Unlike New Zealand and several Australian states and territories, Canada hasn’t got as far as the decriminalisation of sex work yet. Moreover, a certain religious denomination has enrolled on the side of prohibition…yes, that’s right: The Salvation Army.
The Salvos would probably say that they’re on the side of those who have been “trafficked” into prostitution. […]

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Back in March/April 2008, Alison Bechdel’s excellent lesbian graphic novel Fun Home was the subject of a censorship bid at (sigh) the University of Utah…According to KSL TV’s Sarah Daloff, although Time had voted it their book of the year, a group of neanderthal first years in an English class labelled it “pornographic” and asked […]

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Barring unforeseen newsworthy events of relevance to our communities over the next week or so, I thought I’d try to discern what the new year holds in store for us.
In the United States, the Bush error comes to an end, as Duhhh-bya steps down, trips over and plummets into well-deserved obscurity, as the United States enters […]

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I sometimes wonder if those who call for same-sex marriage proper are aware of the problematic history of the institution. While browsing online, a History Today article caught my eye.
Now, I’m not overly inclined toward romanticism when it comes to marriage. Medieval marriage was particularly fraught. To its credit, medieval Catholicism insisted on consent before […]

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Pope Benedict XVI has caused considerable annoyed response from LGBT people, who objected to him comparing us to advocates and active protagonists in fomenting adverse climate change.
I think what he was trying to do was to map the archaic, creaking Thomist framework that denotes heterosexuality as “natural” and homosexuality as an “objective moral disorder” onto […]

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Pat Boone used to be one of my mum’s favourites. Not any more.
At seventy four, Boone is a hasbeen. He had his own US television music showin the fifties, and toured with Elvis, but became hooked on gospel in the sixties, and at the end of that decade, he turned Pentecostal.
Rock’s British invasion relegated him to […]

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PinkNews has welcome news about a fundamentalist Christian legal registrar who refused to recognise civil partnership documentation due to her religious beliefs. She has lost an appealed employment discrimination case.
An earlier tribunal ruling argued that Lilian Ladele had been ‘discriminated’ against because Islington Council had undertaken disciplinary action against her due to her refusal to […]

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Okay. As we are all aware, in Christian mythology, Jesus was supposed to have risen from the dead.
Trouble is, as all popular culture mavens are aware, there’s only one sort of being capable of that. Yes, that’s right. Jesus is a zombie. As such, he still loved humans- unfortunately, he wanted them for dinner. Why […]

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Alien abductions often cause snickering and snide aspersions from those of us who are non-believers. Intriguingly, I’ve never encountered a gay man who claims that these experiences happened to him. All male ‘alien abductees’ would appear to be straight.
In alien abduction stories, a person is abducted by little green or grey people. They rip the […]

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Given two recent cases where citizens initiated referenda led to noticeably liberal social policy outcomes (for a change), I wonder how long social conservatives realise that they were sold a pup when they signed up to the extreme right’s favourite populist plaything.
I’m referring to two particular instances. In November 2008, Washington state became the second […]

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