20 January – 20 February 2004
Scottish Media Monitor
As the Church disintegrates around us, the voices of its militants become ever more shrill. There was an Almighty fight going on in the playground over campuses shared by Catholic and non-denominational schools. And who had we at the centre of the fight? Well, well, well! If it wasn’t our old friend, Religion! Reporter Graham Grant in The Scottish Daily Mail casually described the spat over the “bringing together of children of different faiths”. Faith is only ever imposed on children. They’re not born with one and there’s precious little evidence of it bringing anyone together! (Not counting mass graves). Catholic Church militants threatened to pull out of a £150m public-private partnership scheme to create seven shared campuses. Their demands included separate entrances, staff rooms, libraries, and – I kid you not – separate Catholic and non-denominational lavatories! Even convent-educated Old Mother (Joan) Burnie gasped in The Daily Record: “Is there really a difference between a Catholic and a Proddy willy?” Michael McGrath, director of the Scottish Catholic Education Service was reported in The Herald saying: “The worry with one big shared campus, with the same entrance for both schools, is that people would not recognise that the schools were still separate. The most successful organisations are those that have a clear identity, a strong brand, and a positive ethos and we want to maintain these things in our schools in Lanarkshire”. With a Catholic ‘cottage’? Oh, puh-leeease! His thoughts on promoting the brand were echoed by Frank Cassidy, chancellor of the Catholic diocese of Motherwell, who was reported defending proselytising to children in The Scottish Daily Mail: “It’s important for us to have Catholic insignia and symbolism in the foyer of the school, which is why we want separate entrances”. The ubiquitous columnist, Mrs Katie Grant screeched her family-carrier to a halt outside the school gates, and hollered: “They didn’t waste much time, did they, those clever secularians, as we might call them. Dalkeith’s joint school campuses are launched with not a sign of the cross in sight and pictures of the Pope are removed because he is a ‘religious artefact’ rather than a world leader”. In fact, it had already been agreed that this particular wall was to be covered with student’s artwork. She snorted from her column in The Scotsman: “…A head or two should roll… It would have been unthinkable not to pay due deference to the great faith of Islam, not just because political correctness demands it but because Islamic leaders up here quite rightly defend themselves strongly… It seems that in supposedly equal Scotland, there really are minorities and minorities…”
Although perceived as heroes of desegregation, locked in battle with militant religionists, Lanarkshire council had, in the past, played an active role in condemning the repeal of the homophobic Clause 28 in Scotland and admitted that their current stand was just a business decision to counter the falling school rolls. Instead of focusing on properly equipping their schools, the council sweet-talked Catholic officials with removable dividing walls in staff rooms and shared entrances for staff. On BBC’s Newsnight Scotland, presenter Gordon Brewer gave voice to public incredulity with some pertinent questions for North Lanarkshire Council’s director of education, Michael O’Neill and Catholic education spokesman, Michael McGrath who said he “feared integration”. Given the Catholic Church’s record of gay human rights abuses, this was scary stuff. Illustrating the threat Catholicism posed to young gay people, Zenit, the Catholic news agency reported an American priest, Father John Harvey, suggesting parents were responsible for the formation of gay children. He said that if parents suspect that their children were ‘experimenting’ with homosexuality, ‘the child must be commanded to seek therapy from reliable Catholic doctors’. This neatly coincided with a scientific report in The British Medical Journal warning of the dangers and ineffectiveness of psychoanalysis, behavioural aversion therapy with electric shocks, electroconvulsive therapy, oestrogen treatment to reduce libido, desensitisation of an assumed phobia of the opposite sex, hypnosis, psychodrama and abreaction to change aspects of human behaviour. Children need to be rescued from religion. We all do.
