Come back! We can campaign about trees together!

I've been critical before of political groups and movements whose entire platform basically boils down to "we're not the Conservatives". They avoid setting out principles as much as possible to attract a broad audience - "a united left", or whatever - which works fine right up until they actually try to do anything.

The result is usually a group which is run by and for default people, and often one viewing political power as an end rather than as a means.

I bring this up now because there was [content note: heterosexism, especially in comments] a fine example yesterday of the intellectual knots one can get oneself into when attempting to run a campaigning organisation without reference to any underlying principles¹.

Paraphrased:

The membership's desire to take action in favour² of non-default people was a clear but not unanimous majority. This was hard to interpret, so we resolved to only take late, ineffective and partial action on the subject.

Despite the considered ineffectuality of our response, approximately 0.1% of the recipients of our call to action found it too much for them, and delivered us a series of insults, or even cancelled their subscriptions. Please tell us what you think. Should we have made our action even weaker, or not done it at all?

We don't want to lose important people over this! Please come back... We can campaign about trees together. We won't do it again...

Another example of why I strongly prefer campaigns which both start from and stick with their principles, then.

Footnotes and rambling digressions

¹ Yes, I'm aware they claim to have underlying principles. Under both "defend fairness" and "protect rights" this one should have been fairly obvious (though see next footnote too).

² There is of course a principled argument that marriage - either in its current form as a concept or in all forms - is itself harmful, and therefore to extend it to more people is to go in completely the wrong direction; instead, heterosexual marriage should be abolished. I very much doubt any of the objections received were along those lines.

Certainly, I would agree that in so far as the state needs to have a means of registering relationships between individuals, the model of "marriage", even opened up so that it does not require particular genders of the participants, is massively insufficient. Relationships between more than two people, relationships which desire some but not all of the legal statuses attached to "marriage", and so on, are not well-served by the current set up. This should not be considered the end of the reform process, though with the exception of those religions which would like to run religious ceremonies for marriages, it probably will be for quite some time.

I can also envisage societies in which the "state" either has no need to register relationships at all, or does not exist in such a form that the concept even makes sense. At least some of these social models would, for me, also be preferable to the current system.

Nevertheless, I think even if the long-term plan is to get rid of the concept of state recognised marriage (and remember that this digression is irrelevant to the main post, where that clearly is not the long-term plan!), the current concept has so many flaws that refusing to fix them in the short term is the wrong approach.

(See also: Andy's Miscellany: Marriage Equality and Primogeniture for a different analysis)

Why is a pancake unlike a marriage?

Yesterday, in the UK and other countries, was Pancake Day, a secular celebration of the tastiness of pancakes.

It was also, of course, Shrove Tuesday, the last date in the Christian Calendar before the start of Lent. Traditionally, pancakes would be eaten to use up stocks of rich foods before the start of Lent fasting and repentance.

The secular co-option of the fun bits of the tradition in a way that almost entirely inverts the point of the tradition is not unique to this particular event, of course, but I wasn't able to find anyone anywhere complaining that the celebration of Pancake Day was taking away from the meaning and seriousness of Shrove Tuesday and Lent.

Meanwhile, the usual forces of Christianity-excused heterosexism were campaigning strongly that their particular current definition of marriage should be the only legally-supported and state-recognised one, on the grounds that allowing other definitions - even trivial amendments which entirely retain the stated¹ point of the tradition - would weaken their own.

It's an interesting contrast.

Footnote

¹ There are arguably certain points - more common historically - regarding the control of women which same-sex marriage would subvert, of course. But they will deny if asked that this is the particular point that would be weakened.

Allowing religion as an excuse for discrimination: consultation response

Spark in Darkness highlights an Equality and Human Rights Commission consulation (Word document) on its intervention in a number of religious discrimination cases.

As pointed out by Sparky, the consultation wording is pretty bad, and seriously downplays the discriminatory nature of the inactions that two of the plaintiffs were rightly barred from. The consultation also makes it quite difficult to find the details of the cases - they give you a link about six steps out in the convoluted court website, and then approximately describe the first two steps needed to find them (one of which no longer works as described). As linked below, there are perfectly good¹ direct links to the case descriptions!

The cases in question are:

• The two cases Eweida and Chaplin, in which the plaintiffs were forbidden from wearing particular visible Christian symbols as part of their work uniform.
• The two cases Ladele and McFarlane, in which the plaintiffs hold that requiring them to carry out all aspects of their jobs with all clients was discriminatory, since heterosexist discrimination is part of their religion.

In all four cases, the UK courts have decided that the plaintiffs were not subject to unfair discrimination.

Currently the EHRC's position is that the UK courts were wrong in the first two cases, and correct in the last two. They also ask if a concept of "reasonable accommodation" should be applied to religious discrimination.

It is crucial, of course - to prevent religious exemptions and "conscience clauses" from making equality laws useless - that the European courts uphold the decisions against Ladele and McFarlane. It's also therefore important that the EHRC does not ask those courts to rule in favour of Ladele and McFarlane. Please send a response to their consultation if you have time (contact details on the final page of the consultation document, deadline 5 September.

Here's my response:

Regarding your consultation on intervention in four religious discrimination cases before the European courts:

Response to question 1:

In the case of Eweida, I believe that the courts probably made the correct decision based on current law, given that "In the interim, British Airways had offered to move the applicant without loss of pay to work involving no public contact, but the applicant had chosen to reject this offer and instead to stay away from work and claim her pay as compensation.".

Whether or not this decision was correct would depend in my view on whether the alternative work offered was at a similar standard - not just in pay but in working conditions, opportunities for promotion and skills development, fit with the plaintiff's skillset, and so on - to the original work. If it was - and the UK courts appear to have found that it was - I can see no reason for BA to make payments based on the plaintiff not taking up this offer.

In the case of Chaplin, I believe that the court's response was also correct. The hospital's uniform policy was designed to minimise risk of infection and preserve health, and so requiring employees to follow it should be considered a legitimate restriction "necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, [and] the protection of [...] health".

Response to question 2:

In both of these cases I believe that the domestic courts made the correct decision. Both plaintiffs were required to carry out particular tasks as part of their jobs, without discrimination based on the sexuality of their clients. This is not a case where the religious discrimination claimed is largely unrelated to the performance of their jobs, but one where their religion is definitionally incompatible in their view with the duties of their job. In this case, there should be no responsibility upon the employer to vary the duties, especially where such variance would require discrimination against other protected groups. Protection against religious discrimination should not extend to being able to pick and choose which aspects of ones job should be carried out.

Response to question 3:

A "reasonable accommodation" test for religious discrimination would seem - on the basis of the four cases presented - to be superfluous with current law.

In Eweida, the employer attempted to make reasonable accommodations - firstly by offering a job in which the contested restriction would not apply, and secondly by amending the contested restriction. This was found under current law to be sufficient, and so an explicit "reasonable accommodations" law would have been unlikely to make a difference to the outcome.

In Chaplin, Ladele, and McFarlane, the cases fall outside the scope of "reasonable accommodation". The actions requested by the plaintiffs were incompatible with the duties of the job, and so no "reasonable accommodation" could have been made. Furthermore, in the cases of Ladele and McFarlane, no accommodation of the plaintiff's stance could have been provided without harming the employers' provision of service towards LGB people. Again, a "reasonable accommodations" law would have been unlikely to have made a difference. (Had, in Chaplin, a way of displaying the crucifix been available that was compatible with infection control and health and safety requirements, it seems unlikely that neither the employee nor the employer would not have suggested this at some point in the dispute)

The "reasonable adjustments" part of disability law is in my view to reflect that the infrastructure of society is generally set up by default in a way that is not accessible to people with disabilities, and so it may not be possible - especially for a small business or organisation with a very limited budget - to provide a fully accessible environment. There is therefore only a requirement to do what is financially and physically possible unilaterally, rather than requiring a multilateral rebuild of social and physical infrastructure to truly eliminate environmental disability discrimination.

There is not an analogous situation with religion - no buildings need be completely rebuilt, no tools need to be completely redesigned, and so on - and therefore the concept of "reasonable adjustments" seems unnecessary.

Footnote

¹ Well, in so far as the court website itself isn't particularly accessible or user-friendly.

