Nick Clegg has taken the opportunity of an interview with The Independent’s Johann Hari for Attitude magazine to lay out a comprehensive range of measures to promote gay equality – and has laid down the gauntlet to the Tory leader David Cameron to justify his ‘liberal Conservatism’ by following suit.
Here’s how the paper summarises Nick’s proposals:
* Force all schools – including faith schools – to implement anti-homophobia bullying policies and teach that homosexuality is “normal and harmless”.
* Change the law to allow gay men and women the same marital rights as straight couples, including the symbolic right to use the word “marriage” rather than civil partnerships.
* Reverse the ban on gay men being allowed to give blood.
* Guarantee any refugees genuinely fleeing a country because of persecution over their sexual orientation asylum in the UK.
* Review Uganda’s membership of the Commonwealth if its government was to bring in the death penalty for practicing gays.
Johann Hari ‘s view
In an accompanying opinion piece, Mr Hari gives his enthusiastic support to Nick’s move:
… it is impressive that Nick Clegg has articulated, in full, and with striking passion, an action plan for the next stage in the fight to make gay people truly equal. … Clegg is taking the fight to the last remaining bastions of bigotry. He will get a nasty kick from religious fundamentalists who say that gay couples should never be allowed to marry, and who claim they have a “right” to teach homophobia to children in a way that produces such disproportionate rates of violent bullying and suicide. The right-wing press will savage it as an attack on “freedom” – when, in fact, it is a defence of the freedom of gay people to live their lives free of irrational hate.
So what will David Cameron do?
What wil the Tory leader’s response be to the Clegg gauntlet? Nick himself says he’s no idea what Mr Cameron’s views are:
He’s a confection. I don’t really know what he believes in. I don’t know what his convictions are and the reason is because they keep changing – and they seem to change for convenience. So when it mattered, when people went through the lobby to vote on Section 28, his convictions were on the wrong side. Suddenly they’ve changed and we get an apology!”
Mr Cameron will have to work out whether he will back Nick’s call and risk the wrath of his reactionary MPs and ConservativeHome, or whether he’s going to continue to sit on the fence. Mr Hari concludes his article with a promise:
When I interview the Conservative leader for Attitude soon, I will ask: will Cameron now support the Liberal Democrats’ bold programme to make Britain a genuinely equal country?
What other Lib Dem bloggers are saying …
Lib Dems and sexuality (Nader Fekri)
I’m proud to say that one of the main reasons I joined the Liberal party as was in the 1970s was its attitudes and policies towards personal politics and especially gay rights. The Tories are light years behind and Labour far too timid. I am proud to belong to a party that has such progressive policies on LGBT rights, and a leader unafraid to proclaim them.
Nick Clegg Sets Out the Real Gay Rights’ Agenda (Stephen Glenn)
Nick Clegg this morning talking in The Independent goes further than any other leader ever has to knock out the last few areas of inequality for the gay community. He’s basically saying enough of ‘equal but different’ why can’t we just be equal.
Menahwile Sara Scarlett at the Liberal Vision blog is more lukewarm, quoting Red Rag’s assessment:
[Nick] is saying “I believe this, you should too, even if you religion is opposed I will legislate to force your schools to brainwash your children with my thinking.” What could be more illiberal?
LDV readers may also wish to re-read Andrew Reeves’ guest post for LDV from September 2009 – Conservatives are complete hypocrites on LGBT issues as Section 28 raises its ugly head again – which asked the simple question:
How can people in this country trust the Conservatives? How can any gay person vote for them or even worse be a paid up member? How can anyone from the LGBT community trust Cameron or any of his candidates? They don’t practice what they preach.
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51 Comments
Of course I’m more lukewarm.
I don’t think schools should be “legally obliged to teach anything”. What if Jewish schools were legally obliged to teach children that circumcision was “unnecessary”. There would be an outrage. If it’s ok to propose authoritarian measures that align with our prejudices then we are just like the tories.
FFS!
But Sara, they already are obliged to teach relationship advice in whatever form their personal development education takes. If some people are not finding out that what they are feeling is perfectly normal as part of that already established part of our education, or if schools can hide behind faith to ignore homophobic bullying and omitting it from their policies, how else are we to help those individuals.
I’m already chasing up my old school about their inaction to apply a anti-homophobia trance in their bullying policy. The fact that their last MP is now the Chief Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds means that they are not alone in ignoring the development of some of their pupils.
Well, Sara, if these “faith” schools want to be reactionary why don’t they go it alone, without taxpayer funding?
In fact, here in the reality-based community, you should read what Johann Hari has said as to what happens in soem faith schools, what would happen if we had a generation of Muslim schools, as Michael Gove seems to be saying will happen under a Tory government.
