Daily Mail in knee-jerk homophobic, sexist shocker!
By Jess McCabe | 6 July 2009, 15:29
How to react this rant by Melanie Phillips in today’s Daily Mail?
I mean, clearly it’s a reaction to Pride this weekend, right? It pushed her buttons, because although she makes the concession that G(LB?) people should be “tolerated” and not beaten up, she also thinks gay rights activists are responsible for the breakdown of the ‘family’* and that it’s Asking Too Much to want an end to discrimination in adoption and marriage, or that same-sex relationships are considered “equal” to different-sex (married) relationships.
We don’t really have to go much beyond this headline:
Hooray! The Tories are backing marriage - but they’re wrong to pretend all relationships are equal
I mean, it is simultaneously offensive and just ridiculous.
Phillips also manages to argue that demanding an end to discrimination in adoption and marriage amounts to discrimination against straight Christians.
She goes on to complain about how all the stigma has been removed from being a single mum and getting divorced (oh noez! how will the world keep turning if single mums aren’t being shamed in some way?!)
At least Phillips is giving us the opportunity to brace ourselves for the report which she says is shortly to shape the Conservatives’ “far-reaching policy to put marriage at the heart of family* life”.
And yes, you can chalk me up on the side of those totally unconvinced by the Tories ‘gay-friendly’, ‘we’re not the nasty-party’ makeover.
(Via Liberal Conspiracy)
* ‘Family’ is in scare quotes, because this is categorically not about supporting all families, just the nuclear, one-woman, one-man, plus children, plus marriage certificate, sort of family. Those who don’t fit this description don’t have families.
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Feeds
Melanie said:
Phillips's article is so badly written it's amusing.
e.g. "Cohabitation numbers took off, fuelled by a tax and welfare system which provided incentives for couples to live apart"
Is it just me, or does that sentence completely contradict itself?
Posted on 06 July 2009 at 11:50 PM
polly styrene said:
What I loved was Phillips' assumption that homosexuality is just so tempting as an option, that unless you make it crystal clear that marriage/heterosexuality is better and coerce people into it, everyone will just go gay.
Is there something you're in denial about maybe Melanie?
Posted on 07 July 2009 at 8:18 AM
lisa said:
The reason children in the UK are increasingly neglected and living in poverty is because of rampant consumer capitalism promoted first by Thatcher and embraced wholeheartedly by Labour. So long as children are low on the list of adult priorities it won't make any difference whether they are living with a hetrosexual or homosexual couple BUT parenting is hard work and taking that path alone (whatever the gender or sexual orientation) is hard. A more practical solution would be to support the extended family so that more adults are available to help both to earn family income and to parent.
Posted on 07 July 2009 at 8:18 AM
Josie said:
Ah yes, it's important that we 'tolerate' gay people. Reminds me of Tina Fey as Sarah Palin in one of the (brilliant) pre-election SNL sketches - 'I tolerate gay people, I tolerate them with all my heart'. Vomit.
I really do think that Phillips has surpassed herself this time in utter bonkersness. And this is a woman who has previously written an article entitled, in all seriousness, 'The Murder of Marriage'. It's in the Daily Male online archives, look it up, it's a hoot
!
I agree with Melanie (commenter) that the article is ridiculously badly written, I found myself laughing out loud all the way through it. Less amusing, however, is the prospect of the forthcoming Tory doctrine on marriage as the answer to all society's ills. Just the thought makes my blood run cold.
Posted on 07 July 2009 at 8:22 AM
George said:
I love that Don't Panic video - my favourite bit is that Boris Johnson is apparently the new Guevara. Unintentional comedy gold, and politically effective with it.
Re: the article... *headdesk*.
Posted on 07 July 2009 at 10:30 AM
Mary said:
My favourite bit was how marriage had been attacked by gay campaigners in the UK, which was why we have the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe. You know, because there are no queer partnerships or co-habitation in those countries with low teen pregnancy rates.
Posted on 07 July 2009 at 11:10 AM
SunlessNick said:
What I loved was Phillips' assumption that homosexuality is just so tempting as an option, that unless you make it crystal clear that marriage/heterosexuality is better and coerce people into it, everyone will just go gay.>/em>
Totally - if heterosexual marriage is so grand, it should be able to survive without the suppression of all other alternatives.
Posted on 07 July 2009 at 3:42 PM
Shea said:
I've got to second George's comment - Boris Johnson as Che Guevara ha ha ha ha ha! Thats comic genius!
I love the attempts at wheedling out of the fact that you can trace the roots of the current economic crisis in a very neat line to Thatcher's de-regulation of the City in the 1980s. Nothing the Tories have or will do would have prevented or ameliorated what has happened.
And crises of Capitalism are fundamental to what capitalism is! Boom and Bust is to capitalism what the aorta is to the heart. Unfortunately the neo liberal agenda of both Lib, Lab and Conservatives means a steady erosion of employment and worker rights and benefits and more people thrust into poverty and powerlessness.
But no lets go for the Cayman Islands, as a model example. At a time when because of the gross mismanagement, corruption and incompetence of the private sector, we have a massive public borrowing and public debt --- lets CUT taxes. Yes, then we can all start crapping money in order to repay this.
And yes lets borrow the economic model of a country with a population of 45,000 people, that's not even within the top 70 world economies and apply it to a country of 60 million. Makes sense.
Y'know that film Blue State, where the democrat pledges to leave the US if Bush Jnr gets re-elected in 2004? Well I'm making a similar pledge. If Cameron et al get into government I'm off for the foreseeable future, I hear the Cayman Islands are nice.........
Posted on 07 July 2009 at 8:22 PM
Rachthewarriorprincess said:
Everyone knows straight marriage =
women being left at 30, kicked out the door with 4 kids and the option only of working at a chippie.
Men actually want the option for it to end when they lose interest, and women become fooled into thinking they'll be supported forever.
Holding onto marriage has always conjured up an image of women trying to look younger, be more submissive and useful to keep their men from leaving. Or ya know, putting up domestic abuse. Which will get worse if we make divorce more diffcult you fucking prudes.
Posted on 07 July 2009 at 10:34 PM
sianmarie said:
couldn't even get to the end. i hate her!! how dare she - how dare she be allowed to write such nasty petty hate filled articles? has she ever actually spoken to someone brought up in a gay family? i don't think so - then perhaps she would learn that it is love and care and a sense of stability that is important for children, not the institution of marriage.
and what's this bullshit that it is the breakdown of the family that causes domestic violence??!! like dv doesn't happen within marriage as well! i tried to interview her for the guardian once on the subject of lesbian mothers but she declined, probably because the prospect of speaking to a woman raised by two women who was actually happy with that situation would so undermine her world view that she would crumble under the weight of her own lies.
this article is nothing but incitement to homophobia and hatred. she makes me so angry!!!
Posted on 08 July 2009 at 8:49 AM
Mobot said:
Ha ha, I just read this piece of incoherent drivel... it was a bit like watching a bad horror movie or a car crash that you can't stop looking at even though it's gross. It's some small comfort that this sort of 'journalism' is rife with fear and panic because it's written by people who know that they're a dying breed. Also, I was both amused and worried by the fact that a commenter on the article who 'shouted' his agreement with it cited himself as being from (something along the lines of) 'Australians for non-bigotry'! What's up with right wingers appropriating language to mean its exact opposite? Philips seems to totally miss the irony in her use of the apparently Orwellian inspired 'groupthink'. What an idiot.
Posted on 09 July 2009 at 9:00 PM