Sweden’s leading opposition, the Social Democrats, has made a promise to close the tax gap between people who work and people living on benefits. It sounds right, but their proposal doesn’t even come close to the flat income tax that would really close the gap. What they suggest is a system that would punish people who are successful at what they do. It is nothing but an appeal to envy.

An English teacher in an American High School has been suspended because he had students read a scientific article about homosexuality in the animal kingdom. I guess nothing must be allowed to challenge the myth about homosexuality being a “lifestyle choice”.

Read the forbidden article here.

Cartoon by Yaakov Kirschen.

I just found an article in the Jewish Chronicle that that moved me.

“I hated myself. I couldn’t find any escape. I would pray for hours, cry, go to the Kotel. The only place I could talk about my feelings was a support group for gay Orthodox teenagers, but there they would tell me that I was sick and must try to be cured. It was like living without breathing. I felt as though I had a terminal illness. I couldn’t escape,” Rabbi Hillel Athias-Robles is quoted as saying after the August gun attack on a gay youth centre in Tel Aviv. “In Liberal Judaism I found a God that I could love, rather than fear. I found a community that would accept everyone the way he or she was. I am so fulfilled. I have a partner, and a life of incredible happiness.”

I don’t want to go into personal details, but I can relate to this. To me, organized religion was all about bigotry and conformity until I met Progressive Judaism. Now I realize that there is more to religion than believing in what some men said about God in an ancient past. It is about a sense of belonging and trying one’s best to be a good person.

Cartoon by Tom Scott.

The Jerusalem Post has an article about the high cost of kosher food in Europe.

Sweden in one of a handful of countries where kosher slaughter is banned by law. This makes meat products very costly and difficult to obtain for observant Jews. The main argument for the ban on kosher slaughter is that it causes severe suffering to animals. I am not convinced by the arguments put forwards by advocates of animal welfare. Done correctly, Jewish ritual slaughter does not need to cause suffering.

I would like to see the ban lifted to give Swedish Jews a greater opportunity to follow the dietary laws of traditional Judaism.

In a 1999 essay, Andrew Sullivan exemplifies the problem about hate crime legislation:

In 1993, in San Jose, Calif., two neighbors—one heterosexual, one homosexual—were engaged in a protracted squabble over grass clippings. (The full case is recounted in "Hate Crimes," by James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter.) The gay man regularly mowed his lawn without a grass catcher, which prompted his neighbor to complain on many occasions that grass clippings spilled over onto his driveway. Tensions grew until one day, the gay man mowed his front yard, spilling clippings onto his neighbor’s driveway, prompting the straight man to yell an obscene and common anti-gay insult. The wrangling escalated. At one point, the gay man agreed to collect the clippings from his neighbor’s driveway but then later found them dumped on his own porch. A fracas ensued with the gay man spraying the straight man’s son with a garden hose, and the son hitting and kicking the gay man several times, yelling anti-gay slurs. The police were called, and the son was eventually convicted of a hate-motivated assault, a felony. But what was the nature of the hate: anti-gay bias, or suburban property-owner madness?

Sullivan has ha point, but it is also important to remember that many people are attacked merely for being part of a group. Gay men in particular are often victims of unprovoked violence from strangers. So, I am a bit ambivalent. On the one hand, hate-crime laws are in themselves discriminating; on the other hand, some people are discriminates against for simply being members of a group. In a perfect world, one law against all violence would be sufficient. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect. If it were, we would not need these types of laws, full stop.

Researchers have managed to grown human eggs and sperm in laboratory, which might make it possible to make babies through entirely artificial means.

I nice example of human empathy overriding politics.

Andrea Levin, executive director and president of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, is absolutely rights about Aftonbladet.

According to Hatewatch, this is what evangelical pastor Douglas Wilson wrote in a 1996 book entitled Southern Slavery, As it Was. Wilson appears in a new film about the merits of Christianity, in which he debates the issue with atheist Christopher Hitchens.

A website called Intelligence Report write about some excerpted “highlights” from the book:

“Slavery as it existed in the South ... was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence,” the excerpts read in part. “There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. ...

“Slave life was to them [slaves] a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care.”

Eh?

These are the words of Venezuela’s de fact dictator Hugo Chávez.

I think we can expect him to declare himself the Messiah in a not too distant future. Chávez is the new Idi Amin; you know, the Ugandan dictator who in the 1970s declared himself the King of Scotland and ordered his subjects to address him as: His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, Conqueror of the British Empire.