We are not living in your libertarian utopia, we are living in a world in which teenagers who are trying to make sense of the world are having the most reactionary rubbish pumped into them, & all paid for by muggins here.
“Well, Sara, if these “faith” schools want to be reactionary why don’t they go it alone, without taxpayer funding?”
Why not, indeed?!
Because they rather enjoy having taxpayer funding & there are no plans to withdraw this, as much as some secularists may regret it.
That is why I do not think it is unreasonable to request that state schools cease to promote the homophobia that some of them do promote.
http://www.johannhari.com/2008/06/23/when-two-sides-of-islam-go-head-to-head-on-big-brother
“I would have died in one of these Muslim-only faith schools.” There, the Alexes can mass and shout down the Mohameds with the backing of their teachers. (Our oil-addicted foreign policy makes it easier to tell them the democratic society outside is evil.) Yet the Government is not dismantling faith schools – it is building more of them.
We are steering a course through stormy waters. I find what libertarians say on matters like this quite unsatisfying, even though I agree with many of your views. Though I tend to restrain myself in my expression, it should not be mistaken for agreement 🙂
Just to clarify. I don’t believe in state education of any kind. It’s a completely unnecessary and unfortunate Victorian hangover.
If you are an Evangelical Christian who believes that homosexuality is a sin, then you should be allowed to send your child to a school that teaches as much.
Also aren’t we conflating two issues here?
Surely bullying is bullying. Being legally obliged to teach that homosexuality is normal is something else?
What if you hold homophobic views but don’t bully anyone?
Sara,
So what kind of schools would you allow. What about schools that refuse to admit black people?
Yoe are clearly more interested in the freedom of institutions to oppress and discriminate than you are of people to express their individuality. That’s neither Liberal nor Visionary.
Well that is great for the parents. But what if the child is gay? The child will suffer the consequences of the choice.
What about if Islam4UK were to set up a madrassa that advocated terrorism (for the sake or arguement)? Should the state allow that?
In the case of the gay young person sent to the evangelical Christian school, doesn’t (s)he have any right to protection from those teaching that there is something fundamentally wrong with him? Why are the concerns of parents and schools in these instances paramount?
Well, Geoffrey, you’ll just have to trust the parents to make the right choices for their children.
Don’t get me wrong, if we don’t have these laws and every child becomes a repressed homosexual and/or a terrorist, I will conceded.
I’m not sure the distinction between bullying and homophobia is an easy one to draw; aren’t gay pupils inevitably going to feel like victims in surroundings as hostile to them as some faith schools?
Let’s not forget that equal marriage isn’t yet Lib Dem party policy, just Nick’s (and DELGA‘s) opinion. If you want to support it, please join and promote our Marriage Without Borders campaign!
Actually I think there are lots of issues being conflated here.
1. There is an issue of “sticks and stones” versus “words”. As a gay man personally I am perturbed by the ever increasing tendency of the state, even advocated by so called “liberals”, to try to stop people expressing their opinions, however repugnant and offensive. Although the situation is unlikely to arise in my case, I would rather, for example, know that a business owner hates what he thinks I am, so that I can boycott him and encourage others to do so, than forever be suspicious that they are providing me with a service through gritted teeth because the government says they must or be arrested. As Mill said, in paraphrase, a wrong opinion, even an egregiously wrong one, is an opportunity for those of us of a right opinion to hone our arguments and prove we are right.
To me, one function of a rounded education is to teach people to be more confident and not care about such ignoramuses so much. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger sort of stuff.
But “sticks and stones” – committing actual harm to others, whatever the reason, is inexcusable and should always be part of an anti-bullying policy. I just don’t think that bullies should be categorised by the “type” of their victim – I’d suggest that most bullies are in fact “poly-victim” bullies. They don’t get their kicks out of bullying a particular type, just from bullying, and if they are steered off a particular subject they will find another, and that has to be stopped regardless of the victim. If we have a specifically anti-homophobic anti-bullying policy, why not an anti-fat anti-bullying policy, or attempt to single out every other way that kids can be horrible to each other?
Having said that, education should also be about respecting others, and part of that *is* to stamp out people calling other people names they don’t like, whether it’s a nick-name or a racist or homophobic epithet. And a school does not have to agree that homosexuality is acceptable, or teach that, to teach, and enforce, that it is just downright rude to call each other names that bothers the victim.
If someone is miserable at school, then the school, or the parents, or both, are clearly failing them, whatever the reason for their misery.
2. Whether schools ought to be funded by the state, and if so, how much is it legitimate to force them to do. I tend to agree with the argument that *if* there is state funded education, then it should do what those who commission that say, but that I would rather *not* have state funded education. And in this respect I absolutely dispute Richard Church’s suggestion above. Liberals exist, supposedly, to ensure nobody is “enslaved by conformity”. The education system as it stands in this country and in most other places where it is compulsory and usually state funded, is all about “conformity” as far as I can see.
