This post is just a bit of filler while I attend the Liberal Conspiracy / Guardian event in London today, but is to highlight two stories that have some serious relevance to homosexual rights in this country. The first is regarding the Heinz advert that has been pulled by the company following 200 homophobic complaints about the innocuous contents. The second is the much more dangerous statement by Jacqui Smith that has the audacity to try and tell homosexuals to tone down their behaviour so as to not get caught by the homophobic Iranian officials.

Over on Liberal Conspiracy a very good debate is formulating over a series of posts about abortion and the liberal/left stance, with a surprising amount of decent interjection coming in from those that tend to always disagree with the postings on there. Once again I found myself responding to something on there and it getting too long to be a comment, so here is my view on the very muddy subject.

I can't bring myself to support abortion or oppose it on the basis of socially prescribed ethical codes, religious belief or, most crucially, the date at which a foetus has at least some chance of staying alive if removed from the womb…currently found to be 24 weeks and being argued by conservatives and more sensible religious groups to be lowered to 20 weeks. To me the issue is about the life of a child, just as it is for the god squad or those that put a great deal of weight on the rights of the unborn, it is just that such a question of quality of life and reasonable expectation have to enter the debate.

OK, well there's no punchline, the story is an unbelievable enough tale of knee-jerk reactionism as it is. As it stands, I'm backing the bishop on this one. I don't totally agree with what The Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC) said, but I do think that to claim he needs to resign, or that he was out of order for making such comments are ridiculous on two counts. The first is that this is thankfully a free country where a man can make a learned case for a new idea in intellectual company and shouldn't be criticised for doing so. The second is that the outrage largely seems to come from members of his Church that completely misunderstand how much of a subtle nudge this was for Christianity to be given more of it's own weight in deciding legal matters.

I'm trying something new here, not sure if it's going to work as well as intended but here it is. Read more for the transcript of this movie.

When starting to peg down a few more blogs and aggregators a few days back to increase my scope of reading I came across this blog that simultaneously tries to condemn the Labour government for trying to "abolish" mass worship and at the same time heap praise on faith schools and, therefore, Christianity. It's the sort of blog that just makes me angry to read it and gives me a desire to find out more with the hopes of just completely being able to discount what bollocks it being said. So with that, here we are, and it's time to look deeper into Cramner's claims.

The facts, in reality, are these: Faith in schools is doing nothing to stem the flow of individuals "losing" religion nor the drop in perception about how important religion is. Faith is not intrinsically linked to morals, and in fact history will show that for every moral good dead there is a quite evil bad one to counter it with the Christian church. And finally, the big myth, faith schools do not offer your child a better opportunity at education unless you were already predisposed for good educational achievement in the first place due to your social and economic background. So, kindly, take your sanctimonious bollocks and shove it up your collective worship.

At least this is what he might have well said when extending the following comment...

Britain technically is a Christian country with many secular features. It’s those two things. It’s not anything else. If you expect that you would have the same response to your faith needs in Britain as would happen within a Muslim or Islamic country, [you] would be disappointed

This is in reference, I assume, to the idea that universities that allow Muslim students to attend religious meetings and prayer should be reporting suspicious activity and keeping checks on them. Effectively we have moved no further away from spying on our students than we were one year ago.

It seems as though the issue of presumed consent blew up quite loudly in the end which is good to see, it needs to be debated and it is quite literally everywhere except the headline news right now. But in the debate there have been some things come up which are worth some clarification or further discussion, in some cases because they're not necessarily true, and in others because they're being used as arguments against change without any real thought going into such arguments. I'm going to tackle the following issues that have been raised from both sides

• "Doctors will feel the need to let us die quicker for our organs"
• "This is state ownership of my body"
• "There will be huge screw ups and scandals because of opt-out"
• "What about sudden deaths?"
• "This is an anti-religious policy"
• "I'll opt out in protest despite being a donor"
• "Who cares, when you're dead you're dead"
• "Surely a free market on organs is the way forward?"
• "Why don't we try asking first?"

I am, when all is said and done, a bit of a nerd when it comes to analysing things and trying to predict outcomes. While I truly believe that nationally the UK blog scene should be concentrating on prevailing UK political issues I just can't come to drop this kind of opportunity to geek out. So without further ado, with New Hampshire exit poll results at the ready, I want to look in to who I believe is going to win depending on a few key scenario differences at the next stage of the race towards becoming the democratic candidate for president. Just to note, I would write about the Republicans too but in all honesty that group of people just really irk me rather than make me passionate about politics, so it is probably best I keep avoiding analysing them!

Over in the Observer a very good piece has been written about the build up to the next state. The race is moving South, and so while the middle of America has now been initially weighed up and also the North, the South is yet to make its views known. Given the propensity for religion the more south you go in the US, as well as the well known history about race relations in the south vs the north, it is clear that if anywhere was going to differ from what we've seen already it would be South Carolina that would start to show those differences. Is the race issue going to be where the battle is won and lost? Will religious rhetoric come out in more force?

Commons Leader Harriet Harman has told the BBC she wants the law to be changed to make it illegal to pay for sex.

This subject is always a controversial one, and feminists I have seen debate this issue on both sides of the spectrum. However I personally think that in the current climate, and based on my personal opinion, Harriet Harman's statement about changing the law on prostitution is ill conceived. Let's take a look at the rest of the content of this article...

Over at "Question That" Ian has written an article discussing and questioning the standards of the BBC when it comes to religion, specifically in one of the hot topics du jour: "The BBC loves to bash Christianity but won't touch Islam with a barge poll" (post-publication edit: initiating article can be found here)

Now this might sound a bit rich coming from me given I have a distinct issue myself with BBC's impartiality, at least when it comes to news broadcasting, and where their ability to be thorough with the facts rarely shows light of day (R.I.P Panorama). However this is one issue which I have to wonder if there is really an issue present at all.

Lets get started with my response to this article...starting with a quote that originally came from the Mail on Sunday, stating that the BBC...

...deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians