Beyond Critique

An emerging area that I would welcome your opinion on is Opinion-based Sexual Orientation, which the various -ism lobbies are moving towards demanding as a right.

This has been quite prominent in the recent pitched battle concerning Julie Birchill / Suzanne Moore and Transexuality.

It is also quite prominent in the recent all-of-a-sudden adoption of ‘anti-harrassment’ policies by umpteen atheist groups in North America:

eg http://atheists.org/conferencecodeofconduct

which is based on this:

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy

It is an interestingly different argument to the now-traditional “homosexuality is genetic/not a choice”, while religion is just an opinion, so discimination against the HS community is like racism  and the religious must just suck up whatever comes their way.

The sharpest one will be whether “Genderqueer” (I choose man/woman presentation based on how I feel at any particular time) claims confer a right to impose limitations on the actions of others, since (as far as I can see anyway) there is no basis whatsoever for the existence of the orientation outside bald assertion.

To me, if claims for allowing discrimination against religion because it is an opinion succeed, the Genderqueer claims fail the same hurdle.

I’m not expecting consistency, however :-).