Indeed, right from the days of Luther in Germany setting the ball rolling on state run education it has been about inculcating a particular set of views and mores to create a citizenry that the rulers deemed appropriate (i.e. usually passively obedient and eminently exploitable). That is not liberal, certainly.
Personally I think this stratification continues today, and perhaps even more so. By putting more or less everyone through a specific, government mandated style of education, and the measures they take (especially nowadays) to ensure that mandate is fulfilled we are branding people at the earliest age of being “failures”. Haven’t quite grasped reading yet? Oh, let’s give you a “literacy hour” or “one to one tuition” – you’re “special”, see. Special because you are making us miss our targets rather than special in having other talents to explore whilst perhaps taking your literacy forward a bit more slowly.
If you have an hour, have a listen to Murray Rothbard on education (iTunesU link).
3. If you are going to say that parents do not have the right to choose what sort of education their child gets, and whether it gels with their own beliefs, I don’t see why you can’t just have the state adopt them all at birth and have done with interfering parents completely.
All that having been said, I do understand the psychological pain of growing up “alone”. I’m not clear how that can be addressed, but am convinced that it should not be through other compulsion or by silencing opinions – the most dangerous type of conformity, as Mill said, both for the person silenced and for the authority demanding their silence.
Oh – and as for the “marriage” issue, I’d rather the state kept out of private contracts altogether, and did not seek to grant its imprimatur to any combination of consenting competents.
I have to admit I’m a little surprised by this move. I wasn’t expecting even Clegg to come down this hard on the subject, in the run up to an election, since it’s never been a vote winner and has so often invited attacks from the religious right.
But still, a welcome development.
I would first like to point out that Google has provided an amusing juxtaposition of adverts for this article: ‘Gay Chat’ and ‘Conservative Way Forward’. But never mind.
Jock (and other libertarians, for that matter). What moral privilege allows parents to brainwash a child rather than the state? Parents smack children, so the argument that the state has exclusive rights around violence doesn’t work here. How come indoctrination is okay when it comes from one source and not another?
I had carefully written a comment on this article, but it was rejected as “spam” by this site’s system.
You may find this comment here.
I don’t always agree with Hari, however this is one of the occasions I do. He is spot on here.
Folks, this is an historic moment…
I agree with Matthew’s (offsite) comment!
However, to deal with his main concern, I believe that when they say “anti-homophobic bullying policy” it extends to people using terms of homophobic abuse against people who are not gay. Whether of course in implementation the school seems to assume that the victim is, in fact, gay and treat him or her as such in the advice they give would be part of the measure of whether they succeed or fail in their policy.
But I agree on the main point as I said above – I do not agree with laws or rules that single out a characteristic of the victim as making harming them somehow a special case.
Now, to Adam Bell – it is a bit of a quandary isn’t it, if you assume the state has any rights at all to interfere with “family life” where does it stop? At what point does a child become an independent actor, and who decides? Before that who is responsible for them? If you prevent what you call “indoctrination” happening in schools, how do you prevent it in the home, or at a church group or something? Or do you simply say that *anyone* who wants their child to go to such a school is such a suspect parent that they should not have care of a child anyway? Just where do you draw the line?
As to issues like smacking, actually I suspect libertarianism/anarchism has a better footing on this than statism, in the form of the non-aggression principle. Assault is still assault, and there would be nothing to stop, for example, a disinterested bystander trying to pursue a parent through the courts on behalf of a child that appeared to be suffering physical abuse in such a way. Which I’d suggest, in a caring society, would be a better option than having the Stasi monitor families as they do at present.
“Abandonment” is also abuse, and whilst normally it would be perfectly within someone’s rights to treat “property” (with which a child who cannot survive on its own shares some characteristics as well as some of an indepdendent economic actor) how they wish, including destroy it, the fact that a child is a “potential” economic actor in its own right as well means that such neglect or ill treatment is aggressive force and tghe negligent parents could be prosecuted on those grounds.
And that’s the main point I thgink, bringing up children is probably the supreme *social* activity, not a *state* activity. And as the state eats away at social capacity it destroys liberalism.
This debate certainly does conflate a lot of issues, Jock.
It might be an idea to look at Nick’s proposals separately. For example, I disagree that schools should be forced (I’d love to know if that was Hari’s word or Nick’s) to teach that “Homosexuality is normal and harmless” even though I believe that it is. I disagree that schools should be forced to have any curriculum. State schools could be obliged to teach whatever the Government decides – he who pays the piper calls the tune – but if parents want to opt out they should be allowed to do so. (I’m not going to go off on the easy tangent that is freedom of education in general).
