do you have the evidence for that? Innate or learned?
    - josepholeary
      
      No, but the President of Uganda is looking for such evidence. Can you help him? He asks if gays are so born, like Albinos (who have been murdered in Africa).
      - John Smith
        
        So no evidence, just the usual specious points
      - josepholeary
        
        John Smith, what is your evidence on whether heterosexuality is innate or learned? The evidence you offer will be found to fit the gay case as well.
      - John Smith
        
        Your birth & existence goes a long way to showing its innate But I guess you will argue against that.
        – Over to you on the gay case & evidence .. .
      - josepholeary
        
        It doesn’t go any way at all! To be an Albino is an innate condition even if neither parent is. To be gay or to be straight is a condition that is likewise not dependent on the sexual orientation of the parents. It is a logical fallacy to say that because all people are born of heterosexual intercourse, heterosexuality must be innate in a way that homosexuality is not. It is a non sequitur, so rather hard to argue with, except to say, quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur.
      - John Smith
        
        Its OK to be in denial
        We await the case for why being gay is not a choice, or at worst fashionable
      - josepholeary
        
        “We await the case”
        
        I first felt tenderness for another male when looking into a classmate’s eyes at the age of 4 — the first male outside the family that I had encountered — the sentiment remains as vivid today at 64, in unbroken continuity — no more “chosen” than my conscience or my mind.
        
        You will get the same testimony from millions upon millions of people, if you are willing to hold a human dialogue with them. But if it’s hard scientific proof you want, well, there is a vast literature out there、much of it arguing for genetic determination, as indicated by this piece: http://www.viewzone.com/homosexual.html, but even psychoanalysts argue only for unconscious choice in earliest infancy, which determines orientation irreversibly.
        
        Unlike the scientific case for Copernican or Darwinian theory, the hard science and the subjective experience match perfectly in this case.
      - John Smith
        
        Are you still saying that the procreation of a child between two hetrosexual folk is not innate?
        What you have put forward here is a strong case for choice in homosexual relations but no evidence it is innate.
        Obscure organisations trying to be self realising by dodgy research do not help the case
      - josepholeary
        
        I believe that heterosexuality is just as innate as homosexuality, no more, no less, and as pointed out, both experience and science substantiate this position. I made the case that there is NO choice in homosexual or heterosexual orientation. Of course there is plenty of choice in what one does on the basis of that orientation. One may choose to have sexual relations or not, to procreate a child or not, etc. But actions cannot meaningfully be spoken of as innate.
      - John Smith
        
        If two people have a loving & caring relationship that is something to be cherished.
        By definition the procreation of a child between two hetrosexual folk is innate
        All the research on homosexuality is far from conclusive.
        It shifts between innate & learned, then back again. So any conjecture on it being innate is purely a personal opinion
      - josepholeary
        
        The origins of heterosexuality are just as obscure as the origins of homosexuality. Psychoanalysts say that both are learned. Others say that both are innate. Neither are consciously learned. The procreation of a child is an act performed in adulthood, so by definition cannot be innate.
      - RichardOakes
        
        Yes, and any homosexual activity is purely personal – put simply, you don’t have to watch.
        
        I wonder why people affect a standpoint of scientific enquiry when talking about this…I would say that ‘playing Playstation’ or even ‘cooking food’ is less innate or natural than copulation of any kind, yet people don’t seem bothered about these forms of abomination.
      - OldeJanner
        
        Sorry to butt in, but isn’t albinism caused by a DNA defect?
      - josepholeary
        
        I suppose so. No one seems to think that a gay gene would be a “defect”, but even if it were, that would not undercut legal equality (just as albinism doesn’t).
    - Jeffrey Vernon
      
      It’s not really a subject where ‘evidence’ matters very much. What kind of controlled experiment could you do? Not all problems are reducible to this approach.
      
      It would be like asking for evidence that heterosexuals can convert. I think we all know that they have, in some cases,spontaneously; forcible conversion from straight to gay is probably not attempted very much, and probably wouldn’t work. In the end, you’re left with anecdotes – nothing you could publish with confidence intervals.
      - josepholeary
        
        Spontaneous conversion or change of sexual orientation is a topic one would like to know more about — does it mean a shift on a basic bisexual spectrum or is it experienced as the surprising emergence of a sexual interest never previously felt. It is shocking to me that in the 21st century human sexuality still remains such a terra incognita — thanks to massive forces of fear and obscurantism. Consider the chequered careers of Freud and Hirschfeld and the machinery of censorship that kept even such mild efforts as those of E. M. Forster and Radclyffe-Hall buried.
      - RichardOakes
        
        You seem like a thoroughly decent chap, Joseph.
        
        Well done for humouring the ‘scientific’ brigade, at least my Grandad doesn’t attempt to justify it beyond “I just don’t like poofs”, there’s something pathetic (and of a lady protesting too much) about people who claim to be looking for some kind of science to hide their secret lust for man-meat behind.
  - Mark Blades
    
    Eight major studies of identical twins in Australia, the U.S., and
    Scandinavia during the last two decades all arrive at the same
    conclusion: gays were not born that way.
    
    “At best genetics is a minor factor,” says Dr. Neil Whitehead, PhD. His PhD is in biochemistry and statistics.
    
    Identical twins have the same genes or DNA. They are nurtured in
    equal prenatal conditions. If homosexuality is caused by genetics or prenatal conditions and one twin is gay, the co-twin should also be gay.
    
    “Because they have identical DNA, it ought to be 100%,” Dr. Whitehead notes. But the studies reveal something else. “If an identical twin has same-sex attraction the chances the co-twin has it are only about 11% for men and 14% for women.”
    
    Because identical twins are always genetically identical,
    homosexuality cannot be genetically dictated. “No-one is born gay,” he notes. “The predominant things that create homosexuality in one identical twin and not in the other have to be post-birth factors.”
- GraveDave
  
  You’ll never stop it now -not even if the UKIP were to one day form a government. Too many people and groups stand to lose out.
- Stigenace
  
  The RNLI doesn’t want state funding.
  
  Reputation is vitally important to the charity because it relies very heavily on voluntary income. Of its total annual revenue of about £170m, £52m comes from fundraising and £95m from legacies. It relies also on volunteer effort: although it does employ 1,400 paid staff, the lifeboat service depends on 7,500 operational volunteers and a wider network of about 35,000 helpers.
  
  In this sense, the RNLI can be seen as a “pure” charity that has not gone down the road of accepting state funding, or recruiting a largely paid workforce, even though it runs an essential public service. So its success in the reputation survey raises intriguing issues for the voluntary sectoras it contemplates the prospect and nature of a wider role in public services under the new prime minister’s vision of a “big society”.
  
  [Paul] Boissier [RNLI’s Chief Executive] admits that when he joined the RNLI, he questioned why it did not take government money. But he quickly came to appreciate the stance. “From our perspective, and I can’t speak for others, we think that if we mixed our funding, the public would perceive a lesser need to put money into the box to help us. And the other issue is that if the government gives you money this year, there’s no guarantee it will repeat it next year.”
  
  http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/jun/02/charities-shine-reputation-chart
  - Rocksy
    
    What the Gov giveth, the Gov can taketh away.
    - OldeJanner
      
      But don’t for fear of being ‘labelled’!
- Captain Yossarian
  
  Churches also receive economic benefit in the form of tax relief. So what? Why should atheists have to pay money for that?
  
  Gay people are tax payers; are you saying that they should be exempt from paying taxes because the Church receives money from the government?
  - Rocksy
    
    Tax relief or tax exempt doesn’t mean taxpayer funded.
    - Captain Yossarian
      
      It means that they are getting economic benefit from the Government. They don’t have to pay money on their earnings, while other businesses and individuals have to do so.
      
      They should be taxed if they want to start meddling in the politics and laws of the country. They should not have special privileges. Their imaginary sky fairy shouldn’t have any relevance to the law of the land.
      
      If gay people have to pay tax on their earnings, then they should have more rights concerning the country than Churches, who pay no taxes on their earnings. It’s as simple as that.
      - Rocksy
        
        I don’t disagree with your post in general., though I think that many religious organizations and other charities which rely on volunteers do good work which saves the taxpayer millions. Perhaps this system needs to be revisited. My beef is with political and race or nationality based organizations which are often politicized. Why are we subsidizing communities of people from other countries?
      - Rocksy
        
        Athiests benefit from many organizations run by religious charities. Directly and indirectly.
sarah_13

Final paragraph is spot on. The problem for Rod I think is that many who want to read the worst in his articles never actually get to the final paragraph.
IanM

Glad to see someone standing up for our ‘uman rights. So much so I would be prepared to contribute to a charity seeking to reintroduce lesbians to the Chilterns, so we can once again see them “soaring hither and thither in the skies…on their outstretched wings, fierce gimlet eyes perpetually on the alert for carrion”. What a wonderful awe-inspiring thing that would be! Thank you Rod for the best image of the week so far.
- John Clegg
  
  I agree, Rod is one of the most entertaining and best writers around today. I turn to him first every Friday.
  
  Thanks Rod.
- Captain Yossarian
  
  Yes, glad to see that Rod Liddle is standing up for what’s right.
  
  Oh wait, is this the same Rod Liddle who was arrested for assaulting his pregnant girlfriend?
  
  Well, no surprise that someone like him is siding with homophobia, is it?
  - gerontius
    
    Cheap shot Captain and he isn’t siding with homophobia.
    Aside to the audience:
    “Why am I defending him – he can clearly look after himself?”
    - Captain Yossarian
      
      I’m sure it’s no cheaper than a ‘shot’ to the eye socket of a pregnant woman.
      
      He clearly was being homophobic, it’s right there in the article.
Swanky

Not a great font of future citizens though, eh Rod?

