4 questions for Anne Marie Waters and secularists voting UKIP

Britain’s European elections are in three weeks, with the right-wing UK Independence Party predicted first place.

This blog’s core readers aren’t likely to vote for them, but the party has startling support in parts of UK secularism. Anne Marie Waters, who serves on the National Secular Society’s board of directors, was this month announced as UKIP’s 2015 candidate for Basildon, joining supporters like Pat Condell. (Her site now voices rather sudden fears about ‘erosion of British democracy and identity as a result of our membership of the European Union’.)

Given UKIP’s policies, I have questions for Waters and secularists tempted to vote for them.

1. What will secularists do without human rights laws?

The European Convention on Human Rights was a key part of recent years’ court success against homophobic B&B owners, and was cited initially in the NSS’s 2012 case against council prayers. UKIP want Britain to withdraw from it.

The Human Rights Act 1998, modelled on it and passed by Labour to make filing human rights cases easier, is cited frequently – not least by Waters – as demanding abolition of the UK’s 80-plus sharia courts; it’s also referenced by critics of state-maintained ‘faith’ schools. UKIP want to repeal it. (In a likely case of far-right influencing so-called centre-right, the Conservatives have now pledged to do so if reelected.)

Britain, unlike the US, is not constitutionally secular. Without an establishment clause dividing religion and state, these laws are the most powerful we have prohibiting religious privilege and abuse. This renders them essential to work like the NSS’s: scapping them as UKIP propose would make campaigns like those above inordinately harder if not impossible.

2. With Ofsted gone, what will stop fundamentalist schools?

The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) does exactly what its name implies, inspecting schools on everything from teaching to pastoral care – a remit which includes maintaining satisfactory science lessons, sex education and social diversity, areas mounting fundamentalism threatens.

While different schools have varying degrees of exemption from Ofsted’s rules, religious ones among them, and there’s evidence it’s granted some extremists far too much leeway, its watchdog role keeps many in check. According to a recent Guardian report, the current government’s ‘free schools’ – often religious, startable by anyone and with no requirement for qualified teachers – fail inspections at three times the average rate; the Office is currently investigating Islamists’ leaked plot in Birmigham to gain control of city schools.

The logical need from a secularist viewpoint is for more robust deployment of Ofsted’s powers. UKIP’s latest manifesto, meanwhile, promised ‘Ofsted will be abolished’, opening potential floodgates to a tidal wave of religious malpractice. (Perhaps on science teaching specifically, we shouldn’t have expected much: it also boasts the party, which ‘look[s] favourably on home education’, is the first ‘to take a sceptical stance on man-made global warming claims’.)

3. What do UKIP votes mean for a secular state?

The 2010 manifesto further states UKIP ‘oppose disestablishment of the Church of England’; around the same time, their website added ‘and believe the Monarch should remain Defender of the Faith – faith being the Church of England.’

The web page in question is now empty, and leader Nigel Farage has publicly distanced himself from the manifesto, arguing that since he wasn’t in office in May 2010, its doesn’t reflect UKIP under him. (He fails to mention that he was, in fact, leader from 2006 to 2009.) Current events suggest, however, that change is unlikely.

When David Cameron, amid cabinet praise for the Church of England, used his Easter message to declare ‘We should be more confident about our status as a Christian country, more ambitious about expanding the role of faith-based organisations, and, frankly, more evangelical’, Farage replied on behalf of his party:

We have been saying for years that we should be more muscular in our defence of Judaeo-Christian culture, and after all, we have a Christian constitution. The Church of England is the established church of this country. What Cameron is doing, once again, was really mimicking what UKIP have been saying.

What happens, as such a party gains support, to prospects for a secular state?

4. What’s UKIP’s record on religious sexism and homophobia?

The NSS has long made equality and human rights a keystone of its work. Many self-declared secularists supporting UKIP and other far-right groups, in fact, do so ostensibly out of commitment to these goals – in particular, to ‘save’ women and gay people from invading Muslims. Beside opposing key laws that safeguard them against religious abuse, then, what’s UKIP’s record on LGBT and women’s rights?

In 2012 David Coburn, spokesperson for the party’s National Executive Committee, described government same-sex marriage support as ‘an aggressive attack on people of faith, and an act of intolerance in itself’. In 2013, all but one of UKIP’s MEPs voted to halt progress on a motion in the European Parliament for increased provision of reproductive rights and women’s sexual health information. (The NSS lobbied for the bill; religious groups opposed it.) The exception was deputy leader Paul Nuttall, who appears not to have been present. Nuttall himself belongs to the mainly religious Society for the Protection Unborn Children and has spoken at their meetings. SPUC calls for a ban on all abortions, as well as numerous forms of birth control.