Rape prevention: response from Education

[trigger warning]

Here's the reply from the Department of Education, which I received yesterday, on rape prevention (with minor edits for readability on the web, that do not affect meaning, and contact details removed)

Thank you for your email dated 4 July 2011 asking for information about the department's role in safeguarding teenagers from abuse. I have been asked to reply.

The Department for Education is committed to making a strong contribution to the cross government Action Plan on Violence Against Women and Girls which is led by the Home Office. This reflects our responsibility for safeguarding young people and our strategic leadership of the education system.

The Department`s actions include:

• Taking forward recommendations from the independent Reg Bailey report on sexualisation and commercialisation of young people.
• Considering the teaching of sexual consent within the Personal Social and Health Education Review. The issue of consent is already covered within the Department's guidance on sex and relationships education (SRE) which can be viewed from our website.
• Anti bullying and behaviour - every school must have measures to encourage good behaviour, respect, and to prevent all forms of bullying amongst pupils. These measures must be part of the school's behaviour policy. Following consultation a final version of guidance for school leaders and governors will be published at the end of July 2011.

They also suggested I contacted the Ministry of Justice, which I'd already done.

The guidance is fairly sparse on consent, as it happens. There's a couple of bullet points on helping people 'avoid being abused' (which is not great wording), half a bullet point on "avoiding [...] exploiting others".

The concept that school children might be committing rape is entirely ignored, though the document does contain a fair amount of information on the possibility of them being victims.

The guidance (2000) predates the repeal of the heterosexist "Section 28" (2000 in Scotland, 2003 elsewhere), so contains the bizarre phrase "There should be no direct promotion of sexual orientation." which I'm fairly sure is universally interpreted as "only directly promote monogamous heterosexuality".

There's also a note about what the National Curriculum contains on the subject, which is mainly about the biology of sexual reproduction, and the enforced requirement to learn some oversimplified rubbish about "sex determination" in humans that very harmfully erases the existence of trans and intersex people (and so makes it harder for people to accept their existence later on). I understand why topics need to be simplified for school, but there's "simplified" and there's "outright wrong".

It'll certainly be better than whatever it replaced - I went through SRE well before this guidance was introduced, and I don't recall consent being mentioned at all. (In fact, they tried very hard to avoid mentioning that sex might involve people¹) - but it definitely needs some significant updating.

Here's the review they mentioned - they opened a consultation on it on the 21 July. I strongly recommend that anyone with an interest in improving teaching about consent replies to the review (which will be open until the end of November 2011) to make their points. If you have relevant evidence and research papers, especially recent ones, make sure that you include them in your response (and share them here, too, if you like, so that other people can use them too).

Many of the questions in the consultation are asking about case studies from schools, but they explicitly say you don't need to answer every question - many of them are more general and can be answered by people other than PSHE teachers.

I'll post my own response to the consultation once I've written it.

Footnote

¹ Not in a pro-masturbation way (that wasn't mentioned at all), in a "this is an abstract rather than physical activity" way.

Scapegoating refugees for political advantage continues

[trigger warning]

So the news today is reporting that the Home Affairs Committee has described the news that 40% of asylum cases since 2006 have been given leave to stay in the UK as an "amnesty".

Well, of course they do. The idea that it's even remotely possible that anywhere near 40% of asylum claims might actually be justified is hardly going to be considered by politicians who view "immigrants" as a convenient scapegoat for all the country's ills.

Cue the usual comments from the usual suspects about "illegal immigration" and "overstaying visas" - none of which apply to asylum claims that are pending a decision, but it's useful to that argument to pretend all immigrants are coming over here to take our jobs and claim our benefits - and how the government hasn't yet succeeded in building a ten-mile high wall around the country to keep those nasty foreigners out. Except the white English-speaking ones, of course.

The idea that people might actually be claiming asylum because they face persecution and possibly death in their original country seems irrelevant - and with large parts of the world being unstable - indeed, with the UK playing its part in keeping large parts of the world unstable - the idea that 40% or more of claims might be justified doesn't seem unreasonable.

Given that the [trigger warning] deportation of LGB asylum seekers back to Uganda and other unsafe countries continues, despite assurances from the government that it wouldn't, it seems there's a very strong case that the UK isn't being generous enough when it comes to saving people's lives.

Kyriarchy for kids

Durham County Council has recently put out this press release, which was reprinted in the local free paper and probably elsewhere.

The search is on for young people in County Durham with an outstanding school attendance record.

Durham County Council is tracking down all final-year primary and secondary school pupils who have never taken a day off.

The council is planning a special celebration to reward young people with a 100 per cent attendance record at either primary or secondary school.

Maureen Clare, Durham County Council’s head of countywide services, said: “Never missing even half a day of primary or secondary school is a fantastic achievement and one we want to reward.”

Unauthorised absence from school is a problem, but there are serious problems with this plan.

[trigger warning]

Pupils spend six or seven years at primary school, and five (optionally seven) at secondary school. School is generally open 5 days a week, 39 weeks a year - so that's an unbroken absence record for over 900 days (primary) or over 750 days (secondary). This includes no absences for the various authorised reasons.

According to the Department for Education, there are just under 36,000 primary-age pupils in County Durham (so probably around 5,500 in their final year), and around 30,000 secondary age pupils (so probably around 6,000 in their final year). I suspect the odds of never missing a day are well over 1 in 12,000.

Managing this is a "fantastic achievement" only in the sense that winning the lottery is a "fantastic achievement". I very much doubt that they'll find anyone. I hope they don't find anyone. Rewarding someone for that combination of luck and privilege sends entirely the wrong message.

A partial list of children who - through no fault of their own - will not be getting the prize.

Health and disability

• Those who were seriously ill for at least one day out of several hundred. Even with a great immune system and full vaccinations that's going to be tricky to achieve. I don't know anyone who didn't miss at least a couple of days of school for general illness - stomach bugs, severe colds, etc.
• Similarly, anyone who's seriously injured. Break an arm? Tough. No prize for them unless they splint it with their school ruler and carry on. Break their arm while playing rugby for the school? Still tough.
• Disability or other condition requiring medical treatment, or making continuous school attendance difficult? Nope. No prize for you.

Yet again we have "being ill is immoral". The same attitude permeates government at all levels, and society in general, with well-documented effects.

Family situations

• Bereavement? Family member terminally ill? No taking time off to visit them in hospital or attend their funeral. They should have the decency to die at a weekend and so not harm productivity. Similarly for happier family occasions.
• Family moves in or out of the county? I suppose the Council might try to chase up attendance records from other education authorities, but I doubt it. In or out of the country? No chance. Similarly for people who were home-educated at any time - it's legal, and rightly so, but that doesn't mean the government likes it.
• Abusive family so they run away from home? Or get placed in care? Not conducive to a perfect attendance record. The Council is fully aware of this

Bullying and other peer abuse

• Bullied to the extent of needing time off to recover from injuries (physical or mental)? See above.
• So (justifiably) terrified of the bullying that they make up an illness to avoid going in, or are ill because they're so worried, or just don't go in without telling their parents¹, or their parents rightly refuse to send them in? No prize for them.
• Sexual violence? Still the victim's fault.

LGB kids, or fat kids, or neuroatypical kids, or really, any kid that doesn't conform to the exact social stereotype, tend to be even bigger targets for bullies, but it can and does happen to anyone and we somehow accept it as largely inevitable; there are no equivalents of Trades Unions to speak up for childrens' rights here, and children who go on strike in protest... well, that's an unauthorised absence.

Even worse, there's nothing in this section to stop the bullies themselves having a perfect attendance record and getting the prize. "Trample those beneath you to raise yourself up" is perhaps not the ethos schools should be trying to instil.

Miscellaneous bad luck

• The last couple of winters have been extremely harsh, with schools closed several days for snow. There will have been days when the school wasn't closed but children living in more isolated parts of the county will have been snowed in anyway. Didn't walk three miles through over a foot of snow? Tough.
• Foot and mouth outbreak causes your farm to be quarantined? As usual, that's no excuse - you should break the law and come in anyway.

The TUC were very critical of the employers who expected their staff to come in, at risk to their life, during the severe weather this winter. Again, apparently this is something that starts early.

Closing thoughts

There's nothing unusual about these proposals. The value of attendance - whether you should be there or not, whether you're productive there or not, whether your attendance causes more problems later or not - is insisted upon by many employers and starts off at school. The idea that people who are ill, or disabled, or victims of assault and bullying, are somehow morally and otherwise inferior, or brought it on themselves - it's an idea probably as old as humanity, but that doesn't make it right.

There's another bit of point-missing, too. The reason that Councils have a legal responsibility to provide education and to require attendance at some form of education, is for the benefit of the children, who will have better chances in life, on average, if they receive education.

The children who attended every day have already, by that logic, received their reward - an education - and don't need an extra reward. The children who were missing are surely the ones who need more attention and help. It's far easier to reward attendance - useful attendance or not - of course.

I've sent the following letter to the Council itself, and to my two local councillors.

I write regarding the scheme described in your April 28, 2011 press release "Search for 100 per cent school attendees".

I fully understand that unauthorised absences from school can be a serious problem, and one which the Council has a legal responsibility to deal with. However, I do not feel that this plan is an appropriate part of that strategy.

Not missing a single day - out of the several hundred that must be attended - is only a "fantastic achievement" in the same sense that a lottery win is a "fantastic achievement". Not only must the winning child - I will be very surprised if you find even one, given the odds - not have had any unauthorised absences, which is quite possible, but they must not also have had any authorised absences either.

Not needing any authorised absences is, however, largely a matter of luck. People get ill. Children, who generally have less well-developed immune systems than adults, get ill even more often. Getting through over 750 days of schooling without being ill even once requires a perfect immune system, which is largely a matter of genetic luck and other factors outside the child's control.

Children with disabilities, chronic health conditions, cancer, or other conditions requiring regular treatment would find it impossible - through no fault of their own - to win the prize being offered. Effectively the Council is declaring that the genetic luck of being in perfect health is "an achievement" - which implies that it is something that the children had a choice in and control over. That is not a pleasant implication.

While luck of birth is one factor the winner or winners of this prize will need, they also need other sorts of luck too. The County's schools all have anti-bullying strategies, but these strategies are not fully effective, and one reason for unauthorised absence can be an entirely justified fear of bullying. (Being bullied can also affect one's physical and mental health, causing authorised health-related absences)

LGBT children, children with disabilities - including learning difficulties or mental health conditions, and children who don't "fit in" for any other reason are more likely to be targets for bullies, again, through no fault of their own.

Not being bullied is not "an achievement" - rare as it is - and to treat it as such is to blame the victims of bullying for the bully's actions. Worse still, the bully could still attend every day and be eligible for the prize while their victims are not!

There are many other good reasons for absence too - a bereavement in the family, being snowed in during the winter's bad weather, road accidents, and many more - for which describing it as "an achievement" to have avoided them is wrong and extremely insensitive. Think of a pupil who had an otherwise "perfect" attendance record, but took a few days off when their father died to grieve and attend the funeral. How will they feel if they hear about this prize?

I understand why the Council wishes to encourage attendance at school, but this is very much the wrong way to go about it, and I urge you to withdraw the scheme.

Yours sincerely

[cim]

Footnote

¹ The only item on this list that actually counts on school records as unauthorised absence, I believe.

For balance

In most discussions on the news, the press nowadays are careful to bring in a dissenting voice - no matter how outlandish the dissent is - to express an alternative view.

The matters that they don't are those that are universally agreed - "Mr Jones, of the 13th Century Society, condemned the proposals. 'Everyone knows that disease is spread by miasmas', he said.".

And, of course, those that the press might like to be universally agreed.

[trigger warning for the links]

So, for instance, the BBC uncritically reprints a DWP press release claiming that "most" benefit claimants are "fit for work" - despite there being massive problems with this conclusion - without any evidence of an opposing view. Like gravity, the round earth, and so on, the "fact" that most benefit claimants are scroungers is too uncontroversial to need one.

Conversely, on other issues where there should be no controversy at all, they go to find the most hateful people they can, just to get "an opposing view". Got to have balance, and if no-one mainstream is willing to provide it, then find someone who isn't.

Likewise, most science reporting has some other scientist saying "well, we shouldn't jump to conclusions based on one experiment" - but take some of the worst research ever, and not only doesn't it need an art historian pointing out "Wait, what? That makes no sense" - it also gets a second independent speaker for the same proposition - you know, for balance.

So - this is neutrality, this is impartiality, from the fabled BBC - it can be taken as uncontestable fact, just as it can be taken as uncontestable fact that France is in Europe, or that the A1 runs from London to somewhere up North, that default people are superior and morally good, and everyone else is clearly inferior and brought it upon themselves.

That's impartiality for you.

Aside

The BBC gets a lot of criticism from the right-wing Politicians¹ for being too left-wing, and a lot of criticism from left-wing Politicians for being too right-wing. This is taken by centrist Politicians to show that clearly it is impartial.

Again, since the battle between right-wing and left-wing Politics is for which bunch of mostly-default people should be in charge, that's hardly surprising.

¹ I use the capital P to distinguish "the mostly-default people who are thought of as involved in politics" from the much larger set of people who - "the personal is political" - are actually involved in politics.

Apologies for unchecked privilege

[trigger warning for ablist language]

As eateroftrees and others point out, using X-phobia to describe a type of discrimination is appropriative and disablist in its own right. Privilege and intentional hatred, not a disability, is the cause of the discrimination.

I apologise for not realising this far sooner. In retrospect, of course, it's incredibly obvious - just as racist behaviour is not "crazy" or "blackphobic", discrimination against LGB and/or trans people is heterosexist and/or cissexist, not "homophobic" or "transphobic".

I've removed the problematic labels from older posts and replaced them with the suggested alternatives, so new posts and the label list won't contain this language. (Older posts will still contain X-phobia constructions in the body: there doesn't appear to be a way to do a search and replace on every post - again, my apologies for it being there in the first place)

Semi-Equality Act: EU directives, and views from the Minister

So, the message from the Equalities Office referred to four European Directives, claiming that they meant that the harassment protections were necessary to implement EU law - with the nasty implication, of course, that if it weren't for those directives, it would be legal to harass people in a racist, sexist or disablist fashion, provided that it didn't constitute direct or indirect discrimination.

• 2000/43/EC: article 2, paragraph 3 defines harassment as a type of discrimination, and article 3 sets out various areas in which it applies.
• 2000/78/EC: article 2, paragraph 3 again defines harassment, with articles 1 and 3 setting out that this applies to age, sexuality, disability and religion or belief, in contexts relating to employment only.
• 2002/73/EC: this is similar to 2000/78/EC but for gender discrimination and harassment in employment. It states that sexual harassment is to be considered harassment and that marital and family status cannot be used as 'covers' for discrimination.
• 2006/54/EC (PDF): extends 2002/73/EC slightly.

The Equalities Office's claim is that because of these EU regulations, the prohibitions on harassment are not redundant as they implement EU regulations.

However, the Equalities Act rightly goes beyond the requirements of the EU regulations - it forbids harassment on the grounds of gender, age and disability in many contexts other than employment.

There seems little point in raising this with the Equalities Office itself, however. It's fairly clear that their job is to defend the existing law as if it were perfect, until such time as it is changed by Parliament into another perfect form. To an extent that's even a reasonable requirement to place upon the civil service, but it does mean that getting answers to "why" questions out of them is near-impossible.

Meanwhile, the Equalities Minister, Lynne Featherstone MP (Lib Dem, Hornsey & Wood Green) was celebrating the Equality Act becoming active on 1 October. There were several comments criticising the reversals in equality for trans people that the Act caused, which she promised to look into, while expressing doubt (like her office: in opposition to what the Act's own text and Explanatory Notes says) that the Act actually would have that effect. Hopefully there she'll get some good legal advice and be in a position to repeal¹ some of those exemptions, which are designed to allow the provision of a service for transphobic individuals at the expense of trans people.

On the harassment exemptions her comment was:

Yes – Evan [Harris, then-MP for Oxford West & Abingdon] and I fought very hard over the differential discrimination in terms of LGB at school – and Labour took no notice. EU is looking at this too at the moment. Will say more when I know more.

So it looks like the EU route may be the best way to get these provisions repealed¹, though not a particularly quick one.

¹ Her Conservative coalition partners are planning a "Great Repeal Bill", though repealing clauses of legislation for the purpose of strengthening it - especially equality legislation - is probably not what they have in mind. Still, once that bill gets to first reading I'll suggest it.