The ‘world is too populated’ crowd misses the point. Firstly, they exempt everyone they care about from any projected population blank-slating (‘no grandchildren, except my own’). Secondly, they ignore the fact that the ‘do-unto-others’ types do well among some and not among others. I want more of the DUO types in the world and fewer of the others. Quality not quantity — or, if we must have great quantity, let it be quality of decent soul. Otherwise, unspeakable cruelty unleashes itself, and the good have no recourse. As the scholar Clifford Orwin once put it, in times of faction the best men are gift-wrapped victims of the worst.
Vlad

No offence, but this bs. It has been proven that gay re-education, the one practiced buy churches is not a valid treatment to being gay. It only affect the person psychologically, probably because of the archaic methods that The Church has always applied to solving issues. Moreover now this re-education it’s on the brink of being banned. Gay is not a condition, nor a gap in your soul that needs to be filled by Jesus. It’s a different genetic sequence that can’t be fixed, nor it necessarily needs to be fixed, but this is another discussion. Bottom line, it can’t be fixed. So ex-gays are brainwashed or really fragile people that got to that state by psychological torture. So I’m sorry if it offends you that those buses were banned but it’s a valid decision. Would you like genital mutilation to be legal and advertised about? It’s a religious ritual that “fixes” women. Let’s legalize that too.
- VitaBrevis1
  
  If gays cannot be treated, why is it that paedophiles can be?
  - Fred Scuttle
    
    They can’t really.
  - Fergus Pickering
    
    They can’t, fellow. Why do you suppose they can? Who told you that?
    - Cassandra
      
      You have a problem. If paedophilia can’t be treated, then paedophiles have no moral culpability. Which is the argument that homosexuals offer for their own condition: ‘We can’t help it’!
      
      So kiddy fiddlers should have the equal treatment we are ordered by law to offer to homosexuals, according to you?
      
      Actually, one can get treatment for paedophilia at the Portman Clinic in London.
      
      Failing that, there is always chemical castration.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        I think you are shying away from what may be the truth. Paedophiles are morally culpable if they give in to their desires. But why should they? We seem to believe that sex is stronger than the will. ‘The woman tempted me and I did eat’. Or the little boy. Tosh!
        
        You can get treatment for anything at a clinic. I can call spirits from the vasty deep!’ @But will they come when you do call to them?’
      - Jeffrey Vernon
        
        They can be dissuaded from their reckless behavior – but I expect that the desire remains (at least in many cases). Treatment for paedos isn’t aimed at orienting them towards adults – more at socialisation
  - Vlad
    
    :)) Paedophiles can’t be treated. They are incarcerated and when released an interdiction is given to them to not come close to any school, playground or similar place. That is way in US there is the largest town of paedophiles and sex offenders in the world. Almost all of them are one or the other. They all moved there because there are no children in the area.
    
    They don’t get cured. Being gay is an inherited random change in the genetic code. Like being heterosexual. The only difference is that heterosexuals could reproduce and that’s why there are more of them today than homosexuals. There are other forms of reproduction too like cloning. There are lizard populations on different islands that reproduce by cloning. Females give birth to an exact copy of themselves. So the whole population looks identical.
    
    Bottom line, sexual behaviour and reproduction have come into existence in different forms by natural selection and random genetic mutation. There is no fundamental model because there wasn’t any to begin with.
    
    Why do you people insist on intervening in other peoples lifes. As long as they don’t come shove their ideas in yours why bother about them?
- Tom M
  
  Strange that, I watched a gay couple on the BBC a month or two ago where the subject of gay marriage was being discussed. The gay bloke suggested that if people objected to gay marriage it was because they needed to be educated. Apparently some education is OK.
- Alexandrovich
  
  Presumably, you are Vlad the… erm…Impaler?
- Jeffrey Vernon
  
  ‘It’s a different genetic sequence.’
  
  This sentence is meaningless. If gays have a genetic sequence, how did they get it from their heterosexual parents? Why don’t their heterosexual siblings inherit it?
  
  Do you know what a genetic sequence is?
  - Vlad
    
    Because two people are not born the same, mate. That’s why a sibling can have blond hair and one can have black hair. Because they don’t inherit everything. Some inherit more from their parents, others inherit some from relatives down the chain like grandparents or even great-grandparents.
    
    No offence, but you learn this in the 9th grade in Biology class. This was first proven around 18th century by a monk doing genetic tests on cultures of corn. Later confirmed by subsequent tests and analysis of genetic material in different generations of people from the same family.
    - Jeffrey Vernon
      
      But the blond hair and black hair occurred somewhere among their ancestors – it doesn’t spontaneously occur. That’s how we know that hair colour is genetic, and the colour of Mendel’s peas is genetic (but that cancer isn’t in most cases). Why does homosexuality appear for the first time in a family if it’s inherited from a long line of heterosexual parents, grandparents…?
      - Vlad
        
        It does spontaneously occur. My brother has blonde hair even though me, my mother and father have black hair. The only one in the family with blonde hair was my grand-grandfather. It’s called a recessive gene. Even if it doesn’t manifest in you you carry it over and it can manifest in your children or their children. That’s why some children suffer from genetically transmitted diseases of which their parent’s don’t, but their ancestors might have. That’s why at the doctor’s you are asked if you had any history of disease in the family, including uncles and grandparents.
      - Jeffrey Vernon
        
        That’s right – there was a blond ancestor. The gene didn’t happen out of nowhere. Even if you didn’t know your grandfather, someone in the past will have transmitted the allele to your brother. Now, it’s possible that recessive homo genes occur in families – and perhaps a long-dead ancestor was actually gay – but the chance of a gay man/woman passing that gene to a child is low. And ‘declared’ homosexuality seems to be more frequent in western countries, which suggests that there’s something more than biology happening. If it really was a single recessive gay gene, it would have been discovered in family studies (plenty of labs have been looking).
Claire Fifi Fifield

Lol,this article has been cleverly constructed to lead homophobic people “by the nose”, I can imagine them all reading it,nodding sagely and saying “hear, hear” and then comes the coup de grace, the cruncher…as they nod to the notion that gay people should just “abide by someone else’s rule and accept that they are hideously misguided”…Erm…yeeeees? Is that right?
- Colonel Mustard
  
  No.
VitaBrevis1

Gays represent 1% of the population, with a further 0.5% describing themselves as bisexual.

One would never guess these vanishingly small proportions if one got one’s information solely from watching BBC TV.

For example, ‘Location Location’ invariably has at least one gay couple house hunting, even though such couples form a minority in the tiny 1% aforesaid.

And this organisation claims not to have its own agenda?
- Fergus Pickering
  
  No. That is the people who so describe themselves. People don’t always tell the truth to researchers. Shock, horror! Do you remember how many Poles said they would come to England years ago? Or how many Bulgarians recently? And if I went out onto th streets and asked people whether they were fat and ugly, would I get theb 20% take-up I ought to get?
  - Swanky
    
    True. I NEVER tell doctors how much wine I drink. In fact I try to tell them as little as possible. They’re not great brains, and I’m much better off managing my own health.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      Quite right. I had a fine doctor once whose Bardolph nose showed he liked his wine. My present doctor is a charming Irish woman with children and a big fluffy dog who wouldn’t dream of asking me any such thing.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        If you heard the big fluffy dog asking you questions
        then I would think it’s not just the doctor who was fond of wine,
        or whiskey ( Irish spelling- unlike the way those blasted
        Scots spell the word)
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        It is a most polite dog, Kitty
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Big fluffy dogs are usually mostly polite,
        unlike gun dogs who are mostly curmudgeonly.
        At least fluffy understands you, when you have
        have a chat about the price of Borneo’s these days.
        Mine only understand Italian, a huge problem for the vet.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        I don’t know the nationality of my doctor’s dog. Could it be an Irish Setter? As to the booze, it all depends on the whisky. Either way it is a transliteration from the Gaelic. But you knew that.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Irish setters are not fluffy, and are somewhat lofty in character and
        not polite !
        It maybe a Irish Water Spaniel, or perhaps a Irish Toy Collie-
        perhaps you should ask next time you see fluffy.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        I shall enquire.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Excellent idea!
        Just make sure you have not had too
        Many whiskey’s beforehand or you will
        be sharing ‘The hair of the dog’ !
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        In general I am a G & T man, but not till the sun is over the yardarm which it ain’t.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        ” The sun is over the yardarm”
        I have heard of that saying before,
        from a porridge eating, kilt wearing ( Englishmen do not have the knees) painted faced savage ( blame Caesar)
        fellow called Salty who lives somewhere deep in isolation
        in haggis land- Probably the only Scottish Conservative left!
        I also hope you have a slice of lime with your G&T-its much better then lemon.
      - JohnCK
        
        I think you two should go and find a room, as Private Eye might have said, and continue the ‘doggie discussions’.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        We are delighted you can share our wit and wisdom. We have plenty to spare. Unlike some, by God.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        Lime it shall be, Kitty. And Oliver Cromwell gin.
      - Rocksy
        
        My philosophy is that the sun is over the yardarm somewhere.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        In the days when pubs didn’t open till eleven Stanley Holloway was asked (some Ealing Comedy – the Titfield Thunderbolt perhaps) what he did until that hour. ‘II wait impetient for the day to dawn!’ I miss pub opening and closing times. But then I am of an age when I miss a lot of things.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        ‘ I am of an age where I miss most things’.
        That is very cheery way to start a day.
        Absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism-
        Try reading Evelyn Waugh, PG Wodehouse ( brilliant)
        or even Tom Sharpe ( unless you are too refined)
        If none of that works, you poor old soul,
        then for God, for England and for George -just
        fall off the top of a mountain!
        Also, a message to all you chaps, pubs still have opening and
        closing times- they are not open 24 hours a day- its a myth.
        Boys and there watering holes- God give me strength.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        I read P G Wodehouse all the time.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Splendid, a gentleman of good taste and one that appreciates a certain type of English humour.
        Fergus does remind me of a character,
        but I cannot for the life of me remember his name,
        and I have a feeling that I cannot tell you even if I did remember.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Correction- their watering holes!
      - Rocksy
        