UKIP’s candidates, councillors and MEPs have furthermore called female audience members sluts whose place was cleaning fridges, called feminists ‘shrill, bored, middle class women of a certain physical genre’ and denied ‘the impossibility of the creationist theory’, called bisexual and transgender people part-time homosexuals, blamed floods on gay marriage and promised to scrap ‘politically correct laws’ that ‘made it possible for lifestyle choices to be placed above religious faith’. These may be individual views rather than policies, but is a party that attracts such people in large numbers good for secularists?

UKIP’s politics, in letter and in spirit, are anti-secular by nature; there are many arguments against a vote for them, but supporting them means siding with a party that consistently opposes disestablishment, appeals to the religious right, allies with them against minorities and women, imperils science and education and welcomes fundamentalists. Their mission is in zero-sum conflict with those of groups like the NSS, in whose place I’d be concerned to have their members on my council of management.

4 questions for Anne Marie Waters and secularists voting UKIP
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Bisexuality’s supposed ease: another letter to Dan Savage

April 6’s post, taking to task the warping of a two-syllable mumble by Tom Daley, did quite well. Those who shared it included Dan Savage at the Stranger, who’d joined the chorus hailing him as a former fake bisexual.

‘Daley will never have a sexual relationship with a woman again,’ Andrew Sullivan had written months before, ‘because his assertion that he still fancies girls is a classic bridging mechanism to ease the transition to his real sexual identity. I know this because I did it too.’ Gay press outlets, agreeing, waited on tenterhooks for evidence of this – jumping the gun by claiming victory when a quiz show host told the diver ‘You’re a gay man now’ and got this answer.

Assuming bi-identifying men are gay then saying they cast doubt on ‘real bisexuals’ is a common if circular tendency. Teenage boys in particular are often accused, to use Owen Jones’ words in this week’s Guardian, of ‘coming out as bisexual (fuelling a sense of “bi now, gay later”, much to the annoyance of genuine bisexuals), hoping that having one foot in the straight camp might preserve a sense of normality.’

Savage, having written rather often of ‘transitional’ bisexuality in youth, agrees. Discussing his own for Sullivan’s website The Dish, he states that when ‘you meet some somebody who’s fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old, and they tell you that they’re bi, a little voice in the back of your head goes “Yeah, so was I.” You don’t think that out loud, but you think it. And I don’t think you can help it. And it’s not the fault of bisexuals that you think that, it’s the fault of people who were not bisexuals who said that they were’.

Frightened young gays, we’re told, call themselves bi to escape homophobia, restrained by fear and circumstance from just telling the truth. This isn’t fiction, but nor is it the whole story. While many gay men describe such a past, what was funniest about Daley’s non-statement was how clear a case it was of the opposite pressure – an instance where most bi folk would find accuracy near-impossible.

I’ll let Dan Savage in on a secret here: bisexuals call themselves gay all the time – or at least, allow people to call them gay. It’s often difficult not to. Like several others, Savage claimed Daley’s response to being named a gay man ‘sounded like an “I am”’ (judge for yourself), adding that if the host was wrong, ‘you would think Daley would’ve corrected him’.

While I don’t want to say he definitely is bisexual, it’s easy for me to see why, if so, he didn’t. Correcting people on your sexuality is awkward, especially in a lighthearted context; especially when their mistake (in this case a popular catchphrase) was also a joke; especially on national TV. Providing corrections, details and explanations each time we’re mislabelled can moreover be emotionally exhausting.

When I asked bisexual Twitter users if they ever went by ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’, or let others describe them thus, many said things to this effect: ‘Sometimes [I’m] not comfortable trying to explain’; ‘I don’t have [the] energy’; ‘it can at times be simpler’; ‘I often just lack the moral energy to correct them; I am often guilty of failing to’; ‘if I can’t be bothered to have the conversation explaining myself to the person I’ll just go along with it.

Why, asks Savage, wouldn’t Daley correct someone calling him gay if this was false? Perhaps, as is an everyday occurrence for bisexuals, he didn’t feel like it.

Others blur categories for practicality. ‘Bi,’ Charley Hasted says when asked if they’re gay, ‘but yeah.’ (‘I know what they mean, but people are bad at accuracy.’) ‘If I’ve just said “Hey, that’s kinda homophobic”’, AutistLiam told me, ‘and someone says “Are you gay or what?”, I’ll say “Yeah, I am”.’

