Category: Human rights

NI abortion activist smashes patriarchy by getting OBE from old, white cisgender king

Abortion, Human rights / / by

A punk rock, anti-establishment and anti-patriarchy abortion activist who describes herself online as “witchy af” has been made an OBE. 

Marigold St Clements (she/her) of Holywood, County Down, was awarded the honour for services to bland mainstream establishment patriarchy in Northern Ireland in the King’s New Year’s honours list.

Operating in the shadows of the oppressive patriarchal regime designed to kill her, Ms St Clements’s unwavering activism has seen her get up as early as 11 am thrice yearly to march alongside her comrades in Writer’s Square, Belfast, with only her mum’s sourdough sandwiches and some cold-pressed carrot and mint juice to sustain her. 

She will now bow down before her king as a reward.

Marigold was named abortion activist of the Year in 2020 for her passion for waving poorly-made, typo-ridden placards and screaming about ‘repo justice’ and her bravery in continuing to scream in the face of her oppressors by blocking everyone who disagrees with her on Twitter.

She has been an active member of ’Communists for Choice’ and ‘Abort All Equally NI’, a group that campaigns for removing all abortion time limits, so that all unwanted humans can be aborted equally after 24 weeks, not just the disabled ones. 

Ms St Clements is shortly taking up a role as a partner in her daddy’s estate agent business.

Ms St Clements said: “It’s amazing, like, to be recognised for so going against the flow and so sticking a middle finger up to the establishment and the patriarchy this way. 

“There were times when I thought we’d never see justice for pregnant persons who have unwanted humans gestating inside them, but,  just like an abortion provider with a fetus’s arm, we managed to pull it off. 

“But we still need to be vigilant. Look at what happened in America with Roe. It’s basically the Handmaid’s Tale there now with a pregnant person dying every 3 seconds from lack of abortion care. But I’ll continue to scream and shout and repeatedly make erroneous and unscientific claims online like “miscarriages will be illegal” and “an embryo isn’t human” to keep the status quo.”

Co-convenor of Abort All Equally NI and vegan leather evangelist Tarquin Jessop Farquar said: “Marigold is a perfect example of what women and girls – and men who say that they’re women – can achieve with nothing but a fierce passion for justice and the full support of all the big corporations, mainstream media, most of the men in Westminster, and, of course, her king.

“We are all in awe of how average and mainstream she and the wider repo justice community have become.”

Northern Ireland Humanists to offer abortion ceremonies

Abortion, Human rights / / by

After the recent liberalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Humanists immediately unveiled plans to make a few quid by offering abortion ceremonies.

While the humanist movement has, for some time, been offering a range of ceremonial services for secularists who want all the trappings of religion but none of the God stuff, abortion ceremonies are believed to be a world’s first.

“We wanted to celebrate this historic day of joy and bloodshed by offering people something unique and memorable for their abortions,” said Quentin Snarf, a humanist celebrant and founder of the pro-choice activist group, Upper-Middle Class Alliance Against Poor People Breeding.

“We humanists love our ceremonies and already offer lots of them – from wedding ceremonies to cat-naming ceremonies – so why not abortion? It is our most important sacrament, after all.”

With the first abortions in Northern Ireland set to take place during March 2020, Snarf is expecting demand to be high.

“We’ve already had hundreds of enquires, many from people who aren’t even pregnant yet!” said Snarf.

“We know from independently verified data that Northern Ireland’s wicked and antiquated pro-life laws have saved over 100,000 lives, but while we can’t kill those people now, we can kill a future 100,000 – and what a better way to celebrate that than with an abortion ceremony!”

At present, details are sketchy as to what an abortion ceremony will involve, but a spokesperson for Northern Ireland Humanists has confirmed that participants will be offered the chance to “pull off the first limb” or “crush the skull themselves” as part of the ritual.

Four reasons why we need to rally for choice

Abortion, Activism, Human rights / / by

A guest blog by Rally for Choice speaker, Evil-Lyn

Mmmmmmwwwwhhhyy hello there, comrades – hahahaha! I am Evil-Lyn, sorceress and harnesser of dark powers. Most of you will remember me as the evil witch from the hit 80s cartoon, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe – but I am also a compassionate and reason-filled proponent of abortion and bodily autonomy rights.

So – when the organisers of Belfast’s Rally for Choice reached out to me during their AGM seance and asked me to be one of their guest speakers, how could I refuse? Hahahaha! (I couldn’t).

