Shaphan

"The gay hotel boss who doesn't want to go straight"

Some gay hoteliers in Blackpool have just woken up to the predicament their community leaders have led them into.

A hotelier who runs a gays-only guesthouse fears the new anti-discrimination laws could put him out of business.  Mark Hurst, 47, says the legislation will force him to open his doors to heterosexual guests.  He believes this will put off his core customers, who may feel uneasy in a mixed group.

Mr Hurst, who runs Guyz hotel in Blackpool with his partner Steve, said: "We run a gay hotel exclusively for men. We feel if we were forced to a situation where we had to accept heterosexual people into our hotel, our gay clientele will not behave as naturally as they would now...

Mr Hurst’s fears that, by extension, it could force him not to discriminate against heterosexuals are shared by Steve Dobbin, 46, manager of the gay hotel Trades, also in Blackpool.

He said: "Many of our older guests don’t like to show affection to one another in front of a mixed group. I can see what the law is trying to do but I am not certain this is the right way to ensure gay rights."  [Daily Mail]

Without wishing to blow my own cornet, this blog was the only one I know of - though I'm sure there were others - that spoke up for the gay and lesbian B&B owners before they themselves twigged that the sexual orientation regulations of the Equality Act would apply to them as well.  But one of the Act's chief cheerleaders, Peter 'Outrage' Tatchell, is unsympathetic to their plight.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said, however: "I think it’s very unlikely there are going to be hundreds of heterosexuals banging on the doors of gay hotels demanding to be let in.

"I think their fears are misplaced.  Under the new laws they will still be able to make it clear to prospective guests that they primarily serve the gay community."

How can a 'gay rights' campaigner be supporting legislation that erodes the freedoms of gay and lesbian B&B owners to provide a service that both they and their customers can feel comfortable with?  Isn't that against to the interests of the gay-and-lesbian holiday industry?  Whilst the Act may not immediately decimate the UK's gay-and-lesbian B&B scene, surely it will discourage other gays and lesbians from opening new establishments?  Maybe Peter Tatchell goes abroad for his holidays, but I'm sure there are some old queens and dykes who like nothing better than to be beside the British seaside, sucking on sticks of rock or licking their candyfloss, in a B&B tailored exclusively to their needs.  There's no accounting for taste but that's surely no reason to drive the proprietors out of business.

As I've said before, it's an illiberal and indiscriminate law that didn't get proper parliamentary scrutiny.  I'm not suggesting that the gay-and-lesbian holiday industry gets an exemption from the Act, not if adoption agencies don't also.  But I do think the whole Act needs scrapping and redrafting, with greater reference to the real world.

Discrimination rules

There's an incredibly stupid piece of legislation, the Equality Act 2006, that's soon to be rolled out. 

The Equality Act 2006, which comes into force in April, bans discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services on the basis of sexual orientation...

Lord Falconer told BBC television's Sunday AM programme: "We have introduced laws which prevent discrimination against people on the basis of their sexual orientation; those laws should be given full effect.

"We do take the view in this country that you shouldn't be discriminated against on that basis and think that applies to everybody, whatever your religion." [Telegraph]

As I wrote in a comment on the Guardian blog, appended to a piss-poor article by faux philosopher AC Grayling, "discrimination is the beginning of wisdom, which is the object of philosophy".  Charlie Falconer, you don't speak for me - I believe a lesbian couple should be allowed to open a B&B 'for lesbians only', without fear of prosecution.  Their civil liberty, to discriminate against me and invite only single and coupled lesbians into their house, is being sacrificed on the altar of indiscrimination.  It's not the sort of Britain I want to live in.  And it shouldn't be left to the followers of religions to oppose it.

Dworkin, Kant and Humbug

[Previous entries: Dworkin's nonsense on stilts;  Letter to the Guardian;  Dworkin nonsense;  Not Dworkin to me]  [His name is a boon for headline writers]

Two months ago, I started trying to wring a correction out of the Guardian, after one of their occasional columnists, Ronald Dworkin, claimed that Jeremy Bentham had viewed the 'whole idea of human rights' as "nonsense upon stilts".  (Dworkin is the Bentham professor of jurisprudence at UCL.)  For weeks, the Corrections office blanked me.  Last week I tried again, this time threatening Ian Mayes that, if I still got no reply, I'd write to the editor, the external ombudsman, the Scott trustees and UCL. 