The Ugandan parliament is preparing a inhuman law that could sentence gay people to death. Maybe Western media ought to pay attention?

Noah was a handy man who got the weather reports much earlier than everyone else. But was he really a righteous man? The Bible says so, but what do you think? This funny little video might give an answer.

After a nomination meeting with some turbulence, the Moderate Party in Malmö has decided to put me on number 17 on its list to the Swedish Parliament. That means that my name will be on the ballot paper in next year’s general election, but considering that the only the three names at the top are expected to get a seat in parliament, my chances are very slim indeed. But it feels nice to be on the ballot paper and being able to vote for myself.

One thing that always amazes me about the Christian Right is their refusal to debate with the gay people they are so happy to debate among themselves. I now have a new example of this. Jonathan Ekman, the director of Livets Ord, a conservative and charismatic Christian congregation in Sweden, runs a blog where he shares his ideas about theology, culture, and politics. Blog readers are invited to take part in the discussions, but everyone who has a strong argument against Ekman’s position on homosexuality is blocked.

Yesterday, I read Ekman’s posting on the Church of Sweden’s decision to allow same-sex couples to marry. The article is full of hatred and misunderstandings. A number of highly homophobic readers—probably from Ekman’s own congregation—have commented on the blog article. But one in particular had a straightforward question I decided to answer.

It is common that Christian homophobes try to mock the fact that gay people are legally and culturally considered a group of people, much like an ethnic group. This, the Christian homophobes say, is political correctness and something the gay lobby has created to gain power in society. The reader on Ekman’s blog asked rhetorically, “When did people become groups based on sexual preferences?”

This question—which is repeated over and over by people who assume the obvious answer is that the homosexuals have done this themselves—is in fact easy to answer.

In 1230, Pope Gregory IX wrote a document that for the fist time made homosexuals a distinct group of people. In earlier documents, homosexuality had been described as simply an action—most often anal intercourse. But as from 1230, the Catholic Church treated gay people as a group much like an ethnic group. During the Spanish Inquisition, gay people and Jews were singled out as the two groups that should be exterminated. Both gays and Jews were tortured and burned at the stake simply for being members of these groups. Since then, gays have been treated as a group of people in legal matters in many countries, and in the 1930s, the Nazis forced gay people to wear pink triangles.

It was the homophobes, not the homosexuals, that made gay people the legally and culturally defined group of people it is today.

This was the dangerous information that Jonathan Ekman could not allow on his blog. I know why. It would take away one opportunity to discredit gay people. Better then to ignore the facts and refuse an informed gay person a voice.

Update at 23:15: Jonathan Ekman has now published my comments on his blog.

I updated my Firefox web browser, and by mistake opened an old file when migrating my old bookmarks to my new browser. What came on the screen was an article by Peter Tatchell I read several years ago. I think I have posted a link to it on my blog once before, but I figure it is worth a reminder in these day when Ugandan politicians are planning a witch-hunt on gay people and the opponents to same-sex marriage in Europe and America do their best to demonize homosexuals.

Read Peter Tatchell’s article about the “gay holocaust” here.

(Seen in the picture are a few of the 100,000 gay prisoners the Nazis sent to their concentration camps.)

Update: Read this article.

“Germany’s high court strengthened the rights of gay couples on Thursday, ruling that government employees with registered civil unions are entitled to the same pension plans as married couples,” The Local reports.

After years of fierce debate, the United States Senate has voted 68-29 in favour of extending federal hate-crimes laws to protect people who are victimized because of their gender, disability, or sexual orientation. President Obama has promised to sign the bill into law once it got the Senate’s approval.

This was the headline of a weekly television show in Uganda this Wednesday. An anonymous blogger writes about the latest in a long campaign against human rights for gay people in Uganda.

In the show, Pastor Martin Ssempa, a well-known advocate of homophobia, argued in favour of a new law that would allow for Ugandan courts to sentence gay people to death for having sex. The anonymous blogger sums up the pastor’s arguments:

• There is no middle ground. You are either for or against homosexuality.
• It is political suicide to oppose the bill since most Ugandans support it.
• Basic intrinsic values of Ugandans are not negotiable. They include homophobia.
• Punishing homosexuals is not done out of hate but an act of love.
• The views on homosexuality held by Barack Obama, Gene Robinson, and the Archbishop of Canterbury are appalling.
• There is a dangerous, international Homosexual Agenda.
• Homosexuals have lots of money they use to bribe politicians.
• Europeans and Americans are bribed to come to Africa to promote sodomy.
• It is time for Uganda to stand up to the whole world on behalf of the children.