Now that the dust has settled after a crazy weekend of marching and protesting around Belfast with 17 million (according to our academic) fellow pro-choice persons, I want to take the time to enlighten all you bigots and misogynists on why the choice to end a human life is necessary for progress.

Here are four reasons – hahahahaha!

1. Population control

As my enlightened pro-choice comrades often point out – usually over a glass of Ca’ di Rajo Lemoss Frizzante and a bowl of roasted chickpeas back at mine after watching a profound piece of abortion theatre at the MAC – the world is overcrowded. There’s at least 6 billion of us and counting. It is not possible for so many people to enjoy the splendours of our wonderful planet all at the same time without destroying it.

Something has to give.

Unfortunately, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. And by eggs, I mean fetuses. Abusing chickens of their eggs is disgusting and immoral.

This Facebook post from an academic at a leading NI University sums up our predicament perfectly:

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2. Clearing out the riff-raff

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of being in a “benefits lounge,” you’ll notice that poor people are rather unsightly. Not only that, they have a tendency to “muck about,” which means they can never get work or contribute to a meaningful society.

As our comrade Bernie Sanders explained recently, the answer to people living in poverty – especially in those savage third world countries – is to stop them from breeding. In other words, poor people are better off dead. And in pieces. And in a bin.

(As an added bonus, since the poor commit all the crimes, this approach is also useful for countries that don’t have the death penalty. Except it’s better, because the criminal can be taken out before a crime has even been committed – like in Minority Report – saving the Justice Department millions in taxpayers’ money).

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“Pro-choice, not Pro-letariat!” I screamed.

3. Improving the gene pool

If our amazing foremothers Marie Stopes and Margret Sanger, founders of the two biggest abortion enterprises in the universe, taught us anything it was that abortion “Is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives”.

This is true. When I visited Iceland a few moon cycles ago, my intention was to overthrow their government and seize control of their aluminium smelting plants. But then I discovered they had done great work in eradicating Down’s syndrome – a problem that has cursed my home planet of Eternia since the beginning of time – by eradicating those with Down’s syndrome! Genius – hahahaha!

So it follows, then, that since Iceland is often portrayed as a beacon of secular hope and progress, it would be prudent to follow their lead by allowing Northern Ireland to abort all its defectives, too. Those with Down’s syndrome, those with an FFA, those with a cleft palate, those with colic – the whole lot of them. Having a choice helps us achieve that.

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I genuinely don’t look out of place here.

4. People should be able to do whatever the f**k they want, you c**nts!

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While the first three reasons are closely linked, this one often gets overlooked, but it’s a vital component – if not the most important component – of everything that the pro-choice movement stands for, especially when it comes to sex. And that is the right to do whatever the f**k we want, whenever we want.

Five millennia ago I argued during my presidential campaign that laws should be based on a) how badly people want to do something and b) possession of a uterus or uteruses. Unfortunately, at the time, my home planet of Eternia was under the patriarchy of Skeletor, who took exception to my liberal fancies and banished me to a netherworld for ten thousand years.

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Skeletor and I have since reconciled. It was great to see him at the Rally and looking the part, alongside his long-term political ally, Eamonn McCann.

But I was right. Nihilism is the only viable option for governance. It’s true that some people argue that laws should be based on reason and merit, but do you notice how everyone who says that doesn’t have a uterus? Exactly – hahahaha! Shut up, you man*!

Hopefully, these reasons – and all of the lovely photographs you see of how wonderful and stable and measured we pro-choicers are – will have dragged you out of your religious stupor and into the 21st Century. But if not, well, DON’T LIKE ABORTION, DON’T HAVE ONE! – HAHAHAHA!

*By ‘man’ I am referring to those without wombs. I am aware that not everyone without a womb identifies as a man, making them a woman*. I mean no offence by this. I support you all.

* By ‘woman’ I am referring to those with wombs. I am aware that not everyone with a womb identifies as a woman and are actually men with wombs. To clarify, men who are women who are men who are women who are men with wombs and also women without wombs – I mean no offence. I support you all.

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Beast Man cheered up considerably after his Boojum.

Government to introduce ‘Atheism Studies’ as RE alternative for children of embarrassing atheist parents

Atheism, Education, Human rights / / by

Following an attempt by atheist parents to sue a Christian school for doing Christian stuff, the Department of Education announced that it will introduce ‘Atheism Studies’ as a ‘meaningiful and educational’ alternative for those wishing to opt their children out of RE – and to give those children some respite from their parents’ public displays of hyper-litigiousness.