        I’m of an age when I’ve forgotten a lot of things. I don’t realise I’m missing something till I’m reminded of it..
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        As long as you haven’t forgotten your name and where you live.you are OK.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Rocksy, You poor old beansprout ! as long as you remember
        what thinks are for, rather then where you have put them.
        You just disappear off and find a Cameroon to give
        you a big- hug a husky hug !!!
      - Rocksy
        
        OK, I’m going to say it. These posts are going to the dogs.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Rather Like The Conservative Party going to
        Lib Dem Pavlov Dogs- leaving puddles by the Tory oak !
      - Swanky
        
        Lucky you : )
    - gerontius
      
      Sensible girl, don’t give them a glimmer.
      I went to my doc a while back . I hadn’t been for years (well if I’m dying I’d rather not be told in advance). His first and only question was “How much do you drink each week?” I said “Well, a couple of bottle of wine, easily” He raised an eyebrow and said “Well it’s good that you’re honest about it” “No point in lying” I said. He sent me for some weird tests involving a nice nurse and some cold jelly, but I never saw the result. Doomed I suppose.
      If you ever get to York Minster, in the corner of one of those magnificent stained glass windows there is a medieval “cartoon” of a monkey doctor treating his monkey patient – not much changes.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Doctors are very patronising,
        I know someone who had a health problem a while ago,
        one in which she manages herself and was able to get herself
        better again without any help from doctors.
        yet they always think they know better, people who
        live with conditions are the experts.
        Also, we have visited York minster, and have seen the cartoon,
        I should say that the medieval people with their natural remedies knew much more. I am a believer is finding
        cures naturally.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        Only a couple? But I suppose you push the boat out occasionally.
      - Swanky
        
        I’m sure he does. Every day more or less, around the dinner hour, I’d wager.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        I am not too sure about the other indulgencies he mentioned,
        but there is noting more amusing and cringeworthy then a
        posh English man who has had one too many.
        The younger ones like to take their clothes off and run around,
        the older ones, it becomes about the The Great British
        Empire ( which I approve of) and they wander off into the woods with guns to shoot a few birds. The scatological
        private schoolboy humour also appears- and I will not mention bananas- if you come across one – just run.
      - gerontius
        
        You’ve seen right through me. I wouldn’t want you to think that I lie habitually, but when cornered what else can a poor boy do?
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Ermm! Lying has a kind of respect and reverence to it.
        We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging
        his superiority whenever we lie to him.
        The poor boy will not go to heaven,
        but I am sure he will enjoy himself far more in hell 😉
      - Swanky
        
        Play in a rock ‘n roll band?
      - Kitty MLB
        
        He seems like a sensitive soul- there are so many here.
        As the font of all wisdom. I suggest
        he listens to Classical music ( especially baroque)
        English and American Jazz and if he wants to venture further
        the mystical charm Hindustani music.
      - Swanky
        
        Good ideas. Arabian techno-fusion dance funk may be a step too far….. : )
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Also, Chinese dragon dance music blended with
        Aztec drum rhythms…he can even dress up 🙂
      - Swanky
        
        Dressing up’s the best bit!
      - gerontius
        
        What mean person voted down your fine suggestion ?
      - Swanky
        
        A lot of mean people out there, G!
      - Swanky
        
        Hilarious! I love the ‘couple of bottles of wine, easily’ and his response! And then your agreement ;^)
        
        I’ve just seen a diet book that advises seven units (i.e. glasses of whatever sort) of alcohol per week. If you’re being self-indulgent, that is. This is why the thinnest people are those that a) don’t really enjoy food; b) don’t really enjoy drink; c) do things religiously because it’s good for them. My own feeling is that if you can do with only seven units a week as a maximum, why bother drinking at all?
      - gerontius
        
        Swanky, I wouldn’t want to encourage you to over indulge but you’ve reminded me of a comment by the late Clement Freud “They say that if you give up drink, drugs, sex and rock and roll you’ll live longer. You won’t – it just seems that way”
      - Swanky
        
        Perfect! I’m sure not to live too long, then. It’s only the drink I do (jazz, classical, and world music are more my style these days).
      - gerontius
        
        Not even an occasional bit of rock and roll – when you’re feeling excessively exhuberant?
        I know it’s silly but I can’t help liking this (folk rock really)
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7yVnfX98A8
        I had a red-headed girl once but couldn’t afford the bike.
        Classical is for when I’m feeling grown-up.
      - Swanky
        
        You got me there! I like all sorts, really. Partly it’s that I’ve heard all the rock by now, and I understand they aren’t really making it any more. Listening to your link. For narratives I think you can’t beat ‘El Paso’, played best I think by the Grateful Dead.
        
        Perhaps you would like ‘Pass You By’ by Gillian Welch.
  - Cassandra
    
    Even in an anonymous survey?
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      Do you really believe only one woman in 200 is a lesbian. I think many/most lesbians have found men not altogether satisfactory. As, alas, we are not. I also think many gay men have slept with women or perhaps still do. And there is still the propensity to lie in surveys. Suppose you were asked in an anonymous survey how much alcohol you drank or how often you masturbated? Would you answer truly?
      
      D.H. Lawrence, for instance, was plainly a repressed homosexual, perhaps not always repressed. Do you think he would have admitted it?
    - Jeffrey Vernon
      
      It was the census; in the 2007 Statistics and Registration Service Act, ‘confidential’ data can be disclosed for 8 different reasons. Besides, anything on a government computer is hackable, I suppose. Public sector job forms – impertinently ask your sexual orientation. I doubt any gay person who wants to keep it quiet actually fills it in honestly.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        Nobody should fill in such a thing honestly. As a matter of principle.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        Never fill in such forms honestly.
VitaBrevis1

I don’t think people can ‘get over’ the fact that there are gays, It seems pretty obvious that the reaction most people have, most of the time, to homosexual behaviour, especially when directed at themselves, is instinctive in the human animal. If it wasn’t, we would all be at it , and we aren’t.

However, Sex is a very powerful drive and in circumstances where normal heterosexual outlets are unavailable, such as in boarding school, Prisons, the navy etc and in societies where females are under strict control such as Ancient Greece & / or where there is a shortage because some men have multiple wives ( eg Islam) distaste for homosexual activity is overridden.

But then, in such circumstances, some people will indulge with just about anything and anyone.
- Fred Scuttle
  
  “I don’t think people can ‘get over’ the fact that there are gays”
  
  I can. Why can’t you?
  - VitaBrevis1
    
    See above. I’m talking about most people.
    - Fred Scuttle
      
      Most people can and do get over it. Religious weirdos struggle because they are religious weirdos.
      - Swanky
        
        Again, your lack of self-knowledge Fred is amazing.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Likewise I’m sure. Are you religious?
      - Swanky
        
        No, not likewise. And I’ve never been religious in my life.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Are you Christian, and therefore claiming a relationship with a 2000 year old corpse?
      - Swanky
        
        Hello? Anybody home? I’ve already told you I’ve never been religious. Everything alright in there, Fred?
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Christians frequently say they are not religious at all, but claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
      - Swanky
        
        Do they? I’ve never met one like that.
      - dmitri the impostor
        
        Of course they do, Swanky. Didn’t you know? Fred’s one of
        the magic clipboard brigade. He has gone round and personally interviewed ‘most people’. ‘Can you and do you get over it?’ he asks them. ‘Ooh yes, Fred,’ they say. And Fred ticks his little box.
        
        Then he moves on to question 2. ‘Are you religious at all?’ ‘Ooh no, Fred,’ they say. And Fred ticks his little box. ‘Despite that, do you claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?’ And on it goes …
      - mandelson
        
        The best motto for Scuttled Fred must be “Dont feed the Troll!”
      - Swanky
        
        Bingo, D!
- Jeffrey Vernon
  
  That doesn’t account for most homos, who have never been near a prison, boarding school or the navy. You might as well say that heterosexuals fling themselves indiscriminately at the opposite sex because mixed society puts temptation in their way.
  - Cogra Bro
    
    There is a varying capacity for homosexuality in some people. In certain circumstances, mostly prolonged lack of access to the other sex, people who are normally repulsed by homosexual overtures will give in to them.
    - Jeffrey Vernon
      
      BUT most homosexuals are not in this situation. They grow up surrounded by members of both sexes. Vita Brevis was trying to account for homosexuality in terms of desperation and indiscriminate mating.
disqus_KdiRmsUO4U

Whichever way you look at it the pro homosexual lobby is a nuisance.
Also laws have been put on the statute book the have led to clear injustice.
(The B/B couple having to pay damages to a couple of homo showoffs for example)
Tatchell is a brave chappie but i larf out loud when I see how Mugabe’s bodyguards ‘debated’ with him

It is also true a major plank of pro gay propaganda rests on the deceit of cosy romantic long term stable relationships.