The Equality Act: it's supposed to be flawed.

I got a reply to the letter to the Equalities Office that I sent back in June, asking for the rationale and more details behind some of the unpleasant exceptions in the Equality Act 2010.

Here's the reply

Thank you for your email of 8 July 2010 regarding the Equality Act 2010. I am sorry you have had to wait so long for a reply.

I will respond to the questions in the order you raised them.

Sexual orientation: section 12

We have been provided with no evidence that there is a need for people who identify as asexual to be specifically protected by discrimination law. The Equality Act will, however, provide protection to asexual people who are directly discriminated against because they are perceived to be heterosexual, gay or bisexual.

Dual discrimination: section 14

We have carefully considered which protected characteristics should be included in a claim for dual discrimination. We consider that we have adopted an approach to implementation which is practical, provides sufficient protection and does not impose a disproportionate burden. We are not aware of evidence that claims of discrimination which involve marriage and civil partnership or pregnancy and maternity are failing for lack of a remedy for dual discrimination.

As you may be aware, Ministers are currently considering how certain provisions of the Act, including the dual discrimination provisions, can be implemented in the best way for business and for others with rights and responsibilities under the Act.

Harassment: section 26

Discrimination because of marriage and civil partnership is prohibited in order to address very narrow circumstances in which some employers still adopt policies which may discriminate against married people or civil partners. We have no evidence of people being harassed at work because they are married or in a civil partnership. With regard to pregnancy and maternity, any harassment that a woman is subjected to will be covered by the protection against harassment related to sex. Specific protection against harassment related to these protected characteristics is therefore unnecessary and would add no value.

Harassment: sections 29(8); 33(6), 34(4), 35(4), 85(10); and 103(2)

The above-mentioned sections of the Act disapply the definition of harassment at section 26. This disapplication however does not mean that a person is left unprotected, but they are protected differently. Where harassment is not prohibited explicitly - as is the case for sexual orientation and religion or belief outside work - protection will be provided through the provisions prohibiting direct discrimination by subjecting a person to a detriment. Detriment can include unwanted conduct that violates a person's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that person.

Harassment: section 85(10)

Section 85 of the Act deals with the treatment of schoolchildren and there would be no practical benefit to extending harassment protection for children in schools. We believe that the real problem in schools is bullying between pupils, so what we need to focus on is putting a stop to bullying by children of other children. Extending protection against harassment related to gender reassignment, religion or belief, or sexual orientation to children in schools will not do this, since the relationship between one child and another is not caught by discrimination law.

In any situation that we can envisage, it would be unlawful for anyone working in a school to bully a pupil because of their sexual orientation, gender reassignment or religion or belief. And if a teacher were to ignore or condone such bullying of pupils, it would be unlawful discrimination.

General Qualifications Bodies: section 95

As mentioned above, protection against marriage and civil partnership discrimination applies to employment only.

Conclusion

I feel it is important to make it clear that we consulted fully and widely on our proposals for what is now the Equality Act 2010. As a result we believe we have identified where harmful discrimination is occurring. The Act aims to tackle such discrimination where there is evidence that it occurs and where legislation is considered to be a proportionate response to that problem.

I hope this is helpful.

As I said earlier, I could understand that if the act was structured in such a way that provides no protection except that which is explicitly stated to apply, that it might be easy through privilege to accidentally miss out some situations, and I now add to that that it might be considered understandable in the interests of brevity and clarity not to cover forms of discrimination where there is little evidence that they occur.

However, this Act in many cases sets out blanket protections and then puts forwards exceptions to them. To create an exception adds to the length of the Act and reduces from its clarity. Conversely, leaving the exception out is harmless. If no-one ever does discriminate in that way on those grounds, then no cases will be brought. Because of the way the Act is written, the argument against cluttering up the statute books with unnecessary laws doesn't really apply.

This is an argument against including eye colour in the list of protected characteristics (a characteristic I am personally very glad does not need protection in practice), not an argument for explicitly excluding protected characteristics from certain forms of protection.

I find their reasoning that harassment is always direct discrimination to be highly implausible - if it was automatically direct discrimination, there would be no need for the harassment clause at all. Furthermore, an explicit exemption could be taken (and elsewhere in the Act obviously is!) to override the general case. For example, the Act allows people casting for a play to discriminate based on gender or race where the script requires it (the Explanatory Notes give the example of Shakespeare's Othello). A white woman would be treated less favourably than a black man by most directors casting Othello, and this is a rare form of reasonable discrimination, and there is therefore wording in the Act to allow this despite it meeting the basic definition for direct discrimination.

Similarly, I'm fairly sure that the exclusion of asexual people owes more to the wording being constructed by people who hadn't considered their existence than any deliberate assessment that asexual people are not subjected to sufficient discrimination that they need legal protection.

So, here's my follow-up letter:

Thank you for your reply, which mostly answers my questions. I have a further questions regarding the harassment exemptions, where I remain unconvinced that the exemptions are as harmless as you claim.

It seems to me that the harassment protections must provide some additional protection in some case over and above that provided by the various other parts of the Act, or there would be both no need to include them in the Act and no need to deliberately place particular exemptions into the Act.

The explanatory notes for section 85, for instance, distinguish between direct discrimination and harassment. The example given for harassment could equally apply to homophobic comments made by teachers (even if not directed at any particular pupil) but the exception suggests that they did not.

For a real example: a GCSE biology teacher when discussing genetics refers to a particular genetic pattern which research suggests has been connected to homosexuality, describing its effects as "makes you a [homophobic slur]" while making an associated hand gesture. The teacher does not otherwise treat gay students less favourably (not least because no-one in the class is "out" and so he has no way to know)

A pupil might reasonably feel that this has the effect described in 26.1.b.ii but would I think find it very difficult to claim direct or indirect discrimination if this was the only form of discriminatory behaviour the teacher carried out. Nevertheless this behaviour could be extremely harmful - especially as a pattern of behaviour at the school - and I can see no reason not to forbid it just as equivalent behaviour based on gender, race or disability is forbidden.

It seems rather implausible to me - given that every other exception in the Act is clearly intended to set out situations in which the general protections of the Act do not apply - that the protections of the harassment clause remain even when that clause is specifically excepted.

It seems clear that the intent of the Act, both in the wording of the Act and as expressed in the Explanatory Notes, is that harassment, provided that it is not accompanied by less favourable treatment of other forms, is legal in these specific cases.

My further questions based on this are:

If it is the case that any behaviour constituting harassment would be unlawful because of another part of the act, in the cases where there are exemptions, then why are the exemptions so inconsistent. Specifically:

1) Why is there a harassment exception for sexuality and religion for every matter except employment, where there is not? If it makes no difference to the level of protection, only the route taken to guarantee it, why is employment different?

2) Similarly, why is there only a harassment exception for gender identity / transphobia in certain cases relating to school pupils but not in other cases?

3) Similarly, why is there (rightly) no harassment exception for gender, race or disability, if it really has no functional effect on the legality or otherwise of discriminatory actions?

Additionally:

4) Does the Equalities Office have legal advice that suggests that the harassment clauses are essentially entirely redundant, and if so, could you provide me with a copy of this advice?

It'll be interesting to see what they reply, especially for the fourth part. My assessment of the Act as a whole as far less useful than it should be remains unchanged.

What happened next.

A few notes on what's happening now:

[trigger warnings]

• I got a reply to the letter I sent about the National Child Measurement Programme letters. No surprises: the government will keep doing what it has been doing, whether it makes sense or not. I've followed up to ask for more details of the research they're using to justify their decisions.
• A YouGov poll asks about opinions on rape defendant anonymity. A majority are in favour (considerably fewer women than men are in favour) but without a second question about how they feel for anonymity for non-rape defendants it's hard to tell why this is. The question wording really doesn't make clear the limited extent of anonymity (that it's only limited reporting restrictions, not that it wouldn't actually make any difference), which also makes things hard to tell.
• From PinkNews, the BBC trust thinks that a non-apology is sufficient for its posting of the question "Should homosexuals face execution?".
• When looking at the mass of exceptions to the Equality Act, I somehow forgot to look through the Schedules (many of which are titled "Exceptions", which should have been a big hint). There are a whole mass of further unhelpful exceptions here, and Zoe Brain and Helen G have highlighted several relating to gender reassignment.