Mingling with the issue of providing Catholics with separate libraries was the smell of burning books. The Scottish Daily Mail reported: “Mr Cassidy added that fears over inappropriate material such as sex education literature were justification enough for separate libraries”. By chance, last week, a letter was forwarded to me from a reader offended by extreme literature left lying around in the staff room of a Roman Catholic primary school where she worked. Turning to the letters’ page of The Scottish Catholic Observer she found: (“SIR – I was interested to read the letter from the homosexual… Because the Observer is accessible to younger people there can be no discussion of homosexual acts as a Christian option”, wrote a cowardly “Name and address supplied”. Another wrote: “…A sexual relationship outside marriage is fornication and sexual relationships between two men is buggery. Having, years ago, lived with lesbian women in the army (WRAC) I know quite a lot about them”, wrote Mary Murton of Argyll who went on to diagnose: “Real physical abnormalities of a sexual nature are a tragedy. To be disorientated sexually is a terrible cross to bear”. Is it, Mary, for whom? Militants in the Church have already sought exemptions from human rights legislation allowing them to dismiss employees simply for being gay, so what chance is there of ridding Scotland of this fascist material? The Scottish Executive doesn’t give a damn. Why, only recently, they passed the buck over the Gender Recognition Bill, introduced a vote for a Sewell motion and left Westminster to deal with it! The Executive rode roughshod over the concerns raised by trans people in giving evidence over this bill by avoiding any debate. Trans people were concerned that married transgendered would have to divorce in order to gain full gender recognition. They also raised concerns that the costs in making an application to the Gender Recognition Panel might be as high as £1,000 and couldn’t be made before the age of 18. (The age of legal capacity in Scotland is 16 with some people already living their true gender before this age). There was concern that courts and tribunals, often the worst offenders for ‘outing’ queers, would be exempt from privacy rules; that trans people who had already transitioned would have only six months to apply for Gender Recognition after the bill became law and that the rape of a transsexual was not recognised in law. These were all issues that could’ve been debated in Scotland. There were no plans to take evidence at Westminster on the Scottish parts of the bill and no amendments were made by the time it was debated in the House of Lords. Certainly, former Sun columnist and Tory MP, Lord Tebbitt had his say! The Scotsman’s columnist, Robert McNeil quipped of a letter he read, “from Lord Nobody of Somewhere describing the Scottish Parliament as an expensive ‘talking shop’. Then he gave his address: the House of Lords. I laughed so much I had to move up to a 38-trouser”. Hopefully, more voters will turn their back on established political parties like Labour and its coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, with all their mealy-mouthed promises of a liberal democracy. (One of their members was connected to an extreme religious group supporting the ‘curing’ of homosexuals). They have all consistently failed us. Tick the boxes of independent parties such as the Greens, the Liberals and the Scottish Socialist Party. Using peaceful political means, it is time to declare war on religionists and draw a clear line on how far we should be allowing religion to impinge on public life.
The nippy-sweetie wife of the editor of The Herald, Colette Douglas Home, window-dressed the issue of religious apartheid in her column in The Scottish Daily Mail as “…not a melting pot, but a celebration of differences”. (Wha’)? “Those who imagine the Catholic bit of the curriculum involves a 35-minute religious lesson a day need to think again… Catholicism is full immersion, not a dipping of the fingers in a font. It would be a near impossibility to contain children in its cocoon when they were meeting another peer group every time they went to the loo.” My recollections of sex with a Catholic priest, mingling with the smell of Dettol, polished municipal tiles and a crest of the burgh, damaged neither of us, even if he was forced to wear a condom and confront his guilt afterwards. Harking back to her convent days, Colette kindly afforded us a glimpse of life under the Catholic regime, how “care was taken about the range of books in the library. Modesty was applied to naked images in art books with felt tip pen and, memorably, the cross section of a pregnant woman was excised from my O’ level biology textbook…” Mario Conti, the Archbishop of Glasgow dropped her hubbie - the editor of The Herald - a line from his headquarters at 196, Clyde Street, Glasgow, protesting at the BBC’s decision to show a documentary, Sex and the Holy City during the 25th anniversary of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II and the beautification of Mother Teresa! His letter accused the BBC of encouraging “a tabloid culture”. His letter was generously reported on the front page of The Herald where Conti complained “such scheduling showed gross insensitivity to the spiritual and historic significance of these moments”. About as sensitive as the revelation in the documentary that the Catholic Church were promoting the appalling lie that condoms offer no protection against HIV! Conti labelled accusations that the Catholic Church had a major part to play in the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa with their refusal to approve the use of condoms in The Scottish Daily Mail as a “questionable, indeed inaccurate, thesis…” He told The Herald: “We do not object to probing questions”. Victims of child abuse by priests beg to differ. But, he added, “we do object to rudeness and prejudice…” (Well so do we, but since when has that ever stopped you)? A spokesperson for the BBC soon put him in his place: “If Archbishop Conti wishes to raise any concerns about our output with us, we will be happy to respond to him directly rather than through the press”. Anthony Cooper - who I presumed lived on the Moon - but was, in fact, from Greenock, felt drawn to put pen to paper and write to The Sunday Times Scotland: “Unfortunately, the Catholic voice is often denied the right of reply in a media biased toward humanist values”. If only!
