Green leader Natalie Bennett has extended the LGBT section of their website to LGBTIQ. Sounds like a Countdown Conundrum to me.
LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. IQ adds Intersex and Queer. Any more letters and Nat will have the entire alphabet.
The attitude to sexuality, as with religion, should be more than just toleration. I would go further. Don’t tolerate mere tolerance.
Tolerating something implies grudging acceptance - not approval. It’s condescending.
In 21st Century Britain freedom should be the watchword. The freedom to practise a chosen religion or the sexuality of choice without hindrance.
Everyone has the right to self-identify, but the language used sometimes seems a closed book to the rest of us.
Queers may hope to rebrand this word as an inoffensive umbrella term - but when I was young it was one of abuse.
I don’t tick any minority boxes as a middle-aged, middle class, heterosexual white man so I could no more bring myself to say what sounds offensive than call black people the N word.
Intersex people have both male and female physical or genetic features and don’t identify as distinctly men or women. Therefore they may object to being called he or she. They prefer they.
But some insist that as they are individuals ‘they’ must be followed by a verb in the singular.
A colleague might snitch on me to the boss by saying: “He is in the pub.” But if I was intersex that becomes: “They is in the pub.”
That mangles the English language and turns it into nonsense, frankly.
Thanks to David Cameron’s political courage same-sex marriage is now part of the British way of life. Three in five Sunday People readers support it.
Legal battles are now raging in 13 US states where gay marriage is banned. And there’s more at stake there than words or wedding vows.
Gay couples lose out on tax breaks, inheritance rights, spouse health insurance and, if one dies, the custody of jointly raised children.
The sooner the US Supreme Court makes same-sex marriage legal throughout America the better. They could also abolish the death penalty and really make that backward nation an enlightened one.
But God forbid the office nark ever says I is in the pub.
CRACKING THE WHIP
My best year at school was when I was 17. One set of exams over and ‘A’ levels more than a year away.
Now teenagers can’t so much as blink an eye without being examined.
Jenny Brown, head of St Albans High School, Herts says relentless testing must stop because kids are under too much pressure.
Having seen my children under that cosh I agree.
Jenny adds: “In my day the first year of sixth form was hugely important for Saturday jobs, going out and making mistakes, to learn from those mistakes and fall in love.”
In my day, too. That’s what made being 17 such fun.
NELSON’S i
Tories ridiculed Ed Miliband for his gall in unveiling his #edstone. Surprised they didn’t brand it his #gallstone.
Raising Vince Cable from the dead
Yesterday’s man Vince Cable wouldn’t regulate ouija boards when a minister, and they didn’t get a mention in election manifestos. Had they done so the Tories would privatise them, Labour tax them, Lib Dems draw red lines on them, Ukip ban any coming from Europe, SNP grant them independence and Greens demand they’re sourced sustainably. Plaid Cymru, I guess, would want them to speak to the spirit world in Welsh.
There's a new Mob in Whitehall
I popped into the Cabinet Office last week to keep them company while the politicians were away. Passing through security a sign read: “This is a protected site under the Organised Crime Act.” Well, you could have knocked me down with a Mafia chieftain’s tommy gun. How much in protection money, I wonder, does the Cabinet Office have to pay?
Natalie Bennett denied a slice of power
PizzaExpress put the faces of David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage and Nicola Sturgeon on pizzas for polling day. They say the PR stunt was “dough-mocracy”. But they forgot Green Natalie Bennett. I say “Doh!”.