Two days later, Mayes' assistant wrote back to me with Dworkin's reply.  Dworkin wrote thus:

I said that Bentham condemned human rights as nonsense on stilts because I was criticizing Simon Jenkins in the Sunday Times who said, "Bentham was correct. There are no fundamental human rights. The concept, said the great utilitarian, is 'nonsense on stilts'." Your reader objects, to me and therefore to Jenkins, that Bentham spoke of natural rights not human rights. But your reader is making the mistake of conflating words and ideas. Both phrases refer to the same idea. He is guilty of another confusion in saying that human rights did not exist when Bentham wrote. He must mean that the term "human rights" was not in general use then, which is a different matter. If human rights exist now, they have existed for as long as there have been human beings, or at least human beings in political society. He makes a different claim about utilitarianism. Whether human rights exist or not is a matter of the ontology of value not value-free ontology. If Bentham's utilitarianism is correct then there cannot be rights and, as he said, particularly not natural or human rights. If Bentham's utilitarianism is wrong, his "nonsense" claim must be wrong, for reasons Kant pointed out.

Under the fold, I've included the full text of my reply to Dworkin.  It was a poor reply, which missed the mark.  I tried to answer each of the points he raised, but It was the wrong strategy, and the Guardian found in his favour.  But this was my response to his last sentence, in which he had cited Kant.

If Bentham's utilitarianism is wrong, his "nonsense" claim must be wrong, for reasons Kant pointed out.

Would Professor Dworkin please provide a citation for this?  When I first read this sentence, it seemed decisively impressive. But then I remembered that Bentham's Anarchical Fallacies, wherein he wrote of inalienable rights as 'nonsense upon stilts', was not, to my limited knowledge, published until around the year of his death, 1832. And Immanuel Kant died in 1804.  So, how could Kant have pointed out the falsity of Bentham's 'nonsense' claim?  This would therefore appear to be another of RD's anachronistic attributions, but I'd appreciate a citation if one exists. (And if RD is in touch with a medium who's in contact with dead philosophers who will share their thoughts on things post their mortem, could you ask him to ask the medium to ask Thomas Hobbes what he thinks of the United States, especially from its civil war to the present day - thanks.)

I doubt I'll hear back from Dworkin, so if anyone reading this knows their Kant or Bentham, could you please tell me where Kant addressed Bentham's utilitarianism and natural rights?  Is Dworkin right, or is he making it up as he goes along, trying to sound impressive but, like the rest of us, full of **it?

Mayes' assistant wrote back the next day.

Your questions and comments deal with matters of opinion and interpretation which are outside the remit of the Readers' editor. We have passed Professor Dworkin's reply to you, and although we cannot speak for him, he is unlikely to want to continue the debate. May I suggest you send a short, and as succinct as possible (300 words), letter for publication for consideration by the Letters editor ([email protected]). Otherwise, there is nothing to stop you writing to Professor Dworkin at University College London. I'm sorry we cannot help further

best wishes Helen

That reply left me livid, partly because it signalled my failure.  I've lost much confidence in the Guardian reader's editor as a neutral arbiter.   I might try emailing Dworkin to see if I can get the Kant citation off him.  Whatever, this episode has left me unsatisfied.

Dworkin nonsense

I'm not sure why but I'm still trying to get the Guardian to publish a correction about Jeremy Bentham.  (For previous entries, see here and here.)  Soon after sending the last email, I got a reply from Ian Mayes to say he'd been away, didn't know why it hadn't been dealt with, and he'd chase it up.  I wrote back:

On reflection, while I still stand by the second point, conventional wisdom has it that everything Bentham thought, wrote and said was predicated on the 'greatest happiness principle' (even when the evidence, such as the 'nonsense on stilts' essay, suggests otherwise).  So Dworkin will reject that criticism, and I am willing to let it go.  The first point, however, is more clear-cut, and I'd be surprised if he disputed it.  If he does, please allow me a reponse. Then, I'd leave it up to you, or to whomever, to adjudicate.

That was ten days ago.  Since then, nothing.  So this morning I gave it another go.

I'm still waiting for Ronald Dworkin's misstatement about Jeremy Bentham to be corrected.  Why the delay?

Bentham did not say that the whole idea of 'human rights' was nonsense upon stilts.  'Natural rights' and 'human rights' are related but the terms refer to different ideas.  The latter is normally understood to mean the regime of rights codified in the Universal Declaration of HR and its successors, including the European Convention.  Throughout his column, Dworkin was using 'human rights' in this modern sense. As Bentham died in 1832, it's not right to say he had a view on 'human rights'.

