2013-06-20T03:42:36-04:00 Balaji Ravichandran http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=balaji-ravichandran Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Balaji Ravichandran Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3071708 2013-05-06T19:00:00-04:00 2013-05-06T11:47:04-04:00

Balaji Ravichandran http://www.huffingtonpost.com/balaji-ravichandran/
If I am to believe the reports on television and newspaper these past few days - never a good idea, I know -Ukip is now a force to be reckoned with. Of course, these are local elections, observers quip, and they will never make it to power at a national level, but, to many on the left as well as the right, it is a worrying development. I am worried too. In fact, I have been worried these past few years, as an immigrant, as someone who wants to remain in Britain, as an ethnic minority, and as a gay man. So, it is high time, I thought, I put my cards on the table.

I arrived in this country more than seven years ago. I was a medical student in India before then, and a respected medical journal thought it fit to bring me to London for an internship. I worked there for a year, received an offer from Cambridge, where I did my undergraduate degree, then a master's at St Andrews, and now, I'm doing my doctorate degree at Oxford. With the exception of my parents, who still remain in India, my entire life is now based in Britain, and has been for a while. I don't merely have friends in England, but surrogate families, networks of friends, and even an ex-lover or two, none of which I thought I'd have when I arrived with just £40 in my wallet, and not knowing a single soul in this country.

I am not saying any of this to vaunt my apparent success. On the contrary, I feel grateful to this country for giving me so much. Britain made me, gave me opportunities, nourished me, in a way no other country did. So, first of all, thank you.

But, a lot has changed since I first arrived. Back then, my visa application was four pages, cost me roughly £50, and a decision on the application took less than 48 hours. Now, the application form is roughly 64 pages, the visa fees up to £1,000, and a decision on application can take months, if not years. The number of documents I have to submit to prove my credentials have multiplied, and even then, the rates of rejection have shot up significantly.

Too right too, I hear some of you say. In fact, for the past five years, all I've ever heard air in the media, in the newspapers and on online forums, is that immigration is a 'problem,' the greatest one at that. Even liberal newspapers, which on the whole support immigration, feel obliged to begin with an acknowledgement that there is a problem. It is not merely a question of numbers. It cannot be. Were it so, the uniformity of the negative coverage would not be so blatant. Nor would there be so much blatant xenophobia, yes, often bordering on racism, in the pages of tabloid newspapers, and comment pages of even liberal websites such as The Huffington Post and the Guardian.

Don't take it personally, some of you tell me. We want highly skilled immigrants, who contribute greatly to the country, and are not a burden on the state. But, how can I not take it personally? Just as every gay man would be offended by a homophobic sentiment, when all major election parties think of immigration as a 'problem,' it is hard not to take it personally. I feel insulted, ignored, often vilified.

It is a greater disappointment for me to see all debates about immigration being reduced to diseased economic terms. Those who acknowledge benefits at all only do so in terms of the economy, and many think of immigrants as benefit scroungers. For the record, I have never taken a single penny from the state. My scholarship comes from abroad, which alone has contributed more than £150,000 so far to the universities here, and when I did work, I paid my taxes fully. But, is that what you call 'contribution'? If so, is that enough?

I, and many others like me, are here for reasons entirely different from the economy. I am here because I wanted to be in a country where being gay is accepted, and sexual minorities are afforded equal rights as straight people. I am here because, it meant something to me when Britain protected Salman Rushdie, after he wrote The Satanic Verses, whereas India was the first country to proscribe it altogether. I am here because my talents, such as they be, were recognised first by people in this country rather than that of my birth and childhood. I am here, most importantly, due to the cultural affinities that bind me to this country and to Western Europe as a whole.

It is indeed silly to use imperialism and colonialism as trumpet-cards in any argument, as even academics are wont to these days. But, it is important to remember that of all the remnants it leaves behind, one is inerasible. Language. It is the basis of thought, culture, science, and human relationship. Language is also what brings many people to this country, and takes them to the United States, Canada or Australia. We are all delighted to be able to get away with speaking English in countries where it is not the normal language, but we forget that it is one of the strongest cultural forces driving immigration.

Such individual stories as mine, bound as they are with their own emotions and complexities, become quickly lost, of course. I am an invisible point on a political graph, a statistical tool. When politicians listen to populist rhetoric and base their policies on that, the people who are affected are often not the people they want out of the country. The occasional cheat, and the rare religious fanatic still manages to get through, but thousands of valuable, worthwhile visitors, students, workers, and, dare I say it, future citizens, become lost.

Now, many of you have voted Ukip, maybe as a protest vote, or maybe, like them, you believe that Britain should basically close its borders altogether. Let's face it, some of you want it to remain a white-majority country too. That's why some think-tanks insist on restricting non-European migration alone. In response, all the parties would doubtless turn up their rhetoric against immigration, and a new wave of anti-immigration measures would be instituted. This government has already, more than any other, made it nearly impossible to come to this country as a student or a worker. One wonders what more it could possibly do in the upcoming Queen's Speech.

Naturally, I worry. I feel rejected, unwanted, often like a third-class subject. Labels, when used pejoratively, tend to do that. But, having made my whole life here, how could I possibly leave? Why should I?

So, the next time you read a vicious diatribe in the Daily Mail, or feel inclined to vote for Ukip, remember that immigration often has little to do with the economy. Remember that most of what you take for granted is a privilege, a luxury for the rest of the world, and even then, not everyone wants to come here and settle down permanently. Remember that the choices you make affect the lives of thousands of others like me. Most of all, ask yourself if you'd rather live in a country of cultural monotony and uniformity, or one which welcomed, among others, Handel, Henry James, Sigmund Freud, TS Eliot, Mitsuko Uchida and VS Naipaul, and have made this the most culturally exciting country in Europe.

Thank you.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2983360 2013-03-30T05:59:32-04:00 2013-05-30T05:12:01-04:00

Balaji Ravichandran http://www.huffingtonpost.com/balaji-ravichandran/
Lord Carey has lashed out, yet again, against the current coalition's one sensible policy: letting gay people get married. Predictably, his words appear in that beacon of intellect and tolerance, the Daily Mail. At certain points, one is not sure whether he wrote the article himself or parts of it were dictated by Paul Dacre, the foul-mouthed proprietor of the Mail. Expressions like 'persecuted minority,' 'aggressive secularism,' '[moral] relativism,' excessive 'political correctness,' have all crept their way into the article.