On the other hand, Nick is completely right that the state institution of marriage should be equal and non-discriminatory. The problem here is that the French Revolutionaries, when they did away with religious marriage, kept the term. If there was a different word for the religious ceremony and the legal contract we wouldn’t have this problem. I’m quite happy for any group of which membership is voluntary to set their own rules (even if those rules do discriminate) but not for state-sponsored legal contracts to do so. Marriage as a state institution should be equal to all parties.
The ban on gay men giving blood is absurd. Men with diseased blood should be banned from giving blood. Men with healthy blood should be welcomed.
Rather than fretting about why people are seeking asylum, why not just admit them as long as they are wiling to work?
The Commonwealth is a tricky one. Why not seek to expel all countries that support the death penalty? It is wrong, after all. And why not seek to expel all countries that legislate discrimination. Is it acceptable for a country to imprison or flog gays, but not to kill them? I realise that killing them is worse, but only quantitatively.
On a final note, some commentators here and elsewhere have asked why “libertarians” would support parents making decisions for their children in preference to the state (for example, Adam Bell at 10.24am). I would like to invert the question: Why do “illiberals” support the state making decisions for their children in preference to parents? I fully accept that some parents get it wrong or even do harm, but as a general principal I believe that parents should be entrusted with the decisions that children cannot make for themselves in preference to politicians.
To paraphrase Gladstone, I’m quite happy for there to be a bit of prudance, but could we not try to trust the people just a little bit?
What a total Clegghead…
“Force all schools…”
Can you see your mistake there Nick? Are you going to personally stand there and bully anyone who fails to come down pretty-bloody-thoroughly-hard on anything which sounds a bit anti-gay, or just add one more page of rabid nonsense to the teacher training manual? It’s the latter isn’t it? Gesture politics you total plank, it will only (ironically) stifle teachers’ ability to think for themselves and adapt to each situation rationally. Of course in principle I can easily agree with this idea. Yes. Just as I can agree with Section 28. It’s actually perfectly just when you first consider that the public has their money stolen from them, then used to indoctrinate their – and others’ – children with whatever mindless, soul-destroying, soporific crap is considered “education” by the current government… Alternatively the government could get out of education and we’d all live happily ever after.
“Change the law to allow gay men and women the same marital rights as straight couples…”
Marriage is a religious institution you flatheaded gimp. If people want marriage they’ll need the approval of their church. If you want to fix this one you will first have to disestablish the Church of England. Do you remember liberalism at all? I’m told it’s all outlined in JS Mills’ “On Liberty”, the back-cover of which you and Chris Huhne have read once, and now won’t shut up about.
“Reverse the ban on gay men being allowed to give blood.”
Excellent Idea! So you’ll be abolishing the NHS, since this is a cost-cutting measure the like of which are inherent and unavoidable in a socialised system such as the NHS and wouldn’t survive two minutes in a free market that put patients first.
“Guarantee any refugees genuinely fleeing a country because of persecution over their sexual orientation asylum in the UK.”
You’ve never heard of the BNP then? Nor our many native Muslims and their love of gayism? I hope you have a plan for marshall law to help ease this one in… But more to the point this is nonsense; this country is a small island with limited infrastructure, etc, and there are over 6 billion people in the world. You cannot make daft unlimited pronouncements like this and expect anything other than ridicule. Also this has nothing whatever to do with equality, and, again, everything to do with posturing.
“Review Uganda’s membership of the Commonwealth if its government was to bring in the death penalty for practicing gays.”
Oooh, strong words Nick, that ought to do it.
He’s made a total Nick of himself, again.
Actually Gandhi, I disagree with this bit – “Marriage is a religious institution you flatheaded gimp.”
No, it’s not. Indeed in the early years of the Christian era mmost Christians would not have been able to get married as most were not freemen of Rome. So they actually invented a new and separate institution from the Roman civil marriage, they called, I think, conternubium, which was purely a religious thing and carried no civil weight at all.
They should go bck to that and beyond. The private contract between two people could be witnessed by a minister of religion or not, or even perhaps nobody other than the couple involved. It shouldn’t be anyone’s business except that the term so fthe contract are enforceable when necessary.
Ah, I was wondering how long it would take for the nothing-but-insults posts to show up.
Penny arcade called it
Jock: the point being that Nick Clegg presumably intends to impose gay marriage on churches, force them to marry gay couples whether they like it or not. His view of “rights” seem likely to include the “right” to marry in a church, or perhaps a mosque?! What he should be doing is separating church and state, such that the church is none of his business and the law is none of the business of the church (etc). That’s a very old demand of actual liberals, but totally unnecessary to a 21st century social democrat.
I don’t think he cares a fig about churches’ position actually, though.