The overwhelming volume of male homosexual behaviour is anonymous taking place in such places as club toilets and saunas.
- Fred Scuttle
  
  I laughed out loud when the religious nuts in the B&B case lost. Serves them right, lying twits.
  - Baron
    
    Laughs, last, longest?
  - HFC
    
    You really are a nasty piece of work, aren’t you.
  - Colonel Mustard
    
    I laugh out loud at most of your stupid comments. Probably because your avatar appears so well suited to your mentality.
    - Fred Scuttle
      
      That Jesus sure was a nutcase.
      - Swanky
        
        Yeah, we get it: you’re not a Christian. Religion stinks. Anything else to offer?
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Well if he doesn’t like the Christian God,
        he should think about Greek or Roman mythology
        there is plenty to chose from and they have more human
        qualities and flaws.
        Yet I suppose he prefers to have no hope !
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Why believe in any of it at all? it’s crazy.
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        Why not? It’s not your business to determine the beliefs of others just because you want to wave your militant atheist credentials – another belief system by the way.
      - Swanky
        
        Well, I don’t have much ‘hope’, Kitty, but I don’t go around slagging off the foundations of my own civilization, either. (Please forgive the vulgar idiom.)
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Its a general lack of respect for others! there is so
        much of that in the modern world, a lack of kindness and manners.
        Also he does not understand that there is no sense or reasoning to faith, you either have it or do not.
        Also, hope is something that perhaps turns up latter in life,
        when you are young, you perhaps do not think of such things.
        Well I had better go and make sure I have not ruined
        the Lamb, have a good weekend.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Are you having lion with it?
      - Swanky
        
        Have a good weekend, Kitty, and enjoy your dinner.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        Forgot to mention something about the word Hope.
        I do not believe you have to have faith in God for that,
        A friend of mine believes the soul is a an energy that
        cannot die and continues forever.
        Yet I know reincarnation is a no go area for the church.-
        they are not very open about that thought.
      - Swanky
        
        I don’t believe in not dying, but I’m fine with that. I’m not concerned about ‘where’ I was before I was born, and I’m just as unconcerned about ‘where’ I’ll be when I die — which is probably nowhere.
- VitaBrevis1
  
  In my view those homosexuals went after that B&B couple deliberately and brought them to near ruin out of pure spite in an effort to assert their proclivities as ‘equal ‘, which they aren’t and never can be for the overwhelming majority of people.
  
  Homosexuals were extended tolerance and return have shown themselves to be capable of vicious Intolerance.
  - Fergus Pickering
    
    But aren’t you doing what the poofs say you do, generalising from a small and possibly unrepresentative sample. Am I to generalise about heterosexuals from couples who beat their children to death?
  - Fred Scuttle
    
    They booked a room and were turned away. Very Christian.
    - MikeF
      
      In fact they weren’t ‘turned away’ but offered separate rooms just as an unmarried heterosexual couple would have been.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Not true, unmarried hetero couples were allowed to stay (the NSS tested this) and the gay couple were in a civil partnership, so as married as they could possibly be. The place was full AFAIK, so no separate rooms were available.
      - MikeF
        
        Not what I understood to be the case, but either way the absolutist intolerance of the militant gay lobby for anything that they decide they do not like is what remains self-evident. Why not instead settle for a bit of live and let live – after all what might the reception be for a prim heterosexual couple seeking to book a room in a ‘gay’ hotel in Brighton?
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Legally they would have to be allowed in. If not they could also seek redress through the courts.
      - Jeffrey Vernon
        
        Where is this army of gay lobbyists? It was a court case, not a street campaign. A single couple, one B&B. I disagree with the court verdict, but it really doesn’t have the implications you say.
  - Jeffrey Vernon
    
    When they were extended tolerance it was not by you, clearly (not equal and never will be, forsooth)
    
    Precisely TWO homosexuals showed themselves capable of intolerance. And they were only using a weapon handed to them by the Equality Act 2006.
  - Sigfridii
    
    Gay “rights” is one thing, but it has now become Gay Rule.
- Fergus Pickering
  
  And male heterosexual activity?
- Jeffrey Vernon
  
  Club toilets? A better class of homosexual, evidently.
- DG
  
  http://www.vice.com/en_uk/vice-news/young-and-gay-in-putins-russia-full-length#ooid=dma2F3ajo0wu91EBz26kVQqfNmEnOg5y
Fred Scuttle

I can only hope that one day there will be a complete cure for religious belief. Not Christian, ex Christian because I have a fully functioning brain!
- VitaBrevis1
  
  A fully functioning brain? So has a rat.
  - Fred Scuttle
    
    Better thinkers than the religious too!
    - VitaBrevis1
      
      So rattus rattus could preach the Sermon on the mount?
      
      Where is this prodigy?
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        I’m sure the talking snake could do it if a rat couldn’t.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        So let’s hear you preach then.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        I don’t preach. I leave that to those that wish to control the peasants.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        If you aren’t a peasant, what are you? Lord Scuttle of the Coke Heap?
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        I’m Fred that sees how evil and false religious faith is. How it divides the human race along sectarian lines.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        Without religion there would be no civilisation. ‘Culture’, from ‘cult’.
        
        What’s evil are people who sneer at decent others who are ruined by homosexual bigots.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        There was civilization here long before the evil middle eastern cult called Christianity was imposed by force. It’s happening again, this time it’s another variety of Abrahamic garbage called Islam that threatens us, ironic because it’s basically the same idiotic controlling crap that Christianity was.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        The world’s first architecture is to be found on the Island of Gozo (Malta).
        
        It is a temple.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Yes. And?
      - Baron
        
        And you claim to have a fully functioning brain, arghhh.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Let me explain it to you. Man invented all gods and all religion, so the evolution of man’s civilization has nothing to do with it.
        Try to understand, it really isn’t all that difficult.
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        Nor this.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        Do you know anybody who has been ruined by a homosexual bigot? On the other hand it is true that many have been ruined by religious bigots, Have you read David Copperfield? I know it is fiction but do you not recognise Mr Murdstone. I am at least a passable Christian so don’t suppose I am biassed. Oh, and what do you think about muslim religious bigotry and its ability to ruin lives.
      - Baron
        
        The two Christian B&B owners, Fergus, ruined by two homosexual bigots.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        Yes, Baron, you are right about them. Would you, as a matter of interest defend the rights of B & B owners for turning away blacks, Irish and couples they judge not to be married?. But the two homosexuals should be ashamed of themselves and I know they won’t be.
      - Cassandra
        
        I actually lived in boarding houses in such times when these notices appeared on some of them.
        
        Blacks and Irish had a well – deserved reputation for drunkeness, playing loud music, theft, fighting , drugs, dirtiness and having women of dubious provenance on the premises,
        
        When I let out rooms of my own later, I didn’t want them on the premises either, even though I am Irish myself.
      - Baron
        
        You will forgive the poorly educated Slav for the delay, he’s traveling.
        
        Look, in most case, those who procure services, those who offer them would have no problem with sexual orientation, skin colour, nationality or whatever. In those case where problem does arise, the courts should decide, but not under an umbrella of biased statutes.
        
        In this specific case, if the two gays could easily find another B&B, the judge may have dismissed the case. If, on the other hand, the alternative accommodation wasn’t available, the B&B owners abused them or whatever, the judgment may have gone the other way, the B&B owners fined.
        
        To force a B&B business to close because a couple of homos want to shag there because the law says the right of homosexuals to do what they want trumps the rights of others, here the right to follow a religious belief, stinks of unfairness.
        
        Less than half a century ago we sent gays down, now they are untouchable. Both state of affairs are, in Baron’s view, wrong.
        
        You disagree?
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        No I don’t. You have put the case very cogently.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        They weren’t bigots at all.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        The evolution of a word means nothing.
      - Swanky
        
        Wrongo, Freddo. Much if not most of your morality as I see it displayed here would not exist without Judaeo-Christian morality. Sorry about that, old fruit.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Morality has nothing whatsoever to do with religion, unless you’re suggesting that the primitive men that invented the war god YAHWEH / Jesus knew more about how to behave in a moral way than we do now. I would say stoning is barbaric, how about you? What about slavery?
        Want to see Christianista style morality? Check out the stonings in Islamic countries.
      - Swanky
        
        You are too closed to talk with, Fred. The civilization you live in is a product of many forces but the biggies are the ancient Greek and Roman world as blended with the Judaeo-Christian religion. This pairing, mixing, and winnowing of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem is how we got The Enlightenment.
        
        Unless you swear off The Enlightenment and consider it evil, you are in large part a product of religious morality.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        There is no such thing as religious morality. Religion is the invention of man.
      - Swanky
        
        And morality is the invention of man — in which religion is inextricably bound up. God man, it’s obvious! You’re so anti-religion that you’re absurd about its effects.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Sigh. Religion derives its morality from the consensus within the society in which it was invented. It isn’t the other way round. Religion has given us nothing.
      - Swanky
        
        Well, that’s where you’re blind. And you need to make a distinction between what you hate as religious worship and the thinking/teaching of religious founders. In short, ideas have to come from somewhere. In our history, many ideas if not most have come through the channel of religious belief.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        It’s obvious, but being a religious nut you can’t see it.
      - Swanky
        
        OK, Eric the Fred. I’ve already told you I’m not religious. If anyone is behaving like a ‘religious nut’, it’s you — because you are adamant that you know the whole truth and you are crusading against those that think otherwise.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        How likely is it that a man was the product of an adulterous relationship with a god and his mother, the mother remained a virgin and the man died, then came back as his own god dad. I would expect someone that believes that to be constantly replying to Nigerian emails.
        
        One doesn’t need to be particularly clever to see foolish nonsense like that for what it is.
      - Swanky
        
        I’m glad it gives you a feeling of superiority. Again, you are confusing moral thinking about how we should live with specific aspects of the scriptural story. Try to separate them and perhaps you won’t be in such a fug. Though I doubt it.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        Ho likely is it that the world we live in evolved from nothing at all. Yes science tells us that is so, Not likely though, is it? How likely is it that 95% of the universe (the world of antatter) is unknowable. Not likely at all. But possibly true/.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        As all it has is an old book Christianity is set in stone and therefore the values within it are also set in stone. Our evolving moral values tell us that stoning and slavery is morally wrong, Chrstianity doesn’t.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        Religion has given many, many people the strength to endure. Your life has been easy. Try to imagine if it were not so, Fred.
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        So is science. Without man there would be no science.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        I will explain it very slowly for you. Over many millennia civilization slowly evolves as man evolves. While this happens man invents all kinds of gods, including the Judeo-Christian one.
        
