Sean Gabb on the Horrors of Internet Pornography

The Beeb woke me at the crack of dawn to deal with these fatuous and endlessly-recycled lies about the tendency of porn to turn good men into sex-crazed zombies. Don’t be surprised if I sound as bored here as I felt. The most interesting thing for me about the interview was staring up at the contours of my bedroom ceiling.

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/2013-05-14-sig-porn.mp3

Whither consent?

Writing in spiked! recently, barrister Barbara Hewson suggests that the age of consent for sexual activity should be restored to its pre-1885 position of 13.

Reducing the age of consent to 13 for all sexual acts would bring the UK in line with Spain, although Spain has a legal caveat that allows for prosecution where sexual consent is obtained by deception in the case of a person aged between 13 and 16. Until 1995, the age of consent in Spain was 12. Indeed, Britain’s age of consent is high by the standards of European countries, many of which have an age of consent for heterosexual acts of 14 or 15, although the age of consent for homosexual acts is not necessarily the same. Among other developed nations, Japan has an age of consent of 13, although this is subject to further restrictions.

An interesting note to this matter is that until 1993, English common law held that a boy under the age of 14 could not commit rape as a principal offender because he was irrebuttably presumed to be incapable of sexual intercourse. That a boy of that age is indeed so capable has been the subject of some publicity.

While there is some merit in arguing about the moral, physiological, emotional and cultural import of an age of consent, and the extent to which children need to be protected both from the attentions of adults and their peers, we should also consider all this in the context of what consent has come to mean in the implementation of the law. Consent is not, and never was, the same as a contract, whereby terms are mutually agreed and non-performance brings with it an entitlement to compensation. Rather, consent is a highly complex concept which is changing rapidly in its meaning.

Ian B on Paedomania

by Ian B

My heart sank when I saw the Hall guilty plea. Yewtree needed a first scalp, and now they have it. The concept of justice has been entirely trampled now by a stampeding mob frenzied by moral panic.

I can understand why an elderly man in his position would accept a plea bargain, for the reasons described by Ecks above. But it is sad.

Ecks quotes me, some time ago, saying they want a Steven Lawrence Moment. I still stand by that. The thing they are after though is a complete repudiation of the 1970s. It represents the period between the two Feminist waves, when First Wave Political Correctness all but collapsed, and before Second Wave PC had been installed, under which we now live.

Proof that Evil Traitor Heath Infected with Evil Paedo Virus by Evil Shape-shifting Lizard Jimothy Saveloy

Oh, but I’m getting so bored by the paedo witchhunt that I can barely feel alarmed by the latest turns in its lunacy. A Coronation Street actor is now being done for an alleged assault 46 years ago – the complainant is now 61! I suggest that anyone who waits this long before making a complaint should be ignored without further investigation. There should be a limitation on child sex prosecutions of three years from the date of the alleged offence, or one year from the complainant’s reaching the age of 18, whichever is longer.

This isn’t because I think well of people who have sex with persons under the age of consent – I don’t – but because the present law is almost self-evidently unjust, and will eventually bring the criminal justice system into ridicule and contempt.

The Reprobate Keynesian Mind

by Don Hank

I recently had a stimulating discussion with a UK pastor regarding the imminent legalization of a radical new definition of marriage, which for 5000 years, in over 600 languages and dialects, has always referred to a union between a man and a woman. True, some cultures have included polygamous marriages in this definition, but still, marriage was never between members of the same sex. The suggestion of such a union had always been regarded as unnatural.

This pastor made a startling assertion: the power in Europe is in the hands of sexual perverts.

Let us have Gay Marriage – but not yet! by Sean Gabb

Let Us Have Gay Marriage – But not Yet!
by Sean Gabb
(Unedited Version of Article
Published in TakiMag, February 2013)

Bearing in mind its nature, I think anyone who writes about the gay marriage Bill, now before Parliament, has more than a usual obligation to be honest about his underlying beliefs. Mine are easily stated. I have never shared or understood the moral prejudice against homosexual acts. Even as a boy, I thought the legal penalties were unjust. A quarter of a century ago, I wrote an essay in which, among much else, I called for gay marriage to be allowed. I have a long and consistent, and open, record on gay issues.