Full details of the new subject have yet to be finalised, but a government source said it will cover the following key curriculum areas:

History

Instead of learning about the pyramids and Victorian child chimney sweeps, students of atheism will be taught the history of atheist thought, from reciting the nihilistic ramblings of Frederich Nietzsche to a VR tour of the Godless utopian paradise of Stalin’s Soviet Russia.

Field trips will include a visit to North Korea, where children can see first hand what official atheist government policy looks like in practice, which they can follow up with some labour camp building in Minecraft.

Science

Science lessons will focus exclusively on evidence for atheism. As such, the government has allocated a £50m budget for schools to rent out empty sheds for periods of up to five hundred million years so as children of atheists can observe how living things can come from nothing.

Experiments like making and freezing slime will be replaced with experiments showing how slime, under the right conditions and given enough time, can become fully functioning members of society worthy of rights and personhood.

The Arts

Those taking Atheism Studies can dispense with the Christmas nativity and instead do a play based on atheist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel, Being and Nothingness.

Pupils will get to dress up as their favourite atheist and lounge around the stage smoking cigarettes, contemplating the merits of living a conflicted life of misery and pleasure versus simply committing suicide.

Welcoming today’s announcement, secular campaigner Casper Sage Floyd said: ‘This is great progress. Even though I believe you get to make your own meaning in life, religious meaning is more meaningless than atheist meaning. And even though I believe that morality is subjective, it is objectively wrong to indoctrinate kids into religion. As as a society we need to be tolerant and inclusive, which is why we must banish religion to the ideological gulags – or else.”

However, some atheist parents did express concern over the use of Sartre’s books given the author’s well-documented sordid sex life —although plans to teach primary school children that sex between two and any number of consenting people is acceptable were warmly received.

Amnesty NI is hiring a new abortion campaigns assistant. Here are some excellent candidates

Abortion, Human rights, Pro-choice / / by

Amnesty International is seeking to recruit a new Campaigns Assistant to help quicken the right to kill tiny humans in Northern Ireland.

Since the job requires a passion for human destruction and a profound ignorance of science, the pool of suitable candidates is likely to be very small. But fear not! The Belfast Bigot is on hand to offer these capable recommendations:

Xenomorph Queen

The bookies’ favourite. In every hive that she’s been in charge of, Xenomorph Queen has successfully raised hundreds of fearless Drones and Warriors, making her ideally suited to Amnesty’s activist ethic. She’s also a mother, giving her extra moral authority when deciding who can and can’t live, and she understands the value of choice having once devoured thirty of her own offspring after they failed to develop correctly in the egg.

Runner_2

“MY BODY, MY CHOICCCCCCCCCCCCZZZZ!”

Baraka from Mortal Kombat

As a member of a nomadic mutant community, Baraka knows all too well what it’s like being part of an oppressed people. While he doesn’t have a womb, his marginalised status allows him to empathise with marginalised womb owners who want to kill their own offspring. Most importantly, as a loyal warrior with blades protruding from his arms, he will fight to the death for those whom he calls “master,” making him an exceptional abortion advocate.

baraka

“Mmmmmaaaaaadon’t like abortion, don’t have one!”

Gozer the Gozarian

Being an approachable person who can speak the language of those on the ground is a core requirement for any Amnesty employee. In that regard, Gozer, pictured below, would blend right in at the local Choice rally or vegan cat cafe. Plus, her ability to summon large armies of demons to destroy dissenters should not be overlooked. Downside: being a god Gozer would bring an unwanted religious element to Amnesty’s secular culture.

gozer

“Are you pro-chooooooooice?…. then die!!!!!”

Beverley Allit

Many of you may remember Beverly as the NHS nurse found guilty of killing several babies in her care in the early 1990s, but the term “killing” is harsh. Beverly’s problem was that the healthcare she provided took place on the wrong side of the birth canal. Other than that, she exhibited all of the compassion and empathy expected of any heroic healthcare rights campaigner. The obvious issue is her current incarceration, but Amnesty has a great track record of working with the falsely imprisoned, so maybe they can come to an arrangement.

A massive cast iron hammer and sickle

Not necessarily because of the communist connection – though that would of course rouse and delight many abortion advocates – but as a symbol of the tools needed for an abortion procedure; a hammer to crush skulls and a blade for lopping off limbs. It also works as a beautiful and profound woke metaphor for a woman’s struggle for reproductive freedom (because the patriarchy made these tools heavy and hard to carry). Downside: no real word processing skills.

Other worthwhile mentions: Dawn Purvis, Pennywise the clown, and the demonic form of Marie Stopes.

