We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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“The process is the punishment”, and Dale McAlpine has been processed.
Charges have been dropped against a Christian preacher who told a police officer homosexuality was “a sin”.
Of course they have. So long as someone pushes back, the police will retreat. They know that they would lose in court – they also know they do not have to win in court in order to intimidate. Being arrested is not nice, is it? The mere arrest is quite enough to spread the idea around that saying homosexuality is a sin is illegal.
Dale Mcalpine, 42, was accused of a public order offence after speaking to a community support officer (PCSO) in Workington, Cumbria, in April.
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Mr Mcalpine was preaching to shoppers in the west Cumbrian town on 20 April when he said he was approached by the PCSO, who told him he was a liaison officer for the local lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.
“He told me he was homosexual,” Mr Mcalpine said.
“I said ‘the Bible says homosexuality is a sin’. He said ‘I’m offended by that and I’m also the LGBT liaison officer within the police’.
“I said ‘it is still a sin’.”
He said three uniformed police officers then appeared and accused him of using homophobic language.
“I’m not homophobic, I don’t hate gays,” Mr Mcalpine said. “Then they said it is against the law to say homosexuality is a sin. I was arrested.”
Kudos to gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who “condemned the arrest and urged the home secretary to issue new guidelines to the police” – although it is a pity that Mr Tatchell does not follow through the logic of his argument to the case of property rights.
Once freedom goes it becomes a matter of elite fashion just who the police harass. In 2010 it was Baptist street preachers. Twenty years earlier it was homosexuals. Twenty years later it may be homosexuals again. Get yer multiculturalism right and it could be both.
I am troubled at the spread of a certain meme. It is hostile to liberty, yet seems to be fairly popular with those who in other respects defend freedom of speech and abhor State interference in personal relations. In the comments to this Samizdata post, a regular commenter here, ‘Mandrill’, expressed this particular meme unambiguously:
It should be illegal for any adult, parent or not, to indoctrinate any child in any religion, period. If they choose to follow one of the multitudinous superstitions which we’ve infected our intellects with once they’re an adult that’s their business, but to poison a child’s mind against reason from a very young age is, in my view, abuse and is something that stunts not only the intellectual growth of the child but that of the rest of humanity also. Just as much as genital mutilation (male or female) is.
That is all.
I have a few more examples that I have collected at the end of the post. Those quoted are not necessarily famous or influential, only those that I bestirred myself to note down or to find by casual googling. Trust me, there are plenty more out there. Feel free to add your own examples in comments. I would also welcome comments from anyone – such as Mandrill – who thinks this is a good meme.
Meanwhile let me speculate on how what I hold to be an insidious and bad meme is propagating itself with some success among them as should know better. Such qualities as ‘truth’ and ‘goodness’ and ‘internal consistency’ are often useful characteristics for a meme to have but are by no means essential to its success as a replicator.
1) Firstly, the ‘ban religion for children’ meme appeals by a having a spurious similarity to generally accepted ideas about when and whether sex should be prohibited. Most of us accept that consenting adults can do what they like, but children and mentally deficient people cannot give meaningful consent. My answer to that is sex is sex and talk is talk.
Campaign groups often try to ‘borrow’ some of the public willingness to abhor and forbid certain sexual acts and use it to get the public to abhor and forbid non-sexual acts of which the pusher disapproves. For instance, campaigners against smacking children often blur the boundaries between sexual and physical child abuse. In a loosely related way campaigners against rape sometimes blur the boundaries between forced sexual intercourse i.e. rape and the sort of ‘force’ involved in the use of emotional blackmail to get sex. → Continue reading: Cherchez le mème
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