Tag Archives: Harriet Harman

Commentary

How the Labor Party killed marriage in the UK

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Kathy Gyngell explains in this UK Daily Mail article. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

Across its various forms and rules [marriage] is a human universal and with good reason. Marriage everywhere is the bridge between affinal and kin relationships ­ a bond integral to the functioning and survival of human society. It defines social relationships, social and economic responsibilities.

It establishes genealogical connections and confers ‘belonging’ and social identity. It prevents incest­ now more prevalent in our underclass than we know (something of deep concern to the more thoughtful of our politicians and social workers). No other set of relationships or connections ­ whether through friendship, work, sport or volunteering – replicate the function of marriage. The state certainly cannot ­ the failure of communism demonstrated that.

[…]I believe governments (successive ones) are culpable for setting marriage adrift as the sexual/ cultural revolution swept in. This was not the case elsewhere.

Britain silently, casually and progressively abolished the family … first through liberalising the divorce laws; later came the official signal that marriage no longer mattered.

Former Chancellor Nigel Lawson’s reform of personal taxation set in train the abolition of the married couple’s allowance. (He failed, as he had planned in his Green Paper, to balance independent taxation by transferring the unused personal allowance to a non-earning, most likely child-rearing-spouse.)

But it was Gordon Brown’s first budget that did the real damage. It marked, as Harriet Harman emphasized triumphantly at the time, “the end of the assumption that families consist of a male breadwinner and a female helpmate in the home”. Labour’s new measures did not just recognise that women were in paid work and needed help with childcare, they pushed this agenda aggressively with tax incentives and a massive expansion of childcare facilities.

Married mothers at home were indeed marked as second class citizens. What¹s more their families were to subsidise, through their disproportionately burdensome taxes, those families with no breadwinner at all. Frank Field¹s intention to cut back on lone-parent benefits in order to discourage dependency was abandoned in the face of party fury and threatened rebellion.

State support for lone parenthood has entrenched illegitimacy ­ the word no one dares speak. This is our root social problem. It is why we are now Europe¹s pre-eminent ‘transient shack up’ society. We cannot rest the entire blame on the pill per se (available across Europe) or on women’s lib. Betty Friedman and Germaine Greer (both made their way onto most European bookshop shelves) or cultural osmosis, though feminism and socialism have proved a pernicious mix.

The fact is other countries in Europe have done more to support and sustain marriage and married families. They have capitulated less to aggressive feminist ideologues ­ people who viewed marriage as the tool of an oppressive patriarchal regime, if not as prostitution (Jenni Murray in the past) but never as an institution the majority of young women continued to aspire to.

That marriage socialised men, and that women had power in marriage, did not occur to this particular monstrous regiment of women. Nor did men marshal the arguments against this craziness, for fear of falling foul of irrational and strident Gingerbread demands for lone parent economic independence – courtesy of the state of course.

Whatever cost to the state and taxpayer – subsidising lone mothers back to work, putting their fatherless children into state paid for childcare and continuing to mop after what were never viable families in the first place, whether in the form of Louise Casey or Sure Start, remains the mantra of left and most of the centre of politics.

Marriage didn’t just die in the UK by accident. It was a victim of a partnership of big government and militant feminism. Financial incentives were put in place by the secular left with the goal of discouraging people from marrying and have a mother stay at home and raise the children. The mistake that many women made is that they believed that they could keep marriage as is, with men seeking to commit for life, and add to it a government-provided safety net that would catch them if the men they freely chose fail to perform. Instead of getting serious about consulting with their parents, and choosing the right man for the responsibilities of marriage, women followed their hearts, and hoped to transform the wrong men using mystical powers. Somehow, they believed, premarital sex coupled with peer approval and an expensive wedding ceremony could transform a man who was not qualified for marriage at all into the perfect husband and father. When all of this failed, women refused to point the finger at themselves, and instead voted for more and more government social programs to equalize all households, regardless of their decisions about men. After all, men are so unpredictable! And courting intelligently and chastely is “too strict”.

This is why the typical mother in the UK spends 19 minutes per day with her children, and the average father spends even less. If everyone has to work to pay taxes for the welfare state, then there is no money left in the family for a stay-at-home parent. This is exactly what the feminists wanted – the end of marriage, and it’s unequal sex roles for wives and husbands. And the only way to go back to the way it used to be is for women to stop outsourcing the roles of the husband and father to government, and start marrying the right men for those jobs.

News

Christian demoted for expressing disagreement with same-sex marriage

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From the UK Daily Mail, worrying news about the state of free speech in the UK. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

Mr Smith has worked for 18 years for Trafford Council and Trafford Housing Trust, which manages more than 9,000 homes in Sale, Greater Manchester.

But he now finds his career in tatters over a comment he wrote on his personal Facebook page one Sunday morning in response to a BBC story headlined ‘Gay church “marriages” get go-ahead’. The story referred to Government plans to lift the ban on homosexual couples holding civil partnerships in churches and other religious settings.

Mr Smith, whose Facebook profile identified him as working for the Trust as a housing manager, commented: ‘An equality too far.’

