Of anyone needed reminding of the
actionary role of the
churches with regard to sexual polithe events of this summer should have come as a wake-up call.
Fis me mac the fasco n the Church of England are a me macona afiliaces over
тат boug te sacet = be a celicate one being brouge up n the secogca the Catholic Church, I couldnit quite get my head round that one.
Of course at one level, I'm happy as a socialist and an atheist to see organised religion of any type tying itself up in knots. But the established Church does has more impact on British society as a whole than is Christianity is shoved down the throats of most children with the authority of the national curriculum and the Church of Christian England gets massive state subsidies for "its" schools, despite its huge wealth.
Then we had the intervention of the Catholic Church and its associated organisations (not to be outdone perhaps) around stem cell research.
Most of those who have been quoted in the media are promi nent anti-abortionists who not only oppose a woman's right to choose but argue that "life begins at conception".
In the context of current medical developments, these reactionaries argue that the problem is not stem cell research as such, but that which uses cells from foetal tissue - some, but not all of which is available as a result of abortions. These, organisations are happy to use
Wing that they are not given the chance. of sexual politics and the Christian far-right have been in the news. Commentators in the US are predicting that lesbian and gay rights could become a real battlefield in the forthcoming American Presidential elections. sex in private between two consenting male adults is not actually illegal, sweeping aside the statute in Jeb Bush's Texas that criminalized this. An openly gay man was elected as Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire by his parishioners. ering whether to legalise same sex marriages -son was when Amenta bigest for their Mart, became an equal opportunities be demand- employer, including introducing a clause And it's not just in Britain that questions
promotion. In June, the US Supreme Court ruled that
"family values". The state of Massachusetts is still considda."
erhaps the most interesting deciretail, chain, the anti-union. Walintervene. against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in recruitment, training and rent
What is perhaps more significant than these developments themselves has been the reaction of President Bush.
Bush has a strong relationship with who worked hard for his election and clearly expected him to join with them in denouncing these attacks on
The dissenting judge at the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, for example suggested that his more liberal colleagues were in thrall to what he called a "homosexual agenBut Bush is being more circumspect. While he has made it clear that, for example, he believes marriage should remain a heterosexual preserve, he is not about to
And this stance is symptomatic of deeper more depth. splits on the right, with the growth of a curof right-wing libertarianism that believes issues of sexuality, amongst others are private questions into which the state should not intervene.
These divisions amongst our opponents pose some interesting challenges for the left in the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transexual) and feminist movements, which need much wider discussion than we have space for here body and A Womans right tor logans like 'Keep your laws off my
choose' need to be accompanied by arguments about how we can create the sort of society in which real choice and freedom can exist for the majority of working people.
Hopefully the European Social Forum in Paris provide another opportunity, as its predecessor in Florence did last year, for radical actiyists to explore such issues in
page 17 of the scan
socia stres ance September 2003 2l
Socialist Alliance