Hey, all, sorry I haven’t been much of a blogger (or podcaster, or anysuch other) lately, but I have been moved to write by discovering this story. It’s been responded to here. Just a disclaimer: These are the only sources on this that I’ve seen, so it’s possible it’s not true. (I’m not familiar with NCLR, but I’m told by a gay friend that it’s a reliable source.) Sadly, my instinct tells me it probably is true.

An elderly gay couple in the US – surprisingly, in liberal California – have just been put through the most horrifying and inhuman series of loops that I’ve ever come across in a news story. The two men, Clay and Harold, had lived together for twenty years, and had secured all the legal paperwork ensuring that they were named on each other’s wills, that had power of attorney over each other, etc., etc. But when Harold was hospitalised after a fall, these directives were ignored, and worse. To begin with, Clay was refused hospital visitation rights.

It’s here that these gay rights horror stories usually stop, but it’s here that this one gets so much worse. The county ignored Clay and appealed to a judge to allow them to make medical decisions on his behalf. They referred in their appeal to Clay as Harold’s “roommate.” From the article:

The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.

They then went to the house that Harold and Clay had lived in, moved Clay out to a nursing home against his will (and separate from the home in which they’d put Harold), auctioned off all of their belongings without “making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom,” terminated the lease on the house and gave it to a landlord.

Harold has since died, alone, in a nursing home. Clay has been stripped of all his possessions, except for a photo album willed to him by Harold. He has been released from the nursing home, and is now suing the county with the help of a lawyer, Anne Dennis, who was appointed by the court. I wish him the best of luck.

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I’m trying to be as fair-minded as I can with the following sentence, so I apologise for the qualifiers I may use:

I don’t see any way that anyone other than the most narrow-minded homophobic bigot could see this as anything other than a tragedy and an affront to the dignity of these two men specifically and to humanity generally.

Leaving aside for a moment the gay argument (I’ll come to it), these men had everything they owned taken from them, including their home, for the sake of medical bills. It’s the kind of story that can only come from America (and I don’t know how much the new health care bill will help), but that alone is outrageous. It is, in point of fact, robbery, by the state of its citizens. I often wondered when the tea party were marching in their idiot masses over the past year why they did not protest this kind of thing, because in the US it’s not an uncommon occurrence for healthcare costs to bankrupt a person or a family. In the case of Clay and Harold, as far as I’m aware, bankruptcy was not declared, but they lost their house and everything that made it a home. I do think, though, that if this were a straight couple, it would be all over the news, rather than reported on a couple of obscure blogs in the corners of the internet as it is now.

Because the gay issue is important here. There is no way that any straight couple, married or “civil partners” or otherwise, would be treated the way these men were treated. Hospital visitation rights are a common call among gay rights activists, and it seems like so small a thing, but it is utterly important. Think of someone in your life right now who you love; who means the world to you, and imagine they are seriously injured. Imagine being told, maybe a hundred feet from where they’re lying, that you’re not allowed to see them. That though you have lived with them for years (or in the case of Clay and Harold, decades), that you don’t count as close enough. This argument alone should stand as sufficient for gay marriage and equal rights for gay people to become law, but it is not the only argument that can be made. But time and again politicians at best refuse to touch it and at worst make abhorrent slippery slope arguments equating homosexuality with paedophilia and bestiality.

Certainly the refusal of visitation was not the greatest indignity forced upon these men. I read a novel (David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Highly recommended. Amazon UK and US) a few years ago which told the story of a man imprisoned in a nursing home against his will. It was told comically, but was memorably frightening. I always assumed it to be, to some extent, hyperbole. Reading how Clay was ejected from his house and shipped off to a home so that his possessions could be sold to pay the medical bills of his dying lover, and how he needed the help of a lawyer to get out, makes me less sure. The state refused to acknowledge in court that they were lovers (the referral to Clay as Harold’s “roommate” I found particularly chilling), but this did not stop them from treating their possessions and property as those of a single unit, like, say, a family unit. Here the state has it both ways, neither of which works particularly to the advantage of the state – at best, what did they get out of it? A few hundred thousand dollars, maybe? – but both of which are disastrous to the men involved. The worst of both worlds. This was abusive, malicious and needless.

Creative interpretations of the law – remember that Clay, legally, had power of attorney and power over medical directives – allowed this abuse to take place. This is why in civilised countries gay marriage must be legalised, and must be given the same status as straight marriage. There must be one law for straight couples and gay couples, not “separate but equal,” but the same law. Remember that “separate but equal” must by necessity lead to “but some are more equal than others” (if you’ll excuse me misquoting Orwell). Clay is suing the state, and with any luck will be successful, but that will not restore the three months he spent imprisoned away from his dying lover. The only possible good that might come of this is if it mobilises people to get gay rights on the agenda and get some modicum of gay equality into law.