But then, I'm being carried away by my own prejudice. I expected better from a former Archbishop of Canterbury, that his words would carry some degree of theological humility and political restraint. After all, this was the man who once said legalising marriage for same-sex couples would turn Britain into Nazi Germany, shamelessly and egregiously insulting the tens of thousands of gay men who were sent to death in Dachau and other concentration camps. But, he went further, by comparing Christians in present day Britain to the Jews under Nazi Germany. That besmirched the memory of what happened to six million Jews across Europe from Kristallnacht to the end of the Second World War.

To his credit, in his piece, Lord Carey has admitted that few are actually persecuted in this country. (Though the treatment of Lucy Meadows at the hands of the Richard Littlejohn and the Mail should give him some clues about who is still persecuted in Britain.) But, he says, according to a poll by ComRes, that great ally of anti-equality coalition, two-thirds of 'regular church-goers' feel that they are part of a 'persecuted minority.' Dramatic, indeed. But, the devil is in the detail. Given the precipitous fall in church attendance, to argue that they represent Christianity at large is highly problematic. Equally, the fall in the number of people calling themselves Christian, according to the recent census, further complicates the picture.

The Mail, however, in a supposedly objective news report, concludes: 'The march of secularism means that if trends continue, Britain will no longer be a Christian country by 2030 when the number of non-believers will have overtaken the number of Christians.' It adds: 'In the past six years the number of Muslims has surged by 37 per cent to 2.6 million, Hindus by 43 per cent and Buddhists by a massive 74 per cent.'

Herein lies the problem. The myth that Christianity, or any religion for that matter, is persecuted, is a concoction of vile tabloids like the Sun and the Daily Mail, something that people who oppose gay rights feed on with delight. Persecution is a highly sensitive word that cannot be used casually. The 4,000 gay men and women killed in Iran between 1979 and 2009, that's persecution. The sensationalist headlines, and the increasingly harsh policies to which immigrants, especially from Eastern Europe and outside the EU, are subjected in this country, that's persecution. The plight of asylum seekers all across Europe, that's persecution. It must be a very stupid person indeed, who argues that introducing equal marriage for gay couples somehow threatens freedom of religion. The logical equivalent is to say that inter-racial or inter-faith marriage are somehow a threat to both religion and the races.

Mr Carey makes many more silly claims in his article. For example, he believes that allowing the Westminster Chapel to conduct same-sex ceremonies would 'fundamentally change' the nature of the Chapel, and is the first step towards disestablishment of the Church of England. It is hard to see how allowing gay people to get married in a Chapel, or even welcoming people of other faiths is a threat to its Christian heritage. Indeed, I would have thought the Bible would actively encourage both.

Similarly, he seems to suggest that a large number of Christian volunteers and public servants, who contribute immensely to society, are adversely affected by extending equality to gay people. Again, I don't see how. If it does, it must be a very narrow faith indeed which compels them to their good work. Is he suggesting that were it not for their faith, their contributions would be meaningless, or any the less welcome?

It is very disingenuous, not to mention illogical, to cite Christian heritage and contributions to society as grounds against gay rights. It is a clever concatenation of unrelated facts that subtly sows fear and anxiety into people's hearts: something worthy of the Mail, for sure, but not a fomer Archbishop of Canterbury.

Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are not the province of Christianity or any other religion for that matter. Mr Carey is suggesting that the right to marry is somehow the province of religion, not the state. That, by definition, is 'relativism,' which the former archbishop seems unwilling to recognise, despite rushing to condemn it.

In the beginning of his article, Lord Carey calls out Mr Cameron's apparent hypocrisy in supporting Christian rights, while furthering in public equal rights for gay people. But, he is unaware of his own hypocrisy. This opposition, between gay rights and religion, exists only in the minds of certain small-minded sections of the Christian population, and of other faiths. As the Quakers, the Unitarians, and many liberal Anglicans point out, it is in fact very Christian of Mr Cameron to extend marriage to same-sex couples. The great pity is in fact that gay members of the Church of England are explicitly forbidden by this government to get married within their faith.

Furthermore, Mr Carey is wilfully ignoring the fact that fully one-third of the House of Lords is occupied by members of the Church of England. And, as the National Secular Society has been quick to point out, a daily act of Christian worship is a compulsory requirement in every state school in England and Wales. Is this the face of persecution?

Lord Carey, I hate to break this to you, but Britain has moved on. The majority support equal marriage, and many are losing their faith. These are the facts of life. But, correlation is not causation, and one does not cause the other. In fact, I think it is the outdated and homophobic attitudes like yours that drive people away from the Church. So, if you do want to protect Christianity from 'aggressive secularism,' I suggest you get back to the 'love and charity' bit of your scripture, help the poor and the needy, and stop interfering in the affairs of the state and its secular citizens. These sensationalist claims and dramatic pronouncements do you no favour.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2922235 2013-03-21T06:25:25-04:00 2013-05-21T05:12:01-04:00

Balaji Ravichandran http://www.huffingtonpost.com/balaji-ravichandran/ interview for the BBC this morning.

Apparently, some gay couples have loving, stable, and monogamous relationships of "stunning" quality, he has acknowledged, and finds himself "deeply challenged" by this. Look at the qualifying words: "some," "quality," "acknowledged," and "deeply challenged." Set it in the context of what he calls the Church of England's formal opposition to "active homosexuality," and the message becomes clear.

To Mr Welby, heterosexual relationships are the norm, the gold standard, even if they are not "active," nor "loving, stable and monogamous." You can be a lying, serial adulterer, but the Church will still marry you as long as your partner is not of the same sex. But, you see, gay couples are not normally loving and monogamous, traits which are the province exclusively of straight people, and so, when he does come across such couples, he finds himself "challenged."

There is only one word to adequately describe this manner of thinking: homophobia, which is ironic coming from a man who claims to denounce it. Were one to say "there are some black people whose intelligence I find stunning and am challenged by it," we would quickly denounce it as racist - and rightly so. Yet, the BBC reports this as a remarkable piece of news in its own right (hence the 'acknowledged' bit), and the right-wing press has happily followed.

The hypocrisy does not end there, of course. Mr Welby, while in favour of the ordination of women bishops, is opposed openly gay people on the pulpit, were they not celibate. Needless to repeat then his opposition to equal marriage, which alone, according to Peter Tatchell, is enough to establish Mr Welby's prejudice against gay people.