First of all, @Tom: I’m not going to bother to engage with you, as your application of the label ‘illiberal’ to me as a consequence of raising a query around moral primacy (which implied no particular answer) rather implies you’re a moron given to rhetoric rather than proper debate. Jock is a self-professed libertarian, so I see no problem with applying that label to him.
@Jock: It is, of course, a quandary which is why I raised it. It’s a quandary for any who self-identifies as a liberal, as well as libertarians. The root cause is determining when the child becomes an independent actor, and who provides that determination. The latter is a problem, as the power to determine when an individual is an independent actor is the power to determine when an individual has the moral attributes we would associate with self determination; in essence, to be able to determine when someone is human or not. I’m sure we can both agree that no-one should have that power, and therefore we need a criteria based on external factors rather than individual judgement. I would argue it should be based on the capability of an individual to express their own judgement; i.e. communicate intention. One could get recursive about this if one wished, but let’s not bother for the sake of argument.
This would seemingly place the advent of the independent actor around the time a child learns to talk, which may be significantly earlier than many would be comfortable with – however, specifying a particular age ignores the fact that everyone develops at a different pace, and the only clear dividing line is the possession of intention. It also implies that anyone attempting to determine that child’s behaviour, whether it’s the state or their family, is equally culpable of the sort of imposition that libertarians find immoral.
One of the reasons I’m not a libertarian is the aggression principle you refer to; it would appear to prevent me from, say, stopping a friend in a depressive state from killing or injuring themselves when they run out of their medication. More than that, the capability of the individual to express violence is the only guarantee of social fairness – the only check on power acquired through intellectual means (i.e. money) is that capability. In this sense, I have absolutely no problem with Clegg’s suggestion as long as it’s part of a broader educational approach that demands that anything taught within state-provided education will not later be discovered by the child to be untrue; included in this is the possibility that scientific theories may be disproven but as long as they’re taught within the context of the scientific method they’ll derive their truth value from the nature of theories in that context.
This is, of course, an incredibly high standard to hold public education to account, and one open to challenge from people who want to get all Foucaultian about it, but it has the advantage of reducing all teaching of opinion to description of that opinion rather than endorsement thereof. This would go some way towards meeting the challenge of, ‘State-funded indoctrination’ raised here. In my view (which of course I am happy to impose, being the simply /dreadful/ illiberal that I am), requiring children to be educated in this manner increases their capability of choice far more than it removes their liberty.
Tom, the biggest problem I have with what you say is that ab initio, state organized education has been a means of indocrination by whoever happens, pro tempore to control the state and decide what is “right”. Herbert Spencer is particularly lucid on this I find in Social Statics.
The problem he had with late c19th Liberals was that they overlaid this previous understanding with the notion (which is probably correct assuming it is properly tailored to the different capacities of different young minds) that education is a good in itself. The libertarian would say well if it is such a good in itself, the last thing it should be is conflated with state indoctrination.
In a truly free market, schools which consistently turned out sociopaths, neurotics or simply people who did not match up to teh standards expected of their particular pedagogical method would not last long. In the current situation it seems such are even “rewarded”.
In a free society, the quandary about when someone “comes of age” if you like, is often solved through rites of passage for which there is a preparation that people undertake at slightly different times depending on their strengths and abilities. In a state system, it is easier simply to impose an age and be done with it.
By the way, I describe myself rather as a Mutualist, Individualist Anarchist, or Market Anarchist, rather than libertarian, but it is effective enough “shorthand” so long as the people with whom I am debating don’t assume it means “Thatcherite” like so many in this party do.
Jock
I agree with Matthew’s (offsite) comment!
However, to deal with his main concern, I believe that when they say “anti-homophobic bullying policy” it extends to people using terms of homophobic abuse against people who are not gay. Whether of course in implementation the school seems to assume that the victim is, in fact, gay and treat him or her as such in the advice they give would be part of the measure of whether they succeed or fail in their policy.
Well, yes, but that was my point. Those lobbying for this sort of policy seem to be doing so on the basis that “homophobic bullying” will primarily be aimed at those who are gay. The use of such bullying against anyone else seems to be dismissed as a sort of footnote issue.
My experience, both from what I remember from when I was a schoolboy, and from what I am told by young people now, is that the term “gay” and pejorative terms which are supposed to mean the same, are commonly thrown about as a general insult, and in fact the main aim is to hurt someone who is not gay by suggesting they are.
Therefore, I have no confidence that those lobbying for such a policy, and if successful probably writing it, have a full understanding of the issue, and therefore I fear they will write and enforce the policy in a way which ignores the second and more common sort of “homophobic bullying”.
So not only is there the whole issue of whether such prescriptive policy should be enforced by state order, it also seems to me highly likely it will be enforced in a way which will end up with the schools joining in the bullying in most cases by accepting on face value what were meant to be hurtful accusations made by the bully.