Sorry, Fionola Meredith – arguments have no gender. Abortion is still wrong even if a man says it

Abortion, Human rights, Morality, Pro-choice, Pro-life / / by

Fallacious arguments are a bit like Where’s Wally?. Once you learn how to spot Wally, you can easily spot him on every page. Similarly, once you learn how to identify logical fallacies – no matter how eloquently put – they leap off the page and beat you over the head with a hurley bat.

I mention this because, after reading this article by Fionola Meredith, I got beaten so badly by a whole gang of fallacies that I had to be rushed to intellectual A&E.

According to Fionola, some men aren’t qualified to speak on abortion because “murdering the little babies” is the sole reserve of those with a womb. But since pro-life men use exactly the same arguments as pro-life women, it is incumbent upon Fionola to answer these arguments without resorting to fallaciously attacking someone’s gender or making unqualified assumptions about their character. Does she do that? Nope. In fact, the entire article is who’s who (what’s what?) of logical errors, from name-calling and emotional appeals to wild and unqualified assumptions. There’s even some amateur psychology in there too for good measure.

Some of these angry, heartless men call themselves Christians. That’s a sick joke. If you’re such a champion of the unborn foetus that you can’t spare an ounce of compassion for a raped child, then what does your faith count for?

Let’s assume that these men are angry and heartless. In fact, while we’re in prejudice mode, let’s make them tax dodgers and drug dealers too. They’re horrible, compassionless, hypocritical, drug-dealing, tax-dodging, pro-life Christian scummers. And they stole the lead off yer Da’s shed. So now what follows? Nothing. Abortion is still the intentional taking of innocent human life.

What we see here – and in the following four (!) paragraphs – is a commitment to the ad-hominem fallacy – that is, attacking people (who she’s never met) as opposed to their ideas in lieu of making a persuasive case of her own. It’s just name-calling. And name-calling is not an argument.

Notice also that she attacks a strawman – the intentional misrepresentation of an opponent that is easier to defeat than their actual view. I’ve yet to meet any pro-lifer who wouldn’t have compassion for a raped child. Such a charge is as ridiculous as it is unfounded. But it also cuts both ways. If you’re such a champion of raped children that you can’t spare an ounce of compassion for the child heading for the abortion chopping block, then what does your egalitarian secularism count for? See how that works?

A much better approach – and one desperately needed in our wee divided country – is to advance actual arguments that must be defended. Arguments that stand or fall on their merits, not the gender (or colour, or race, or religion, .etc) of those espousing them.

It’s true that we frequently hear female voices who are implacably opposed to abortion in all circumstances, although I’ve never yet heard one of them give a satisfactory answer as to why any girl or woman should be forced to give birth to a child she does not want.

The answer is simple and wholly satisfactory to any right-thinking person: the value of human life is not determined by wantedness. A woman should not be able to poison alive / methodically dismember her unborn child because she does not want her, any more than she should be able to poison alive / methodically dismember her two-year-old for the same reason.

Again, the gender of the person making this point is completely irrelevant – it is either true or false on its own merit – but since you mention it, there are countless female pro-life leaders articulating this basic philosophical truth in the world today. In fact, the whole pro-life movement is headed up and staffed almost exclusively by women. There’s at least a dozen of them in NI alone. Why not meet with them if you’re still unclear?

I think they are motivated by something far more base, ugly and deplorable. I believe they are driven by contempt for women, a desire to control them and to have dominion over their bodies.

Listen to the vitriol in the words they use. What you’re hearing, echoing down the millennia from the dawn of time, is misogyny: an ancient fear, suspicion and resentment of women and their extraordinary power to give birth.

There’s no doubt that Fionola is a talented writer and articulate speaker (as much as I disagree with some of her views, I enjoy listening to her on the radio and reading her articles), but she’s no psychiatrist. All of this is mere conjecture that lies outside the bounds of her knowledge and expertise. How does she know what drives someone? Is she qualified to make statements about someone’s personal psychology? I doubt it. Is she privy to their medical records? I hope not. This is yet more name-calling, just made a little more sophisticated by wrapping it up in pseudo-psychology and poetic language.

And who are these suspicious and contemptuous men anyway? Big Ivor Bogroll she heard on the Nolan Show? Well, she might have a point with Big Ivor – I once saw him eat a plastic fork in a KFC outside Lurgan – but she hasn’t mentioned any names, or provided any evidence of these alleged transgressions, just assumptions and generalisations and someone she heard on the Nolan Show. This is not journalism – or even a thoughtful opinion piece – it’s naked activism.

Men can never know what it is like to experience a crisis pregnancy. They will never grapple with the horror and fear. They will never have to take out a bank loan to fund their personal travel expenses to England, or to make the lonely, disorienting journey there and back.

Consider this: Fionola will never know what it’s like to fight in a war. She will never grapple with horror and fear. She will never have to survive on benefits or struggle with PTSD. Therefore, Fionola doesn’t get to decide whether the army can torture war prisoners or not.

That’s a pretty bizarre argument, don’t you think? So, why would discussing other moral issues like abortion be any different? It’s true that gender perspectives on abortion can help us understand the personal experience, but they are no substitute for rational inquiry.

The abortion question does not hinge on gender or personal experiences (indeed, many women will never know what those things are like, either), but whether or not the unborn child has value and is worthy of protection. Would she make the same appeal to emotion if the debate were about killing toddlers instead of fetuses?

But ultimately it won’t be the man’s decision, nor should it be. Their views count for less, and rightly have no legal weight, because it is the woman who carries the child. She deals with the immediate physical reality of the pregnancy, as well as the lifelong impact of giving birth to another human being.

OK – if men can’t make decisions on abortion, then the 1967 Abortion Act is bad law. After all, it was introduced by David Steel, a man, and backed by a government comprising entirely of men. The same goes for Roe V. Wade in America which was passed by nine male judges. Of course, Fionola likely believes that the views of those men – and today’s male abortion lawmakers like Simon Harris and Leo Varadkar – do not count for less and have plenty of legal weight because she agrees with them.

So what this all amounts to, then – even with a shoe-horned attempt at balance by referencing the “kindly pro-life men” she knows – is the silencing of those she disagrees with based purely on their gender. Think about that for a second. Isn’t that the very base, ugly and deplorable trait that she claims to detest in others?

If you think right and wrong exist above the law, you’d be right. But that’s theism.

Human rights, Humanism, LGBT, secularism / / by

Where now for secular humanists, atheists and other moral relativists who profoundly disagree with the Ashers ruling? The outrage currently coming from their various corners is palpable, but it only highlights their inconsistency when it comes to the Moral Project, and exposes their faulty understanding of human rights and what it means to be human.

Human rights, as far as we can tell, can only come from one of three sources: 1) God, 2) Nature or 3) governments. Those who subscribe to an atheistic and/or strictly secular worldview reject God outright. Grand. That leaves Nature and governments. We can all agree, I think, that Nature is an amoral and impersonal force that thrives on violence and discrimination. Nature might bless you with the genes needed to live a long and prosperous life, or it might chuck a tree at your caravan. So that’s Nature out. That leaves governments – which brings us to the Ashers case.

As far as strict secularists and the Ashers case are concerned, the highest court in one of the most enlightened and progressive civilisations on earth has ruled emphatically that what they sincerely thought was a human rights violation was in fact nothing of the kind. On what basis can they now argue otherwise?

This was a question posed to the pro-life community when the 8th Amendment referendum result went against them. But there’s a key difference. The dominant view among pro-lifers is that the State does not get to hand down human rights. The State’s only job is to protect the human rights that already exist by virtue of you simply being human. Abortion, therefore, will always be wrong, regardless of what the State says because it unjustly takes the life of a scientifically-proven-to-be human being. And so, like all social reformers worth their salt, pro-lifers understand what it means to be human, and are able to remain consistent in their philosophical convictions by opposing the State and continuing to fight for the rights of unborn humans.

This view, of course, is rooted in the Judeo-Christian idea that all human beings are created equally and imbued with intrinsic value and purpose. In other words, human rights are an objective feature of reality above man’s ability to change. This, of course, is a scandalous and radical departure from secular atheism.

Secular atheism, on its own terms, cannot account for human worth or dignity because such things simply don’t exist. They are social constructs arbitrated by those in power – like those who ruled against Gareth Lee. So where do secularists turn now? What are their options?

The European Court of Human Rights? Possibly, but there’s every chance that could go the same way. The universe? Ha. The universe hates you. Shit happens. What about the doctrine that underpins the entire atheist enterprise, Darwin’s Origin of Species? Well, if Darwin was right, human beings are just slabs of talking meat. Some will get lucky, some will get devoured. There’s no secular hope to be found there, either.

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No. All they have are the laws given to them by the State of whatever country and time period they happen to be in. And what the State giveth, the State taketh away.