I'd appreciate a reply before too long.

The plaintive 'before too long' indicates that I'm losing the will to live over this.

Letter to the Guardian II

In lieu of having anything interesting to say, here's the latest installment of my attempt to get a correction (of Dworkin on Bentham on rights) printed in the Guardian.  I got no reply to my original email, so re-sent it today with the following message:

Dear Readers' Editor

I sent the email below eight days ago, and am re-sending it, in case it was not seen, as I've heard nothing back nor seen any correction published.  I still think the two issues I raised are valid.  Assuming that my email was read:  had the writer been one of your journalists, I'm thinking that a correction/clarification might have appeared by now.  Which is to say, not having heard from you, I suspect that the writer being the Bentham professor at UCL might have complicated the matter.  If so, that would be understandable, but surely it would make the need for a correction, of some sort, even greater (as readers might reasonably expect an accurate representation of Bentham's thought from someone writing in the Guardian as the Bentham professor of law)?

I'm looking forward to a reply, to which I claim an inalienable right.  (In it, please don't tell me I was the only one to raise this issue.  Please tell me I was just one of many readers who contacted you.)

Yours,

I'm sort of enjoying this, except for the lack of a response. If I still get no reply, then it's on to the ombudsman!  And I'm tempted to contact the Dean of Laws at UCL - because, by awarding Ronald Dworkin the Bentham professorship, its most prestigious Chair, UCL has betrayed its own "spiritual father".

Letter to the Guardian

As anticipated yesterday, I emailed the Guardian today about Dworkin on Bentham on rights.

Dear Guardian

Ronald Dworkin's most recent column, on Wednesday, May 24, contained two errors that have not yet been corrected, but which should not be left to stand.  He wrote:

[T]he 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham [..] said that all that matters is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and that the whole idea of human rights is therefore "nonsense upon stilts".

The final phrase contains both problems.  First, Bentham's critique was of late-18th-century natural rights, not mid-20th-century human rights as set out in the UDHR in the 1940s.  Although the two are conceptually and historically linked, they are nevertheless distinct.  So Bentham did not criticise human rights as 'nonsense on stilts', as they did not yet exist.

Second, Dworkin's use of the word 'therefore' is wrong.  Bentham's Critique of the Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights is not dependent upon his 'greatest happiness' principle.  It's not a utilitarian argument against natural rights (whatever that might be); it's simply a rather entertaining and insightful philosophical rant against the ideology of natural rights. It stands (or falls) alone from utilitarianism.

I am aware of the irony, if that's the word, of Dworkin being Bentham professor of jurisprudence, UCL.  I am looking forward to seeing his errors being corrected in next week's Guardian.

Yours sincerely,

We'll see...

Dworkin's nonsense on stilts

Renowned legal theorist Ronald Dworkin (© Dan Brown) writes an occasional column for the Guardian.  His renown in my household (ie with me and the cat) comes from his irrational hostility to Jeremy Bentham's body of work.  That this man is now the Bentham professor of jurisprudence at University College, London, is an affront to British intellectual history.  Bentham would be a-spinning in his grave, were it not that his corpse was preserved, and is mounted, in a glass case in the self-same college, UCL, where Dworkin now professes to teach.

The issue here is Bentham's critique of natural rights as 'nonsense on stilts'.  Bentham was spot on, of course, but such an insight can be existentially threatening to American minds, such as Dworkin's, whose republic was founded on the belief that human beings possess innate rights;  it's a central tenet of the Americanist civil religion.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Self-evidently, Jefferson was delusional - all humans are created unequally and they possess no rights other than those their society gives them.  But Americans are indoctrinated from birth to believe otherwise, and Americanist missionaries, such as Dworkin, are determined that the rest of us believe as they do.

Dworkin's most recent missive was, predictably, a defence of the UK's human rights legislation.  He ended with a dig at Simon Jenkins, who'd written a piece on human rights that had started promisingly but had ended in a confused heap.  Dworkin wrote:

Simon Jenkins, in the Sunday Times, recently declared his enthusiasm for the 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham who said that all that matters is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and that the whole idea of human rights is therefore "nonsense upon stilts".  But Europe, led by Britain, rejected Bentham's utilitarianism after the second world war when it established the European human rights convention.

