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Editor of the Gay & Lesbian Humanist
I went on to a daily in nearby Sheffield, then to an evening in Coventry in the West Midlands, moving eventually, in 1980 at the grand old age of about thirty-one, to the new radio station that everyone in the city was excited about, Mercia Sound. I spent eight years there, reporting and presenting. Then I moved to West Wales, and worked for four years on Swansea Sound, reporting, presenting and being head of programs. The bastards fired me in 1992 and I began freelancing, and even tried my hand at insurance salesmanship, so desperate was I, but I failed miserably at that. I don't have a hard enough skin. Throughout my early years in Yorkshire, of course, I was becoming more aware that I was what they called only queer in those days, and that I was the only one in the entire world, and that I would live a miserable life because I'd never meet anyone like me. It was in the sixties that I was in my teens, enjoying the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Hollies, Gerry and the Pacemakers, movies in the small town of Rotherham, hanging about with my friends, but seeing most of them dating girls, trying it myself, not liking it, not realizing why I didn't like it, then coming to see that I was different. Any form of sexual activity between males of any age was illegal until the end of the 1960s in the UK (not that I would have let that bother me, of course, and I did have the odd fumble in toilets). Eventually, before leaving Yorkshire, I did live with a guy for about nine or ten months in Sheffield, but the relationship was destined not to work out, and I used my need to further my career as an excuse to move out and move on. The Seventies - well. That was a different world. I'd moved to Coventry then, and was in and out of bed as often as I drew breath. I did settle with a guy for a while in the eighties, who's still a dear friend, but I haven't been in a relationship since then. We have a saying here: "Nobody wants a fairy when she's forty." Well, when you reach fifty-bloody-four you've probably had it! But you never know ...
We featured GayToday in our "Web Watch" column recently. That's written by Brett Humphreys, who has provided an extremely readable column of well-researched and useful information for some years now. He writes with a kind of scholarship but a readability that knocks many other web-watching columns into a cocked hat. The column then goes onto the website, where he gives all the links to whatever he's writing about (no point in putting them into the print article, because you can't click there). Raj Ayyar: What is the relationship between Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine http://www.galha.org/glh/ , the Pink Triangle Trust, http://www.galha.org/ptt/ the website and the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) http://www.galha.org/ Andy Armitage: The Pink Triangle Trust is a small charity. It's officially the publisher of Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine, but it also organizes nonreligious ceremonies for committed same-sex couples who want to mark their relationship. Some see it as a sort of "marriage", I guess. It is closely allied to the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Organisation known as GALHA, which started life back in 1979 as the Gay Humanist Group. It eventually took the word "Lesbian" into its title. Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine is largely the mouthpiece of GALHA, but not exclusively. It reports all of what GALHA gets up to, yes, and uses its press releases, but it also carries book reviews, general news from the UK and other parts of the world, regular columns - including "Stateside Gossip", by the never-less-than-interesting Warren Allen Smith of New York, "World Watch", written by GALHA's secretary, George Broadhead, who's just reached his seventieth birthday, and "Infidel", written by an anonymous bastard who takes the piss out of religion - and has gossip, chitchat, news of relevant TV programs and general features, not always on a gay humanist theme. This last point is reflected in the fact that some of our contributors -- mostly Clark Flint and Warren Allen Smith, both in the USA -- wrote about the 11 September attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and Clark has since written about Bush and Blair's despicable war with Iraq. I've got myself into hot water with that, too, because we recently carried a leading article -- "editorial" or "comment", you call it, I think -- about the war and a couple of readers came at me with letters of mass destruction, which appear in our summer 2003 issue. Clearly they thought it was OK to bomb the shit out of Iraqi civilians in the name of ridding an admittedly despicable regime of its weapons, even though the evidence was not there, and still isn't.