A few hours later, one of his Facebook friends, a work colleague whose identity is not known to The Mail on Sunday, posted: ‘Does this mean you don’t approve?’

The following evening after work, Mr Smith, who attends an evangelical church in Bolton, responded: ‘No, not really. I don’t understand why people who have no faith and don’t believe in Christ would want to get hitched in church.

[…]Mr Smith was disciplined after a second colleague complained to the Trust’s ‘equality and diversity lead’, Helen Malone.

A few days later, Mr Smith was summoned from his home to a meeting at the Trust’s headquarters in Sale, where he was told he was being suspended while the complaint was investigated.

He was warned that even though his Facebook page could be viewed only by registered friends, rather than by the general public, those readers included colleagues who had taken issue with his comments.

A shocked Mr Smith, who managed a team looking after local housing issues, immediately removed the reference to where he worked from the page.

The following month he was called to a disciplinary meeting before Mike Corfield, the Trust’s Assistant Director, Customers. Although Mr Smith was allowed to put his case, insiders described the meeting as ‘tense and fraught’.

According to legal documents lodged at Manchester County Court, Debbie Gorman, a ‘neighbourhood manager’ also at the meeting, said Mr Smith’s comment could cause offence.

She said she had interpreted it as saying ‘gay people are not as equal as people who are not gay’ and that the comment could be viewed as homophobic.

Mr Corfield said it was not the comment but its potential misinterpretation that was at issue, but still ruled that Mr Smith had committed a serious breach of discipline for which he could be dismissed.

But because of his loyal service, Mr Smith was instead demoted to money support adviser, handling rent collection. His pay was reduced to £21,396, phased in over a year, and he was given a final written warning.

Mr Smith has been advised he cannot speak to the press, but his solicitor Tom Ellis, of Aughton Ainsworth in Manchester, said: ‘Adrian was shocked and distressed to have been disciplined in this way. He never expected this to happen – it came completely out of the blue.

When people on the secular left talk about tolerance, equality and diversity, this is what they mean. You can’t even make a comment on your on personal Facebook page without being censored by state for thought crime.

The fact is that gay rights and religious liberty are on a legal collision course. (H/T Ruth Blog)

Excerpt:

When the relationships of “gay people” need societal validation, some of them, at least, have made it clear that it’s not all that wrong to stop dissenters from living according to their beliefs.

“There can be a conflict between religious liberty and sexual liberty, but in almost all cases, the sexual liberty should win because that’s the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner,” said sexual activist and former ACLU attorney Chai Feldblum before President Obama appointed her to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where she now has power to try to enforce that view. “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win,” she said.

Indeed, isn’t this the reason that the religious liberty exemptions in the New York marriage redefinition bill don’t include conscience exceptions for individuals or businesses? The idea is that everyone must accept the newly imposed values and live accordingly. A wedding photographer who can’t in good conscience use her artistic expression to make a same-sex ceremony look good as part of her creative work will be regarded no differently than the racist behind the lunch counter who doesn’t want to serve blacks. As Feldblum explained in The Brooklyn Law Review:

Just as we do not tolerate private racial beliefs that adversely affect African-Americans in the commercial arena, even if such beliefs are based on religious views, we should similarly not tolerate private beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity that adversely affect LGBT people.

And if you’re a New York clerk who has a problem of conscience with issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Gov. Andrew Cuomo says you need to give up your job, despite New York law that states otherwise. After all, as one Albany law professor who apparently doesn’t bat an eye about putting this on par with racism says, “There is just not a good legal argument that you have the right to discriminate.”

So if you’ve been on the fence about protecting marriage—wondering how someone else’s same-sex “marriage” will affect your marriage—now you’ve got a good bit of the answer: if you’re part of the 62 percent of Americans who believe marriage should be defined only as the union of a man and a woman, prepare to be regarded as the Ku Klux Klan member next door—and for your children to be taught the same perspective at your local government-run school. As a post titled “Can We Please Just Start Admitting That We Do Actually Want To Indoctrinate Kids?” on the Queerty website put it:

They accuse us of exploiting children and in response we say, “NOOO! We’re not gonna make kids learn about homosexuality, we swear! It’s not like we’re trying to recruit your children or anything.” But let’s face it—that’s a lie. We want educators to teach future generations of children to accept queer sexuality. In fact, our very future depends on it.

The message is frequently that recognition for same-sex unions will have no effect on those who disagree with them, but the evidence clearly says otherwise. As Princeton politics professor Robert P. George notes, “once one buys into ideology of sexual liberalism, the reality that has traditionally been denominated as ‘marriage’ loses all intelligibility . . . one will come to regard one’s allegiance to sexual liberalism as a mark of urbanity and sophistication, and will likely find oneself looking down on those ‘ignorant,’ ‘intolerant,’ ‘bigoted’ people—those hicks and rubes—who refuse to get ‘on the right side of history.’”

And let this be a lesson to all of you who don’t have aliases, and who do have your colleagues who can see your comments on sites like Facebook. Don’t be surprised when things like this happen to you.

News

If you defend your home from armed intruders in the UK, you get arrested

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Story here in the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Officers were called to Vincent Cooke’s house in the affluent Stockport suburb of Bramhall, just before 8pm on Saturday following reports of a break-in.