That’s not to say that proponents of secular atheism can’t oppose unjust laws. They can and do. And many of them do a great job of it. But they do so in contradiction to how they believe reality to be. Any secularist of any stripe who thinks otherwise is halfway to theism, so why not save all this public inconsistency and join us theists, completely? You’d still be wrong about the Ashers ruling, but at least you’d know on what grounds.

Naomi Long – but why are you “personally opposed” to abortion on demand?

Abortion, Human rights, Pro-choice, Pro-life / / by

Last month, the leader of the Alliance Party, Naomi Long, got into a spiky back and forth with Precious Life after she – along with over 169 other MPs – signed a letter calling for their morality to be imposed on unborn children radical changes to Northern Ireland’s abortion laws. Precious Life (correctly) claimed that the letter is basically a euphemism for abortion on demand, and that (also correctly) a vote for Alliance is a vote for abortion. In response, Naomi Long called it ALL LIES before making the claim that decriminalising abortion does not force abortion on anyone. Because we all know that not forcing a certain thing on people makes the thing itself morally permissible. That’s how the logic of morality works in 2018, bigots.

Other local politicians signed the letter too, of course, but the interesting thing about Naomi is that she is a Christian. That and I genuinely like her. She’s a talented, articulate, and hardworking politician, who has displayed considerable bravery in the face of violent paramilitary thugs, and who has, in the past, spoken out against the exodus of persecuted Christians from the Middle East. It’s just a shame that she doesn’t see the violent expulsion of a human being seeking asylum in her mother’s womb in the same way.

You might be wondering, then, how a Christian could love all her neighbours bar the ones that happen to be in a certain location or at a certain stage of development or are the product of certain circumstances. Keep wondering, because Naomi’s specific beliefs on the act of abortion are pretty hard to come by. While she stated in this 2012 article that she’s personally opposed to abortion on demand, she has yet to explain, to my knowledge, why she personally opposes abortion on demand. Is it because she thinks abortion a sin? Does she think abortion takes a human life? Does she think there’s an intrinsic difference between the corpse of a child that was aborted on demand and the corpse of a child that was aborted because she was the product of rape? It’s all rather vague, which should be a concern for any thoughtful pro-life voter because it’s literally a matter of life and death.

So, how best do pro-lifers go about unpacking and engaging with the absurd contradiction of someone who claims to be personally opposed to abortion (either entirely or to a certain degree) yet is in favour of it as a matter of public policy? How do you respond to such a person? What would you say to Naomi Long if she turned up at your door canvassing and the discussion turned to abortion? What would you say to her on Talkback or the Nolan Show when she’s on arguing for choice but doesn’t explain what the precise nature of that choice is? The answer lies in these basic questions, in the following order:

1. “Naomi, why are you personally opposed to abortion on demand?”

The answer to this should be easy. She will likely say that she’s personally opposed to abortion on demand because abortion kills an innocent human being. If Naomi does not think the unborn are human then she would have no logical reason for any personal opposition to abortion at any stage, for any reason. Having an abortion on demand would be no more immoral than picking your nose on demand or having a mole removed on demand. It would require neither personal opposition nor any further thought on the matter.

2. “Naomi, does your belief that abortion on demand kills an innocent human being have any objective basis?”

This is also easy to answer because, if she’s a thinking Christian, two things will happen. First, she will tell you that the scientific consensus amongst embryologists is that the unborn is a distinct, living, and whole human being from the point of conception. Second, she will appeal to her Christian convictions and tell you that all human beings are knit together in their mother’s womb equally in the image of God, and that, as a follower of Christ with a public platform and a gift for feisty activism, she is compelled to speak out against the destruction of the powerless by the powerful, including those at risk of being dismembered with a Sopher clamp by the strong arm of a wealthy abortion doctor.

3. “Naomi, are you personally opposed to child rape?”

This should be brief. She will say “Yes” – then give you the death stare for asking such a stupid question. But it’s not a stupid question. It’s a trap.

4. The next question is obvious: “Would you be willing to impose this belief on others by banning child rape?”

In the blink of an eye, she will answer “yes”. At this point, though, you might want to remind her that preventing people from raping children is a question of objective morality rather than an issue of choice or individual conscience, as the Alliance Party puts it. It is more a case of asking whether a government should prevent terrible things from happening to a voiceless group of vulnerable human beings than the question of choosing between brown sauce or red sauce for your fry.

5. If at this point she doesn’t yet understand how absurd her position is, ask, “Why do you believe that rape is more serious than murder?”