This is dishonest, deceptive nonsense, especially the word 'therefore'.  Jenkins was not, as Dworkin implies, extolling the 'greatest happiness' principle.  Further, the 18th-century concept of natural rights, and the mid-20th-century notion of human rights, are different, so Bentham had no opinion on 'human rights', as they had not yet been formulated.  (The two are linked, historically and conceptually, but they are distinct.)  Also, Bentham's Critique of the Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights is not dependent at all on his 'greatest happiness principle' - that Bentham was wrong about utilitarianism is irrelevant to the validity or otherwise of his polemic against the ideology of inalienable rights.  A Bentham professor of jurisprudence who misrepresents Bentham for political purposes - what was UCL thinking?

It's been three days since the Guardian published Dworkin's column, and each day I've read the Corrections and Clarifications column waiting for the correction to appear.  If it doesn't appear tomorrow, I'll email them.   But whom are they more likely to believe on Bentham, me or the eponymous professor?

The right not to be killed by terrorists

No such right exists, but the Blair government often cites it to justify the expanding powers of the police and security services.  The prime minister first [?] used it in his first monthly press conference following the G8 bombings (the one in which he said, "the rules of the game are changing") and he and his ministers have been using it ever since.

[Blair]  ... I don't think we should allow ourselves to be backed into an argument where we say when you are protecting national security you are interfering with civil rights or civil liberties.  Article 2 of the European Convention is the Right to Life.  The European Convention specifically recognises that you have got to be able to protect your citizens and their right to be free from attack, or free from terrorism.

So I think it is not so much a question, in fact, of saying we put national security above civil liberties, on the contrary it is more a question of saying, what is the right balance between the rights of people to say what they want, or do certain things, and the rights of other people to be free from attack, or free from fear, and that is the balance that has to be struck in any situation where you are debating rights.

The right to life in Article 2 is the right not to be killed by one's own government, not the right not to be killed by terrorists.  Contrary to what Blair says, the European Convention does not mention any right to be "free of attack" or to be "free of terrorism" or, even worse, the right to be "free of fear".  And he seems to believe, or would have us believe, that the Convention confers rights on governments vis à vis their people, whereas exactly the reverse is the case.

Previous Home Secretaries David Blunkett and Charles Clarke also used this fallacious argument to justify empowering the police and reducing civil liberties. If and when the more academically minded Dr John Reid does the same, we'll know we're in big trouble.

The Euston (anti-hu)Manifesto

I was not going to write about the blog-inspired Euston Manifesto but note that it's gaining some public traction, which depresses the hell out of me - political luvvies such as John Lloyd, Paul Berman and Michael Walzer are coming out in its support.  I once considered myself a liberal lefty, like them, so it feels weird now believing that the ideology espoused by the authors of the Euston Manifesto is delusional and dangerous, but I do.  The phrase, 'longest suicide-note in history' springs to mind, with the associated idea of it being a dying croak of a moribund worldview, and, were it so, I would pity these poor people's cognitive confusion.  Unfortunately, their beliefs are neither marginal nor, as they claim, "under-represented" - on the contrary, they are the mainstream beliefs of the ruling class, who continue to lead us into disaster.  Tony Blair, David Cameron, Ming Campbell, and any and all of their successors, Chirac, Sarkozy, Merkel, Barroso, Mandelson, Rice, Kerry, Obama, McCain, Bush, etc., etc., could all affirm the manifesto's core beliefs.  Their fellow-travellers pump out their propaganda relentlessly through the print and broadcast (and now web-based) media, and in the schools and universities, all most of which they effectively control.  But their beliefs, which are the prevailing hegemony in the West, are at odds with reality and in conflict with human nature and reason.  I wish I smelled the whiff of revolution in the air. 

The Euston Manifesto is an intoxicating brew of humanism, Americanist liberalism and Zionism, a concoction dangerous to the young and vulnerable, which the human species still is. Just when the world requires post-humanist, post-liberalist and post-Zionist responses to its current troubles, some of which have been caused by the implementation of humanism, liberalism and Zionism, the Eustonites can only offer up more of the same.  I want to mention three areas where I radically disagree with the manifesto.