        Therefore to say that the creation of civilization has anything at all to do with religion is a nonsense.
      - Swanky
        
        I didn’t. I said YOUR civilization, and mine — which happens to be the apotheosis of human political organization and technological advancement.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        That would be Islamic style morality. The clue is in the name. Islamic. Got it.
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        But this is not ‘preaching’.
      - puss-in-boots
        
        I’m Fred that sees how evil and false religious faith is.
        Yes, that’s your badge of honour, isn’t it Fred? ‘I’m Fred the swashbuckling Destroyer of Falsity, Wielder of Atheism and damn their eyes!’.
        Hilarious. And I’ve got a new nickname for you. Eric the Fred.
      - FrankS2
        
        “I don’t preach.”
        Not much!
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        “I don’t preach”
        
        Ha ha ha ha ha! Read your own comments in this thread you moron.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        preach
        priːtʃ/
        verb
        1.
        deliver a sermon or religious address to an assembled group of people, typically in church.
        “he preached to a large congregation”
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        You don’t do that preach you wally. You do this preach:-
        
        “To advocate, especially to urge compliance with”
        “To give opinionated instruction of selective morality, especially in a tedious manner.”
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        You do that too, nitwit.
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        No I don’t. I merely comment. I don’t wish to tell anyone else what they should or should not believe. It is entirely up to them. And there is a difference between atheism and militant atheism which you preach here as a quasi-religious belief system that you think others ought to comply with by ridiculing them for their beliefs. And ridiculing diversity is a left-wing trick too – Alinsky’s fifth rule from 1971 – ‘Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon’.
- Baron
  
  To have a fully functioning brain, Fred, you need to evolve another couple of millennia, possibly few hours more..
  - Fred Scuttle
    
    Humans are evolving away from religion, that’s for sure.
    - Swanky
      
      God, how wrong can you get!
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        You surely aren’t disputing that!!!!
      - Swanky
        
        ‘Evolve’ is the wrong word, and it’s certainly the wrong idea for most human beings on the planet. Atheism is and always will be a minority view.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        A 2012 survey found that 36% of the world population is not religious and that between 2005 and 2012 world religiosity decreased by 9 percentage points. Over 50% of the UK population are non-religious.
        
        The ancient Greeks believed in their gods. Were they right?
        
        As we evolve we are gradually becoming less religious.
      - pedestrianblogger
        
        You poor benighted soul. I will pray for you.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        I hope Aphrodite blesses you with much love.
      - pedestrianblogger
        
        God is love. I am born again in the Blood of the Lamb.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Yuck.
      - Cassandra
        
        So the population of India is non religious and do is that of ancestor- worshipping Confucian and Buddhist China and the Islamic world etc etc.
        
        Oh. Really?
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        That would be a survey by whom? The New World Order?
      - Cassandra
        
        Christianity might be unfashionable amongst the trendy classes at the moment, but all sorts of other spiritually-based beliefs and faith – based practices are.
      - pedestrianblogger
        
        No blasphemy, please.
michaelantony

The endless nature versus nurture debate over homosexuality would make some progress if people accepted that for some gays it may be innate and for others it may be conditioned behaviour. There is a lot of evidence that far more men come out of prison homosexual than went into it. Many ex-prisoners after five or ten years of forced sodomy can no longer make love to their wives except by sodomizing them while pretending they are men. Boarding school may also lead to what might be called conditioned homosexuality rather than innate homosexuality. Is it too much to expect the gay lobby to accept that those who have been conditioned into it can be conditioned out of it? And that those for whom it is innate cannot be? It is then up to each individual gay to decide if he is a candidate for de-conditioning or not. It is not up to the totalitarian gay lobby to deny people the right to their own analysis of their condition.
- VitaBrevis1
  
  I think the answer is that the division between nature and nurture is grey, not black and white.
  
  We know for example that intelligence is largely a function of genes but that environment does have an input.
  
  On this model, some people have innate tendencies which vary as between individuals and which in the right environmental conditions will produce homosexual behaviour, at least temporarily.
- Jeffrey Vernon
  
  Since most gays know a story about a straight man who grew wings, it stands to reason that gays cannot be fundamentalist about this question. I’m sure they realise that gays can go the other way as well. The Stonewall bus advert does not contradict this possibility.
tjamesjones

GREAT ARTICLE THANKS ROD MADE ME LAUGH A LOT
- Stigenace
  
  Do you see the Caps Lock button on your keyboard? Press it.
Skylar Baker-Jordan

I agree with the final sentiment; I am not for banning adverts because they might offend, nor am I in favour of curtailing the free expression of religious fundamentalists (which the majority of “ex-gays” are).

But Rod Liddle cannot literally compare lesbians to animals and play up stale tropes about gay people and, in the same 1000 words, claim he holds no animus towards gay people.

Beyond that, though, I wonder if we’d be equally aghast if the advert being banned was for skin lightening creams or serums. Imagine a light-skinned person of colour saying “I used to be darker! Get over it!” Society would be appalled. So I’m not quite sure what the difference is.
- VitaBrevis1
  
  Society would be appalled? You’re assuming an awful lot.
- FrankS2
  
  ‘Society would be appalled’ by an advert for skin lightening products…
  and quite right too, those blacks have a duty to remain black!
- Fergus Pickering
  
  I think Rod just says things to annoy. He’s a journalist, after all.
- Jeffrey Vernon
  
  I used to be straight! But I’m much happier now I’m gay!
  
  Another ad I don’t think we’ll be seeing.
Fred Scuttle

The Stonewall ad wasn’t offensive, the religious nut response was. That’s why it was banned.
- James Strong
  
  I think the point is that it doesn’t matter if ads are offensive, they shouldn’t be banned for that.
  You haven’t explained why offensive ads should be banned, and you haven’t attempted to define the limits of offence, or whose feelings of being offended should be taken into account.
  I pretty much agree with Rod – it’s a free country, you have the right to be offended.
  - Fred Scuttle
    
    It’s like saying there is a cure for being black. Or how about a bus banner that said that Christianity was a curable mass mental illness? (Which it is). Would you be OK with that?
    - VitaBrevis1
      
      According to leftist / liberals, there is a cure for bring black be ause race is a’social construct’.
      
      This seems to mean that if enough people think so, black is white and vice versa,
      
      It’s leftist bull, of course, so no doubt you will subscribe to this loony thinking.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        You are talking gibberish. Have another try, but this time make a serious attempt to talk sense.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        You are right, it is gibberish, but that’s leftist ideology for you.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Again, rather weak. Oh well, if that’s the best you can manage.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        Weak or not it’s better than anything had from you so far.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        I don’t value your opinion, or that of any deluded person.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        OK, we must agree to differ.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        The leftie ideology is just utterly mind boggling to me,
        never been brainwashed you see.
      - disqus_KdiRmsUO4U
        
        I wouldn’t try and debate with Fred Scuttle if I were you.
        He’s in love with Ernie the milkman
      - Stigenace
        
        No, that was Sue, a widow of 22 Linley Lane.
      - Jeffrey Vernon
        
        You’ve reduced Race to Being Black. Even the leftists are more subtle than that.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      No it isn’t, Mr Scuttle. Stop undermining your own case.
      - Swanky
        
        He’s an incurable Lefty.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        Alas I fear so. And a miserable atheist.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        So you think you have an imaginary friend. How quaint and deluded.
        
        I’m a happy atheist BTW.
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        You are not that happy if you have to publicly scorn the personal religious beliefs of others as “quaint and deluded”. To each his own and good luck to him.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Christians threaten me with hell or the time and everyone in the media is too scared to criticize Islam. It is my duty and right to mock this corrosive and divisive garbage.We need to secularise all state schools as a matter of urgency.
        
        I’m still happy, though, atheism is very liberating.
      - Swanky
        
        I was like you, once. I got over it.
        
        As for ‘secularise all state schools’: what century are you living in? You clearly know nothing about schools at all.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Abandon the requirement for a religion based assembly, and affiliation to one particular set of religious beliefs. Let’s have 100% of state funded schools and all children integrate rather than segregate along sectarian lines.
      - Swanky
        
        a ‘religion-based assembly’, really? Schools in the US are as anti-religion as you are. From what I hear, Britain is about the same.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        It is currently a legal requirement to have a religion based assembly in the UK.
      - Stigenace
        
        I thought that took the form celebrating diversity and bewailing the fate of the planet.
      - Swanky
        
        Nice one! And so right.
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        It is not your duty or right to mock anything. You should wind your neck in – what there is of it. No-one made you the Sheriff of Liddlesville.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        I expect, like most religious nuts, you are fine about a poster on a bus that offends someone else, but first to react angrily should a bus poster offend you.
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        Unfortunately for you I’m not a religious nut. I am agnostic but was brought up in a Christian country and prefer its teaching as a guidance in life to any of the other religious beliefs now offered as an alternative by nuts like you – like climate change, socialism and militant atheism.
      - Swanky
        
        Christians threaten me with hell [all] the time
        Colour me skeptical on that one.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Only on a blog, I should add.
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        I’d laugh my a***e off if you were wrong and St Peter told you to liberate yourself by taking the down elevator.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        I’d chuckle if Thor struck you with a thunderbolt, but we both know neither is going to happen. Don’t we?
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        Your analogy illustrates the fallacy of your argument. I can be sure that Thor will not strike me with a thunderbolt as I live (although I could be struck by lightning) but I have no idea what might or might not happen when I die. And neither do you, however much science or militant atheism you peddle here.
        
