Pink Sauce

As expected the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has delivered a whitewash for the Daily Mail after receiving 25,000 complaints against the Jan Moir article on the death of Stephen Gately. The PCC's adjudication is available here . Interestingly the PCC seems to have ignore the complaints from the public and to have only focused on that by Gately's husband, Andrew Cowles. The PCC is founded on the principle of self-regulation; this means that the press adjudicates on what the press does. Let me rephrase that: the accused decides if the accused is innocent or not. More over and despite the claims of unacceptable censorship used to justify yesterday's decision, it seems that the only sanctions that the PCC has power to inflict on a guilty paper is to get it to publish the adjudication. This from the Editors' Code of Practice (pdf file): Any publication judged to have breached the Code must print the adjudication in full and with due prominence, including headline refere...

Due to a misunderstanding, the kiss-in (for the organisation of which I have been called an "extrèmiste sodomite" - article in French on a fundamentalist blog: you've been warned!) did not take place but the protest it was a part of did go on and was indeed much fun. Many friendly and familiar faces were there and it was in the end about 300 people who took to the wintry streets of London (between Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral and the Italian Embassy in Grosvenor Square) to voice their opposition to the undue influence of the Pope and the Vatican in European and British politics. It was interesting to note that despite the wider purport of the protest, a vast majority of the participants seemed to come from the LGBT community. My pictures of the event can be seen in this set of my flickr account. (Image above: Peter Tatchell speaking against the Pope outside the Italian Embassy)

I have done it again. I find myself organising a protest, albeit a small one part of a bigger one. And one to which I can't take part(!) The Catholic Chruch is supposed to be spreading a message of love. Yet more and more it's message seems to be going from this towards something more sinister. On Sunday, a demonstration will be taking place outside the RC Cathedral in Westminster (Victoria Street - not the Abbey) before moving to the Italian Embassy. We suggest that straight and gay couples come together for a Valentine Day kiss-in to remind the Church what love is really about. The Kiss-in will last about 5min before the protest moves on to the Italian Embassy. A similar event is taking place in Paris this week-end. There is a Facebook Event for this. Find out more about the main protest here (also on Facebook). (note: the organisers of the main protest have given assent to this) Press coverage: - Protestors will tell Pope to 'snog off' , Pink News - Valentines Day ...

In October last year, a debate was organised in London around the motion that 'The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world'. The pannel was made up of Anne Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan supporting the motion and Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry speaking against it. I have only just come across Fry's contribution to the debate but it is absolutely superb and so I have decided to include it in those page. It lasts about 15 min and has been truncated in two by Youtube; see below: For reference at the start of the debate the audience was asked to vote for or against the motion. before after change for 678 268 -20% against 1102 1876 +34 undecided 346 34 -14% The full debate including the other speakers, a Q&A bit and closing statements can be found on the Intelligence 2 website .

It might just be the way this story is being reported but once again it seems that the Pope has come out (pun intended) with a few empirical sentences , this time against equality laws in the UK, without providing any support or explanation to his views. These however do not stand to the meerest hint of scrutiny. First of all, I am led to wonder what those so called "natural laws" he speaks of are. Where are they defined? And if they have been defined, by whom? Could it be something of the Bible perhaps? His own literature then, to which most of the world only pays a limited amount of attention due to the high cultural impact it has has over the centuries? The very same Bible that was used to justify slavery right up until the end of the 19thc century (and some claim that the Catholic Church itself did not properly condemn slavery until Gaudium et Spes , one of the four Apostolic Constitutions resulting from the Second Vatican Council in 1965!!!). The very same Bible that for...