If she still doesn’t get it at this point or refuses to answer, you can simply explain to her that she thinks it should be illegal to rape children but permissible to murder them – even though she “personally opposes” both child rape and child murder. You can now close the discussion by contrasting her muddled and inconsistent position with your clear and inclusive pro-life position that the law should ban both the rape and murder of children because both are forms of child abuse.

Secularists – if you believe morality is subjective, you can’t complain about the Ulster rugby trial (or anything else)

Equality, Human rights, Morality / / by

Subjective morality, the idea that there are no moral absolutes, no such thing as “just wrong” – merely differing cultural and circumstantial opinions – is pretty much the dominant philosophy in Western culture today.

And I can see the appeal. I mean, who wants to be told what they can and can’t do? As I’m often told, “you can’t force your morality down someone else’s throat, you intolerant old sea weasel!” Subjective morality is an easy position to adopt because you get to live how you want and nobody can accuse you of doing wrong. Each to their own and all that.

But here’s the catch: if you believe morality is subjective, and you wish to remain logically consistent within this belief, then there are a few things you can’t complain about. Like the following:

1. The Ulster rugby trial

Without wanting to comment on the verdict of the trial, because I’m not a barrister and I don’t know all the facts, one verdict that we can be sure of is this: in terms of pure misogyny, the defendants make Harvey Weinstein look like Moominpappa.

But who are we to judge? Remember, there is no such thing as “just wrong,” so saying “misogyny is wrong” makes no sense. What rational justification is there within a subjective moral framework to deny these men – who were simply creating their own meaning in life – the chance to play rugby again? You don’t like their womanising behaviour? Really? I don’t like the behaviour of people who noisily eat crisps on public transport while whistling through their nose, but I’m not about to become all shouty and righteously indignant over it. Unless the crisps are prawn cocktail.

2. Pro-life protestors outside abortion clinics

We’re often told that pro-life protestors intimidate and harass vulnerable women (“Really? REALLY?!” says the soon-to-be-assassinated fetus), and that such behaviour is wicked and evil and wrong.

Of course, to make any of these claims requires evil and wicked and wrong to be actual things, which moral subjectivists flat-out deny, so to confirm its existence by calling abortion protestors these things pulls the rug from under their entire argument.

So, the simple answer to moral subjectivists who think abortion clinic protestors are wrong is this: if you don’t like protesting outside abortion clinics, don’t protest outside abortion clinics! Ha! See now how this argument works? See? Now?

3. Homophobia (and all the other phobias)

If morality is subjective, equality is a nonsensical concept. It simply doesn’t exist. In fact, it says so in the very title of the book that many secularists and subjectivists hold up as proof that their view is correct – Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Did you read that? Preservation of favoured races. Stronger races will be preserved, weaker races will be obliterated. No equality here. It’s right there in the secular bible. You don’t even have to read beyond the front cover or anything.

Equality entails treating people right, and right depends on good, which, if what Darwin taught is true, doesn’t exist. In this regard, subjective morality is the ultimate pro-choice position because it allows for all choices – even the choice to be homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic and so on.

4. Chemical attacks

The former head of American Atheists, David Silverman, said during this debate that the Holocaust wasn’t objectively wrong. Although Silverman undoubtedly thinks that such acts are terrible, he has no choice, if he wishes to remain consistent within his atheism, but to deny their just wrongness. The logical conclusion of that, then, is that chemical attacks on innocent civilians aren’t objectively wrong, either.

For an example closer to home, Paddy Kielty’s powerful documentary showed that there’s no regret to be had when ussuns kills themuns, because the beauty of subjective morality means that you can force (deadly force, if necessary) your morality on others if it’s in the interest of tribe survival and your personal ethics allow it.

Moral subjectivity makes it impossible to have any kind of meaningful discussion regarding ethical behaviour. There’s nothing to talk about. A conversation on moral behaviour involves juxtaposing one view against another to find out which one is best. But if morals are subjective, there is no reason to view one position over another. You can’t even call something as barbaric as the Holocaust “just wrong”. The best thing a moral subjectivist can do during such a discussion is top up the electric and make the tea.

Living like God exists

The irony of all this is that moral subjectivists often pride themselves on their moral superiority (check out any humanist or atheist Internet group for evidence of this). There’s nobody on the planet quicker at telling you how tolerant and non-judgemental than they are. Moral subjectivists are not like the rest of us insufferable bigots.

In other words, they preach a gospel of moral subjectivity, but when a story like the Ulster rugby trial breaks, or when someone is harassed because of their sexual orientation, their gospel turns out to be a false one that belies who they really are – human beings made in the image of God, coded with an intrinsic moral sense. Their cries of injustice and wrongdoing only make sense in light of the biblical worldview they reject, which is why, if they wish to live in a civil society, they must live like God exists.