Mr Cooke, 39, a married father of one who has run a number of small courier and logistics companies, was relaxing alone in the detached interwar property when the two intruders struck, Greater Manchester Police said.

His wife Karen, 34, and 12-year-old son returned home during the incident but escaped unharmed. Police said that during the break-in Mr Cooke was threatened and one of the intruders, Raymond Jacob, 37, of was stabbed.

Mr Cooke, who is one of five children, was being questioned on suspicion of murder on Sunday night.

I thought the response of the police was interesting – self-defense is murder:

“Clearly this is a serious incident in which a man has lost his life and at this time we believe the dead man was one of two men who were attempting to carry out a burglary at the house.”

The other suspected intruder fled in a small white Citroen van. Police last night confirmed a second man had been arrested in connection with the incident.

On Sunday afternoon relatives of Mr Jacob, of Northern Moor, Greater Manchester, laid flowers outside Mr Cooke’s home.

One read: “To my baby boy who will always be my baby boy. I will miss you, but never stop loving you. Mum.”

Last night friends and relatives also left tributes for Mr Jacob social networking websites.

“Still doesnt feel real, cant believe your gone we will all miss you,” said Danielle Leach on Facebook.

Just to be clear about the facts, here’s the UK Sun.

Excerpt:

Two knife-wielding intruders burst into the home of company director Vincent Cooke, 39.

Burglar Raymond Jacob, 37, is believed to have been stabbed with his own knife.

Mr Cooke was later arrested in Bramhall, Cheshire. His wife and son fled the house unhurt.

Isn’t the mother’s reaction interesting? It’s not unexpected coming from the feminized UK, though, where no one is responsible for anything they do. In fact, the one who judges and refuses to bail others out is the bad one. How mean! Defending your home from armed intruders! Just let them kill you! After all, the government already takes your money, so why not not ban self-defense so they take your life as well?

This is not unusual in the new Harriet Harman-onized UK. It happens all the time.

Consider this story from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Miss Klass, a model for Marks & Spencer and a former singer with the pop group Hear’Say, was in her kitchen in the early hours of Friday when she saw two teenagers behaving suspiciously in her garden.

The youths approached the kitchen window, before attempting to break into her garden shed, prompting Miss Klass to wave a kitchen knife to scare them away.

Miss Klass, 31, who was alone in her house in Potters Bar, Herts, with her two-year-old daughter, Ava, called the police. When they arrived at her house they informed her that she should not have used a knife to scare off the youths because carrying an “offensive weapon” – even in her own home – was illegal.

Jonathan Shalit, Miss Klass’s agent, said that had been “shaken and utterly terrified” by the incident and was stepping up security at the house she shares with her fiancé, Graham Quinn, who was away on business at the time.

He said: “Myleene was aghast when she was told that the law did not allow her to defend herself in her own home. All she did was scream loudly and wave the knife to try and frighten them off.

You can read more about how the 1997 ban on handguns in the UK doubled violent crime in the four years after the ban at Reason magazine. Similarly, in the United states, legalizing the concealed carrying of firearms resulted in dramatic declines in violent crime. But that is just common sense. The more people who own guns and can defend themselves, the less crime there will be. But I think that the feminized state is just hostile to men acting in their traditional role as protectors, and they don’t like the idea that anyone is judged for doing evil things – like criminals.

The left, feminism and “equality”

And I can tell you what’s behind this. The secular left believes in equality. So if one person has money, and another doesn’t, it doesn’t matter what their personal decisions were. The poorer person should be allowed to take things from the richer person, and without getting hampered by laws and “self-defense”. That’s their view. That’s why they are soft on crime and release criminals early instead of punishing them. And this doesn’t just apply to criminals – this attitude goes right into the education system (“we need to make sure that families have no choice except the public schools, that way all the children will be equal”) the day care system (“we need to nationalize day care so that all the children are raised equally instead of by their own mothers”) the health care system (“we need to nationalize health care so that chaste men who are saving for their future marriage and children can pay for the abortions, sex changes, breast implants, contraceptives and IVF”), and so on.

I think Christians need to be especially careful with this compassionate impulse for “equality”, and consider whether equality might not make achieving Christian goals like liberty, marriage, and family more difficult. I don’t think it’s good for families to vote for higher taxes and bigger social programs that make men unnecessary as providers, protectors and leaders. All the responsibilities of the man to provide, protect and lead morally and spiritually are being handed off to the government, via police, schools, etc. That’s wrong.

Replacing men with government is bad for children – you don’t want to make it easier for women to not prepare to be mothers and wives, to not be careful about choosing the right men for marriage and parenting, and to not perform as wives and mothers once they are married in order to support men in their male roles. And that’s not my opinion – single motherhood by choice is known to increase child poverty and child abuse. And I don’t think that replacing men with government helps God any, either, since fathers are important for passing religion on to kids. You don’t serve God by undercutting his goals just because it feels good to you. You serve God by delivering results. His goal is not for you to feel good, but to do good. I recommend that anyone who votes based on feelings read more economics to find out what really works, and what strengthens marriage and family.

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