Sometimes it’s about hostility. Pseudonymous user TTE reports, ‘When I first came out and all I wanted was the woman I was in love with . . . she and her friends were very keen on letting me know bi women weren’t welcome.’ ‘I clarify that I’m attracted to more than one gender or just tell them I’m bisexual’, Laurel May adds, ‘and prepare to roll my eyes at their biphobia’.

Especially for women, keeping bisexuality quiet can be convenient. Valen mentions doing so ‘When dealing with friends’ jealous significant others… “Oh, don’t worry, she’s gay.”’ Charlie Edge comments, ‘I only ever call myself a lesbian to deter unwanted advances from hetero dudes’. Greta Christina likewise uses the term ‘to fend off straight guys hitting on me if I don’t feel like having the whole conversation and saying “I’m bisexual – I just want you to piss off”.

Finally, ‘gay’ has extra political or individual use for some of us. MxsQueen is ‘trying to reclaim an older usage from before everything got so differentiated’; Tyler Ford, speaking of their personality, states ‘I call myself “gay” sometimes but it’s because regardless of the gender of the person I’m with, I’m really gay.’ ‘In the nineties,’ remembers Pyra, ‘there was a panel discussion at a local university. After introduction as a lesbian, I didn’t correct them. . . . For the sake of just being a woman on the panel, and to expose some very uptight Catholic students to the idea, I didn’t feel it was bad.’ KitsuneKuro, a ‘[gender-]nonbinary person currently in a relationship that’s read as heterosexual’, says ‘I refer to myself as gay despite actually being pi/pan as a sort of reminder that I’m not straight and absolutely not a woman.’

I’ve been called gay by family and friends, on national radio and in nationwide papers. Usually I complain, but not always, and I’m fussier than most bi people I know. Some – mostly men attracted mainly, but not solely, to other men – have switched permanently to the gay label. Statistics tell a similar story. Bisexuals are dramatically more numerous in LGB populations than appearances imply (an outright majority, several studies suggest) because we frequently call ourselves something else.

From 12 to my early years at university, I went with ‘gay’. It wasn’t a lie, or meaningfully ‘wrong’, nor was there a bisexual eureka moment. ‘Gay’ was the way to interpret my attractions that made most sense and felt most useful as a label… until my thoughts changed, and it didn’t. I’ve used nonbinary labels now for several years – most recently, ‘bisexual’ – and as such, gay was to me exactly what bi is called much of the time: a temporary, adolescent bridging phase.

What’s clear to me is that since switching teams, I haven’t regained ‘a sense a normality’; I eminently don’t have ‘one foot in the straight camp’. Being bi four or five years has been emphatically harder than being gay seven or eight – because of all the enmity and erasure above, and because I’ve experienced just as much homophobia. I’m less gay than I was, but no less queer: straight men across the street harassing me have not, for some reason, discovered I’m bisexual and politely quietened down.

When I read authors like Sullivan and Savage say we ‘real bisexuals’ are dismissed because of those people who claim they’re bi for an easier life, I want to say it isn’t all that simple: that being bi is far more difficult for me and countless others than being gay ever was. (I wonder, actually, if some drop the pretence partly because it no longer seems worth it.) And then I want to tell them two can play at that game.

We know that ‘true’ bisexuals are extremely numerous – at least as much so as gay men – however many ‘fakes’ there are. How does Savage presume to tell who is and isn’t an impostor, and who made him the judge to start with? The truth is denialism doesn’t discriminate: it’s used against everyone who says they’re bi, especially among young men. If gay and straight teenagers can be believed, why can’t bisexual ones?

Yes, gay men sometimes call themselves bi – but systematically, at least as many bi people call themselves gay. Per Savage’s logic, it would be totally valid for us to treat gays, teenage and otherwise, as bisexuals in disguise; to feel a pressing, overpowering need to question the identity or truthfulness of those we meet, telling them ‘So were we, at that age’; ‘This is classic bridge-building’; ‘We know, because we did it too.’

I don’t get that urge, because I’m capable of seeing my narrative isn’t everyone’s – of detaching my experience from any given stranger’s. Also, because I don’t know their inner thoughts better than they do. Also, because when people express preferences about how their sexuality is labelled (the same as ones about their name or pronouns), respecting them is just effing polite.