Human rights
I am pro-humans and pro-civil liberties, and therefore I am anti-human rights.  The writers of the manifesto allege that opponents of human-rights ideology are cultural relativists, whereas I oppose human-rights ideology because it endangers all human cultures, including our own.  Where human-rights ideology advances, civil liberties and cultural pluralism retreat.  Human rights is a pernicious doctrine, fallaciously reasoned, and its adherents are like brainwashed cultists, believing that their credo is universally true and that all the world should join their cult or be demonized, invaded or killed.  (I used to be a human-rights cultist but have since deprogrammed myself.)  The manifesto says that the so-called Universal Declaration should be binding on everyone - if that's not fascistic and totalitarian I don't know what is.  The whole sorry, violent, virulent doctrine should be consigned to history's wastebin before it kills us all.

The UN
1. Following from the above, the UN must disentangle its core and valid business - diplomacy and humanitarianism - from the ideological baggage of human rights, and jettison the latter completely.  Otherwise, it becomes more and more perceived as the enemy of free humanity.  It was no surprise when Zarqawi blew up the UN HQ in Baghdad - whatever its self-perception, the UN is not a neutral agency, but it should endeavour to become so.

2. Britain and the US contravened the will of the security council by invading Iraq - both should lose their veto for at least five years.  Britain and the US set up the UN - of all nations, they, we, should follow the agreed rules and accept the penalty for breaking our contract with the other nations.

3. The Euston Manifesto lauds the outrageous 'responsibility to protect' doctrine, which is now official UN policy thanks to the Americans, the British and their, our, mind-warped allies.  The doctrine eviscerates the notion of national sovereignty - whoever controls the security council will decide whose sovereignty is valid and whose is not.  It's a recipe for chaos and for the collapse of international structures such as the UN.

Zionism, etc.
The authors and supporters of the manifesto might accept the designations 'Zionist left' or 'liberal Zionists', for the themes of Zionism, Israel/Palestine and what they term anti-semitism pervade their document.  No statements of principle about the two Koreas, or Kashmir, but there's one on the 'two-state solution'.  Zionism is the elephant in the corner of this manifesto, which needs to be metaphorically shot, beheaded, stuffed and mounted on the wall above the fireplace.

Labels. Semiotics. Floating signifiers. I am pro-Jewish, pro-Arab, pro-Muslim and pro-Christian, and therefore I am anti-Zionist.  Zionism, in my book, is the antithesis of Judaism, and its fruit, which they call Israel, is the living embodiment of anti-semitism.  Real Jews, whose reputation is unfairly tarred by the Zionist pretenders, wait patiently for the coming of the Messiah.  They have kept to the covenant with G-d, and they are the true people of Israel.  The Zionists, on the other hand, lost patience with G-d, exile and persecution and took matters into their own hands.  As if they were the Messiah, they called the Jews out of exile and back to the Holy Land and many followed, their minds addled by the traumas they had undergone in Europe.  They exiled the Palestinians from their lands, which the real Messiah would not do.  They blasphemously gave their secular state a holy name, Israel, which only adds divine insult to the injury of breaking the covenant.  They label their critics anti-Semites, yet the people who suffer most from the follies of Zionism are the Arabs in the region and the true Jews, both of whom have greater claim to be Semites than do the Zionists.

Enough already.  The manifesto must be opposed by all true democrats. 

On Control Orders

I'm a dissenter from the ideology of human rights for many reasons, but what I hadn't understood up until now was how incompatible it all was with the long-established, tried and tested, English and Welsh legal system.  The Blair government could not have seized the emergency powers it has done via the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 had it not first introduced the Human Rights Act in 1998, and then, post-9/11, deemed Britain to be in an on-going state of emergency, thereby allowing it to circumvent its legal obligations.  (The Blair government always means well, but the road to Hell...)

In December 2004 the Law Lords came to the (counterintuitive?) judgment (re the Belmarsh detainees), forced upon them by Article 5 of the European Convention of Human Rights, that the UK government should treat British citizens and foreign nationals, if either are suspected of involvement in terrorism, as having the same rights under British law.  The government could have, should have, ignored that judgment but instead it chose to embrace it.  Human rights ideology vanquished civil liberties in an instant.  Now, British terror suspects will have the same rights as the former Belmarsh detainees who are now subject to Control Orders.

Except one.  The foreign nationals, most of whom are Algerian, were, and still are, in what has been described as 'a prison with three walls'.  That is, they are free to return to Algeria or wherever, but the British government can't force the detainees to return because they might face torture or worse.  But, if we Britons have Control Orders slapped on us, we would be in a 'prison with four walls', not having the option to go anywhere else.   So, under the new Act, British nationals subject to Control Orders will have fewer legal rights than foreign nationals. 

And the government's definition of terrorism is somewhat wider than most people realize...