While it might be said that one ought not to be hurt by having such accusations thrown at one, it is meant to hurt and it is perceived to hurt, because its intention (when boy to boy) is to rub in the message “you are not a socially successful person”.
My experience of going to school in the late 80s, was that gay was an insult then, or a synonym for “rubbish”.
It did not carry much weight back then.
Tom: I missed your comment earlier. The reason they have a ban on “gay blood” is that they are not testing donated blood for HIV; saving all that lovely time/money the way the NHS knows best by not taking basic health and safety precautions. So our good pal Mr Clegg will have to spend even more money on the NHS if he wants it to raise its health and safety standards AS WELL as ticking boxes!
Adam: As a libertarian myself, I regard empathy as the most important quality; non-aggression is a basic principle which we can use to make objective judgements about the rightness/wrongness of any particular act, but when it’s one-on-one between you and somebody you know well, you may know that they will thank you for restraining them in some way in the short term, knowing that they are struggling with themselves. And of course if you do commit an aggression against somebody else (wisely, and with good intent), you might reasonably expect them NOT to make a complaint to any legal authority. True aggression has to mean unwanted aggression is the point, and ultimately that is a subjective thing.
Gandhi:
“The reason they have a ban on “gay blood” is that they are not testing donated blood for HIV”
From the National Blood Service website:
“Every single blood donation is tested for HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) and hepatitis B and C.
Infected blood isn’t used in transfusions but our test may not always detect the early stages of viral infection.
The chance of infected blood getting past our screening tests is very small, but we rely on your help and co-operation.”
https://secure.blood.co.uk/c11_cant.asp
It would be interesting to hear an informed scientific view on this question.
It was always explained to me by a Blood Service nurse who was very sympathetic to the complaints about not being allowed to give blood was that the testing for HIV is actually not possible (or wasn’t then anyway) in such a way that would leave the blood useful. They can do an antibody negative test pretty well instantly, but that is not safe enough for donation to anoher person – they would need to do an antibody positive test and that’s the thing that takes time. Blood stocks are very short lived, unless they are turned into certain byproducts – but even then they have to be so converted before the original goes off.
Now I am sure the science improves all the time and one day perhaps the test will be quick enough, and one can certainly argue that if you’ve had an antibody positive test that has shown you clear and can say you have not ever put yourself at *any* risk since (which means any sex) then you ought to be allowed – surely that is no different from the restrictions they put on people who travel to particular countries who cannot donate for a particular period – of years often – afterwards. They presumably have to rely on their word that they haven’t.
Mind you, it doesn’t seem to stop them demanding other body parts after you die – which generally have an even shorter shelf life and which compromise the recipients’ immune systems anyway even without the risk of passing on HIV.
I look on it that it is simply one way of “volunteering”, “doing your bit”, and there are others than I cannot or would not be able to do, but there are plenty which I can and would and do.
Yes, Anthony, it is the *permanence* of the ban that causes most annoyance I think.
Actually, I see elsewhere that the ban is currently under review by the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs, with a recommendation due later this year.
It doesn’t seem helpful for people to pre-empt this process in order to score political points. The line taken by the Terrence Higgins Trust seems more sensible:
“We believe that the current policy of the National Blood Service was based on the best available evidence when it was drawn up. Only when an expert review has re-evaluated risks to the safety of the blood supply should the current policy be changed in line with new evidence.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article6891256.ece
On the contrary, in a truly free market, the schools which lasted the longest would be those whose PR department was best at convincing parents that the sociopaths they cheaply turned out were highly valued and productive members of society. These schools would have a significant financial advantage over those that enjoyed a similar reputation, but spent more money on education, hence a free market would prefer the sociopaths.
Free markets run on perceptions, not facts. They are nothing more than the tyranny of the media, in much the same way that pure democracies are the tyranny of the masses.
What you’re thinking of is a fair market, which is really hard to create, and obviously a whole lot less free than the markets we currently have (which involve a lot of swindling, fraud, theft, and exploitation of the ignorance of customers).
Late to this party… lots of issues to pick up on: generally Clegg gets lots of credit for this announcement – on my networks a number of people have come out to say that this will make them strongly consider voting LibDem, whereas they wouldn’t have before, or even not voted!
However I think the message could’ve been a mite sharper still.
To make a distinction on ‘homophobic bullying’ without making it explicit that all bullying is equally abhorrent does slightly undermine the message of equality while use of the word ‘force’ does infer coercion, which is not wholly consistent.