Apparently, Mr Welby is also extending an olive branch to Mr Tatchell, who wrote to the archbishop-to-be to say, quite apart from the issue of gay marriage, he had a duty to speak out against the wave of anti-gay sentiments and draconian laws cropping up across countries like Uganda and Nigeria. Will we hear anything about it from Mr Welby though? Will he tell homophobic bishops in Africa that their call for gay people to be put to death is, to put it in their own Christian terms, an egregious sin? I doubt it. The Church is a club, and he would want to retain its members. Who cares about moral courage or justice when there is the threat of a coup?

These, then, are my greatest hopes: that one day, the Church of England will be disestablished, so that they don't interfere in any affairs of the state or in the civil liberties it guarantees, and two, that the current trend towards greater secularism continues to grow, so that we may not have to look to any self-serving or hypocritical establishment for moral guidance. Now that would be "stunning."]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2661133 2013-02-11T08:21:45-05:00 2013-04-13T05:12:01-04:00

Balaji Ravichandran http://www.huffingtonpost.com/balaji-ravichandran/ BBC has already started a live page, as have the Guardian and the Telegraph.

Tributes have started flooding. Mario Monti has already claimed to be "greatly shaken" by this "unexpected news." The German government, quick to cash in on native attachments, feels "moved and touched" by the resignation. Apparently, Angela Merkel has the "highest respect for the Holy Father, for what he has done, for his contributions over the course of his life to the Catholic Church." Even the Church of England, which the Catholic Church, to put it mildly, considers as a heretical establishment, has been quick to sing his praises. (Read any of those live blogs for the precise statements.) Oh, the hypocrisy of it all.

Look what Damian Thompson, a nasty right-winger who has trivialised mental illness, celebrated the shutting down of a church service in Soho for gay Catholics, and demonstrated an alarming lack of sympathy for drug and alcohol addicts, has to say: "The achievements of Benedict XVI have been subtle, above all in renewing and purifying the way the Catholic Church worships its Creator. He will be intensely missed by those of us for whom he was, in his quiet way, the most inspiring Pope of our lifetimes."

What utter tosh.

Even the most neutral of observers would have to agree that his popedom has been a PR disaster for the Catholic Church. He restored the Tridentine Mass, so that "Jews may be delivered from their darkness", and lifted the excommunication of at least one bishop who is a Holocaust denier. He came close to celebrating the colonial invasion of South America under the rubric of Christian faith, and described Muhammad's teachings as purely "evil and inhuman," as if his own were any better.

This is the man who has endangered millions of lives in Africa by suggesting that, far from managing the HIV/AIDS crisis there, condom use actually increases the rate of infection. Every year, especially over Christmas, he has used his public sermons to condemn homosexuality, gay rights, and equal marriage. Homosexuality, apparently was "an intrinsic moral evil", "an objective disorder", and it was not "unjust" to discriminate against gay people. Transgender people were also an aberration in his eyes, and he has muddled postmodern preoccupation with gender, which is often problematic, with gender malalignment, which blights the lives of millions around the world. And we have to mourn his resignation?

Oh, look at all the good he has done, the apologists claim. Forgive me, but the lie-filled vitriol he has spread among the innocent against gay people, and the lives he has condemned through his message on condoms, and worst of all, if evil has tiers, his active involvement in the cover-up of sexual abuses in the Catholic Church, outweigh all those cries of peace and brotherhood. Merely shaking hands with Jewish and Hindu representatives, or decrying capitalism and nuclear bombs will not do. That is merely the same opinion spouted by beauty pageant hopefuls. If actions do speak louder than words, his actions show far greater prejudice lurking within than tolerance. Some say he has integrity: but no person of integrity would seek and obtain diplomatic immunity in cases lodged by victims of sexual abuse. A person of integrity would have testified in a court room, and grovelled at the feet of the victims to apologise.

This is not a man who inspires or purifies. This is a man who sows prejudice and intolerance at people's hearts.

So, while the politicians celebrate his reign, and his apologists and fans pay their tributes, let me say, with no qualms whatsoever: I'm glad he's gone. Good riddance.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1763346 2012-08-10T07:14:16-04:00 2012-10-10T05:12:15-04:00

Balaji Ravichandran http://www.huffingtonpost.com/balaji-ravichandran/
Cinema, that modern mirror of human life, has been somewhat hopeless when it comes to portraying love between members of the same sex. Our Eric Rohmer is yet to be visible. Worse still, most films, the predominant theme of which be, faute de mieux, gay love, easily fall into one of the following four categories: (a) coming out amidst great adversity and dying, (b) coming out amidst great adversity and surviving, (c) the 'bi now, gay later,' straight-to-gay wish-fulfilment fantasies, and (d) the AIDS film, which is seldom dealt with the sensitivity and poignancy it deserves.

The first two categories were surely worthwhile once, but further additions, especially when blatantly platitudinous, is merely boring. As for the third, seeming as it is to be every gay man's fantasy, I'm sure its appeal won't diminish.

In recent years, it seems to me, a transatlantic divide has emerged when it comes to what, for the sake of convenience, I shall call 'the gay cinema.' The US & Canada have produced some great films of this kind: notably Philadelphia, Boys Don't Cry, and Les Amours Imaginaires. And, no, before somebody feels hurt by the omission of the gay shepherd film, I'm sorry, it is, in my opinion, one of the most over-rated film I've ever seen. For the record, the famous love scene therein is not just unrealistic, it is also inadvisable.

But, Europe, though equally capable of producing irritating films, has been more adept at producing artful and thoughtful films. It was Britain, after all, which first brought forth Beautiful Thing and My Beautiful Laundrette, and, lest we forget, Brideshead Revisited. But, in recent years, while America is prone to produce horrendous gay indies, with unbearable dialogue, appalling acting, and sinful plots, European Cinema is showing signs that it has begun to move beyond kitsch and cliché. Weekend, an independent British film, was both a critical and commercial success. Tomboy, a French film, and Romeos, a German one, both looked, without resorting to sensationalism or violence, at life with gender malalignment. Le Temps Qui Reste is a modern, understated, and highly emotional look at being gay and facing mortality (not HIV/AIDS). In the amazing Io Sono L'Amore, both the coming out, and the the question of familiar acceptance, was addressed with such delicacy and grace, that you wonder whether it were films like these, rather than melodramatic films with tears and screams, that will subtly influence LGBT rights for years to come.