I consulted dozens of bi people for this post; I know and interact with dozens more; I’ve read and followed the work of still dozens more for years. I’ve yet to encounter the anger ‘genuine bisexuals’ feel, according to gay men, at those who borrow our label because it helps them feel safe. Being constantly expected to prove it legitimate ourselves, often resorting to using other ones, we’re unlikely as a community to want anybody stripped of labels (pretend or not) that help them through the night.

As Marius Pieterse says, there’s ‘Nothing wrong with stopping over in bi-town on the way to gayville. Many stop over on the way back too. More still stay.’ Tourists from gayville and straightbury alike, indeed, can regularly be found visiting. All are welcome: mistrust of our identity is fuelled by biphobia, not by this, and gay men who propagate it, Savage included, should take responsibility.

If you’re unable to recognise that other queer lives may not mirror yours; if you can’t take people at their word on things that only they can know about; if you can’t avoid treating them like they need to prove to you their sexuality is what they say – all favours bi people do gay people – this is your fault. The problem isn’t ‘fake bisexuals’ casting doubt on them: your doubt is your choice, and the problem is you.

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Bisexuality’s supposed ease: another letter to Dan Savage

No, Tom Daley didn’t just call himself a gay man

Five months after insisting he still fancied girls, Tom Daley, who came out as bisexual last December in an emotional YouTube video, has made a new announcement: last night, the 19-year-old admitted he only wants to be with men and says he is no longer attracted to women, confirming that he is actually gay. ‘I am a gay man now. I’m definitely gay, not bisexual’, he said, attempting to explain his change-of-heart for Keith Lemon on Celebrity Juice.

This paragraph is a collage of statements from news sources within the last two days. The story, invariably headlined something like ‘Tom Daley: I’m a gay man now’, is all over the web. (I noticed it as a trend on Facebook. At the time of writing, it’s the top one.) With any luck, the patchwork above distills the overarching narrative the press has spun.

Articles show similar patterns. Typically, they open with reminders Daley’s coming-out, in which he ‘insisted’ he liked women while dating a man, was barely five minutes ago; they pointedly note his being 19 (bisexuality, of course, is something teenage); they declare him now to have ‘admitted’ to being simply gay, as the glitterati – Andrew Sullivan, Dan Savage, Richard Lawson – said he would, adding a hundred words or more of gossip-column extraneity.

I’ve felt obliged to write about Daley before, but never quite been able to. As subjects for writing go, he’s always seemed an uninteresting figure – less interesting by far, at least, than a once-bullied, now-adored bilingual queer Olympian should be who lost a parent, was an A-student and photographed Kate Moss and who’s dating an Oscar-winner. I seem to be the only one not attracted to him: the public Daley feels sexless as a Ken doll.

Nonetheless, media’s treatment of him is unsettling – not least its creepy, invasive monitoring of his relationship, an indignity saved usually for royals. This latest headline, clearly, was one the press had ached for months to write in ‘told you so’ self-satisfaction, so nonspecific are the articles below it. Almost none quote what Daley actually said; almost all distort it.

Here is the clip that spurred reports. The entire exchange occurs within the first five seconds.

‘Let’s get right to the crunch here,’ says host Keith Lemon – persona of Leigh Francis, one more straight comic in the David Walliams mould who thinks ‘act queer’ is the fastest route to funny. ‘You’re a gay man now.’ (This is, as has thus far been largely overlooked, a reference to a popular Catherine Tate sketch.)

I, ah…’ Daley replies, sounding a bit uncomfortable.

That’s it.

Admittedly, his diction isn’t clear. A proper journalist’s transcription, and well-known journalists have hired me to give them, would render it simply as ‘[indistinct]’: the second word could equally be ‘agh’, ‘ugh’, ‘yeah’, ‘know’ or something else. Outlets desperate for a bi-now-gay-later scoop seem to have rounded it up to ‘am’ – then delved into wild, opportunistic paraphrase of what they hoped he’d said.

Even if Daley had answered ‘I am’, low-brow comedy quiz programmes on ITV aren’t quite the forum for Q&A on nuanced identities. Plenty who sail like me in vaguely bisexual waters would, I think, have shrugged along rather than correct Francis. We’re encouraged to bow to the binary of ‘gays’ and ‘normal people’, to be unfussy about what we’re called: erasure makes stating bisexuality awkward when it comes as a reprimand.

No, Tom Daley didn’t say he’s a gay man. Nor did he ever use the word bisexual, for that matter – but it’s obvious which one the press prefers.

Edit: For those saying Daley’s reply sounded to them like a clear ‘I am’, hear the isolated audio here.

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No, Tom Daley didn’t just call himself a gay man