I also think it is important to be clear about the difference between feelings and behaviour – what people say and what people do cannot be treated exactly the same. And while authorities should be seen to discourage negative expressions of emotion there is a fine line between saying to adolescents that homosexuality is ok and promoting sexual behaviour among those under the age of consent. As the law stands under-16s cannot be gay because they legally cannot consent to sex. So I do think this opens up a question about some form of tapering of consent and responsibility which needs to be answered
On the blood ban, I think this is excellent news, but my understanding is that last summers review of the policy rejected lifting the ban on two main grounds. Firstly there are international agreements (many blood products are exported across borders around the world) which require uniform standards to be adhered to. And secondly the range of infections which require screening means that there needs to be solid commitment on funding the service, something which Brown would not accept at the height of the credit crunch and the tories are certainly disinclined to do on both moral and economic grounds.
As far as I’m concerned saving lives pays for itself many times over in the long run, and as the technology becomes more available it will fall in cost anyway, so that is a non-argument.
The international aspect of an equality policy is in my view quite clever. Asylum, absolutely. But better still is the advocacy position to use diplomacy more effectively – Miliband has been a singularly unimpressive foreign secretary, and the last noteworthy intervention in international affairs have been the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – what a success they weren’t!
But I also want to take up the wider liberal issue about control of school policy.
Tom says “State schools could be obliged to teach whatever the Government decides,” but surely this depends on a strong mandate from the people, where we have been able to make a clear decision. So personally speaking I’m in favour of state schools because it requires government to have elections and therefore we should be pressing for LibDem votes at the election as a referendum on the state of our schooling.
Anyway, on this initiative I give Clegg eight-and-a-half out of ten. Very good!
Andrew Suffield, if you think that “markets we currently have ” are in any sense “free” you’re on a completely different continent let alone ball-park from me.
On the other hand, clearly any “tyranny” of a (properly free – as opposed to today’s state protected and protecting) “media” offering competing opinions on what is right and wrong as a determinant of what a school produces would be considerably better than one political opinion of what is right for five years followed by the disruption of swinging to the other end of the pendulum the next time the opposite opinion gains a bare majority of support and imposes its idea on 8 million kids.
“On the blood ban, I think this is excellent news, but my understanding is that last summers review of the policy rejected lifting the ban on two main grounds.”
I believe that’s incorrect. As I posted above, the review is still under way, and a recommendation is expected later this year.
You also suggest that the government is unwilling to fund testing for “the range of infections which require screening”. As I posted above, testing is performed for HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C. Which relevant tests are you suggesting aren’t carried out?
@Oranjepan:
“there is a fine line between saying to adolescents that homosexuality is ok and promoting sexual behaviour among those under the age of consent.”
No there isn’t. Unless you think teachers should be careful of telling under-16s that it’s okay to be attracted to members of the opposite s3x as well?
“As the law stands under-16s cannot be gay because they legally cannot consent to sex.”
A similar point. I’m damn sure I was hetero for years before I was 16 (and indeed for long, miserable years before I ever managed to persuade any woman to consent to s3x with me…). The law doesn’t (thankfully) have anything to say about “being [happy]”.
[Some words have been changed in the hope of evading the ever-vigilant LDV spam filter.]
Rankersbo
My experience of going to school in the late 80s, was that gay was an insult then, or a synonym for “rubbish”.
It did not carry much weight back then
This is not really what I was talking about. As you say, there has been a linguistic development (probably already has been surpassed by something else in schools, so now it gets used in that way by young adults who want to look trendy) which means that particular word is used in a way which is perceived as meaning just “rubbish”.
I was actually talking about crude and explicit language in which it is strongly intended to suggest the person in question acts as they do because of a physical attraction to people of the same gender, and which goes on to suggest and to talk in graphical detail about physical acts they might therefore do. The intention is to hurt and to hurt deeply. I am not going to put it any more than that, since I don’t want again to have to make a link to spam-detector-censored material. As I said previously, I recognise the need for spam detectors. Having worked in similar areas myself (I mean the sort of software involved) I can appreciate how difficult it is to avoid false positives and yet effectively rule out real spam.
“Just to clarify. I don’t believe in state education of any kind. It’s a completely unnecessary and unfortunate Victorian hangover.”
Another fantastic vote loser from the fantasy world of “Liberal” Vision.
Malcolm,
I appreciate your view, but I think the first point is a matter of perspective. Saying something is ok from an objective bureaucratic point of view is not the same as being told it subjectively. Tolerance may be politically neutral, but it’s never that way at a personal level when an individual is in a situation where they have to make a decision. I guess it’s the difference between asking and being asked.
Similarly on the second point, there has to be a distinction between fact and opinion. If identity is based on feeling rather than behaviour then this raises all sorts of problems about conscience and morality, so I think there may be a need for educators (parents, teachers, whoever) to more actively clarify the distinction between identification and identity. I tend to be naturally disinclined to the use of thought police to defend or attack any particular personal identifications, whereas I do think it is the legitimate role of authority to defend universal standards of human rights. I don’t question individiual certainty, but I do think it liable to misjudgement for the full force of state power to actively intervene based on situations where there is a lack of evidence – it is often preemptory, open to manipulation and is potentially counterproductive. Attraction and actually getting jiggy with it are two completely different ball games and we should be careful about respecting those boundaries – empathy and sympathy do overlap, but they are distinct.