Mrs Katie Grant used The Scotsman to add her weight to the religious propaganda used in defence of segregation. She called it “the thin end of an increasingly strident, determined and clever secular wedge”, adding: “Any aggravation in a shared playground will be put down to religious bigotry, and Scotland’s chatterati will demand that public Catholicism be toned down so as not to ‘offend’ anybody”. I want her on the terraces of a Celtic versus Rangers match now! And as for the ‘chatterati’, just whose voices are we are seeing in the papers every day? Not ours, that’s for sure! She confessed: “All over the western world, Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, is thought of as a bad thing, and the Church, with its varying shameful scandals… and its lack of charismatic people to speak on its behalf, does not help itself”.
But this was only half time. Gays versus Caths. Gerald Warner chalked up the scores in Scotland on Sunday: “The seven new shared schools are to be built in the ecclesiastical province of Glasgow, which comprises the three dioceses of Glasgow, Motherwell and Paisley. In 1978 that province registered 9,470 baptisms. Today the figure is 4,860. That represents a halving of Catholic births in just a quarter of a century. Over the same period, marriages have declined from 4,148 to 1,383. The Catholic schools do not seem to be having much success in teaching the faith. Sunday Mass attendance is now down to 30%”. So we’re winning! With a pathological hatred of homosexuality stemming from an undetermined source and as unofficial spokesman for the militant wing of the Catholic Church, ‘Geraldine’ Warner lashed her acid tongue across the arse of sceptics of “creeping integration… Religion has become a dirty word in our aggressively secularised society,” he gnashed, distancing himself from his own aggressive demands for the public to take to the streets over such issues as the repeal of Clause 28 and the abolition of fox-hunting in Scotland. Gerald Warner loves to throw into his copy obscure references that leave the casual reader feeling they’d somehow missed out on an education. Over religious apartheid in Lanarkshire he moaned: “This is just the kind of Clochemerle-style dispute that invites derision from commentators already heavily predisposed to mockery of all things Catholic”. Clochemerle? The tale of French provincial manners about a socialist mayor, in a small French town, who provoked outrage after erecting a pissoir next to a church! At least anyone could use it! But this was no thirties French novel or seventies TV comedy drama, this was another excuse for Gerald Warner to vent moral outrage over his living nightmare: Homosexuality. It was a call for the toughening of moral fibre against something he perceived as an evil. A strengthening of resolve against a ‘weakness’. A call to arms. “Today there is a more urgent need than ever to inculcate Catholic doctrine into children…”, he blasted. “If secular society debases itself into a reincarnation of Gomorrah, then it is responsible for the gulf that its degeneracy creates between that ‘non-judgmental’ cauldron of moral anarchy and the beliefs of Catholics. Consistently, for 2,000 years, that faith has condemned as sins cohabitation, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality and many other modish lifestyles promoted by modern, secular society”. He added: “Any attempts by schools to fill their rolls with non-Catholic pupils should be rigorously monitored and in no instance should the proportion of non-Catholics exceed 5%”.