        Perhaps your science or militant atheism could explain to me what lies beyond the universe, and beyond that? How can science equate infinity within the limitations of physics?
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        Alleged ‘Liberating’ is the problem socially. They liberate themselves from any and every morality. Hence the massive rise in crime and selfishness and anti social behaviour in our secular age.
        Then, because life has no meaning, they enslave themselves to drugs, drink or some other addiction.
        Liberating? I think not.
      - Kitty MLB
        
        To believe in nothing must be soul desroying
        as he proves.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        I don’t believe in nothing. Religious people do that. I believe in things that really exist and actually matter.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        I have to say you don’t sound happy.
    - mandelson
      
      You sir are Christianophobic and offensive.
  - Fergus Pickering
    
    It rather depends, doesn’t it? What about one that says ‘Soldiers like killing people. It’s what they join for.’ Now that is obviously true of some soldiers but would you lie to see it on buses?
    - James Strong
      
      I wouldn’t greet such a notice with enthusiasm, but I’d much rather it be allowed than banned.
      ‘The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.’ (Carl Sagan.)
      Don’t forget the important difference between what one disapproves of and what one wants prohibited.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        I take your point, James. But my militophobic bus might encourage attacks on soldiers like the one lately.
    - Nele Schindler
      
      I might actually wan to see this on a bus if it happens to be the response to ‘Soldiers spend their days hugging kittens and handing out lollipops to small children. It’s what they join for.’
- VitaBrevis1
  
  How do you know what other people find offensive or not?
  - Fred Scuttle
    
    Lies are always offensive.
    - VitaBrevis1
      
      What lie is that?
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        The one about gays being cured.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        But gays, or some of them, can be cured. The American Psychiatric Association thought so until it was pressured into declaring otherwise some decades ago and delisted homosexuality from its register of mental aberrations.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        They were bisexuals, silly.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        No, it was homosexuals. Homosexuality is quite clearly the result of gross psychosexual miswiring , but the American psychiatrists chose to ignore the blindingly obvious and said it was merely a normal sexual variation.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        What was God’s purpose in making them? Was it to give people like you an unwarranted feeling of superiority?
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        I don’t feel superior, just sorry for these people who suffer from this unfortunate condition.
        
        I think it is entirely wrong that people should by law be required to accept people with a condition which many find distressing to be near.
        
        It’s an assault on personal freedom.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Aaw diddums. Those icky gays, do they upset you? Bless.
      - ugly_fish
        
        I’m very uncomfortable around them. They put the willies up me.
      - Swanky
        
        Norty!
      - Stigenace
        
        How does this acute distress manifest itself; fainting, bursting into tears, attacks of the vapours, uncontrollable trembling, running away screaming “lawks-a-mercy” or howling at the moon?
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        I find homosexual behaviour creepy and I feel repulsed.
        
        I suggest this feeling is more or less pretty much universal in people and that it is the natural result of evolutionary factors.
      - Stigenace
        
        You might find the sexual practices of homosexuals to be repellent but do you recoil in the same fashion when encountering known or suspected homosexuals in everyday life?
      - Cogra Bro
        
        I has been said behaviour. I am willing to accept that homosexuals can be caring and talented, especially artistically, but I still find their behaviour repellent and their mannerisms, if they are effeminate homosexuals, amusing at best and very off- putting at worst. Certainly not to be admired.
        
        The decline in respect for the manly virtues amongst our ‘opinion formers’ is I fear an aspect if the degeneration of our culture and our country.
      - Guglielmo Marinaro
        
        If you find it creepy, don’t do it.
      - Swanky
        
        I think you’ll have to try another gambit there, Fred. You wouldn’t ask what god’s purpose was in making heartworms, would you?
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        So it is, like fancying grossly fat girls. Turks seem to do this particularly.Or old men fancying very young girls.Or boys fancying women old enough to be their mothers. Or white men fancying black girls. Or…
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        Very few white men fancy black girls, I’ve noticed. Some wHite women seem to fancy black men,, though.
        
        These women tend to come from the white underclass. They hang about shopping malls with their mixed race offspring , or they are to be seen having a fag with others outside.
        
        I think this phenomenon is something to do with the fact that we tend to mate with others of our own intelligence levels and with whom we consider ourselves on a par in the looks department.
        
        What has been regarded as a perversion in ever society you care to name is sexual activity which cannot produce viable offspring.
        
        Thus sex with pre pubescent children is regarded as perverted; as is sex with the very old, the very sick, sex with animals, sex with objects….
        
        It’s why the term ‘wanker’ is an insult.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        Well, there’s no answer to that, is there? Napoleon and Johnny Dankworth were perverts and widows who can’t have children should enter nunneries..
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        Human beings are not always ‘rational actors’ as intellectuals, in their self-congratulatory way, like to think. They are driven first and foremost by unthinking, primal reasons.
        
        ‘Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.’
      - Dodgy Geezer
        
        ..Some white women seem to fancy black men, though….
        …I think this phenomenon is something to do with the fact that we tend to mate with others of our own intelligence …
        
        I had heard that if was to do with a more physical, and completely justifiable, reason…
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        You are saying they are large in the prod department. That is in line with their higher average testosterone levels.
        
        I’ve also heard that they like white women because the latter are – ahem- more snug than black women, shall we say?
        
        Lacking this kind of necessary experience myself, it ‘s just hearsay, but may there may well be some truth in it.
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        And you’d believe a bunch of psychiatrists about anything?
      - Cassandra
        
        Well, there is that.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Religious belief should be on their list.
    - Swanky
      
      Noble lies aren’t. “Darling, you’ll make it through and won’t die of cancer — I promise” is not the most offensive thing I can think of. (I wouldn’t say it, but some would, for honourable reasons.)
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      Why are you a socialist then?
- Fergus Pickering
  
  Practicaly everything is offensive to some people, Fred. Mny of the friends of my daughters, are quite offended to find I am a tory when they think I am quite nice.
  - Swanky
    
    Serves ’em right: they shouldn’t be so prejudiced!
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      Absolutely, Swanky. But they are young and foolish and I am old and wise.
Paulypots

Thank you, Rod. You’re one of the few commentators who actually makes me LOL (if it means what I think it means).

As for “get over it”, any poster who uses that expression should be shot. I’m sure they’ll get over it. End of.
- Stigenace
  
  I don’t think I’ll ever get over “get over it”, nor “get over yourself” and “whatever!”.
FrankS2

I always wanted to add to that petulant stonewall “some people afe gay..” poster the riposte: “Most people don’t really give a damn. Get over that.”
- Fergus Pickering
  
  That would be nice if it were true. It is probably becoming more so among the young.
  - josepholeary
    
    Of course decent liberal people and most young people are totally at ease with whether you are gay or straight or bi. But this is still an object of persecution and discrimination in most countries. Fighting against the latter is like fighting anti-Semitism, a very good cause.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      I read a book in the 1960s called ‘Memoirs of a Runaway Slave’, not a work of faction. The ex-slave said ‘I am of the opinion that a man can stick his arse where he wants’. I have always been of that same opinion and despise all those who are not..
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        They can stick there arse where they want, but those who find such behaviour repulsive should have similar freedom to act accordingly
      - Fergus Pickering
        
        Nobody has the freedom to act accordingly if their actions harm others. J.S. Mill among others.What do you want to do?
      - disqus_KdiRmsUO4U
        
        In point of fact reversing what you said to reflect the truth of the matter regular anal penetration is harmful.
        
        A prolapsed rectum is a sight to behold hehehehehehehe
      - Jeffrey Vernon
        
        So that’s what it all comes down to? You’re against the Stonewall ad because you once saw a prolapsed rectum?
        
        Drinking too much is harmful as well, but it doesn’t seem to excite the same disgust.
      - disqus_KdiRmsUO4U
        
        It comes down to no such thing
        Fergus Whittering said words to the effect ‘do as you will unless harm is caused to others’.
        
        Regularly having your backside penetrated is harmful.
        So the penetrator causes harm.
        
        Nothing whatsoever to do with drinking.
        Get on with your life and stop whinging and most important stop intruding on other peoples’ with you boring propaganda.
      - Jeffrey Vernon
        
        If the penetratee wants to be harmed, what’s that to you?
        
        Prolapse is a medical rather than a moral objection. If a man got penetrated only occasionally, reducing the risk of prolapse, would this overcome the problem for you?
        
        I wrote nothing about restricting free speech. Let people say what they want. Unfortunately, this does mean that you too will have to put up boring propaganda from people you don’t like.
- Swanky
  
  I’d like to put up a counter ad that says: ‘So what do you want for it? A medal?’ Because it seems to me that thinking gays ordinary and letting them blend in is not really what the activists want. They’re lying both to themselves and to us about that.
Swanky

Surely we are arguing about ads when the real point is that public property should not be made hostage for a time to political viewpoints/bullying in this way?
- Fred Scuttle
  
  The Christian one was offensive and bullying, which is why it wasn’t allowed.
- Jeffrey Vernon
  
  Bullying? Diddums.
  - Swanky
    
    Oh hi Jeffrey. Nice to meet you.
Colonel Mustard

A more relevant bus poster for modern Britain might read:-

“Some people are right wing. Get over it!”
- Fred Scuttle
  
  I’m pretty sure that would be allowed.
- Nele Schindler
  
  That should read ‘Most people’, although a lot of them have been bullied into silence.
Dodgy Geezer

…The right to be offended. I think it might catch on, you know….

Ron Liddle need not worry about the demise of this right. Some of us have never lost it, and are being offended more and more often on a daily basis.

I was brought up in a society where many politicians were at least partly honourable, and where scientists did not tell lies. That upbringing alone ensures that I am deeply offended every day.
GraveDave

‘Some People are Gay’. But I was told Stonewall refer only to guys as ‘gay’. Women are simply Lesbian. So grow a beard.
Bill_der_Berg

Is there such a thing as a homophobic bendy bus?
- Fred Scuttle
  
  No, thanks to Boris.
- FrankS2
  
  Really? You could only get into a Routemaster through the rear entrance
Geoff

As I don’t live in the very sophisticated capital city I’ve never seen a homophobic bus. Round these parts you see buses bearing the slogan “Sorry! Not in service”. So that’ll be an apologetic bus I suppose.
- Stigenace
  
  No, a passengerphobic bus.
Radford_NG

“If them fancy Southern folk want to be offended,then I see it as my duty to offend them.T’is sport for me”.