The extremity of this story has set a fire in me the way few things do, and I want it to spread. Please, comment, repost, retweet if you Twitter or link if you Facebook. Let this story grow.

The front-page headline from the Daily Telegraph screamed at me as I bought my milk and apple juice just now,

Hanging Crowd Bays for Blood as Blair Faces his Inquisitors

I mean, for goodness sake, Telegraph, at least pretend to be objective.

As much as this is a great sentence – try saying it in a fearsome, guttural voice, like this – it really leaves the reader in absolutely no doubt what side the article takes.

Besides, it’s hardly true. The crowd, which isn’t hanging (yes, I know what they meant, but they’re not, en masse, calling for his hanging either), is not baying for blood, and the use of the term inquisitors is obviously psychologically linked to the inquisition more than it is to the Iraq inquiry.

And let’s be fair. Blair lied, it would seem knowingly, in order to lead his country to an unjust, unnecessary and illegal war, which has further destabilised the middle-east and given countless muslims cause to fight what they see as an attempt at imperial rule from the west. He should be brought to justice for this, but he won’t. The Iraq inquiry, founded and staffed by the Labour party, is not a trial, and will not resolve any of the important issues.

Digging a little further into the article, we find:

A man grabbed a megaphone, with a let’s-get- down-to-business manner. “Tony Blair …” he shouted. The crowd answered, like the response in a Pentecostalist church. “War criminal!”

See? Those people protesting Blair have a religious fervour. They’re calling for blood, in the face of all rationality. They have “the same sense of seething resentment, and the hunger for justice – or revenge – that one sees at crown courts as child murderers are whisked past in prison vans, their heads covered in blankets.”

And how is Blair taking all this anarchic yelling? In a “narcoleptic” hearing room, after being treated to a description of his attire (“a blue suit, white shirt and red tie”) we find that “his expression [is] grave, with a flicker of apprehension.” Later, on facing a difficult question, he “assumed the bashful look of a schoolboy caught with his hand in the sweet jar.” The article comments later that this questioner is the only one who is not “polite, even courtly,” but cheerfully drops in the adjective “beady” to describe him.

Throughout this article, this simpering (I’m not writing a newspaper article – I’m allowed be biased), pity-Blair tone is adopted, often explicitly but sometimes subtly. The last couple of sentences, though, really do take the cake.

“And is there anything you’d like to add?” Mr Blair looked at him, as if to say, “Are you kidding?” “No”, he said. He walked quickly from the room. There was a smattering of boos from the audience, then shockingly, a shout, “You are a liar.” And another. “And a murderer.”

Outside the baying intensified – less a hanging crowd, it seemed, than a lynch mob. But the pontiff manqué had left by a side entrance. They hadn’t landed a glove on him.

So, after another attempt to vilify the protesters (poor Tony!), we even have this “journalist” putting words in Blair’s mouth. Lucky thing, too. If it weren’t for writing of this calibre, the Telegraph’s audience wouldn’t know what to think.

Oh man, I’m almost afraid to say this.

Ok, here we go.

*deep breath*

I am…in agreement…with the Republicans…on Barack Obama’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

*shudder*

Sorry.

But really, it does seem a little premature. So far, aside from the achievement of restoring international respect to the office of US President, Obama has done very little to aid or to damage world peace. The only examples on either side of the fence I can think of are the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

His greatest contribution to getting the prize seems to be not being George W. Bush (a tweet is going around at the moment that reads “All of the world’s population to be rewarded with Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 because we’re not George W Bush either.” (via @loveandgarbage), and it should be remembered that Bush had started a war by this stage of his first term.

It’s true, as the awarding committee has said, that he possesses a “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons,” which is both noteworthy and good, and that

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts

but this was largely true in the pre-Bush era as well.

I don’t really think that a strong case can be made for Barack Obama deserving a Nobel Peace Prize. At least not yet. I think that his ideals are certainly inclined in the direction of world peace, and he clearly has made diplomacy the most important cause of his international relations, but – aside from talk about it – he hasn’t really done anything yet. He’s only been in office for nine months.

I think he should turn the prize down at this juncture. Perhaps he will receive it again at a more deserving future juncture.

Perhaps also, the Nobel committee are merely trying to avoid another incident like Jimmy Carter’s award, which he received decades after he earned it, or merely demonstrate that the international community cannot afford another Bush-esque catastrophe, no matter how much the Palinites want one.

[I originally wrote this blog on Tuesday the 29th of September, but for some reason couldn't get it to post.]