Reporter Cameron Simpson milked this story for all it was worth, with: “Catholic Church boycotts BBC’s Newsnight over its ‘prejudice’,” appearing the next day in The Herald. This time, Conti squealed, once more, over “gross insensitivity”. He told The Mail: “It is socially irresponsible to commission programmes which mock religious minorities”. (And people in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones, but there you go)! The Catholic media office, headed by Catholic militant Peter Kearney, wrote to Blair Jenkins, BBC Scotland’s head of news and current affairs warning him that they were “withdrawing its co-operation” until it got “fairness” from the BBC. Two MPs spoke for the Church, Tory MP David Amess whinged that a significant number of Catholics had been dropped without explanation from Radio 4’s early morning Thought for the Day slot. (What do we want religionist propaganda interrupting the news every day for, anyway?) Labour MP Sion Simon demanded the BBC launch an independent, fully audited inquiry into the BBC’s journalistic, editorial and ethical procedures and standards. As it was, the corporation had promised that they would meet representatives from the Church. The Herald took this as an opportunity to include the story how a chief constable stormed off after some tough questioning by Jeremy Paxman following errors that had let murderer Ian Huntley become a school caretaker. There was no shortage of willing customers for the religionist’s press releases. “MPs from both sides of the House waded into the controversy…”, rejoined The Scottish Daily Mail who bragged: “Archbishop Conti writes exclusively for the Mail”. Reader, James Bauld wrote to The Herald: “My abiding memory of the Newsnight interview was not of any ‘sneering’ or ‘aggression’. It was watching the best of my former teachers (Michael O’Neill) sitting practically cringeing with embarrassment at the position being adopted on behalf of the Catholic Church”.
For Mario Conti this was all a bit of a giggle. In another letter to The Herald he confessed to reading the tidal wave of outrage “leaking” from The Herald’s letters’ pages with “some amusement”. In the end, he was satisfied his argument had “got home”. Brushing aside the Catholic’s moral arguments against using condoms in the face of an AIDS epidemic, he diverted attention to how much money they were throwing at people living with the disease: “£414,523 went to 11 HIV/Aids programmes”, he bragged, and, without naming the source, pointed to, “recently published statistics” which “identified the Catholic Church as globally the provider of 25% of all care to Aids sufferers. I hardly think the Terence Higgins Trust… is in this league”, he swiped.
The Catholic militants had dug themselves a very deep hole. Never mind. They had plenty of useful friends they could count on, Enter one, Eddie Barnes. His biased reports in support of Catholic dogma and so-called ‘family values’ where once a familiar read in The Scottish Daily Mail. Vis-a-vis: “Lurid school sex education packs suggest pupils discuss gay and oral sex. Parents are appalled by the material…” and “the Scottish Executive was attacked last night for caving in to European legislation and ushering through more liberal laws governing homosexual practices”. Now promoted to Scottish political editor of Scotland on Sunday he fondly wrote how: “Cardinal Keith O’Brien, will accept the scrapping of Catholic schools if support for them dwindles in Scotland”. In Barnes’s interview with the Scottish Catholic leader, O’Brien swept away rumours that he was liberal-minded: “I have never spoken against family life, or said that married people should commit adultery or that homosexuals should live together and adopt children… I’m regarded by Catholics as a right old square. I’m not a way-out liberal: I’ve never advocated any of these things. From the first day when I became a priest, when folk came to confession they knew where they stood – it is go and sin no more… As regards to marriage, to lifestyles, you listen and you comfort, but eventually you say: ‘I can’t do anything more to help you; you know the teaching of Christ, about adultery or homosexuality, and that’s that’.” Or until they’re so fucked up about their sexuality they have to get 16 and 17-year-old lads drunk before they can risk having sex with them. That is, before they are attacked by someone whose sexuality is even more pathologically twisted! Alan Wilson, the respectable history teacher’s legs were found in a wheelie bin and arms, head and torso were found wrapped in a carpet in a back garden in Merchiston Avenue in Edinburgh. Alan Wilson thanked Mario Conti for his help preparing his book ‘St Margaret Queen of Scotland’.