Meanwhile, Jake Berry MP (Conservative, Rossendale & Darwen) asks if Parliament can get a cat. It will be investigated, apparently.

Writing to the government

Some letters I've sent recently regarding recent issues. Specifically:

• Via Goriler of 3B, a letter asking that funding for a rape crisis centre not be cut. Please, if you have time, send your own as well, especially if you live in or near London.
• A letter to the Health Minister asking that they stop the letters accusing children of being too heavy.
• A letter to the Equalities Office to see if they have any idea what these exceptions are for.

Letters below.

[trigger warning]

As usual, please feel free to use these for inspiration for your own letters, though remember that letters in your own words are more powerful than copies of other letters, if you have the time and energy to do so.

Regarding RASASC

I sent this by email to mike.fisher@croydon.gov.uk.

Dear Mr Fisher,

You have recently announced that the funding for RASASC, the Croydon Rape Crisis Centre, will be cut by 27,000 pounds a year. This is a significant amount for a rape crisis centre, and it is likely to lead to the centre being unable to support hundreds of rape victims a year.

As the only rape crisis centre for the London area, the service it provides to victims is invaluable, and the effects of reducing its funding will spread well outside your own Council's boundaries. By running a helpline, supporting survivors of rape through counselling and through legal assistance at trials, it not only provides a vital public service, but provides a highly cost-effective way for your Council to support victims of crime.

The government have promised to improve the funding provided centrally for rape crisis centres, but it is not clear when - or even if - this promise will be fulfilled. Until then, it is necessary that others such as your Council play their part in keeping these services open. With thousands of rapes occurring in London each year, RASASC's ability to help additional victims is crucial.

Please restore RASASC's funding.

Yours sincerely,

[me]

Letters regarding children's weight

I sent this using the contact form on the Department of Health's website.

Dear Andrew Lansley MP, Health Secretary

I understand that you are looking for programmes run by the NHS and other health providers within your remit that could be reduced or eliminated without impacting the quality of front-line service.

I would like to suggest the sending of letters regarding the weight category of children, which is carried out as part of the National Child Measurement Programme. While the general aims of that programme are not in question, and the statistical data it gathers is perhaps worth much more to your department than the cost of gathering it, this particular application is not a good use of limited resources.

There have been a few reported cases - for example one last February reported at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/8523707.stm and one recently reported at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leeds/10505584.stm - where letters telling parents that their child is overweight and warning of dire consequences, have been sent out to the parents of children who were physically active, eat healthily, and nevertheless happen to be marginally above the guidelines set out by the previous government for a person's required weight.

It is extremely likely that these cases are only the tip of the iceberg and there are many more letters being sent out in similar circumstances. The mechanism used to determine who gets the letters guarantees this.

Firstly, the letters are sent out based on Body Mass Index. This measure was developed as a way of providing a statistical estimate across a wide population of adults. It has never been appropriate to use as an individual measure, has not necessarily coped well with the increase in average height over the century since its introduction, fails to account for normal racial and sexual variations between individuals, and other forms of normal genetic variation, fails to distinguish between fat and muscle mass, and certainly was never intended to apply to children, whose shapes vary considerably and rapidly as they grow, especially in early puberty when the second set of measurements for the NCMP takes place.

Secondly, the children in regard of whom these letters are being sent are at a young and impresssionable age. It may have been the aim of the previous government in introducing these letters to encourage healthy eating and exercise habits to start early. In practice, of course, the effect can be quite the opposite - the child in the second article above refused to eat their meal when they discovered that - as is of course natural and desirable for growing children - their weight had increased since the NCMP measurement. This is something that could very easily turn into a serious eating disorder.

Thirdly, the science regarding weight is inexact. Multiple research studies - Orpana et al 2009 in Canada (doi:10.1038/oby.2009.191), Lenz et al 2009 in Germany (doi:10.3238/arztebl.2009.0641), or the NHANES studies in the USA (Flegal et al 2005) have shown that - at least in Western industrial societies - the mortality risk of people with a BMI in the 25-35 range is not statistically different to that of those in the current government-recommended 18-25 range (indeed, there may be a marginally lower risk for those in the so-called "overweight" 25-30 range). This is the research for adults, suggesting that the BMI guidelines set out by governments for them may not be correct. There is no similar research I know of for children - because, regardless of their weight, children very rarely die of weight-associated conditions other than eating disorders - but it seems very unlikely that the BMI guidelines set for them are correct either.

Fourthly, even if increased weight is correlated with an increase in risk for various health conditions, and even if that correlation is causative, which has generally not been shown, there remains no reliable long-term method for reducing weight in the long term. The few 5-year follow-up studies that have been done show that dieting is ineffective. Exercise certainly improves general health, but does not appear to cause weight loss. Early indications are that the surgeries currently being trialled have a greater chance of causing early death than any of the health conditions associated with above-average weight.

As you have gathered, I would like to see a general move away from the overemphasis of the crude BMI measure, and from the excessive conflation of weight and health carried out by previous governments, in general.

For now, however, I would appreciate it if the money used to produce and send these letters was reallocated into other more useful areas of your department's activities.

Yours sincerely,

[me]

Equality Act exceptions

And finally this one to the Equalities Office general enquiries address, to see what they know. I'll post up the response if I get one.

Dear Government Equalities Office,

I have a number of questions regarding the Equality Act 2010, that are not answered by the explanatory notes provided. Could you please provide me with the Goverment Equalities Office's current opinions on these matters.

The wording of Section 12 is not completely clear to me. While the application of legislation would ultimately be a matter for the courts, does the Government Equalities Office believe that this section would protect those people who identify as asexual (i.e. they are not sexually interested in people of any gender) as well as the bisexual, heterosexual and homosexual people that it more obviously protects?

In the areas of dual discrimination (Section 14), the protected characteristics of "marriage" and of "pregnancy" are excluded. Does this mean that an organisation that did not in general discriminate against people who were married, and did not in general discriminate against women, would still be allowed to discriminate against married women? If so, could you outline a situation where it would be desirable for this to be legal for an organisation to do?

The same characteristics are excluded from Section 26 (harassment). Could you outline a situation where the harassment (as defined in 26b) of a person or persons due to their marital status or pregnancy would be desirable, please?

In Sections 29.8, 33.6, 34.4, 35.4, 85.10, and 103.2, sexual orientation and relgious belief are excluded from the Section 26 harassment prohibition. For each of these situations, could you explain why it might be both necessary and desirable for a relevant organisation to carry out harassing behaviour against LGB people or people of a particular religion?

Section 85.10 also allows harassment on the grounds of gender identity. Again, please could you outline a situation where this is desirable?

Section 85.10 applies to the admission and treatment of primary and secondary pupils. Section 91, which covers the treatment of students in Further and Higher Education, does not contain a similar exception. Could you explain why it is not necessary for tertiary education providers to be allowed to harass LGBT applicants, given that this is apparently necessary for primary and secondary education providers?

Section 95 states that the chapter on General Qualifications Bodies does not apply to marriage or civil partnership. In what case would a qualifications body wish to do make use of this (for example by withdrawing qualifications from people when they were married) and why is it required?

With regard to the above questions, if the Government Equalities Office cannot provide an example of a situation in which a particular exception would be desirable, could you tell me if there are any current plans by the government to remove that exception.

Thank you

Yours faithfully

[me]

Why is this still legal? The Equality-on-a-good-day Act

Why is this even legal? According to the BBC:

Residents of Firhall, built in the early Noughties on the outskirts of Nairn in the Highlands, must abide by certain rules. The deeds for their properties prohibit the keeping of ducks, rabbits, pigeons and bees. Households are allowed to have one dog - but controversially no resident children. To own a house in Firhall you must be over 45 years old. Grandchildren and the children of friends can visit and stay, but there are even limits on how often this happens.

It's not the only thing that's surprisingly legal, either. So much for the grand claims that the Equality Act would protect those most vulnerable to discrimination.

Looking at the Equality Act 2010, this appears to be entirely legal:

4 [...] The following characteristics are protected characteristics [...] age [...]