Review of “Fifty Shades of Grey” by E. L. James

by Foseti
http://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/review-of-fifty-shades-of-grey-by-e-l-james/

Review of “Fifty Shades of Grey” by E. L. James

A while back, I had drinks with one of this blog’s best commenters, and he strongly recommended this book (he also provided some thoughts, some of which I’ve taken).

The recommendation came with a set of warnings, which should be heeded. To put it bluntly, the book is quite horrible. I merely repeat the obvious by saying that the writing is poor (it’s not just not good, it’s prole, it’s juvenile, it’s absurd), the characters are unbelievable, etc. Consult a mainstream review for more on these obvious aspects of the book.

And yet . . .

It’s an odd world, isn’t it?

by His Grace The Devil
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDevilsKitchen/~3/9CN0ldssucM/its-odd-world-isnt-it.html

I would never, for instance, have expected to read the following headline:

Anti-gay activist lawyer guilty of child pornography after videotaping daughter

But it gets worse…

The New Joy of Gay Sex

From Free Life, Issue 19, November 1993
ISSN: 0260 5112

The New Joy of Gay Sex
Dr Charles Silverstein and Edmund White
The Gay Men’s Press, London, 1993, 220 pp., £16.95
(ISBN 0 85449 214 3)
Reviewed by Sean Gabb

I did think of turning this review into a plea for the toleration of sexual differences. But where homosexuals are concerned, I suspect I am about a decade too late. I will not claim that they have today no justified grievances. The criminal and civil law of this country embodies a mass of prejudice which ranges from the petty to the viciously destructive. Even so, the argument for removing that prejudice has been largely won in the minds of those who matter. There are very few middle class people left who regard homosexuality as something abominable – as justifying an exclusion that amounts to social death, or even as justifying the slightest legal disability.

Of course, such people do still exist. But they are the despised minority. They are the ones often excluded from polite society. They are even the ones whom this journal may soon be defending from a legal persecution.

This being said, I will deny my readers an unnecessary effusion, and move directly to consider the merits of this book.

Opt out of opting in or out

by Robert Henderson
http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/opt-out-of-opting-in-or-out/
Opt out of opting in or out

Robert Henderson

The government has refused to make an automatic filter for pornography a legal requirement for ISPs with those wishing to access it having to opt out of the filters. They have not done this out of any concern for freedom of expression but because the government has

Should There be an Automatic Filter for Pornographic Web Sites?

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/2012-12-19-porn-sig.mp3

Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance, speaking on BBC Radio Ulster on the 19th December 2012.

The question was whether there should be an automatic filter on pornographic web sites, to protect children from the horrors of nudity and sex. Such content would still be available to adults who explicitly asked for the filter to be removed in their case, and who were not scared of being put on a list of known sex perverts. NB, the British Government had recently announced that it would not make any law to compel an automatic filter.

Sean argues these points:

Gay Marriage, political correctness and Newspeak

by Robert Henderson
http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/gay-marriage-political-correctness-and-newspeak/

The commonly made objections to Gay Marriage are (a) marriage is traditionally between a man and a woman, a fact underpinned for many opponents by religious beliefs that only a man and a woman can be married, (b) claims that expansion of the definition of marriage to include same sex relationships will undermine the family and (c) such a novel status creates a legal anomaly whereby homosexual relationships become in some areas privileged over close non-sexual relationships between people of the same sex, for example, two elderly spinster sisters living together.

GAY MARRIAGE – UK Prime Minister promotes decadence

by the Rev. Alan Clifford

I respect Alan Clifford, and I maintain his absolute right to state his theological position on homosexuality. However, I don’t agree with him about gay marriage. So long as no church or other religious institution or minister of religion is penalised for refusing to perform services, I see no objection to gay marriage. I am suspicious of the current proposals. Though I haven’t studied them in any detail, I suspect the proposals do enable civil or criminal persecution. indeed, I suspect that is part of their intention. Take this possibility away, though, and I don’t see why a man shouldn’t be at liberty to marry his own brother so long as they are both consenting adults. SIG

Past Lives and Present Misgivings – Part Eight.