The most beautiful film on what it means to love someone of your own sex, released earlier this year in the UK at the BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, must be Noordzee, Texas (North Sea, Texas). In one of the very first scenes, a young boy, of about five, goes up to his room, dons a tiara, wears a pearl necklace, and adores himself naked in the mirror. His mum walks in, but neither screams nor cries. 'Don't worry, Pim, mum's not angry,' she says.

As he grows into a beautiful teenager, Pim falls in love with a neighbour. Although the love is mutual, Pim's lover, Gino, is sexually confused. But, no terms, no words such as 'gay' or 'straight,' no vacuous truisms about society and family deafen our ears. There is a tacit understanding on the part of Gino's lugubrious mother, but much, as in real life, is left unsaid. Indeed, Pim barely speaks five hundred words through the film. Pim, who patiently collects memorabilia from every important love in his life, from the tiara to a bit of shaving foam on a piece of paper, is perhaps the tenderest and purest expression of adolescent love in gay cinema.

It may be, of course, due to the fact that the film is Dutch, and the Dutch tend to be more relaxed about these things than many other countries. The cynical side of me also wondered, were not the two men in question so beautiful, and they are beautiful, whether the film would be as effective. But, that is besides the point. What the film evokes, in the days of Grindr and GayDar, online dating and an oft-celebrated divorce between sex and emotions, and evokes powerfully, is the issue at the heart of all endeavours associated with gay rights: the innate need, the natural desire, the human right, to fall in love.

II.

I came to Britain, roughly six years ago, seeking a new life. In India, from where I had moved, sexual acts between two men, or two women, were still illegal, and could carry a sentence of life imprisonment. Much as I moved here for intellectual and artistic reasons, I also moved here, I'm not ashamed to admit, to burn, with a gem-like flame, in love. If youth be not the age for love, what is?

The passionate love I have instinctively sought has yet to materialise. There are several personal reasons, such as studying at a demanding university, and maintaining a career in addition. But, these are facile orthodoxies. Upon reflection, and this is what Noordzee forced me to confront anew, thereby compelling me to pen this piece, I realised that the nature of love itself, and especially perhaps for gay men, is radically transforming, which I'm not sure is at all for the better.

A disclaimer at this point: this article is written from the perspective of a gay man, for gay and bisexual men. Not to discriminate against people of other sexualities. But, when it comes to writing about something so personal as love, I cannot generalise beyond what I myself know and feel.

Until, say, a decade or so ago, the traditional venue for gay men to meet each other was in dedicated bars and clubs. Of course, cruising for sex was always widespread among gay men, and I have nothing to say on that matter, nor judge it. But, people routinely fell in love, which was one of the motivations in the fight for equality. After all, gay men and women weren't fighting just for the right to have sex. Were that the case, they could just as easily have done that in the privacy of their bedrooms.

Then, online dating came in, and at first, it seemed like a boon. Gay people, especially in the more oppressive societies, could communicate with ease and without fear of being put in the pillory for it. But, as acceptance improved in Western countries, this purpose seemed to wither, and people used it more and more to find transient sexual partnerships. The surest example of this is (or was) the extremely popular website GayDar, or in America, CraigsList. Open these websites today, and flip through the odd profile, and one is immediately disabused of any illusions as to their proclaimed innocuousness.

Now, with the arrival of Grindr, which pinpoints through your smartphone where the nearest gay man is, GayDar and its cousins, including Facebook, seem tame as a lamb. At least on GayDar, your subjective self had a few thousand words, categorised and stereotyped as they are, to express your essence. In Grindr, you at most have twenty words. The rest are categories, check-lists: age, height, weight, sexual status, and most importantly, ethnicity. In my experience, and this has been confirmed by many others, almost all online dating platforms are routinely racist, and, this is ironic, blatantly homophobic, with little moderation from the developers. The most common sentences on the profiles are: 'No Asians,' 'Not into Indians, Blacks, Asians, or Africans,' 'No camps, femmes, trannies,' and, 'No one under 30.' The profiles commonly have headless torsos, seldom authentic, and the first picture that comes one's way, if one is deigned to receive a reply at all, is a picture of the private parts. The number of men in their late forties and fifties, attempting to take advantage of a teenager, is seriously disturbing.

In the space of online and app-based dating, the space for love has been correspondingly hard to find. Even in bars and clubs, ever frequented by straight women for 'fun,' men's faces are increasingly preoccupied with the screens in their hands, their faces yellow with the glow of Grindr. People don't look into the other's eye, hoping, yearning for that spark of contact, that longing for communication, the intimacy of touch. There are, as Rohmer would bemoan, no surprises, no mysteries, the essential ingredients for affections to blossom.

More worryingly, for the young men and women coming out today and exploring their sexuality, a world of hypersexuality, one filled with predatory individuals, is surely not the best way to help them see sexual partnerships as a means to connect with other individuals. Besides, how prepared are we to suggest, or admit, that the only means, let alone the best one, to proceed with sexuality is to divorce it from feelings altogether?

Lest I be misconstrued as an old fogey or a luddite, I can, I admit, see the 'networking' aspect of these technologies, especially, as I said in the less tolerant of places. It does provide an opportunity for us to reach out. Equally, I recognise the problem gay men and women face today. When we wish to begin talking to someone whom, for various reasons, we find attractive, society still dictates that the person we behold is straight. At best, it leads to a simple rejection, at worse, to physical assault. Also, far be it from me to draw the moral contours of human sexuality. The less we moralise it, in fact, and leave consensual adults to their own healthy devices, the better.

Yet, as someone who, with no interest in Grindr or DismayDar, whose idea of music is more of Scriabin than of Lady Gaga, as someone who is interested more in love than sex for its own sake, the lack of platforms to meet and find other gay friends, and hopefully, a boyfriend, is a cause for melancholy. I fear that love, such as one finds in Nordzee, can no longer establish itself, for it has no space to breathe and be nurtured. Which is why, I cannot help but ask, even plead, if love be the ultimate reason as to why we fight for gay rights, that we may burn, slowly, fully, and with sweet labour, in its pure flame, then, as a community, and as a society, that we find a way, were that possible, to provide human relationships their due sense of space and time.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1706965 2012-07-26T16:12:04-04:00 2012-09-25T05:12:06-04:00

Balaji Ravichandran http://www.huffingtonpost.com/balaji-ravichandran/
However history comes to judge the forthcoming games, that the weeks leading up to it have caused this government considerable headache, most will allow. First, there were concerns about unending queues at Heathrow, thanks partly to the chronic shortage of staff at immigration controls in Heathrow, and partly to the draconian method of dealing with visitors from outside the EU. Then, the incompetence with which the security arrangements with G4S were handled came to light, which resulted in army personnel being deployed in large numbers, often denying them their brief vacation. Worst of all, the strike threatened by employees at the UK Borders Agency was not called off until the last minute.