Part 4: Premises [...] 32.1 [...] This Part does not apply to the following protected characteristics [...] age

Looking at section 17, the terms would be unenforcable for the first 26 weeks of a child's life if their mother was already there, but that's all. (Of course, it would be relatively rare for a mother over the age of 45 to be living there, but not impossible). Otherwise, they seem to be within the exceptions the law provides.

Another unpleasant exception in this section, that I found in my "how is this possibly legal" search - you are allowed to harass people occupying or applying to occupy (as tenants) on the grounds of their sexual orientation or religion.

There's a similar but slightly broader exception in the Education section (which only applies to schools, not to FE colleges and Universities¹), the same exception in the Provision of Services section, and in the membership of associations section.

So Labour and the Lib Dems get an LGB-friendly reputation for supporting this legislation (the Lib Dems, to be fair to them, did attempt to amend some of these bits out), which mostly seems to consist of "You must supply these services to LGB² people, but you can '[create] an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for [them]' as much as you like in the process."

Additionally, neither "marriage and civil partnership" nor "pregnancy and maternity" are characteristics to which the harassment section applies at all.

There were some good bits in the Equality Act that hadn't been there before, such as the pay audits and the recognition of the existence of intersectional discrimination, and it's not as if by having these exceptions it was removing protections that previously existed, but it still hardly deserves the name. It's not as if this was a drafting error and an unnoticed loophole was left in until it was too late to take it out (though that, in its casual disregard, would be bad enough) - because of the way the Act is worded, someone had to specifically insert these exceptions.

Additionally, you can use these terms to push a lot of other things through. The Act doesn't say how wide an age group has to be, so you can legally say "Sorry, I don't rent to people who were born on 3rd April 1972 between 2am and 2:30am", and provided you then apply that rule consistently to later default tenants, you have a perfectly legal reason³ not to rent to any non-default person you like.

Other things that are entirely legal under the Act and really shouldn't be (or at least, if there is a real need for an exception, it should be the exception that is legal, not the rule):

• Pregnancy and maternity, and marriage/civil partnership, are excluded from the intersectional discrimination laws. So discrimination against all married people is disallowed, and discrimination against all women is disallowed, but discrimination only against married women is apparently fine (barring explicit exceptions elsewhere in legislation, of course)
• Refusing to provide a service to married and civilly-partnered people. (You can't, at least, just pick one and sneak in some homophobia) Similarly for single people.
• Same things for premises
• Same things for education (yes, your university can refuse to provide an education for single and/or unofficially partnered people, and I have no idea why, and likewise a qualifications board can legally withdraw qualifications from people when they get married/civilly-partnered, though what possible reason⁴ they'd have to want to I don't know)
• Additionally, the exception for harassment in schools applies to gender identity as well as the sadly usual pair of sexual orientation and religion
• The exceptions for what can't be required as a "reasonable adjustment" for disabled people are extensive.

The only area that doesn't seem to have masses of exceptions is employment. I may have missed some other exceptions, since there are a lot and the phrasing used for them varies.

¹ Yes, seriously. Apparently homophobia in admissions is essential, and banning it would have terrible consequences for the rights of bigots at the primary and secondary stage, but at the tertiary level the rights of bigots are unimportant. This makes even less sense than usual.

² It's not at all clear to me whether any of the Act applies at all to asexual people. It can be read either way. The explanatory note suggests that it doesn't apply to them, but I think a good lawyer could probably convince a judge that it did.

³ Disclaimer: not legal advice. If you try this argument you deserve everything you get.

⁴ "We've been homophobic for centuries and we're not going to stop now" is not a good reason, nor one that governments should be supporting people in, but you can at least understand which group of bigots lobbied to have that exception included. Some of these it's not at all clear why anyone would ask for them.

Is the aim to be a fatally unwelcoming country?

[trigger warning]

Via Shakesville, the news that yet another asylum seeker has had their application refused, on the apparent grounds that "will be executed because of their sexuality" is not sufficient persecution.

There is a petition to sign.

It is also possible to contact the Home Office and the Home Secretary Alan Johnson directly, even though the general election means that there are currently no MPs. Contact details are on the Home Office website.

My letter to them follows. You may find the government's information on UK asylum policy useful when drafting your own.

Dear Home Secretary Alan Johnson,

The asylum decisions made in the case of Kiana Firouz, a lesbian actress from Iran, have recently been brought to my attention. It is my understanding that the Home Office has rejected her asylum request and appeals.

According to the UK Asylum web pages,

"Asylum is protection given by a country to someone who is fleeing persecution in their own country"

and

"The UK also adheres to the European Convention on Human Rights, which prevents us sending someone to a country where there is a real risk they will be exposed to torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

In Iran, the penalty for homosexuality is 100 lashes for the first three offences, followed by execution for a fourth offence. All of these surely count as "torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" and the strong possibly of execution surely must count as "persecution"

Returning Kiana Firouz to Iran is likely to lead to her death, and this decision seems to have been taken despite it contradicting both the European Convention on Human Rights, the Home Office's own statements on the criteria for accepting an asylum application, and the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which states:

"No Contracting State shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of [...] membership of a particular social group."

I ask you to please reverse this decision in the case of Kiana Firouz, and to take steps to ensure that the UK never in future abandons any person to be executed, imprisoned or otherwise persecuted on the grounds of their sexual orientation.

Yours sincerely,
[me]

Can the BBC be trusted with a web page?

No.

[trigger warning]

(via Liberal Conspiracy) The BBC Have Your Say forums currently have as a question:

Should Uganda debate gay execution?

Should homosexuals face execution? Yes, we accept it is a stark and disturbing question. But this is the reality behind an Anti-Homosexuality Bill being debated on Friday by the Ugandan parliament which would see some homosexual offences punishable by death.

There are many legitimate questions to ask about the current situation in Uganda. This is not, no matter how many disclaimers are added, one of them.

You can complain to the BBC about this. My complaint letter is:

I can not understand how you can think this is a legitimate question to be asking. There are plenty of reasonable questions that could be asked about the proposed legislation in Uganda, but "should homosexuals face execution?" is not one of them.

There is no way to ask that question that does not imply that "yes" is a legitimate answer. Your "house rules" for Have Your Say contain "Do not post messages that are unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, homophobic or racially offensive." - when the question itself meets several of those, it sets an unacceptable example.

I expect a full and sincere apology from the BBC for this, and details of what steps are being taken to ensure that similar questions are not asked in future.

Update, 18 December

The BBC claims it has done nothing wrong, and then after that fails to stop complaints, issues a non-apology. I'm aware that the BBC considers non-apologies completely adequate. The National Union of Journalists has also come in on the "mass murder is unacceptable" side of the debate.

I got a reply to my complaint pointing me to those posts, claiming to "understand the concerns I have raised". My reply to that was:

[Neither post] acknowledges at all that:

• it was not an appropriate question to ask
• the problem was not merely with the original headline but with the entire concept for the question

Nor does it provide an apology beyond the "we're sorry if anyone might possibly have been offended, but we're still right", or describe what steps will be taken to prevent a recurrence of this sort of question.

I find it an utterly unsatisfactory response to the complaint that does not make me believe that you "understand the concerns [I] have raised".

Reply from MP

My MP got back to me on the attempts to get the Pope to visit. The reply was (trimming out header and footer)

I support the invitation to the Pope. While I do not agree with many of the Pope's views, we should focus on entering into dialogue, not censor what he has to say. I believe a Papal visit to the North East would help also to raise the region's profile.

The point about raising the region's profile is fair enough - the region is not doing well economically, and more tourism and investment would help with some the severe social problems this is causing. However, there are plenty of other well-known public figures with less problematic views who could also be invited. If they have been, there's been no public announcement of this.

As far as censoring goes... he's the Pope. He's the head of the largest branch of the world's most popular religion, and is unlikely to have trouble getting his opinions out (the over-emphasis on his opinions is a large part of the problem). I find it very difficult to believe that any dialogue will be entered into on these subjects if he does come up to Durham: I suspect a condition of his visit might be that there are security arrangements in place to avoid such questions.

There's quite a large difference between censoring someone and not explicitly inviting them to say it here. I know my MP knows this, of course.

The semi-Equality Bill: lobbying for improvement

Two amendments to improve the Equality Bill for trans people have been put forward. Please encourage your MP to support them. A description of the issue, and model letters, via Bird of Paradox. You can write to your own MP using WriteToThem, though only if you're using your own letter rather than one of the model letters - please contact justfillingintheblanks@googlemail.com if you do so that they can keep track of the number of people lobbying.