Martin Ssempa ended the show with a prayer for Gene Robinson and Elton John to be delivered from homosexuality and wished they would find women to marry.

Swedish gay newspaper QX reports that American churches sponsor the Ugandan homophobes are the new proposed legislation.

Ross Douthat:

“The secular arguments against gay marriage, when they aren’t just based on bigotry or custom, tend to be abstract in ways that don’t find purchase in American political discourse. I say, ‘Institutional support for reproduction,’ you say, ‘I love my boyfriend and I want to marry him.’ Who wins that debate? You win that debate.”

As from 1 November, same-sex couples can get married in the Church of Sweden. After a heated debate, Sweden’s former state-church decided to grant gay members the same rights as heterosexual members.

With 74 per cent of Swedes being its members and with more than 3,500 church buildings, the Church of Sweden is by far the largest religious organization in Sweden.

Read more in Swedish here, here, here, and here.

Update: More in English here.

The fascinating power of one news man.

A woman saw a naked man making coffee in his kitchen when she cut through the man’s garden at 5:30 in the morning. Now she is suing the man.

There is something very wrong with people who are this sensitive to human nudity.

Patrizia Bugnano is right. Someone ought to tell Italy’s prime minister that he is too old and too ugly to make other people’s appearance an issue.

Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary—by some fellow Muslims considered “an extremist nut”—has urged Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II to convert to Islam. He is also quoted as saying, “Britain does not need a new leader, it needs a revolution—an Islamic revolution.”

I bet the British National Party and its racist entourage are thrilled. Now they have “proof” of a Muslim plan to take over Britain.

In today’s issue, Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet publishes an article picturing Muslims as the biggest threat to Sweden since the Second World War. This same tabloid newspaper published the world-famous anti-Semitic article about Jews harvesting killed Palestinians for body organs. The Islamophobic article is written by the leader of the racist Sweden Democrats.

It seems Aftonbladet’s new target groups are the political extremists.

More in English here.

You have heard about it in the news, but now you can read the graphic novel, too.

It is interesting how the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah is used in politics. The latest example comes from a heated debate over a new sex club in Gloucester, where one Susan Johnson warned that this British town would soon turn into Sodom and Gomorrah. The irony is that the moral lesson to be learned from the biblical story most likely is about unwelcoming and hostile behaviour rather than wrongful sexual acts.

The City of Rotterdam is encouraging its civil servants to report cynical colleagues.

Yeah, like that will work! People will only use the hotline to escape from their duties. (Joke!)

This online journal is not updated very often nowadays. That’s because I’m busy writing the essay for my bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies. The topic is Jewish nationhood and social ontology. I might publish the result here when it has been presented at my seminar in January.

In a new bill, David Bahati, member of the Ugandan Parliament, wants to toughen some of the world’s most homophobic laws. His bill is said to “protect the traditional family by prohibiting any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex”. Although homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, a large majority of MPs are believed to support Bahati’s bill, which would allow gay sex to be punishable by death.

“All wonders of the universe are created by the union of sperm and egg,” writes an angry straight man to Andrew Sullivan. The email makes James Withers furious, but I think Sullivan’s homophobic reader is quite funny. Even funnier is that he makes the argument that nine per cent of the population is too small a group to care about. I imagine he thought this was a brilliant argument when he sent the email, but I doubt he would stick by it if children were the topic.

Not much, apparently.

The closer to a problem decisions are made the better the decision. That is the simplified thesis of Elinor Ostrom, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. I like!

On this day in 1998, gay teenager Matthew Shepard was beaten to death by Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney. His death sparked an international debate about hate crimes and the fact that gays and lesbians are often seen as legitimate targets of violence. The Christian Right picketed Shepard’s funeral, which forced many people to speak out against the homophobic propaganda produced by religious groups.

Since so many religious groups are only too eager to make homosexuality into something it is not, I want to repeat a statement I made on several seminars.