For her Church’s support for separate urinals for Catholics, Mrs Katie Grant saved her ‘political correctness gone mad’ sloganeering for the better practices adopted by Lothian and Borders police. Her column became swept away in a sea of eighties Tory sloganeering: “…Political correctness hits Lothian and Borders officers…” and “the pernicious march of the language police”. This was, of course, the strange land of The Scottish Daily Mail. “Whisper it, but political correctness has reached newer, madder heights…” she spat, regurgitating the same nonsense that had made her so popular with Scotland’s media. But Mrs Grant did anything but whisper this old chestnut. The accompanying picture was one of Orwell’s Thought Police brandishing a rifle! Lothian and Borders police were trying to turn what was once a police force, into a police service. It was a useful explanation of terminology used in society today, both offensive and friendly, helping the police, whose job it is to deal with members of the public, of which lesbian, gay, bisexuals and trans people are part, do a better job. The police made it perfectly clear that “this guide is intended to provide examples of the kind of language and terminology, which will minimise such offence and, thereby, provide a professional service, which is sensitive to peoples’ needs. This applies as much to our dealings with each other, as members of Lothian and Borders Police, as it does to the public we serve”. And what could be fairer than that? It was “a guide”. You wouldn’t think so after reading Mrs Grant’s objections. Communication, as any police officer will tell you, is vital. The police knew they had to be on their guard, explaining: “In reality, away from the hype of the tabloid press, what many people dismiss as ‘political correctness’ is only treating people with respect and dignity…” Again, what could possibly be wrong with that? Mrs Grant just couldn’t get it. “If only it were all a joke. But political correctness is now severely hampering people doing important jobs, for it no longer concerns only language but has spread, in an insidious and dangerous way, to encompass behaviour”. She tried her hand at humour. “It must, for example, be almost impossible to do your duty as a police officer if you can’t ask people if they are married (for fear of upsetting gays)…, can’t describe gays as ‘homosexuals’ (they are all gay in different ways, you see); ‘dyke’ (stone walls might misunderstand, and they have feelings too) or ‘manhole cover’ (because only a chauvinist would deny a woman the chance to go into the sewers)”. Mrs Grant was, of course, talking shite! (Who said gays are politically correct)? The lies gushed forth. “Political correctness, you see, only applies to some of us, namely the heterosexual, white middle-classes. Everybody else can say what they like because, according to the PC tyrants, they must be part of a disadvantaged group which is exempt”. But was it going to stop her? Oh, no! “Did you know £152,000 has been spent by the Department for International Development on sending ‘gender advisers’ to Iraq, where fresh water and dependable electricity are in short supply? The Gay Police Association might not approve, but I’ll risk it and say sanity is vanishing faster than snow off a dyke”. Are you proud of this example of Scottish journalism? We are a supposed to be a nation for Christ/fucks sake! When are we going to wake up and start taking ourselves more seriously? Thank you, Alan Taylor, columnist in a paper unlikely to give her more exposure: The Sunday Herald. Given that it was possible an airbag could crush a windbag, he declared: “…She punched the steering wheel so hard she was surprised the airbag didn’t billow out and suffocate her. If only”.
garry@scottishmediamonitor.com
SMM supports the work of The Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund, P.O Box 35253, London E1 4YF. Donations welcome, write cheque to P.T.H.R.F.
CUT IT OUT…
John MacLeod in The Scottish Daily Mail praising homophobic Sir Teddy Taylor: “He cannot, however, be too readily portrayed as a rabid, knee-jerk Right-winger. Although pro-hanging, anti-gay rights and anti-abortion. Sir Teddy is one of the few Conservative MPs who fiercely oppose fox-hunting”.
Gerald Warner in Scotland on Sunday: “No sooner has Blair sunk groggily back on the ropes after a savaging from Howard than the ghost of Christmas Past, in the shape of one of the less Follettée babes, rises to enjoy her 15 seconds of fame: ‘Will the Prime Minister join me in welcoming the opening in my constituency of a crêche for Kosovar lesbians?’ Zzzz… Of course he will – it is much more congenial than responding to questions anent the Iraq war and weapons of mass destruction”.
Alan Taylor in The Sunday Herald on the murder of Edinburgh teacher Alan Wilson who served 18 months for having sex with 16 and 17-year-old pupils after getting them drunk: “Meanwhile former pupils of Gillespie’s have been eager to tell the papers what they thought of their erstwhile teacher. Writing in the Hootsmon (The Scotsman), Angie Brown relayed the information that her fellow pupils were ‘shocked but not surprised to hear Mr Wilson had been hacked to pieces’. And they wonder why it’s so difficult to find new recruits to the teaching profession”.
Former Herald editor Harry Reid in The Scottish Review: “Two senior but very different politicians, Lord Hurd and Robin Cook, drew loud and sustained applause at a recent conference in Cheltenham when they attacked contemporary standards in the British press. It is possible that the unthinkable has happened; journalists are even less popular then politicians”.
