Mail and Mullen Part II : Tragedy, Comedy and Farce

PROLOGUE

Due to my failure to answer two Literature questions in last night's Quiz League battering, I've been sentenced to extra training and so a day off has been idly but wisely spent.

Further news on the strange bedfellows [1], The Mail and the Rev. Peter Mullen. As the Guardian reports, Mullen has used his column (you lot giggling at the back: see me after class) in The Northern Echo to 'apologise' for "making some off-colour jokes about homosexuals on my website.

He continues,

• However, I do believe The Evening Standard took my words out of context, although that paper did have the good grace to print my explanation of my intentions.

This being the Evening Standard owned by the same group as The Mail of course. So, they seem to have kissed and made up. So all's well that ends well [2]. However, the Rev. seems a bit grudging in his confession.

• I was not criticising individual homosexuals. I have never criticised them. I number many homosexual men and women among my dearest friends.

(An Interpreter writes, 'Some of my best friends are black, gay, black and gay, young, gifted and black, which means I cannot be prejudiced against 'them'.'

I'm a bit confused at the next bit,

• I voted for the Homosexual Reform Act of 1967

Does he think there was a referendum on this? Was he an MP or sitting in the Lords Spiritual section? Maybe he just means he supported the change in law. He then gives some of the game away. Whilst he is claims to be tolerant, he has some ground rules.

• homosexual acts “between consenting adults in private.” “Between” means two. “Adults” meant 21. “Private” means in the bedroom.

He does not make it clear whether he agrees with the lowering of the age to that of heterosexual consent. Nor does he mention the anomaly that existed due to hotel rooms not being classed as 'the bedroom.' He mentions Hamstead Heath and public lavatories which denotes an unhealthy interest in Littlejohn's domain.

So - apology over - he returns once more unto the breeches [3]:

• And the love that once dare not speak its name [4] now shrieks at us in high camp down every high street.

• What I do oppose – on the authority of the Christian faith – is the corrupting influence of the promotional parades of homosexuality by such as Gay Pride demonstrations.

Translation: Keep it in your trousers until you're in your own room and don't ram it down our throats by mincing down the road at the Love Parade.

• I was delighted to be so warmly welcomed at church last Sunday by the many homosexual people in my congregation.

More subtle mentions of the fact that there are gay members of his congregation. Methinks he does protest too much! [5]

He then name-checks Sandy Toksvig on Radio 4 in a bid to show that he can take a joke at his expense.

So, we shall await further words of wisdom from the pulpit in the Mail as the star-crossed love affair continues.[6]

Gobie's Notes
1] Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud till the
dregs of the storm be past...................The Tempest
2] All's Well That Ends Well........obviously
3] Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...............Henry V
4] I am the Love that dare not speak its name........... Lord Alfred Douglas 'Two Loves'
5] The lady doth protest too much, methinks.............. Hamlet
6] A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life ...............Romeo and Juliet

Another Rentaquote Joins The Team

In addition to Migrationwatch, The Taxpayers' Alliance and other assorted gobshites we now have a new arrival: The Rev Peter Mullen, chaplain to the London Stock Exchange. It's certainly understandable that traders are in need of prayer at this time, so now Peter is on hand to provide the necessary ecumenical weight and gravitas to the laterst top story.

ROYAL MAIL CONDEMNED FOR HONOURING 'NAZI' MARIE STOPES

• Royal Mail has been condemned for releasing a set of stamps that include controversial family planning pioneer Marie Stopes.
  

  From today her face will appear on the 50p stamp in the Women of Distinction set, which commemorates the achievements of six women.
  

  Stopes was accused of being racist because of her support for eugenics - the 'perfection of the race' through selective breeding.

Leaving aside the nauseating feeling of seeing the Mail go on about Nazis after its support of the '30s, who does the paper call on to back its claim that the design has been condemned. None other than the Rev. Mullen.

• The Rev Peter Mullen, chaplain to the Stock Exchange, branded Stopes a 'Nazi sympathiser'. He said: 'She campaigned to have the poor, the sick and people of mixed race sterilised.'

Of course, this is the rational and sane Peter Mullen who last week was himself the subject of condemnation in this very paper for calling,

• for homosexuals to be tattooed with warnings about the perils of gay sex in a cigarette-packet-style health warning.

and

• In the blog, Mr Mullen wrote: 'Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH.
  

  'In addition, the obscene 'gay pride' parades and carnivals should be banned for they give rise to passive corruption, comparable to passive smoking. Young people forced to witness these excrescences are corrupted by them.'

Then there was his poetry prowess,

• 'The Bishop of London is in a high huff.
  

  'Because Dr Dudley has married a puff;

  'And not just one puff - he's married another:
  

  'Two priests, two puffs and either to other.'

Turning back to the stamp issue story we see that Marie Stopes is accompanied by some other famous women:

1. CLAUDIA JONES
2. BARBARA CASTLE
3. MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT
4. ELIZABETH GARRETT ANDERSON
5. ELEANOR RATHBONE

The names are significant; all have CVs which may not appeal to the Mail or some its rabid readers. Strangely, no comment is made other than the condemnation of Stopes. The Mail is doing its usual trick of feeding its readers enough bait.

Jones : Communist, prisoner, asylum seeker, founder of the Notting Hill Carnival;
Castle : Labour Minister, architect of the Equal Pay Act;
Fawcett : Votes for Women campaigner
Anderson : Became a doctor against all odds instead of housewife;
Rathbone : Woman MP and early critic of the Nazis

Stopes of course also pionerred contraception advice and established Family Planning Clinics.

The sad thing is that the Mail story apparently took 2 journalists to write. One to look at Wikipedia, the other to telephone the Rentaquote Rev.