Being a homosexual is neither a lifestyle choice nor a political statement; homosexuality is a harmless and natural variation of human sexuality. Being a homosexual makes some things more difficult, but in a tolerant society, none of these obstacles is too great to be overcome. In a liberal society, gays and lesbians can reproduce, raise children, praise God, and live long and healthy lives.

If you are a university student between twenty and twenty-five years old and interested in liberal ideology, then Stureakademin might be something for you. Stureakademin is an annual one-year education project in Swedish sponsored by liberal think tank Timbro.

On Timbro’s website you can read more about Stureakademin and how to apply.

A new survey has some interesting data on the public opinion. Although 57 per cent of Americans support civil unions, only 39 per cent support same-sex marriage.

The five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee says awarding Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize could be seen as “an early vote of confidence intended to build global support for the policies of his young administration.” In other words: the Nobel Peace Prize is nothing but a public endorsement of traditional big-government politics. It has nothing whatsoever to do with peace or the better of humankind.

I would not be surprised if Hugo Chávez were to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.

If Iran is not further sanctioned for its nuclear programme by Christmas, Israel will attack the country. Personally, I would welcome tough measures taken against Iran. Considering the many outspoken promises to wipe out Israel, the Israelis must assume Iran’s nuclear programme is a threat to their existence.

No one seems able to understand why Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. The Internet commentators are puzzled. From The Economist’s comment section:

The Nobel prize has a fine tradition of awarding the Nobel prizes for the alpha males in the West and rewarding low life dissidents of the East.

Mr “happyfish18” might be on to something.

I heard the news over dinner and thought it was a joke. Turns out it is not. What on earth has Barack Obama done to deserve the Nobel Prize for Peace? Al Gore was bad enough, but this is worse. The Nobel Prize for Peace has no value anymore. It is only a biased prize awarded the most successful leftist agitator.

The Local has more.

Today is the first day of a three-day Nordic conference on HIV-prevention and gay health in Copenhagen. Among other things, I have learned that data from a new Danish study suggests that nearly half of all children that attempt suicide are gay or lesbian. The data is based on interviews made with adults who reflect on the reason why they tried to kill themselves at such a young age. I knew there was a strong link between suicidal risks and sexual orientation, but I could not imagine that it would be that strong a link. Shocking.

Hm...

I have had some problems with my server. Sunday’s entries were erased and I had to re-publish them today. This may look strange in some feed readers, but now everything should be back to normal.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Iran’s notoriously anti-Semitic president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was born into a Jewish family that later converted to Islam. This, according to Orthodox interpretation of Halacha (the religious law), makes him a Jew. Orthodox Judaism holds that every person whose biological mother was Jewish is a Jew for life no matter what he or she does. However, according to the Progressive movement (the largest denomination in contemporary Judaism) and the State of Israel, a person loses his or her Jewish status when converting to another religion.

Is Mr Ahmadinejad a Jew? Well, the answer depends on whom you ask.

Update: No, he is not Jewish.

In a second referendum on Friday, Irish voters approved the Lisbon Treaty.

Over the past twelve months, my hometown Malmö has seen a number of violent communist demonstrations. Today, local newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet has an article that calculates the cost for this so-called activism to staggering 58 million Swedish kronor (€5,650,000). That is a lot of money for a city of 300,000 people.

A friend has a theory. He suggests that Genesis 9:3 is allowing us to smoke cannabis. In the latest Jewish Publication Society translation of Genesis, God says to Noah, “Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give all these.”

After 1,195 days in captivity, Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas releases a videotape of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter has an interview with a Kurdish teenager torn between his longing for love and his family’s homophobic “honour culture”.

“Imagine a straight married couple having to hide their marriage from the American government in order to avoid the risk of it being torn apart,” Andrew Sullivan writes in a comment to an email a reader who experiences America’s discriminatory legislation every time he travels with his husband. And Sullivan is right; most straight couples could not in their wildest nightmares imagine what gay couples go through due to discrimination. And the method the homophobes use to uphold this discrimination is the depiction of gay people as fundamentally different from “regular folks”. Here in Sweden, we no longer have to suffer from marriage discrimination. But we still have conservative politicians who make it their pet project to fuel a factionary conflict between minority rights and majority culture.

Only 37% of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox men work, as opposed to some 80% of their secular counterparts. Since the ultra-Orthodox are so eager to point out to progressive and secular Jews that their interpretation of Halacha is wrong, maybe these unemployed men ought to study what the Talmud says about a man’s duty to maintain and support his wife.