The narrow definition of 'trans' as people who are, have, or will undergo gender reassignment is seemingly a habit of this government, so the more people saying it's wrong the better.

The explicit omission of sexual orientation and gender identity from the reasons schools are not allowed to discriminate or harass is unbelievable. I could understand - though not accept - if anti-discrimination legislation forgot to include those as reasons. In this case, it includes language specifically to exclude those as protections. This is not a case of "not having thought about it" but of "having thought about it and decided to do it anyway".

The letter I sent to my MP follows. They're not the promptest to reply to these, so I expect I'll have to check the voting records for an answer, but I hope their office is organised enough to at least get it to them before the 3rd reading debate:

Dear [MP]

The Equality Bill currently in the Commons may well be the last opportunity for several years to strengthen the protections available for groups who are currently the subject of severe discrimination.

There are two amendments to this bill which significantly strengthen the protection it provides to trans people (transgender, transsexual, and other gender variant people), that I would appreciate your support for in Commons votes.

Firstly, for Clause 7:

Currently, in Clause 7, "gender reassignment" is a protected characteristic. A significant proportion of trans people, perhaps the majority, would not be covered by this, as they are not intending to go through the medical process of gender reassignment. Additionally, people who do not identify as either male or female (regardless of the gender assigned at birth) are not covered by this terminology, for example, some intersex people.

The Scottish Parliament passed anti-harassment legislation earlier this year which was much more broadly defined with respect to trans people than the Equality Bill's Clause 7. Having particular forms of harassment legal in England and Wales which Scotland has rightly outlawed is an inconsistency likely to cause significant problems for many people.

The recent Joint Committee on Human Rights report recommends widening this definition on pages 25 to 26 of the report, available from http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200809/jtselect/jtrights/169/169.pdf, by using the term "gender identity" instead. Amendments NC12(3) to (5) make this change, and I ask you to please support these amendments and encourage your colleagues to do likewise.

Secondly, in the section on education, Clause 82(10) excludes "gender reassignment" and "sexual orientation" from the scope of Clause 82, which requires that the responsible body of a school not:

• discriminate or victimise in admissions
• discriminate or victimise in provision of education
• harass the pupil

Homophobic and transphobic harassment and bullying is a severe problem within schools, with the majority of LGB and gender variant pupils reporting experience of homophobic and/or transphobic bullying and harassment, in some cases from the school staff as well as from other pupils. In many of these cases, the school has failed to respond adequately to the problem.

This harassment and bullying can cause severe problems, including truancy and academic failure, low self-esteem and mental health problems, and even self-mutilation and suicide. The suicide rate for LGB and gender variant children is significantly higher than that for children in general, and this is a major cause of that.

Page 44 of the Joint Committee report states:

We therefore recommend that protection from harassment be available on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools using the narrower conjunctive definition as there is a "captive population" and vulnerable population at risk and there is an established problem of bullying and harassment in this area. We also recommend that protection from harassment be available on the grounds of sexual orientation using the narrower conjunctive definition in the provision of public services as those who use public services may also be "captive populations" and vulnerable.

Please support any amendments that would remove these exemptions, to give LGB and gender variant pupils the same protections that BAME pupils, female pupils and disabled pupils have already been granted.

The Equality Bill is a generally strong piece of legislation, that I am pleased to have seen the government introduce and I hope that it will become law before the next general election. As the most important piece of equality legislation in recent years, it needs to provide comprehensive protections as the next opportunity to improve them may be some time away.

Trans people have long had little protection in law, something which the government has recently begun to rectify with legislation such as the Gender Recognition Act. Please take the opportunity to make significant further progress now.

Sexuality and hate speech

The BBC reports that the government will be taking anti-hate-speech legislation to a fifth vote in the Commons, to remove so-called "free speech" protections that the Lords keep putting back.

The fourth time this came up in the Commons, the vote was almost entirely on party lines: Labour and Lib Dems in favour, Conservatives opposed. There were a few Labour MPs and 1 Lib Dem MP against it. The votes in the Lords were on a similar basis.

The nature of this debate is that the Lords can keep putting them back in and the Commons can keep taking them out more-or-less indefinitely. The principle that the Lords do not have the right to indefinitely overrule the Commons is in the Parliament Act, but this sort of shorter-term delay is allowed and probably sufficient to block the bill. The question then is whether the Lords is willing to block the bill as a whole, which they are presumably mostly happy with, over this small bit of it, and whether the Commons is willing to take that risk or just abandon this amendment to pass the rest of the bill.

As it happens, the Commons backed down first. LGB rights are not sufficiently important to them to risk the Lords blocking the bill as a whole.

As for what was being argued over here, it's quite complicated to determine, because the Statute Law database hasn't been completely updated, so the relevant bits of legislation are scattered all over the place, and the media doesn't go into enough detail. I'll try to summarise:

• The Public Order Act 1986 contains Section 3 which makes creating racial hatred illegal.
• The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 inserted this amendment to the Public Order Act 1986, making religious hatred (which includes hatred over a lack of religious belief) illegal to stir up.
• The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 modified this insertion to give sexual orientation equivalent protection to religious preferences.
• In the religious hatred section, there is the language: (section 29J) "Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.". Summarised: you can insult religions and belief systems as much as you like, but you can't attempt to get people to hate them. You can also try to convert people.
• When the sexuality hatred amendment was made, an equivalent section (29JA) "In this Part, for the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred." was added.
• The Commons would now like to remove 29JA. The Lords would like to keep it.

The Lords/Conservative argument is that removing that part, while not removing 29J, creates an inconsistency between the two forms of incitement to hatred which they do not wish to support. (They also, presumably, think 29J is good, since they're not proposing to remove that). They also don't think it's a problem, or if they do, they haven't mentioned it, that a similar provision to 29J or 29JA isn't in the original racial hatred language.

This might be clearer with a table:

Legislation	Groups	Behavior or written or spoken words must be	Exceptions "for the avoidance of doubt"
Public Order Act 1986	Races, colours, nationalities, citizenships, national or ethnic origin	Threatening, abusive or insulting	None
Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006	Religions, beliefs, or lack thereof	Threatening	Abuse, insults, conversion explicitly allowed, provided it isn't threatening.
Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008	Sexual orientation (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Het)	Threatening	Criticism, conversion explicitly allowed, defined as not threatening.

The debate is whether the highlighted table cell should be changed to 'None'

Even with this amendment, the protections against sexuality-based hate speech are considerably weaker than the protections against racist hate speech. You can be abusive and insulting about LGB people, provided you somehow do this without being threatening, without breaking the law.

The clauses, despite the Lords/Conservatives stance on them, are not particularly equivalent to start with. The religious hatred one states that insults, abuse and conversion, in the absence of a threat, are legal. The sexuality-based hatred clause states that criticism of sexual conduct and practices and calls to refrain from them² are not in themselves threatening or intended to stir up hatred.

Of course, they are, no matter how politely they're phrased, because you can't say that people shouldn't be LGB without it being a threat to those who are, because of the high levels of violence from other people who also say that, and because it's a denial of a basic part of someone's identity. There are good reasons that no similar clause is in the racial hatred legislation³, and these reasons apply to the sexuality-based hatred legislation too.

These clauses are not equivalent to start with. The Lords added it to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, and the Commons backed down rather than lose the rest of the bill. Yet again, the Lords have delayed the bill up until the end of the Parliamentary session, and the Commons have been unwilling to see if they were bluffing about killing the bill entirely.

There won't be another chance for a while, since the next Parliamentary session will be a short one, truncated by the inevitable general election. At the moment, it looks likely that there won't be the Commons majority necessary to try again after that happens.

As an aside, from the BBC article: "But some comedians have criticised the plans, saying they could stifle creativity and even lead to the threat of people being arrested over jokes." If your 'joke' counts as homophobic hate speech, it wasn't very creative, since that sort of joke has been around for centuries. If it was so hate-filled that it gets you arrested, then it probably wasn't funny either. Going after easy targets and relying on prevalent stereotypes is not "creative humour", it's unwarranted laziness. Since abuse and insults are still allowed, and since I presume comedy doesn't intend to actually threaten people, I doubt many acts will need to change. The presence of the racial hatred legislation, which is far broader, hasn't prevented racist jokes being made by comedians, after all.