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/cCOUpHlEakI/

Lordy, Lordy, Lordy – this entire shebang grows more bizzarre by the hour, if not by the minute.

Overnight, a woman called Andrea Davison has emerged to claim that she was also at Duncroft, and there she first learned of ‘the existence of an Elite Paedophile ring reaching into the Government’. This is a story which has been gaining much traction on the Internet overnight.

I will take it one step at a time, otherwise I might fry your brains…

Cardinal Keith O’Brien wins Stonewall’s ‘Bigot of the Year’ 2012

by “Archbishop Cranmer”
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2012/11/cardinal-keith-obrien-wins-stonwalls.html

Stonewall has awarded its ‘Bigot of the Year’ prize to the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien. He apparently won it for his stance on same-sex marriage, which he compared to slavery and described it as ‘harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing’.

Let’s put this into a little perspective, shall we?

The other nominees were:

Past Lives and Present Misgivings – Part Seven.

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/7aeOxF4OrQE/
Past Lives and Present Misgivings – Part Seven.

Evening all; pull up a chair and pin your ears back.

I have, this evening, had a long talk with Miss Margaret Jones, headmistress of Duncroft for many years. It was almost 50 years since we had spoken directly to each other, and it was riveting. She was as corruscatingly honest and direct as I remember. Anybody who is under the impression that because she is 91, she might be slightly short on the marbles is in for a shock. Her power of recall is exceptional – and will prove to be devastating. As sharp as a box of scalpels – I can’t say that I am surprised; if anybody was going to stay on the ball, she was always a good candidate.

Past Lives and Present Misgivings – Part Six.

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/C19bnwGzluI/
Past Lives and Present Misgivings – Part Six.

The opening sequence of the Panorama film featuring the alleged sexual abuse of children at Duncroft lingered on a huge and imposing set of Victorian iron gates. Half open, they conjured up an image of a peek inside a forbidden and forbidding world. A world where children were routinely abused in a manner which our intrepid reporters were about to reveal…it was shades of Haute de la Garenne and a dozen Hammer horror films. It was an emotive image.

Past Lives and Present Misgivings – Part Four.

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/6E5Hg2gcN_4/
Past Lives and Present Misgivings – Part Four.

First some corrections from yesterday – I was very tired and didn’t proof read properly; dining is spelt dining, not dinning; I’m has got an m after the apostrophe; I was 16 and coming up to my 17th birthday not my 16th birthday; and the curtains for ‘her flat’ refer to Miss Jones’ flat – I could have worded that better. I am putting them here and in an erratum because I am very aware that the text from yesterday was downloaded several hundred times, and read many thousands times, and I don’t want to be accused of having changed the text after publication. (and my heartfelt thanks to the few brave souls who ventured into the comments to encourage me, those silent readers can be very daunting sometimes, and this is definitely one of those times!)

Past Lives and Present Misgivings – Part Three.

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/ds6zflTFD0s/

Duncroft! I never thought I would hear that name again – and suddenly it is on everybody’s lips! It is nearly 50 years ago that the car I was in drew up outside that familiar facade and I prepared to enter yet another ‘boarding school’.

Past Lives and Present Misgivings – Part Two

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/UuzPdirbHyg/

Where was I? Oh, yes, Cumberlow Lodge, South Norwood. Politely described as a ‘children’s home’ – no doubt to honour the strictures of the will of the Victorian philanthropist, W E Stanley, who had left his much loved home to the government for use as a ‘children’s home’. It was a detention centre, adapted to the needs of the burgeoning new fangled Social Services who were trying out their theories that the State was better equipped to care for children than ordinary people. Even the good people of South Norwood complained bitterly when it became home to Mary Bell in later years. Those of us who were there sent up daily prayers that it would disappear from the face of the earth – our prayers were not answered until 2006 when a developer blew the site off the map of South Norwood one dark night before the listed buildings people could stop him covering it in ‘affordable homes’.