Don’t like human trafficking? Don’t traffic humans! Why we need to #TrustTraffickers and judge less

Equality, Human rights, Pro-choice / / by

The world is full of narrow-minded zealots.

Take a look, for example, at those religious nutjobs who are against human trafficking. They’re too busy imposing their bronze-age morality on the rest of us that they fail to see that human trafficking is not a black and white issue. In fact, there are some totes amaze arguments in favour of it.

Behold:

Trafficked humans would only be living in poverty anyway

There are over 100,000 homeless people in Northern Ireland alone. If we keep human trafficking illegal, that figure will continue to increase. Nobody wants that.

Additionally, many studies have shown that when people come out of a life of being trafficked, they sink into abject poverty, don’t achieve very much, or end up in prison or dead.

Human trafficking, on the other hand, is caring and compassionate; it keeps the trafficked person alive, fed, housed, and out of prison – meaning much less crime on our streets, too.

Anti-traffickers only care about freedom, they don’t care what happens to a person once they’re free

People take up a lot of resources. As anyone who has ever had a human live in their house will testify, they’re really very expensive. From the exorbitant costs of living to the endless pile of stuff they demand, like mobile phones and tins of Monster.

So, if we take away trafficking, who’s going to give all these millions of suddenly-free people a home? I don’t see anti-traffickers queuing up to give them ALL a home, do you?

No – every free human being should be a WANTED free human being. And until anti-traffickers start caring for already-free people, they have no business telling the rest of us what to do. Unless a human being is wanted, the caring thing to do is traffic it.

Banning human trafficking does not stop human trafficking

The main reason anti-traffickers want to keep human trafficking illegal, other than to impose their morals on the rest of us, is that doing so will reduce its frequency. But the data says otherwise. According to the International Labour Organization, there were 40.3 million humans trafficked globally in 2016 – most of which were in countries where trafficking is already illegal! So obviously keeping it illegal doesn’t help. It just stops safe trafficking.

A friend of mine, Mauricio – who only wants to go by his first name because of the horrible stigma attached to trafficking, and for fear of being arrested – trafficks humans in his home village of Lambeg.

Teary-eyed, with his once immaculate three-tier ebony mullet now unkempt with the stress, he recently told me, “Restricting access to human trafficking makes no significant difference to the number of people being trafficked. Instead, restrictions on human trafficking make it more likely that poor people looking to make a better life for themselves will turn to backstreet traffickers. In 2018, this is unacceptable.”

Did you read that? Yes, it’s 2018. Therefore, any other opinion is wrong because it’s older. And older things are inferior to present day things. Don’t ask me how. They just are.

It’s morally wrong to impose your morals on someone else

I’m all for freedom of religious belief. However, when religious beliefs impede on secular beliefs, then we need to ensure that secular beliefs come out on top – because secular beliefs are neutral. And that’s a scientific fact. So, religious people don’t have a right to tell other people how to behave, which is why it’s important to tell them – forcefully, if necessary – that they need to behave more secularly. Or else.

But by far the biggest problem I find with those against human trafficking – in my experience mostly Christians – is when they quote their “holy” book. Well, you can just quote it right back at them – “Judge not, that ye be not judged”.

What the God-botherers fail to understand here is that Jesus didn’t say anything specific about human trafficking, therefore it’s totally cool. And if Jesus thinks it’s cool, it’s cool. Even though I don’t think Jesus even existed.

The point is, all beliefs are good, but I believe that the religious have no right to force their beliefs on others – especially when it comes to sensitive and emotive issues like trafficking. So just stop being so judgemental, OK?

If you don’t like human trafficking, don’t traffick humans

This is the best argument for everything, ever. It is the platinum rule, not just for human trafficking, but for EVERYTHING that people disagree with you on! If you don’t like the idea of human trafficking, no one is forcing you to traffic humans. Mind your own business.

Your anti-trafficking opinion will not change the fact that traffickers traffic people every day. Old traffickers, young traffickers, poor traffickers, rich traffickers – they all traffic humans on a daily basis, and nobody’s opinion is going to change that.

In summary, anyone who values progress and empathy should support traffick rights because being pro-traffic means a lot of wonderful things – among them, the belief that trafficking should be safe, legal, accessible, entirely paid for by your taxes and carried out with empathy and non-judgement.

Only a hateful, bigoted fool would disagree. RIGHT!?!??!!