¹ I use a restricted initialism because the amendment being debated doesn't address transphobic statements or those made about gender identity. As far as I can tell, that is still legal. The language added in 2008 defines sexual orientation "whether towards persons of the same sex, the opposite sex or both", so asexual people are also still legal targets for hatred. As far as I can tell, since the Public Order Act seems to be the place for hate speech legislation to live, you can also threaten people for their gender more generally, any disabilities they have, or their weight, with complete impunity. Comedians relying on bigotry for their act needn't worry about running out of material any time soon. Everyone else probably should worry.

² Pre-emptive note: there is nothing at all in this legislation, with or without 29JA, that would prohibit criticism or prevention of non-consensual sexual activities. Take that slippery slope elsewhere.

³ While the racial hatred legislation is stronger, it's fairly clearly still not strong enough.

They're inviting the Pope.

A "consortium of university and religious leaders" is hoping to get Pope Benedict XVI to come to Durham as part of his planned visit to Britain. It would be the first ever visit by a Pope to the North-East, and is supported by local political leaders including Durham's MP and the County Council.

Let's file this under "things that they thought everyone would be joyously happy about because their definition of 'everyone' was lacking".

Here's the letter I wrote to my MP: [trigger warning]

You recently said, as published in the Northern Echo and elsewhere,

"The possibility of a papal visit to Durham and to Durham Cathedral, a site of unparalleled beauty, would be of tremendous benefit to the North East. I'm sure the people of Durham would feel great pride in welcoming Pope Benedict and the world's media. Durham is a very important ecumenical centre including our cathedral and the university and it would be wonderful if the Pope was able to visit. I have written to the Foreign Secretary to encourage him to promote Durham as a possible site for a Papal visit and I look forward to hearing more about the Pope's plans in the coming weeks and months."

Pope Benedict XVI, as you are aware, has strong views on a range of political and social issues. For example, he is strongly against the use of contraception (including claiming that the use of condoms in Africa has made the AIDS epidemic on that continent worse), strongly against abortion (including giving his support to the excommunication of the doctors who allowed a 9 year old rape victim to obtain an abortion for a pregnancy that would otherwise have killed her), has referred to homosexual relationships and transgender identities as being against nature, and disapproves of men or women who step outside their "traditional" gender roles.

Inviting him to visit Durham as a high-profile honoured guest gives the implicit support of Durham to his views. Durham has previously been supportive of the LGBT community, recently hosting an International Day Against Homophobia conference at County Hall. I find it very difficult to reconcile this stated support with extending an invitation to someone who actively promotes homophobia and transphobia.

The consequences of homophobia and transphobia can be extremely severe. There have been vigils across the UK within the last week to remember the victims of violence. This October, Ian Baynham in London and Andrea Waddell in Brighton lost their lives as a result of homophobic and transphobic hatred. To invite Pope Benedict to Durham is to condone the views that led to their deaths.

I would feel no pride in welcoming Pope Benedict, and I feel that whatever temporary media attention Durham benefits from as a result could never outweigh the message this would send about how important Durham really considers the lives of its LGBT citizens, women needing abortions, and other groups that he wishes to marginalise or punish.

I hope that you will consider the message that inviting the Pope to Durham would send, withdraw your support for this invitiation, and encourage the other groups involved in it to do likewise.

Bad science, lazy reporting, and a side order of heteronormativity

Some articles, you can read the first paragraph, or maybe the headline, and get an instant sense that it bears no relation to the real story.

So, the BBC is reporting on a recent paper in the European Journal of Operational Research. First mistake: the paper is described as being by a Bath University team. Of the five authors, only one (Fragnière, the second author), is from Bath, so this seems to be stretching the definition a bit. The others are from various Swiss institutions. So, no prizes for guessing the source of the press release.

Second mistake: the BBC says:

The researchers studied interviews of more than 1,500 couples who were married or in a serious relationship.

Five years later, they followed up 1,000 of the couples to see which had lasted.

The paper itself says:

We use data from the 1999 Swiss contemporary family survey by Widmer et al., 2003. This is a representative random sample of 1534 couples, married or unmarried, ages 18–75, residing in the three linguistic areas of Switzerland. In 2004, the authors did a follow-up study on 1074 of those couples to determine how many had separated (Widmer et al., 2006 E.D. Widmer, J. Kellerhals and R. Levy, Types of conjugal interactions and conjugal conflict: A Longitudinal Assessment, European Sociological Review 20 (2006), pp. 63–77.Widmer et al., 2006).

Someone else did that research. They used that research as a basis for their own work. There's a huge difference there.

Both the paper and the BBC, unnaturally, say "couples" when they mean "male-female couples".

The BBC then says:

They found that if the wife was five or more years older than her husband, they were more than three times as likely to divorce than if they were the same age.

If the age gap is reversed, and the man is older than the woman, the odds of marital bliss are higher.

The latter "finding" isn't statistically significant, however.

Add in a better education for the woman - Beyonce has her high school diploma, unlike husband Jay-Z - and the chances of lasting happiness improve further.

The paper really doesn't imply this at all. It finds statistically a significant difference where marriages between people at different educational levels are more likely to last the full five years than marriages between people at the same educational level. The paper doesn't give the 95% significance range, only the value and whether this is significant at the 95% level, so while the five-year stability is increased more for marriages where the female partner is more educated than for those where the male partner is more educated, both are increased above the baseline.

Back to the BBC

Those who have never divorced fare better too. But couples in which one member has been through a divorce in the past are less stable than those in which both members are divorcees.

The only case that is statistically significantly different to the baseline case they chose (neither divorced) is where the male partner is formerly divorced but the female partner is not.

That's three of the four factors discussed. Here's the fourth, which is larger than the age one and doesn't get a mention. From the paper:

Wife and husband are both Swiss (REF)    -

Wife and husband are both from Western countries    3.451*

So, yes, if you want a stable marriage, the best approach is to be Swiss and marry someone else who is Swiss. British readers of BBC news are somewhat out of luck. (Note: this result may not generalise outside Switzerland, but then, the others might not either)

This, incidentally, has all been drawn from the first three chapters of the paper. The press release, and the BBC, seem to have stayed away from the fourth chapter onwards, probably because it then starts to get very strange. There's a slight hint of it in Fragnière's quote in the BBC article.

The researchers constructed a model where they'd take the demographics from the study, and their found weightings for the data, and then swap people around between couples to produce the set of couples with the lowest predicted divorce rate. That didn't make it into the news article, did it. I bet it didn't get as far as the press release before someone in Bath Uni's marketing department thought "this sounds a bit creepy".

To create our optimization model, we assumed a central matrimonial agency with knowledge of all the characteristics of all potential mates, whose mission is to optimize romantic matches.

Okay, maybe more than a bit.

The researchers acknowledge that this swap (99.81% of the couples were found to be "incorrect") is based on a whole bunch of limitations, and might not actually give the same result in reality (they don't suggest trying it, but they do suggest using these factors to give hints in matchmaking services)

There are several practical issues related to our model that we would like to address at this point. This study refers to married, or formerly married couples, and this does not take into account the odds of initially liking each other. In a real case of “marriage agency” the quality of the allocation must also include high probability of liking each other from the beginning. Moreover, in the real world the size of the men and women sets is different, which obviously is not represented in the model since our sample solely contained information about couples. These certainly represent limitations of our model

(emphasis mine)

A major limitation that they've not addressed is the sexuality of these couples. There are probably enough bisexual people within these couples that a straightforward swap of one man for another won't always be "optimal. Of course, that would complicate the mathematical model significantly, so it's not surprising that they didn't try it, but it is disappointing (and also not surprising) that they didn't notice and/or acknowledge this as a limitation.

It's not the first painfully heteronormative study around relationships, and it won't be the last.

So yes, a study of already dubious value, combined with some even worse reporting. Specifically, I think, "copying the press release without verifying it", since the New Zealand Herald, the Daily Mail, and the Telegraph all make similar mistakes (and all use one or both of the same two celebrity couples as examples). I wonder how many of the journalists bothered to use their news organisations subscriptions to check out the original paper (since none of them mentioned the last three chapters, I guess none)