This advertisement appeared in today’s Irish Times, and presumably in the other national papers as well.

I’ll be voting yes to the treaty. That doesn’t change the fact that I think Michael O’Leary, the head of Ryanair, is a despicable human being. As with so much of what he says, this ad will only have the effect of making the people who already agree with him laugh.

A friend, who is supporting the no side of the campaign, responded to my posting this picture on Twitter by remarking that a yes vote will have the effect of endorsing by proxy those who support it, including our present incompetent government and O’Leary. Though this makes little sense – we can (and, as usual, probably won’t) express our dissatisfaction in the next general election – even if it were true then the same could be said of the no side. As much of the no side is currently made up of one almost-equally-obnoxious businessman (Declan Ganley) with strong anti-European sentiments, a far-right Christian “values” group called Cóir and a political party (Sinn Féin) which until recently supported terrorism and had its own private army, I think I’d rather throw my lot in with the yes side, even before it comes to reasons for actually supporting the treaty.

As to why I support the treaty, much of its work is in sorting out legislative processes which are messy or don’t adequately do the job any more. This is valuable, but there are three important points which would have won me to it easily.

The first is that it contains a provision for dealing with global warming. It’s obvious to anyone who’s looked at the data that climate change is one of the most important, if not the most important, issues facing the world at the moment. While I’m aware that resolutions are one thing while action is another, a resolution is still better than none. I think that the governments of the world are finally starting to react to what scientists have been telling them for decades, and I would very much like for Europe to be a leader in dealing with the problem. (Admittedly, our overall record is still pretty good compared with places like the US and China, but urgent action is nonetheless required.)

The second is the aim to reduce poverty, with the lofty (and sadly probably inachievable) goal attached of eradicating it entirely. The treaty provides legal groundwork for humanitarian aid outside the EU.

Lastly, the Citizen’s Initiative is a beautiful aspect of the treaty, which allows the citizens of Europe to bring matters directly to the table of the European Commission (the body which proposes legislation), if they can provide a petition with a million signatures from across the Union – a small figure given the overall population. While the EU’s power to influence laws is limited by each of the countries within it, this should give a much stronger voice to minorities all across Europe.

I’m also vaguely curious as to why I’ve heard so little about the Irish commissioner this time around. Last time we voted on this treaty, one of the major (and few factual) bones of contention for the no side was that Ireland wouldn’t be represented in the European Commission 100% of the time. The treaty has now been modified so that the Commission will be represented by all member states all of the time. But where the no side – last year alive with the chant of “keep our commissioner!” has unterstandably shut the hell up about it, I’m more than a little surprised that the yes side hasn’t taken up the same rallying call.

Oh well. The referendum is tomorrow We shall see how things progress.

So despite having far more money to pour into their advertising than probably any other party in Europe, Declan Ganley’s Libertas – the “Party without Policies’ – has been shot down by European voters.

Ganley himself was running for election here in the Irish north-west, and after his place on the European parliament seemed as unlikely as anything, requested a recount. He thought that several thousand votes for him had been mistakenly given to another candidate.

So they checked the bundles.

And three thousand votes for another candidate were found in his pile.

Heh.

The first election I remember being of any significance to me was held when I was a child. I suppose I would have been about nine or ten, and this local candidate came to our door. She wasn’t the first to come, nor the last, but she did have something very special: a loudspeaker on the top of her car.

This was the coolest thing I or my younger brother had ever seen, and she let us use it. Wow!

I’m sure some other people have similar memories, and it seems to be a fairly common practise in politicians. I’ve never forgotten her name.

When the elections came around, my brother and I begged – begged! – our parents to vote for this nice lady with a sense of humour, who had given us a go on her car’s loudspeaker. Looking back I realise now of course that this is a foolish motivation to vote.

But I’m not sure everyone does.

I have, over the last few years, heard the most banal and pointless excuses used as genuine reasons for voting. Things like ‘I’d left it too late to get a passport, and this politician got me one at the last minute.’ and they really never come down to much more than ‘he was nice to me, so he gets my vote.’

In Ireland, we have European elections coming up in the next few weeks. Unfortunately, this kind of politics is still at the fore here, as it probably is everywhere else. But when it comes to national and international issues, I wish people would understand that sometimes what’s best for everyone isn’t best for them personally.

I’m in the worrying position at the moment of having no-one to vote for in the current elections, but having three parties – one of which I consider to have been proven incompetent and the other two which seem genuinely dangerous – to vote against.

I hope that people will vote with their heads, and not just to return favours.

Also I hope that those people who vote as a civic duty, or because they’re dragged to the polling booth, or whatever, will stay home. The last thing we need is another bunch of officials elected on the basis of the first letter of their surname.