Author: Ophelia Benson

Someone told me the other day that argument isn’t, shall we say, my strong suit – by which I think was meant I’m terrible at it. Oh, I thought, and picked up the classifieds to look for another job. This time I might even try to find one that pays money, however little. That’s what I get for leaving school in the seventh grade. Not that I regret it – those years on the streets were the making of my character.

But so I was amused to see this entry on a philosophy-type blog (a transgendered one at that) that’s full of recommendations of good skeptical, philosophical, scientific and similar sites, and says in a paragraph on logic-oriented sites –

If you lack familiarity with the basics of the subject then The Fallacy Files is a good place to start – it categorises the major logical faults and gives clear illustrative examples. The list sits alongside a blog which subjects news items to argumentative criticism. A similar site, although not a blog, which does the same thing for mathematics, is Numberwatch which has a regular Number of the Month page lambasting innumeracy in the media. My favourite blog, however, in this field is the Notes and Comments of the Butterfliesandwheels site which is dedicated, as they put it, to “fighting fashionable nonsense”. Most (all?) of the entries are written by Ophelia Benson with just the right amount of righteous [indignation] and rigorous logic.

Well, in that case, I’ll put the classifieds back in the zebra’s cage for now.

Next up. Bush’s bizarro non sequitur.

Mr Bush said: “Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society.”

Okay – and? So what? What’s your point? What follows from that? How, exactly, do you get from that to a need to forbid gay marriage? What’s the deal? Are you thinking that the existence of gay marriages will exert some kind of sucking effect on straight marriages, causing them gradually but surely to – um – become something other than straight marriages? To turn into poker dens, or iron smelters, or Manolo Blahnik shoes? But how? How would gay marriages do that? What exactly is the mechanism you think is operating here?

I know, I know; silly question. Silly because it doesn’t matter; silly because irrelevant. The people who pay attention to that kind of drivel won’t notice or think about the non sequitur, and Bush and his caretakers know that, so of course it’s irrelevant. But what the hell. I wanted to point it out anway.

People do keep trampling on the rights of religious believers, don’t they. Have you noticed that? Exhibiting paintings that some Hindus don’t like, putting on plays that some Sikhs don’t like, drawing cartoons that some Muslims don’t like, refusing to give arbitrary unequal treatment to people that some Christians would prefer to see getting arbitrary unequal treatment – there’s just no end to it. So naturally the religious believers are speaking up. Wouldn’t you?

Consider for instance these UK proposals to ‘protect gays and lesbians from being denied “goods, facilities and services” because of their sexual orientation.’

Lord Mackay of Clashfern and the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, said in a statement issued by the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship that the proposals could also undermine people’s rights to exercise their religious beliefs…Lord Mackay said: “For people of religious faith who believe that the practice of homosexuality is wrong, these proposals seem to me to carry a serious threat to their freedom in their voluntary and charitable work and in relation to earning their livelihood in a number of occupations.”

Yes – true. Laws and regulations are like that. They carry of their nature serious threats to freedom. That’s rather the point of them. If they weren’t meant to stop people doing things or to make them do things, they wouldn’t be laws and regulations, they would be something else, like polite advice, or gentle urging, or poetic rumination. The freedom of murderers is badly dented by laws against murder. Is this news to Lord Mackay?

Senior Muslims were also critical. Dr Majid Katme, the spokesman for the Islamic Medical Association, argued that the proposals demonstrated that the Government was prepared to discriminate against faith communities in order to promote “equality”. “The right to hold deep faith convictions that affect the way people think and behave in every aspect of life is sacrificed in these regulations,” he said.

The scare-quotes on ‘equality’ are interesting. Did Dr Katme make the little finger-hooks in the air when he was talking to the Telegraph, or what? How did the Telegraph know to put the scare-quotes on? Whatever. However that happened, it’s fascinating to see people catching on. Ohhhhhh – guess what, there’s a big fat tension in all this cuddly droning about ‘communities’ (I put those scare quotes on myself) and ‘faith communities’ and ‘rights’ and ‘the right to hold deep faith convictions’ on the one hand, and equality and freedom on the other. Guess what, the two don’t always mingle smoothly; guess what, you can’t always have both; guess what, your freedom to hold deep faith convictions that women should be imprisoned and subordinated and silenced conflicts rather sharply with my freedom to be a person like other people. We got a problem here, dude. Same with the gay stuff. Your right to hold deep faith convictions that gay people are wrong and bad and sinful conflicts rather sharply with gay people’s freedom and equality. Unless of course you can bring yourself simply to have the deep faith convictions without trying to enforce them or act on them in any way – but apparently you can’t, or you wouldn’t be complaining about these regulations. You’re not actually talking merely about deep faith convictions, you’re talking about putting them into practice. You’re trying to defend your desire to apply special unequal rules to gay people by calling that unpleasant desire ‘deep faith convictions’ and associating the whole package with freedom and rights. You’re complaining that your right and freedom to treat people unequally is under threat, and you’re dressing it up with talk of deep faith convictions and faith communities and people of religious faith. It’s a low trick. You guys need less in the way of deep faith convictions and a lot more in the way of rational thought about morality.

Oh dear, another ‘community’ has been attacked and defamed and had its human rights abused. Will this kind of thing never end? This time it was an art exhibition that attacked and defamed the Hindu community and abused its human rights. But the Hindu community didn’t take this attacking and abusing lying down – or at least, the group ‘Hindu Human Rights’ didn’t. Bless their hearts.

So we are fully aware of, respect and uphold British laws and traditions, which protect the rights of the Hindu community to protest when attacked and defamed.

That’s a sly one. Yes, of course, British laws and traditions protect the rights of anyone to protest when attacked and defamed, or any other time; British laws and traditions protect rights to protest in general. But the way that’s phrased makes it look (if you read hastily) as if British laws and traditions protect specifically the rights of ‘the Hindu community’ specifically to protest ‘when attacked and defamed’, which is more dubious; it also makes it look, perhaps even if you don’t read hastily, as if ‘the Hindu community’ had in fact been ‘attacked and defamed’, which is highly dubious. It is highly dubious to consider an exhibition of paintings that includes some paintings of naked Hindu deities an exercise in attacking and defaming ‘the Hindu community’. Highly dubious, but also highly popular and highly effective. If you’re religious, just announce that anything that gets up your nose is an attack on and defamation of your ‘community’ and everyone for miles around will turn pale and clammy with anguish, and put a stop to whatever nose-upgetting item is at issue.

We have campaigned for years for these values and freedoms to be granted to the Hindu communities which are persecuted in many parts of the world…As anyone can see from our website and publications, we exist to highlight the abuses of the human rights of Hindus going on in many parts of the world.

By…shutting down art exhibitions? By protesting naked deities in art exhibitions? Because…naked deities in art exhibitions are abuses of human rights? Well, yes; that probably is exactly what Ranbir Singh thinks; that is the way this line is going. Remember that cardinal last month who said exactly that? About the DaVinci Code? “This is one of the fundamental human rights – that we should be respected, our religious beliefs respected, and our founder Jesus Christ respected,” said Cardinal Arinze.” A nice modest humble claim, that we all have to respect everyone else’s religious beliefs and (as if that weren’t enough) religious founders as well. Walls creeping ever closer.