Yet, for all the problems and linguistic blunders, the games will probably proceed without a fuss. The opening ceremony will probably impress, Britain will win its golds and silvers, every thing will proceed smoothly at Heathrow if only for a few weeks, and, with the exception of disgruntled taxi drivers and those Londoners who rely on public transport, the rest of the city will just take it on the chin and people will get on with their lives. Many might even cheer.

But, there is something duplicitous in the way Britain has, it appears, opened its arms to welcome the world. Something, dare I say it, hypocritical.

It wouldn't be fair to accuse London, the London of Londoners, not of bankers and politicians, of hypocrisy. It is the most international city in the world: the most accepting of people regardless of race, nationality, language, sexuality, or what have you. Surveys repeatedly suggest that London is the least hostile to immigrants, be they from Europe or otherwise. It is unlikely that anyone who uses its public transport does not hear at least two different language in a single short ride, or can go a mile without seeing an ethnic minority. So, if any city be capable of welcoming the world, it were London.

Yet, one can't say the same about Britain: and certainly not about the current government. Whether it be due to the reprehensible and immoral sensationalism of the tabloids, or due to the propensity of politicians to let the headlines therein set their agenda, immigration remains one of the biggest concerns of the average British citizen, second only to the economy.

Xenophobia has become politically fashionable, as has the tendency to separate it from racism. Yet, few people seem to be threatened by immigration from North America or Northern and Western Europe. Indeed, one of the more recent immigration 'reforms' was to divide much of non-EU immigration into two tiers -- cue the joke about Britons and their class obsession -- the first tier for countries rich and whose citizens predominantly white, and the second tier for the 'rest,' the burden of documentation and finance being considerably heavy on the lower class. It does not occur to many that one prejudice is no more rational than another.

The last Labour government 'reformed' what was already a strict, but far less nightmarish, immigration system into an Australian-style points-based model. (For those with short memories, Australia had a white-only immigration policy till 1970s.) The steps that government took, so it seemed at the time, were ill-timed, ill-devised, and ultimately, painful to those burdened with additional bureaucratic measures. But even those changes pale into insignificance if we consider the almost mediaeval mindset with which this government has set about virtually shutting down the movement of people into this country from outside Europe.

In just under five years, Britain has, from being one of the most desirable places to move to, has become the most nightmarish countries in Europe to get into. The visa application form, previously merely four pages, has now become at least forty pages. The visa fees, around £100 then, has now become nearly ten times as much, if not more, for the average application. The decisions, which used to take around 24-48 hours, now routinely takes more than a month. Many get stuck in legal limbos for several months. Are these the signs of a welcoming Britain?

Tellingly, the worst hit are still the poor and the vulnerable. The super-rich can still enter, not pay taxes, and stay as long as they like. But, not students, who have been the worst hit, nor enterprising young graduates and entrepreneurs, and certainly not dependents of residents already assimilated. If art be the judge of a refined and open country, then, we have to wonder why internationally renowned artists, composers, musicians, and authors, with the exception of the super-rich pop stars, of course, find it impossible to get into the country. Pianists and opera singers have threatened to boycott Britain altogether. Some already have. Meanwhile, leading universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, have expressed concerns that students are abandoning Britain by the droves to seek knowledge, and their fortunes, elsewhere.

One project manager at Oxfam told me that five years ago, he used to oversee people from around the world on one or two-year fixed contracts. Now, the people he oversees are all white, and from the UK. One senior tutor at Cambridge quipped that having been the head of a famous college for more than a decade, and having been in academia all his life, never has the plight of international students been more regrettable, nor the conduct of the government been to him more infuriating.

Must not the Olympics also force us to think about this second-face of Britain which every immigrant, and their friends, family and colleagues will be familiar with? While we celebrate welcoming the world to this country, must we not also realise that we risk becoming culturally, economically, and demographically insular, sclerotic and backward-looking? Or, even as we cheer the presence of more than 200 nationalities, is this what we really want: to close ourselves, along with our borders?

Today, ahead of a press-conference with the gaffe-prone Mitt Romney, the Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron, was at pains to emphasise how good Britain was 'at welcoming people from around the world.' Mr Cameron is right in one way. The UK has long played host to refugees and dissidents from around the world, were it not for whom, the richness of its culture and economy would have been but a dream. How many of those who arrived here on Kindertransport went on to become academics, poets, and business leaders? Yet, taken at face value, and in the context of what his government has turned Britain into, his quip is more than a tad insincere.

Make no mistake: the Olympics is a grand old thing, which we are apt to enjoy and celebrate, cheer those miraculous athletes, and burn in the enthusiasm it engenders. It is perhaps easy then for us to forget that it is also a show: an expensive, corporate, and political show. But, Britain's apparent openness for the next few weeks is much less a show than an illusion: it is also a painful reminder to many of their own unwelcome presence.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1584547 2012-06-10T13:21:03-04:00 2012-08-10T05:12:07-04:00

Balaji Ravichandran http://www.huffingtonpost.com/balaji-ravichandran/ I penned an article for the Guardian, in which I described how I was subjected to a racist attack in a night-bus in London, and how it cost me my faith in London. My view of London and of Londoners have softened a bit since then: especially due to the outpouring of messages of support and sympathy, and expressions of horror and disgust that have since been communicated to me personally. Though, I still cannot reconcile the fact that most people stood there, just watching.

Naturally, accusations of generalisation, and of stereotyping also found their way into my pigeon-holes -- and I have wondered since then, at what point can we deem a place or country, by which I metonymically identify a population living therein, to be largely racist.

I would by no means call London racist, of course. It is one of the most tolerant of cities I have ever had the fortune of living in. But the acceptance, it seemed and seems to me, was derived not from a celebration of diversity, but from an apathy towards it. And I'm no longer sure that is good enough.

