Interesting Links for 15-03-2012
Mar. 15th, 2012 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Twitter's tales of sexism
- Trans fat consumption linked to greater aggression
- The lost child who found his way home 25 years later thanks to Google Earth
- Fascinating discussion on Hacker News on how Google has caught a nasty case of The Managers
- Is it time to start paying for Android updates?
- GDP across europe, broken down by region (I'm not unshocked that Aberdeen does better than anywhere else in Scotland)
- Goldman Sachs responds to accusations of greed and lack of morals
- An explanation of why movies have to make so much to make a profit.
- Why women shouldn't fake their orgasms.
- Factcheck: Did female unemployment rise under Labour?
- The BBC is to open its archive for downloads
- So, what _would_ we do if there was no other life in the universe?
- Voters favor deep-voiced politicians
- Shy people do not habituate to faces
- European court says kettling tactics in 2001 were lawful
- Government pressing forward with equal marriage - but why the hell tell churches they can't perform ceremonies?
- Some notes on IQ
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 11:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 11:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 12:29 pm (UTC)I suspect that the proposed ban on religious same-sex marriage, even for those religious denominations which want to, is a ham-fisted attempt to lessen opposition and complaints from the (relatively small, but well-organised and loud) religious bigot lobby. It won't work, of course, because that's not the game that the religious bigots are playing.
The article notes that a Labour peer intends to introduce an amendment enabling the Quakers etc to hold same-sex marriage ceremonies if they wish, so hopefully that'll work out. Maybe this was the idea all along: the government score a few brownie points with the bigots (including those in their own party) by carefully delineating the terms of the bill, and then they get to say "well, we tried, but the Lords made us take that bit out, and unfortunately we had to cave in". Result: everything works out how it should, the government partly appeases some of its core voters and party members without it really costing them anything, and the bigots get disappointed, not to mention progressively marginalised as society at large drifts further away from their worldview. At least, that's what I'm hoping will happen anyway.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 12:55 pm (UTC)The Quakers are lovely; I have a huge amount of respect for them. I might even be one if I wasn't pagan.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 01:16 pm (UTC)You're also quite probably right about the legal aspects of the same-sex marriage ban too - I hadn't considered that side of things. But I'm sure that a solution could (and hopefully will) be found if the motivation is there.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-16 01:13 pm (UTC)It's not true in Scotland though - members of any religious body can apply to be licensed to marry opposite sex couples up here.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 11:32 am (UTC)This isn't the case - it's "not compulsory to perform", rather than "compulsory not to perform", and therefore is up to the religion (or to the individual congregation). It certainly used to be the case that civil marriage and civil partnerships could not take place in a religious building, a restriction left over from the original establishment of civil marriage in the early 1800s and never changed, but that was removed not long ago: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-17311555.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 11:34 am (UTC)"Under our plans no church, mosque, temple, synagogue or other religious premises will be forced to hold gay marriage ceremonies. — in fact, they won’t be allowed to even if they want to. Religious marriage between a gay couple will remain illegal."
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 01:59 pm (UTC)Which is to say, she thinks that right now, legal marriage is "banned" inside churches, therefore future legal marriages will still be banned.
(That's kind of the way it is in Canada: There's no such thing as marriage that is not civil marriage. Your religious ceremony is completely irrelevant and has no meaning. All that matters is the paperwork - and you can do the paperwork at the ceremony if you want to, but who cares? Apparently, your Home Secretary thinks there's a rule PROHIBITING you from getting real-married in a church. From her reputation, I suspect being wrong about stuff like that is normal?)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 02:03 pm (UTC)Which sounds similar to Canada - in that you basically do the paperwork in the church after the ceremony. But it would mean that Quakers couldn't carry out weddings for gay people, which is just silly.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 02:17 pm (UTC)There's civil marriage and religious marriage, and the ONLY difference is who does the ceremony and files the paperwork?
What stops you from having a civil marriage in a church?
What stops a civil registrar from going to the church, and handing you the paperwork at the appropriate time while the religious officiant conducts his no-legal-meaning ceremony?
What stops a civil officiant from BEING a priest, or a priest from becoming a civil officiant?
(In Canada, your marriage paperwork must be signed by a registered officiant. Becoming a registered officiant is really easy. If you are a religious official and want to perform religious marriages, you register as an officiant, perform your religious ceremony, and file the paperwork, because civil marriage is the only LEGAL marriage.)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 02:21 pm (UTC)In Scotland, the marriage laws work more like Canada in practice because any 'religious' body including Humanists can become a registered celebrant and if they perform your ceremony (a 'religious' marriage by law even if they are Humanist), you can have it anywhere you please.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-16 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 02:21 pm (UTC)What an odd rule.
Even leaving aside the "can't get married in a church unless it's the other completely-identical kind of marriage" thing.
Oh, well. Common law systems: Grown, not designed.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 02:26 pm (UTC)There are also strict rules about the language etc that can be used for civil ceremonies - nothing religious is allowed and as the definition of religious is left up to the Registrar, this has resulted in some people having readings mentioning souls banned and all sorts.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 06:32 pm (UTC)I understand that now the laws in Scotland have been relaxed, even the odd supermarket is registered as a wedding venue, although googling around is unable to confirm that.
What did amuse me is that it's only recently that the law was modified to allow weddings after 5pm. The previous law was written before widespread artificial lighting; the cut-off period was designed to make sure you didn't accidentally marry the wrong person.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 12:09 pm (UTC)However
it has been pointed out to me by people more familiar with the CoE than me, that if religious equal marriage is allowed in England, the CoE could be taken to court for refusing to perform them under complex rules to do with it being a State Church, and theoretically having a duty to perform legal marriages for anyone who wants one. Which to my mind is merely yet another reason it is well past time it stopped being a State Church, but I'll grant that is a wider and more complex issue.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 10:48 pm (UTC)Right?
no subject
Date: 2012-03-16 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 11:45 am (UTC)Hur hur. I see what he did there ;)
But seriously: yes.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 12:58 pm (UTC)Interesting post... and it seems to be aimed at women, maybe I've read it that way, with a little bit aimed at men.... but as a young woman growing up, I got the impression from males that if you didn't orgasm then there was something wrong with you, and then it becomes less about ego and more about "doing something wrong". I know that's all a load of rubbish, but its pressure and things to negotiate. I sort of wish sex education also included telling young people how the male and female orgasms can be different, (and similar) and that's okay.
Although overall I wish society would accept that people can be different, and that's ok.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 01:10 pm (UTC)(sorry, grumpy this morning. But as a shy person this struck me as one of those findings that reflects the bleeding obvious without adding much insight)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 01:55 pm (UTC)That's true, I was being uncharitable. Noticing that I was grumpy should have been my cue to wait a couple of hours, not to go ahead and share said grumpiness. Sorry about that.
I think part of it for me is that my last 9 months in a completely new environment have really hammered the point home for me that even in the best of circumstances it takes me a long time to stop reacting to people as obvious threats. While I do also have problems thinking I'm not worth listening to, I've had enough variation in mood to notice that my mood has limited impact on the shyness (and it should have, if the problem was entirely self-worth) . The only thing that has obviously helped has been spending lots of time in their vicinity.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 02:43 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Mike_Church
no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-15 02:59 pm (UTC)