Anthony Aloysius St,
not according to the Terence Higgins Trust website, but I’m happy to concede my ignorance beyond that – if the review isn’t complete yet then that at least offers the hope that influence may yet be exerted to change the policy.
Oranjepan
I don’t know what page of the THT website you’re looking at, but on the main page on blood donation it says this:
“THT supports the review announced by the National Blood Service in 2009 of their policy on who in the UK is allowed to give blood and who is not. We ask people to wait for the results of the review and abide by the decision made on the evidence by SABTO, the independent review body answerable to Government for the safety of blood products. We believe that the current policy of the National Blood Service was based on the best available evidence when it was drawn up. Only when an expert review has re-evaluated risks to the safety of the blood supply should the current policy be changed in line with new evidence.”
http://www.tht.org.uk/informationresources/policy/healthpolicy/blooddonations/
OK, one last poke to this thread.
1) Blood: “National Blood Service” this says all you need to know about the blood ban. Why must everything in the UK be controlled at a national level? Once again: we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if there was free choice in healthcare. The arguments about science/trade etc are all post facto excuses. I’ll link you into Peter Tatchell’s bloody stuff: Blood ban on gays because he’s the source of my out-of-date rantings on this, but looking at it now, he has updated it recently.
2) Marriage: Smooth transition now because Tatchell was also the only person I remember sticking up for heterosexuals when civil partnerships came in. Apparently still an issue: Heterosexual couple begin legal fight…. Now: on behalf of the polygamist/polyamorist community (I wish!), I’d like to point out that the state cannot create equality, in order to do that Cleggy just needs to remove these things and then if we want to enter into contracts with one-another we can do so, and choose our own terms; Cameron is proposing extra bribes for marriage, I guess that’s why Cleggy thinks this is all so clever.
3) So in summary, this is all just opportunistic and stupid, and it doesn’t get my vote. HOWEVER, since my local Lib Dem candidate…
(a) used to flash her furry lady garden for money
(b) is a major local troublemaker, and
(c) is utterly, utterly mental AND an actual live witch.
…I may be voting Lib Dem at the GE just for a laugh.
Have a nice weekend folks!
…oh, crap, no she’s not this time. Scratch that, sorry, no witch no vote.
Surely the real target should be zero tolerance of homophobic bullying in schools, not more pointless “relationship education” which, in my experience, was much more fun as an extra curricular activity anyway
I don’t see that Nick was calling for a special lesson to be taught on the topic!
“What a total Clegghead”. Did you make that one up yourself?
Ghandi: “reason they have a ban on “gay blood” is that they are not testing donated blood for HIV”. That simply isn’t true, and if it was it would be a calamity (as gay people are not by any means the only HIV carriers in the country) so Clegg would be doing the country a huge service by introducing HIV screening for blood.
Ghandi: “my local Lib Dem candidate…” It’s a good job you post anonymously because that is so close to libel!
Adam Bell: Are you really annoyed at being called “illiberal”, or is it just that you can’t answer the question? I only used it (in inverted commas) as a counter-point to your use of “libertarian” for people who should be considered (fellow?) liberals – which I presume you did just so that you can pretend that they don’t share your “liberal” ground. But please, if it means you actually answer the question and explain why you support the state making decisions for children in preference to parents, I will take it back.
Jock: I see your point regarding state education but I think it risks broadening this debate out too far. If we – for the moment – accept state education as a given, to what extent should it be used to promote particular political agendas?
Mouse: Jock is not a member of Liberal Vision, to my knowledge. I know it’s easier for your to just lump everybody into one group, but do try to treat people as individuals just occasionally.
* Force all schools – including faith schools – to implement anti-homophobia bullying policies and teach that homosexuality is “normal and harmless”.
I can’t help thinking that, had the above quote been reworded slightly, the debate might have been different:
*Require all schools – including faith schools – to implement anti-homophobia bullying policies and prohibit them from teaching that homosexuality is “wrong and harmful”.
Tom:
Blood: It IS/was a scandal! They DO discriminate on that basis, read the thread! It seems that they are now performing the specific HIV tests, but STILL haven’t changed the policy! What logic there was to it seems to have evaporated since the last time I took an interest.
Libel?: Was thinking out loud (and writing), but it’s nothing like libel since it’s all public knowledge, and she’s proud of it!
…I very much doubt I’ll hear a more sophisticated attack than “Clegghead” from Labour or Tory, have some perspective! ;D
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