mShenko

For those who haven't heard (because, for example, they may actually have a life) mshenko is an "m/m ship" (male/male relationship) between male Shephard (your character, whom you can play as male or female) and Kaidan Alenko from the world of fan-fiction (specifically, fan-fiction about characters in the Mass Effect series of games from Bioware).

Here's a brilliant, if chaotic, take on it from YouTube. Note the subtle mixin of references to the m/m shipping of Sam and Dean Winchester from Supernatural.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man

It's high time for Nigel Farage to join the Conservative party and rescue it from the utter shambles that Theresa May has produced.

Gay men have strong preferences for masculine traits

Apparently.

“Homosexual men preferred hairier stimuli than heterosexual women, supporting past findings that homosexual men have strong preferences for masculine traits,” it says in the summary.

Our View: this is a bombshell that will come as a surprise to literally no gay men.

Equality: now gays can be the oppressors too

In the bad old days it was the heterosexuals who tried to make people ashamed to be gay. They never succeeded with me. I always counted it as a blessing, not a curse, that I could see beauty in a man's frame or find comfort in a man's arms. Now however, the societal tables are turned and, yes, finally, they have made me ashamed to be gay.

Only, "they" this time are people who go up to Christians in the street and try to entrap them, as described in this article in the Telegraph: Preacher locked up for hate crime after quoting the Bible to gay teenager. Incredibly, the young man asked the preacher what the Bible said about gays and then made a hate crime accusation to the police. The preacher was frogmarched off on his say-so alone and made to spend a night in the cells.

There's a line where you stop being a victim and start being a fascist, using your "victim" status as a club to bash others over the head. This kind of behaviour is on the far side of that line. At least the boy's friend's behaviour was admirable: in court he said that Mr Larmour hadn't assaulted his friend or called him homophobic names: he had simply answered his question and told him about Adam and Eve and Heaven and Hell.

Malawi court convicts gay couple

In a brief article, the BBC is reporting that Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga have been convicted of of gross indecency and unnatural acts.

The couple celebrated an unofficial engagement in late December 2009, in public in front of about 500 people, and were later arrested by the police and remanded in prison, where they are said to have been beaten.

There is a Facebook page for those who wish to support the couple. The latest posting on this page's Wall is claiming that they were, in fact acquitted, so look for updates as the day goes on.

Iris Robinson's excellent taste in young men

So it turns out that Iris Robinson, previously in the news for her unfortunate remarks regarding homosexuality ["abomination", "sick", "nauseous" and so on] and adultery, spent 2009 having an affair with what can only be described as a toy boy. Robinson, who will have been 59 at the time, started bedding the delightful Kirk McCambley (now 21) when he was only 19.

Really, the closer you look into this one, the worse it gets. Firstly, it seems that Mrs Robinson may have inadvertently left herself open to allegations that she channeled money his way, both from her friends and from the local council on which she sat. Indeed, Mr McCambley claims that she asked him for a "cut". Secondly — and how can one put this most sensitively? — it seems that Mr McCambley first came to Mrs Robinson's attention in 2008, when she promised his dying father (a close friend of hers) that she would "look after" Kirk, his only son!

I do hope she has the dignity not to ask for understanding, since that is precisely the thing she wants denied to us. Indeed if the state has a duty to carry out "God's laws", as she believes it does, then there are plenty of places in the world even now where she would be looking forward to being publicly flogged or even stoned to death.

The BBC News website has a good article detailing the whole sorry mess quite exhaustively. The most striking thing about it is the photograph at the top: the betrayed husband, looking old and grey and, well, betrayed; the virile young lover looking absolutely scrumptious in a clear-eyed, clean-limbed, closely-cropped kind of way [just how I like 'em—GM]; and finally Iris herself, looking for all the world like a white-leaded and rouged restoration whore.

Readings

Two excellent articles from, of all places, The Guardian.

First, Andrew Chambers examines the Rousseauist tendencies of the Fairtrade movement, concluding that it actively prevents mechanisation and, yes, progress in the countries that need it most, while ensuring that the poorest rural workers fail to benefit [hat tip, Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution].

Second, Simon Jenkins gives a fresh spin to the familiar refrain that Britain, like the U.S., has too many trivial offenses. He has the frightening example of a businessman jailed for three and a half years for VAT fraud by a judge who wasn't sure if he was really guilty of anything, after having his cash and company records seized so that he was unable to mount an effective defense.

Both of these stories remind me, in their different ways, of a passage in The Prince, where Machiavelli advises the Prince to tax people heavily — to the extent that they can no longer live on the remaining income — but then to give the money back to them in the form of a dole. The point being that the state takes tax by right, so that those who do not pay it are criminals, whereas the dole is given as a favour and has to be merited, and can be lost after bad behaviour. So the money that used to be their own now comes to them as a gift from the Prince. The effect is to make formerly independent people dependent on the Prince.

In the first article that principle is at work in the field of economics, in the second article it is at work in the field of criminality. By constantly expanding the number of crimes on the books, the State makes many formerly innocent people guilty ... of something. People who used to be free as of right are now free only as long as the police do not inquire too closely: their freedom is now a gift from the State, and can be taken away at any time. Of course, this is a tactic that has been used against gays throughout history: kiss your boyfriend in public and go straight to jail. Only now that it's affecting large numbers of heterosexuals are the majority getting worried.