Bi The Way

Retired US General John Sheehan, a former Nato commander, has caused outrage by suggesting that Dutch Peacekeepers failure to act and prevent the massacre of Bosniaks at Srebrenica was due to low morale caused by the presence of gay soldiers within the Dutch ranks.

General Sheehan was speaking to a US Senate hearing on allowing openly  gay people to serve  in the US military.

Dutch defence ministry spokesman Roger van de Wetering rebutted the General saying, “It is astonishing that a man of his stature can utter such complete nonsense.”

Full Story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8575717.stm

In 1995 Srebrenica was a UN safe-haven under the protection of 400 Dutch peacekeepers, when Bosian-Serb Forces overran the town killing more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys. To suggest that the presence of gay servicemen in the Dutch contingent contributed to the massacre, is not only wrong and insulting, it also completely ignores the facts.

The Serb forces had been laying siege to the town for weeks. They numbered almost 2,000 and were equipped with tanks, armoured vehicles, heavily artillery and mortars. Once they took the decision to overrun the town, the Dutch troops were largely powerless to prevent it and became little more than hostages. This prevented UN forces from carrying out air-strikes on Serb positions surrounding the town and forcing the invading troops out of the safe-haven.

Dutch morale was indeed low, but it had nothing to do with homosexuals it had far more to do with conditions on the ground, which were dire. Srebrenica has been under siege conditions for weeks, there was little running water and basic sanitation was virtually non-existent. Meanwhile the Dutch camps sheltering refugees were over-crowded and short of supplies, Dutch troops were turning away a large stream of refugees claiming their camps were full.

Now when you are faced with that level of human suffering and you have to turn away needy people,  on the orders of your superiors, yet feel that human urge to help, this is going to  damage your morale.

Of course its far easier to blame it on the gays than it is to understand the situation and suffering on the ground. General Sheehan was never at Srebrenica.

Catholic adoption agency Catholic Care has won a high a court ruling granting them an exception to the Sexual Orientations Regulations, under the United Kingdom Equality Act, which forced adoption agencies to consider homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents.

Catholic adoption agencies were given 18 months to comply with the legislation or close, many threatened to close and some did, others complied it the law whilst Catholic Care sought and exception, threatening to close if one was not granted.

The exception has been granted under the fine print of the law which allows for the exemption could apply “to any charity subject to it being in the public interest”.

There is no doubt the good work that Catholic Care does in adoption cases, its been established for over 100 years and works in some of the most deprived parts of my home region of Yorkshire in the north of England. They just don’t offer adoption services to same sex couples, which clearly is not so good.

Gay rights groups are up in arms about this ruling.

“It’s unthinkable that anyone engaged in delivering any kind of public or publicly funded service should be given licence to pick and choose service users on the basis of individual prejudice. It’s clearly in the best interests of children in care to encourage as wide a pool of potential adopters as possible.” Jonathan Finney of Stonewall told BBC News.

No-one wants to see established adoption agencies close, certainly not those with good track records for supporting adopted children with their new parents. However Catholic Care have sucessfully held the government to ransom over this legislation by threatening to back up shop unless they were allowed to continue to discriminate against homosexual couples.

It would seem however, that the high court has decided that some forms of bigotry are too good to lose.

My posts are becoming more sporadic because I think I’ve said most I wanted to say about bisexuality in previous articles. At least for now. I opened up the blog to other bi-writers to share their experiences, but they too have either said all they felt they needed to or found other pressures on their time that have diverted their attention.

So in an effort to breath a bit of fresh live back into the blog, I thought I might share some cultural references that the bi-community may have missed.

The first is the music video from the Ash single True Love 1980, Ash are an alternative rock band from Northern Ireland and I’ve been a fan since their début album.

Now Ash are not a bisexual or gay band by any stretch of the imagination, to the best of my knowledge all the band members are straight. So its nice to get this little nod in a music video.

If you enjoy the song and the music video you can watch more on the Ash YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/darthmarkh

Incidentally the You Tube user “darthmarkh” who uploads the band’s videos is the band’s bass player Mark Hamilton.