A quote from memory from `Shirley` by Charlotte Bronte;the words coming from a forthright Yorkshire man.
- Fergus Pickering
  
  And vice versa I hope. All scouses should be offended all the time. It is good for their wretched, self-regarding souls
- arnoldo87
  
  My experience with forthright Yorkshire men is that they excel at dishing out offensive material, but aren’t too good at getting it back.
Swanky

I nominate Eric the Fred as Worst Thinker On Blog (and off blog, too, but there’s no separate prize for that).
- pedestrianblogger
  
  Seconded.
  - Fred Scuttle
    
    I nominate you as Christians, and therefore unable to think properly at all.
    - Swanky
      
      Proving your unreason over and over again, Eric. You evidently think that anyone disagreeing with you is a Christian. You’re impervious to information that contradicts this religious belief of yours. Weird.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        So you’re not religious and must be an atheist, in which case I apologise.
      - Swanky
        
        There’s no ‘must be’: I’ve told you outright that I am!
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        You haven’t. You said you weren’t religious.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        Mr Coal Bucket, you have it in for religious belief in general, you say, but the only religious belief you ever criticise is Christianity.
        
        What is the reason for this, I wonder?
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        It’s the most prevalent ignorant superstition around here. Islam is a bigger problem nowadays because the believers of it can be certifiably insane.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        Your language is very extreme, don’t you think, Mr Scuttle?
        
        Isaac Newton was a Christian, and certainly no intellectual slouch.
        
        Are you more intelligent than he was?
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Virtually everyone professed to be a Christian at one time.
        
        Arguing with a Christian is like playing chess with a pigeon.
        
        You could be the greatest player in the world, but the pigeon will still knock over all the pieces, shit on the board and strut around triumphantly.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        And all these great thinkers, they were all wrong and you are right?
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Well yes, of course they were wrong. Anyone can be wrong about anything. It amazes me that anyone claims belief in it nowadays, especially now there’s no compulsion to profess belief in it.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        I quote one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th Century, Ludwig Wittgenstein:
        
        “What do I know about God and the purpose of life?
        I know that this world exists.
        That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field.
        That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning.
        This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it.
        That life is the world.
        That my will penetrates the world.
        That my will is good or evil.
        Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world.The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God.
        And connect with this the comparison of God to a father.”
        
        So, Bulging Brain Scuttle, Let us have your thoughts on where Ludwig got it wrong.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        He was full of shit, as are you.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        Come on, Mr Scuttle, Common Abuse is not an argument, except in the juniors” schoolyard.
        
        Logical Positivism, the philosophical system for which Russell was so much the cheerleader, has been comprehensively discredited, which is why we never hear anything about it these days.
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        It hasn’t been comprehensively discredited except in the weird minds of the religious loopy.
      - anncalba
        
        Ah, I wish I had the ability to come up with such a clever response. Have you tried councelling?
      - Fred Scuttle
        
        Do you need ‘councelling’ ?
      - Jeffrey Vernon
        
        Does this Wittgenstein quote help you in any way? W uses ‘God’ as a shorthand for his sense that the world has meaning. Is this how you use it yourself?
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        “Anyone can be wrong about anything.”
        
        Hee-hee. Your self awareness is awe inspiring.
      - VitaBrevis1
        
        St Thomas Aquinas was a nutcase and you, Fred Scuttle, are saner and a superior genius?
      - Swanky
        
        What else would a non-religious person be?
      - disqus_KdiRmsUO4U
        
        You are even wrong on this ‘must be an atheist’ assertion.
Bandy

I was offended by some Ukip / EDL members on the train home tonight. They made me feel uncomfortable, but I have got over it….that doesn’t mean I don’t know what scum they are.
- Swanky
  
  So you don’t know and it’s just a guess. And you don’t know what these parties actually stand for and that’s just a guess, too. Why didn’t you write Ukip / EDL / the Red Hand and smear a little further by association? Why not add that they were ghouls and walked stud-collared bats on leads? I dare you. Your imagination is already galloping: don’t rein it in, man!
  - Bandy
    
    Well….the fact that two had EDL no surrender jackets on and one was sporting a Ukip pin badge was the clincher….to be fair, the Ukip badge wearer wasn’t the one to tell my wife to take me back to Africa with her.
    - Bill_der_Berg
      
      Members and former members of the BNP. EDL and NF are not welcome in UKIP. The other parties are not so fastidious, and I have met Labour and Conservative Party members who not at all happy about immigration from the Third World.
      - Bandy
        
        I don’t doubt it…..and I have no proof that this bloke was a member, but he certainly was a fan.
      - Bill_der_Berg
        
        You may be right, but it’s not something that UKIP has control over. It is hard to see why any blame attaches to that party.
      - Bandy
        
        I may be right…about what? I attach no blame to Ukip other than the lack of acceptance that playing games with race attracts toerags.
      - Bill_der_Berg
        
        Possibly right about the bloke being a ‘fan’ of UKIP.
        
        What games are being played?
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        Do UKIP play games with race? I thought that was the Labour party?
    - tastemylogos
      
      They were sitting together, chatting away, giggling over the coincidence? Rather random, really. You’re fantasising again, aren’t you.
      
      How do you know, those wearing, ‘No Surrender’ jackets weren’t Rangers supporters?
      - Bandy
        
        Er….as I stated….two of them were wearing EDL no surrender jackets….not Rangers no surrender jackets….EDL no surrender jackets. Is that clear enough for your limited brain to absorb?
      - tastemylogos
        
        Limited brain?
        
        A phD in Quantitative Mathematics suggests not.
        
        Most Rangers jackets do not have the logo on show do they? You see to enjoy engaging in abject conjecture.
        
        I take it they were sitting together. Where was this fantasy bus? Which heartleand of EDL and UKIP was this bus? Pull the other one lad. You’re making a tit of yourself.
      - Bandy
        
        Stop embarrassing yourself and read my post….bus? What bus you utter plum.
      - Cogra Bro
        
        A facility in mathematics does not necessarily mean an equal ability in verbal reasoning.
      - tastemylogos
        
        certainly cognitive reasoning, though
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        Gosh – you descended to the requisite abuse quickly.
      - Bandy
        
        You’re right – although I was responding to abuse, two wrongs don’t make a right.
    - Cyril Sneer
      
      Maybe they were intolerant of your intolerance?
      
      When is your wife going back to Africa?
      - Bandy
        
        Maybe they were.
        My wifes British, so she won’t be, unless it’s more volunteering…though I doubt they knew that.
- Bill_der_Berg
  
  I know what you mean. All decent people are offended by those who make disrespectful comments about the EMU.
- Lord Edmund Moletrousers
  
  maybe they were looking at you because you were the only man in a dress , high heels & a pink wig on the train & inhaling a suspicious substance from inside a brown paper bag
  - Bandy
    
    Maybe….but I think it was my wife they objected to.
    - Cyril Sneer
      
      Did she have dark skin?
      Did you get her off the internet?
- tastemylogos
  
  Where they wearing stickers??? Or are you talking codswallop?
  - Bandy
    
    As mentioned below…..yawn….
    The EDL jacket and Ukip pin badge were the giveaway.
    - tastemylogos
      
      You just said that there was no logo on it. You seem to have made a bit of a tit of yourselfl here.
      
      I know detail is boring for the less intellectual types, but it is still important, dear.
      
      Now, where was this EDL/UKIP heartland where everyone walks around advertising their membership or support of political parties and organic anti-establishment groups????
      - Bandy
        
        No, I haven’t
        said that old bean….I’m not sure what you don’t understand… I would say
        ‘please try reading it again’…but your type don’t deal in facts, do they? Hey,
        tell you what…try typing LiblabCON (the con in always in CAPITAL letters, don’t
        forget), that’s what you drones tend to do.
        
        I will say it one more
        time…they were EDL no surrender jackets. It was on a train (six ish…maybe a
        little later), between London Bridge & Plumstead. My guess is that they
        were on their way home from a march / counter demo…I didn’t ask them.
      - tastemylogos
        
        > that’s what you drones tend to do.
        
        You have no idea who I support or what my political views are. You are merely a bigot who invents stories about people walking around everywhere advertising their membership to the EDL.
        
        If you say so. Dullard.
      - Bandy
        
        Good afternoon my retarded friend – I see you are now out of school. I will lose no sleep over whether you believe it happened or not – I’m just happy to see you making such an arse of yourself. To be called a bigot by a young man such as yourself is both hugely funny and a badge of honour.
      - tastemylogos
        
        > retarded
        
        classy.
        
        A bigot and a quite horrible human being too?
      - Bandy
        
        Don’t be so harsh on yourself
      - Cyril Sneer
        
        Like I said…. nob you are.
- Tom
  
  I am offended but will get over it!!.
  - Bandy
    
    So have I….I won’t forget it in a hurry, though
- Colonel Mustard
  
  I’ve been offended by left wing scum all my life. I have tried to see the positives in left-wing people I have known but they have all turned out to be scum underneath. And I haven’t got over it.
  - Bandy
    
    I feel your pain – it must be tough for you. Chin up.
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      Not tough at all and no pain. I enjoy the thrill of the chase.
      - Bandy
        
        Good for you – does your husband know?
      - Colonel Mustard
        
        There’s that abuse again. I wonder if the thugs on the train picked up on your passive-aggressive inclinations.
      - Bandy
        
        Hey, but at least you think the ‘thugs’ (your word, not mine) existed, which is nice for me.
        Have a nice day.
      - Cyril Sneer
        
        Nob.
  - Cogra Bro
    
    Leftist love humanity. it’s just people they can’t stand.
- Cyril Sneer
  
  UKIP are a political party.
  The EDL are not, they’re a pressure group.
  