Over the past few days, these thoughts have filled my head again, as I have confronted a starker version of prejudices bewebbed into the fabric of another city: Dublin.

When I arrived here -- I am writing this piece from Dublin -- I was well aware of the seemingly contradictory stereotypes about Ireland and its capital. The first, best expressed in Joyce's short story, 'The Dead,' understands Dublin as one of the most friendly and hospitable places in Europe. The second, which finds itself commonly suggested in every tour-guide I could get my hands on, paints Ireland at large as an insular place, the population of which is very suspicious of, faute de mieux, 'foreigners.'

I have experienced both stereotypes to the fullest effect. But, what I was unprepared for was what I can only describe as a racist thread that seemed to underlie both the friendliness and the insularity. Let me put it this way: there is friendliness, but no expression of intimacy, when it comes to ethnic minorities, and there is an insularity, but that insularity has a sharp colour-divide.

This is essentially a subjective experience of course, and I wouldn't claim otherwise. But, study after study, report after report, suggests that my experience is by no means unique, nor am I the only one to actually speak out about it. The conference I attended here, an academic one, produced a paper which suggested that like many other metropolitan areas in Europe, racism tends to be brushed aside under the rubric of legislations, rather than discussed and confronted.

The day I arrived, one taxi driver told me that the locals hated black taxi drivers, because they tend to over-charge, cause traffic jams, and in general were impolite. Later that very day, another taxi driver, this time black, who moved there from Ghana, told me that the locals tended to call all black taxi-drivers as 'Nigerians,' always in a derogatory sense. His friend, an educated Nigerian who spoke with a near-perfect Irish accent, was once told that no matter how perfect his accent, he could never be Irish.

There have been accusations that many Irish taxi-drivers use a covert green-signal to signal that they are not, in fact, black.

But, for me, the biggest surprise was on the so-called gay scene. I went on a tour of the four main gay bars in the city yesterday and the day before, the George, the Dragon, the PantiBar and the Front Lounge. There was a feeling of palpable otherness fostered upon me in three of the four bars, the last being the milder exception. (I was with friends the whole time.) But, just as I was about to attribute this to my own discomfort with the atmosphere of gay bars at large, I heard one guy, pointing to me, and remarking to another, that Indians tend to come with the 'horrible' smell of curry, which is why he could never sleep with them.

In a second bar, someone first asked me where I was from, and I said, without thinking about it, London. Then, she put forth that all-too-common question: No, no, where are you originally from? India, I said, reluctantly. You've come here to work in a restaurant, have you, she asked me. I could not reply.

Finally, around midnight, I separated from my friends, and went to another place. No one approached me, or chatted to me, and all my smiles and attempts at conversations went unreturned. Just as I was about to leave, a middle-aged man, I should think about fifty-five, approached me, and whispered in my ear: Would you like to service a white master, like you're used to, he asked me. Again, I did not reply.

I was reminded of a line from W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, where he wrote that it was precisely Roger Casement's homosexuality that made him sensitive to the sufferings of people in Congo, and to the republican cause in Ireland. How could I possibly say that the LGBT community is sensitive to other minorities, given what I experienced yesterday, and what I always experience among them, even in ostensibly tolerant cities like London?

You see, I am used to comments such as these: they are all too common on so-called 'dating websites,' and even gay bars in London, which is one reason why I have chosen to avoid them. It really hurts one's soul, and one's sense of self-esteem, an awful lot. But, to have to encounter such instances within a single day was, for me, far from bearable. When I took a taxi back to the hotel -- this time, a polite, Indian, driver, as it happened -- I was convinced, I admit, that Dublin was a racist city.

I was, and am, deeply uncomfortable with the conclusion I drew. Despite the recent surveys by the Immigrant Council of Ireland, and by University College Dublin, which indicate an alarming levels of racism against non-EU immigrants, I wondered to what level I could trust my own instinct, and generalise it to the level of a city. But then, how could I deny the truth of my instinctive reaction, inasmuch as those, who believed I might smell of curry or that all black people were Nigerians and swindlers, were also prone to generalise? At what point, I ask myself, and I ask others, can we describe a place or a country as racist?

Let me suggest a list of criteria, though I do not suggest that Dublin, or Ireland at large, satisfies all of these, whatever the studies may say: (1) The inability to be accepted as genuinely part of the country, even after having lived there for several years, (2) The crossing of frontiers such as language and culture are not enough to mediate acceptance, (3) The immigration policy, while explicitly favouring people from North America and Western Europe, discourages people from the rest of the world, Asia and Africa in particular, (4) There is explicit demonstration of immigrants finding it difficult to get jobs, or move through society, even after obtaining local citizenship, (5) A genuine and painful difficulty, common among immigrants, in forming and maintaining intimate relationships with so-called indigenous people, despite their desire to do so, (6) There is evidence that crimes and discrimination against certain ethnic groups or nationalities might be on the rise, and unchecked by existing legislation, and (7) No matter how hard one tries, one knows, intuitively, one can never belong in their adopted country.

If all these seven criteria were fulfilled, then would I be justified in calling a place racist?

Isn't it important to be able to at least say so, if one is to gather the voices and the momentum to confront all forms of racism that, even if not universal, few would deny really does exist?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1421863 2012-04-12T16:44:02-04:00 2012-06-12T05:12:01-04:00

Balaji Ravichandran http://www.huffingtonpost.com/balaji-ravichandran/ well-funded though ill-defined, has been so insidious and penetrating in its homophobia that, by and by, seeing those buses carrying the red-grounded banners with those familiar black-and-white inscriptions was more empowering than discomfiting.

But, given what transpired today through the offices of Transport for London (TfL) and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), I am all the gladder that Stonewall chose to run its campaign as it did. For those not in the know, two Christian organisations, fuelled by the belief that people can be 'cured' of their homosexuality or bisexuality through prayers and 'therapy,' have attempted to run a countercampaign to that of Stonewall's, and using the same public medium, against those same red backgrounds, with the same black-and-white lettering. The message? 'Not Gay! Ex-Gay, Post-Gay and Proud. Get over it!'

The TfL, as it happens, subcontracts advertising on buses to an advertising agency, CSBO, which says it ran the advertisement by the ASA. The rulebook of the latter clearly states that ads that cause offence on the grounds of sexual orientation, or are explicitly homophobic, are unequivocally unacceptable. Yet, lo and behold, the ASA thought the homophobic banner -- yes, it is homophobic, as it suggests that being gay is an illness and an abnormality -- did not breach any rules of advertisement within the UK. It is the clearest evidence yet that homophobia remains the most acceptable and accepted form of discrimination even in ostensibly liberal countries like Britain. Substitute the word 'gay' in that countercampaign with an ethnic or religious minority, or, while we are at it, majority, and see if ASA approves of that.

