Pride and Prejudice

I was in Manchester city centre for the Pride parade on Saturday. It was a wonderful sunny day, and everyone had a smile on their face; you don't see that in Manchester every day. You've never so many loons in one place in your life. Cracking stuff.

The parade is a pretty big event these days. It takes about an hour and a half to go past. Half the city seems to be in it, with the other half watching. My better half was sprinting around the parade route with her running club, the Manchester Frontrunners, so I was in town to watch.

As you might imagine, there was a small group of Christian fruitcakes just by the Town Hall, holding placards about how God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and so on. This was never going to be popular, and they were surrounded by a phalanx of Manchester's finest. There was occasionally a chorus of boos as the more militant sections of the parade went past, but they were mainly ignored or just treated as part of the entertainment. Once the parade had gone past, the Christian loon-in-chief was shouting about how further Pride events would bring destruction upon Manchester. After all, God had punished New Orleans for its Mardi Gras celebrations. A small crowd of people were stood around, roaring with laughter at every new piece of nonsense, before gradually filtering away to various of Manchester's hostelries.

It seems like poetic justice that of all the people in Manchester on Saturday, the Christian loons were the only ones not having a good time.

Catholic tastes

I like this comment piece, it makes me laugh. In it Christina Odone argues that Tony Blair's apparently imminent conversion to Catholicism is a good thing. It will stick it to those evil secular liberals! "Isn't Catholicism just an antiquated religion that bans sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, birth control and abortions?" asks Odone. The answer: "Er, no. Blair's jump will force the spin doctor, the telly producer, the Labour councillor to admit that there's more to Catholicism: charity, compassion, self-sacrifice and modesty for a start". Fair enough, but Catholicism DOES ban sex outside marriage, homosexuality, birth control and abortions, to the detriment of millions of people around the world, even if that isn't ALL it does.

She goes on: "Review Catholic doctrine and you'll see that the overwhelming preoccupation is not about condoms or chastity belts, but about helping others. These are the values the liberal establishment pays lip service to. Now one of their own is prepared to embrace them as guiding principles. That is something to cheer about".

Well, all to the good. But Odone writes as if the only way to embrace "charity, compassion, self-sacrifice and modesty" is to embrace the Catholic church with its Papal infallibility, transubstantiation and all the rest of the transparent bollocks associated with it. If Odone wants to be a Catholic, fair enough, I certainly wouldn't seek to stop her. But smugly pretending that Catholics have a monopoly on ethical behaviour is just plain old wrong.