  Two very different beasts with differing views but you can’t tell the difference as you’ve lumped them in as one lot.
  
  Oh thats right I forget – to oppose mass immigration is racist innit like. To want for controlled sensible immigration is now apparently xenophobic.
BarkingAtTreehuggers

Rod, I cannot get over what a right lefty you are.
- Lord Edmund Moletrousers
  
  I must point out that a right lefty is an oxymoron
Stigenace

Everyone should have the right to be offended

It’s not exactly a right anybody would clamour for. I won’t hold my breath while I wait for a protest group chanting, “What do we want? The right to be offended. When do we want it? Now.”

I would rephrase it as ‘nobody should have the right to never be offended’. However, I take the point that we might, as a society, be a happier one if some weren’t so eager to take recourse to law any time they heard or saw something that upset their sensibilities.
- pedestrianblogger
  
  “Nobody should have the right to never be offended”. You have split an infinitive. See you in court.
- Jeffrey Vernon
  
  And most posters on this page would not want this right, either. They’re quite indignant about Stonewall’s silly ad. They dress it up as a matter of principle, but they’re plainly riled.
Eddie

I am with Salman Rushdie on this:

“Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn’t exist in any declaration I have ever read.

If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn’t occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don’t like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don’t like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.”
- Jeffrey Vernon
  
  I agree with Rushdie. And yet…you can see for yourself how indignant most commentators are on this page. If they were really as indifferent as they all say, would they care a fig about the Stonewall adverts?
- Jeffrey Vernon
  
  None of the critics actually read Rushdie’s book, or understood what it said. I heard a British muslim ‘spokesman’ on the radio complaining that Rushdie’s idea of ‘satanic verses’ appearing in the koran was blasphemous – clearly not even knowing that the satanic verses are mention in the koran itself! That’s when I realised that ‘muslim’ radicals are not inspired by islam (of which they’re quite ignorant) but by a kind of victim mentality.
Eddie

The national sport of this country used to be football (or rugby is Wales). Now our national sport seems to be craving offence.
There should be o exceptionalism at all here – and I get sick and tired of the useful idiots who lecture others about how they should never dare criticise anyone with a dark skin and a religion, or their superhero called Mo.
I am all for putting Mohammed cartoons on every London bus. Then, if homegrown suicide bombers want to take em out, they’ll wipe themselves out by doing it!
For some, practically every piece on nonsense and twerpitude ranted in the local mosque every week is offensive, and ditto for mad churches and faith schools too.
But see, some of us is tolerant, like, innit? So if you wants to talk piffle and believe in nonsense, who am I to stop you? (Though you cross a line when you incite violence Mr Imam).
- VitaBrevis1
  
  I agree. Mo was a 7th Century desert brigand with a predilection for little girls, being betrothed to one when she was 6 and marrying her when she was 9, having alleged revelations conveniently allowing him to marry umpteen wives, etc, assassinating anyone who stood against him and butchering thousands who refused to agree to submit to him.
  If anyone deserves to be lampooned it is this man.
  - Jeffrey Vernon
    
    It’s more likely that he didn’t exist. Just as St Paul is the true founder of xstianity, the prophet’s alleged son-in-law Ali is the first historic muslim.
    - Cogra Bro
      
      No Mr Vernon, Jesus defined himself and set his movement in motion with the ‘Great Commission’.
      
      See eg ‘The Aims of Jesus’ by Ben F Meyer.
zakisbak

people who were once gay but are now gay no longer –
No,no,no Rod,this simply never happens,according to the very assertive chap on tv t’other day.
I must have dreamt the number of people I know it happened to I suppose.
- Fred Scuttle
  
  A bisexual that no longer has gay sex isn’t cured of anything.
- Jeffrey Vernon
  
  same with people who were not gay before, but have had a dip in the pond.
- Guglielmo Marinaro
  
  It may happen in exceptional cases, just as people win the lottery in exceptional cases – which is a lot more useful – but there is no way of making it happen. Anyone embarking on an “ex-gay” or “conversion therapy” programme might as well call in a clairvoyant to get the winning lottery numbers.
Bill_der_Berg

“and not to worry about it any further”

We are going to be urged to ‘worry about it’ for as long as politicians continue to chase the votes of gay people. It is a bit puzzling why our leaders are offended by the Russian government’s attitude to gays but have nothing to say about recent developments in India.
- VitaBrevis1
  
  Or the many other countries where homosexuality activity is a criminal offence.
  
  Perhaps the fact that most of them are black or brown has something to do with it.
  - Bill_der_Berg
    
    The Guardian online has reports on the persecution of gay people in Iran and the same goes for web magazines which are agitating for war with that country, but they rarely become major stories. It’s possible that Russia would have been ignored if Cameron (and others) had not hoped to benefit by making an issue of it.
John Smith

Sounds very fashionable
Raw England

Gays and homophobia matter a perfect zero to me, except when it comes to Left wing gays, whom I despise as much as all the other Left wing filth ruling our ‘country’.

All I know is that our capital city is now ran and colonised by third world foreigners. And as a consequence, so are we all.
Captain Yossarian

Had this been about a group attacking Jews by bus slogans, or another minority, you would not have written this article.

And the fact remains, gay people are still being persecuted by the Church. So it’s not a case of ‘getting over it’ really, is it? Britain has its own Religious Right and they are trying to tell gay people what they can and cannot do.
- VitaBrevis1
  
  Britain had also got its fanatic left , which insists on people treating as equal what plainly isn’t, what they don’t feel to be equal and what they don’t want to treat as equal.
  - Swanky
    
    We can all be equal under the law. But I agree that the Left is far too interested in conformity and not interested enough in freedom.
    - Cogra Bro
      
      Yes, the left is by definition collectivist and egalitarian, which used to mean equality of opportunity but which now absurdly and tyrannically means equality of outcomes.
      
      The French Revolution declared Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood.
      
      Liberty soon bit the dust in favour of Equality. As for Brotherhood – the left is famous for murdering anyone who differs ideologically..
      - Swanky
        
        Exactly, Cogra. But I never had any time for the Fraternity part, and the Equality part was always suspect because it tends to be far too overreaching. I think I was born anti-Communist: the admiration or attraction of it has never existed for me at all.
  - Fred Scuttle
    
    .
- Colonel Mustard
  
  What utter bollocks.
- Swanky
  
  I think people like you want to believe in a ‘Religious Right’ and ‘persecut[ion] by the Church’. It’s the song in your spring, the reason you get up in the morning. Without an opponent — imagined or otherwise — life doesn’t have quite the same magic for you, does it?
  - Cyril Sneer
    
    It’s a typical left wing mentality, if there is no great struggle or cause they make one up.
    - Swanky
      
      Indeed.
- Fred Scuttle
  
  Liddle is a pillock. I’ll put him down as a probable queer.
- Cyril Sneer
  
  “gay people are still being persecuted by the Church.”
  
  In what way?
  
  Like being hung from cranes?
James Peris

Now in the Western world there is a fashion to be gay or to support gay to show ownself smart or not backward. In fact their number is microscopic. But they are holding huge power. Most of the people they don’t know or not concern what is going on. This only the homosexual mafia who are controlling very cunningly by making most of the people fool. Since last 5/6 years I’ve discussed with many people those who don’t know what is happening. We know Devil is a liar and they way they twist the lie people think it is truth. History always says evil always succeed evil way for the time being, but don’t exist forever. So, the way homosexual mafia is controlling or oppressing Christians they won’t exist long. We’ve seen how Roman Empire collapsed. By oppressed and killing they couldn’t destroy church, on the other hand they are remaining in garbage of the history. So, smartness of Boris or evil homosexual mafia will be disappeared one day.
- Fred Scuttle
  
  Both extremely sad and hilariously funny at the same time.
  - pedestrianblogger
    
    “Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” 1 Corinthians v. 6.
Swanky

I’m well into my fifties now, and jaded, so nothing much that happens in the world induces a sense of marvel and excitement.

I do hope you’ve read A Shed Of One’s Own: Midlife Without The Crisis, Rod.
OldeJanner

Most people only want to survive the haranguing liberal elite agendas being forced endlessly upon us!!!!!!
Fact Finder

I must take issue with you over those who say “get over it” – this, to my mind, is not an indicator of sexuality, but one that identifies those who would trample over the feelings and opinions of others who disagree with their own prejudices. It is an indicator of bigotry and would-be opressors.

Maybe I’m just faux-phobia phobic.
1DrFortuneMBezzla7

How can you say that Gays are less likely to commit crime?

Heterosexuals are constantly being told that if they commit a crime and go to prison, they’ll end up being some armed robber’s playmate.

Why are so many armed robbers gay? Isn’t it time the gay community put their own house in order before lecturing us?
helpmabaob

I have a son by a previous relationship who is gay and in a gay partership, I also have an openly gay nephew and a bi curious son by my current partner. My current partner is also interested in same sex relationships, so pray what is abnormal in these enlightend times?
- Cyril Sneer
  
  ‘bi-curious’
  
  Oh give it a rest.
- pedestrianblogger
  
  I have a son by a previous gay relationship who is straight but is hoping to breed lesbians. I think that this trumps your little boast.
  - Martin Snigg
    
    lol
- Neil Saunders
  
  Your sons, nephew and current partner, by the sound of it.
helpmabaob

Why are some comments disappearing?
helpmabaob

Nothing wrong in being gay.
- Cyril Sneer
  
  Indeed.
  
  But, everything wrong with being gay and in your face with the gayness. Hence why I avoid the annual gay pride parade like an annual gay pride parade.
Thomtids

I like the generosity that the “gay” community are far less prone to commit crimes. Presumably because they’re too busy Cottaging?
GordonHide

What would the author’s attitude be to an advert that said: “Not black! Ex-black, Post black and Proud — Get Over It.”?

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Why I'm on board for the homophobic bus

Everyone should have the right to be offended - preferably every day

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