It befell Boris Johnson, the Conservative Mayor and incumbent in the forthcoming mayoral elections, to pull the ad swiftly, following an explosion of understandable outrage across social media networks. A statement of condemnation quickly followed from the Labour candidate, Ken Livingstone and Brian Paddick of the Liberal Democrats.

All said, the cynical side of me wonders that were it not for the forthcoming elections, and the hustings at Stonewall this Saturday, Mr Johnson and Mr Livingstone would have reacted with quite the quickness and outrage they had done so today. After all, was it not Mr Johnson who once put gay marriage and bestial marriage on the same footing? And did not Mr Livingstone once invite and defend a homophobic cleric?

Forgive me for saying this, but the platitudinous invocation of 'freedom of speech' must be one of the most pointless arguments to be made here. I think few would consider denial of the historical truth of the Holocaust, or the barring of miscegenation as permissible on account of free speech or expression. So, even if gay politicians think it defensible in those terms, one can only conclude that we are not as liberated a society as we would wish. No, deep-rooted homophobia still lurks at large like an ill-concealed wound, and the current consultations on equality in marriage has merely made the suppuration visible. There is then only one thing to do: ubi pus, ibi evacua.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1367038 2012-03-20T11:09:31-04:00 2012-05-20T05:12:01-04:00

Balaji Ravichandran http://www.huffingtonpost.com/balaji-ravichandran/ the Atlantic, Nicholas Carr asked the provocative question: Is Google making us stupid? Although it resulted in a long debate amidst academic and media circles across both sides of the pond, there are no visible signs so far that people took his message to heart.

I would recommend that you read Carr's article before proceeding with this post, as I won't be rehearsing the arguments therein made, which I will be presuming here as known or familiar, nor those he advanced in his intriguing book, The Shallows. The question I'm considering here is whether we have become, in our over-reliance upon the online world, also ineluctably addicted to it?

All addictions, be they to substances like alcohol or cocaine, or to activities such as video games or gambling, have certain common, pathognomonic features. Firstly, excessiveness. Most of my friends at the university (and beyond) wake up with a screen, usually with their online 'friends' on a so-called social network, and go to bed with it. They are connected to the web most of their waking hours, and not usually of necessity, but of compulsion; a compulsion that they cannot stop, even when they deeply desire to do so.

Secondly, tolerance. You see this most conspicuously around the moments when Google or Apple release new versions of their hardware or software, and people queueing up to buy (or 'upgrade') their existing devices, barely a few months old and fully functional.

Third, withdrawal symptoms. How many of us get frustrated when the internet connection goes off, even if briefly? And how often do server problems on Facebook, Twitter or Blackberry make it as front-page news on the BBC? The most telling symptom is when my classmates tell me that they would be miserable without the internet, and that I must really be sad and without friends, not being on Facebook, Twitter, and since they introduced their new 'privacy policy,' Google.

Finally, negative impact on quality of life. Refresh your e-mail account or your Facebook page much? Once every ten minutes, or five? Do you compulsively check your Android or iPhone to see if you've got a new message? Missed deadlines, or submitted a rotten work, having spent hours in front of YouTube or Wikipedia, moving from link to link, website to website? Can you still imagine becoming immersed for days on end, without distractions, with Middlemarch or Anna Karenina? Ever had a relationship fall apart over Twitter, or because you're more busy with your online relationships than real ones? It is telling that one of the most downloaded softwares in recent years, especially by academic and creative types, and ironically called Freedom, aims to increase productivity by cutting people off from the web for up to eight hours at a stretch.

Few of us actually stop and think that all this seems symptomatic of a real problem, growing in epidemic proportions. Unnamed and unacknowledged, we remain powerless to address it.

There is no agreed definition of internet addiction, and whether it is a disorder at all is a subject of intense debate among researchers. There is considerable resistance to its inclusion in the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual (DSM-V), and some argue that we are on the way to medicalising a mere lack of self-control. Further complications arise from the fact that any apparent web addiction is masked by other illnesses, most commonly depression and anxiety. In fact, excessive online use is so inextricably linked to depression that researchers are unable to separate the cause from its effect, though the likelihood of the direction is from the former to the latter.

There is however much anecdotal evidence to suggest that the phenomenon itself is very real. One study by professors at UCL, which Carr cites, compared the online research habits of people who visited the websites of the British Library and an educational consortium that indexed academic journals. The authors found that participants did not 'read' their articles in any traditional sense of the word. Rather, they hop on from one source to another, rarely reading one article in full, and seldom returning to the original document from which they digressed. "It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense," the researchers conclude.

Meanwhile, evidence has been mounting over the past few years that internet addiction, defined using the criteria mentioned above, that firmly links structural changes in the brain to changes in behavioural patterns. Most of these studies come from China and South Korea, where worries about addiction to video games is intimately related to excessive presence online. But, while one study found microstructural changes to the grey matter, another found a substantial reduction in white matter in those areas of the brain concerned with regulating social and emotional behaviour.

Translated, it means that not only are individual neurones changing their shapes and chemistry, they also form substantially fewer and stronger connections between each other. So, our memories get weaker, our attention spans smaller, and our thought, I'm afraid, more scattered. Indeed, those precise centres of the brain implicated in reward mechanisms and punishment, planning and organisation, appear to be affected in these studies, which would explain both the addictive nature of internet, and its behavioural correlates.

Last year, a much-publicised study in Science found that our reliance on search engines like Google changes the way our brain is wired for memory. Rather than retaining the information we were seeking, we merely retain the details of where the information can be accessed and how. So, instead of remembering a wonderful quotation from Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, we are more likely to remember what search terms to use or which sites are likely to contain it. This is not necessarily bad, the authors argued, but one wonders if any good can come of it. Given the choice, I'd rather remember the quotation than where to find it.

Nor are the effects merely at the level of the brain. Worryingly, the sedentary nature of internet use (and online gaming) has resulted in a significant increase, at least in East Asia, in the number of deaths related to blood clots and other cardiopulmonary problems. South Korean scientists also report that internet addiction affects the capacity of adolescents to learn and perform well, often requiring them to undergo counselling and other forms of treatment. Given that at least a third of the online space is devoted to hardcore pornography, internet addiction also seems to sit uncomfortably with the development of sexual addiction, with the result that, young adults (mostly men) find it harder to forge intimate bonds with others, as the line between fantasy and reality, consent and force, become blurred.

None of this is to sound alarmist. Far be it from me to claim that internet by itself is dangerous, or needs censorship. It has reaped several wonderful consequences, and undoubtedly made research and communication more organised, fast and efficient. Even the most devout of luddites will admit that much. But, the problem seems to stem from the fact that technological advancements proceed at a pace several orders faster than the time we have to contemplate its biological, psychological, and ethical implications. Internet addiction, however you wish to define or describe it, is the most telling symptom yet for us to pause and examine the nature of relationship we have to our digital creations.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1344126 2012-03-14T08:13:55-04:00 2012-05-14T05:12:01-04:00

Balaji Ravichandran http://www.huffingtonpost.com/balaji-ravichandran/ Yes, Prime Minister and its many witticisms. Two in particular are worth recalling here. One, arguably the most famous, is Jim Hacker's forensic analysis of British newspapers and the prejudices of their readers to which they pander. Two, Sir Humphry demonstrating to Bernard the seamlessness with which polls can be manipulated, even by apparently independent organisations, to get the results their clients would want. Wit, as Dorothea Parker said, has truth in it, and it is perhaps a sign of the times that we need these days political satires to understand public policy.

Gay marriage, so-called in part because marriage in this country is as yet not devoid of gender distinctions, and in part due to the refusal to see it on par with heterosexual relationships, has attracted considerable attention on both sides of the Atlantic over the past few weeks, albeit for different reasons. Unlike the United States, the question here in the U.K. is not so much as whether or not same-sex couples deserve equality under the law's supposedly blind eyes as whether that equality be whole and complete, in name and in truth. That is precisely the question being asked in the twelve-week consultation launched by the government today. Understandably, minds addicted to the most dogmatic of religions are upset, and have given expression to some remarkably intolerant and abusive comments from quarters where one would expect moderation and restraint. To compare same-sex marriage to slavery is as illogical as it is offensively hate-filled. Had the outspoken Cardinal used a similar vociferation in issues concerning other religions, say, or ethnic minorities, doubtless he would have been forced to step down from his hallowed position, if not sent straight to prison. Rather, his outburst has merely confirmed to us that homophobia is the most acceptable of all prejudices which lurk beneath the recesses of men's souls.

We now know that the Catholic Church has stepped up its campaign against equality in marriage, for which it received considerable impetus from a poll, published by ComRes last week claiming to demonstrate that up to 70% of the British population was against same-sex marriage. No sooner that this poll was published than doubts were raised against its findings, though this did not prevent right-wing newspapers from reporting it as an unequivocal fact. However, a simple review of its structure, and an analysis of its methodology revealed deep flaws which render the poll itself, let alone its findings, as suspect at best. Then, two more polls were published over the weekend, one by the Sunday Times, and the other by the Sunday Telegraph, both of which seem to show that a tentative majority of Britons indeed support a gender-neutral understanding of marriage. This, however, did not stop the Sunday Telegraph from desperately spinning the findings of its own poll, to claim not only that the public was uncomfortable with the proposed move to legalise same-sex weddings, a move which now has the backing of all major political parties, but also to pen a muddle-headed argument in its leader against it.

Assuming, for the moment, that the polls are a good way to gauge the mood of the nation, let us conduct a simple systematic review of the public opinion from 2004, the year in which Civil Partnerships were introduced for same-sex couples. Now, there are certain rules to conducting a systematic review, which means that I can only use those studies, the methodologies and findings of which are fully accessible in the public domain, and as such raise no serious concerns as to standards and ethics. This means, unfortunately, that I have to exclude the ComRes poll, -- though I think including it will not significantly alter the results -- and the latest ICM-Sunday Telegraph poll, as ICM has not, at the time of writing, made available its full findings and methodology on its website. Yet, I have at least seven studies to work with: Gallup (2004), Eurobarometer (2006), ICM-Observer (2008), Populus-Times (2009), Angus-Reid (2010, 2011), and YouGov-Sunday Times (2012), all of which are available in the public domain. The results, without going into detailed statistics, are strikingly simple: insofar as we wish to see a distinction between civil partnerships and marriages, the public clearly favours gender-neutral marriage as opposed to the false dichotomy that exists now, by a margin of at least 10-20% (error margin: 2%). Needless to say, any opposition even to civil partnerships is at its lowest level, less than a sixth of the population. Finally, although the difference among the sexes is somewhat trivial, most of the opposition stems from the older generations, while support for marriage equality is highest among those between 18 and 35 years of age. In other words, we can easily see in which direction the future is heading.

In a way, despite the optimism that this review finds, I think it does not, on its own, constitute an effective argument for equality in marriage, any more than the widespread belief that David Cameron's backing of the move is rooted in mere political mileage argues against it. (The latter was a finding of the YouGov-Sunday Times Poll, which also found, rather interestingly, that the Anglican Church was thought to be well within its rights to keep a restricted definition of marriage.) The Catholic Relief Act of 1829 was doubtless a political move too, rooted more in economics than in tolerance, and doubtless opposed by the contemporary public at large, though few would now argue that it was morally incorrect. It is therefore richly ironic that the Telegraph and the Catholic Church should cite public opinion as a reason to forbid same-sex marriages. Equally, given that we are a parliamentary democracy, why should the mandate offered by the last general elections, given that the move has cross-party support, be any less representative than a random (or not-so-random) sampling?

Ultimately, it behoves us to note that the relationship between public opinion and civil law is not a one-way street, and rightly so, lest the hoary head of majoritarianism substitute any meaningful version of democracy. Rather, each feeds into the other. The current acceptance of same-sex relationships, say, and other practices such as abortion, once so fiercely forbidden, has much to do with legislative changes without which they might not have occurred. So, while the polls might provide some glimpses into where the collective mood of the nation might head, the guiding principle of legislation must be rooted in the provision of fundamental human rights, derived from a secular moral philosophy, and protection against their violation, especially for minorities long-persecuted. One hopes that, whatever his motivation, the Prime Minister will not pay heed to the contrivances of the prejudiced, however artfully they be disguised. ]]>