Andy Armitage: I don't personally have a problem with spirituality. I see it as an essential part of being human. I don't go in for noncorporeal beings when I use the word "spirituality", but believe it's a part of the mind. You can reduce it to neurons and synapses if you wish, but, then, you can do that with any concept or model that's been created by the human mind, whether you're talking spirituality, philosophy, psychology or cosmology (although the last of these clearly involves external, physical objects, too). I have a simple view of the human brain--mind continuum: the brain is what the brain is, and the mind is what the brain does. Can the mind be said to exist if all it is is an activity? Well, we're into great ontological mind-blowing conundrums here that can have you flying around in decreasing circles and disappearing up your own argument. If we can say a thought exists because something has happened in the brain, then I guess we can say God exists because some millions of people believe in some kind of progenitor of the universe. But his - or its - existence is to me only like that thought: he's an emergent notion that holds sway because he's held in the minds of those millions. Read what you like into that, but I mention it only to show that it's not easy to be definite about such things. If you live in a world that is only objects, then you deserve to be one, and might as well be a lump of rock or a soggy pretzel. Where I part company with religionists, though, is when they get organized. When they do this they form power bases, and tend to want to control people. When they run their lives and their hordes of believers through certainties, they get dangerous. The so-called "great" religions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity live largely on these certainties, culled from a "holy book" written over centuries of time, centuries ago. Life changes, the world changes, concepts change, people change, societies change, whole paradigms change, but these people stay with their narrow "holy book" full of stories and beliefs that may be understandable within the context of those times, but are not so today. I believe that one day a caveman called Ug came out of his two-up-two-down, said good morning to his neighbor, and then saw a huge lightning bolt in the sky, and, wondering what it was, posited the idea that someone was up there. How else would such phenomena be explained? Once you begin to create explanations in the shape of people (albeit with special powers) you have a belief system. It becomes more complex as people pontificate on it, write about it, twist it for their own ends, misunderstand it or whatever -- it becomes the big cesspool of theology we have today. And it's religionists who usually have a problem with sexuality. If there's an objection to what a chap does with his prick, you can guarantee there's someone with a prayerbook or bible in his hand doing the objecting. Look at the case we have in the UK at the moment, with Canon Dr Jeffrey John, who's been appointed suffragan bishop of Reading, and is due to be consecrated in October. He's gay and was once in a sexually active relationship. His relationship is still there, but not expressed sexually any more. You'd think that would satisfy the evangelical wing of the Anglican Communion and the nutty bishops in Africa, but no: they still want blood. They want the poor chap to stand down because of what he is and what he once did with his willy. I'm very pleased to see the Anglican Church pulling itself apart at the crotch with its agonizing over Jeffrey John, because it's really sorting out the reformers who recognize that Christianity has to move on and the hard-liners who clearly don't want to see any change if it involves condoning a person's natural (some would say God-given) means of sexual expression. So it's religion I don't like, not spirituality. Religion is full of people who have the answers to the questions; spirituality asks questions, and continues to do so. It doesn't mind if questions aren't answered. It delights in art, beauty, fellow-feeling and warmth towards others, enjoyment of the natural world, the thrill of creating, the process of thinking. And thinking doesn't always have to be straight-down-the-middle rational reasoning: sometimes it's nice to let the mind wander, be hypnotized by something, let the hundred billion neurons of the brain and all their potential connections do their thing and make you feel good. We don't always manage that, but there's a time for hard reason and a time for this thing we're loosely calling "spirituality"; there's pleasure in using the brain in a reasoned and rational way, trying to think clearly, analytically about arguments and matters of moment, and there's a pleasure in not questioning, but simply experiencing. Raj Ayyar: Many people in the LGBT communities are seeking a non-homophobic religion that welcomes them with open arms, all the way from the Rev. Troy Perry's MCC to gay Buddhism. Do you think we would be better off rejecting the religions of the world with all their baggage? Should we equate religion with homophobic and other oppression and simply discard it? Andy Armitage: This really depends on how valuable religions are in the world. I happen to think that, if we could overnight realize they're just a bit batty and decide to ease ourselves out of them, we could create a world based not on scriptural certainties, proscription and hate, but one based on rationality, love of our fellow human beings, respect for other creatures with which we share our planet, and the rest of the environment, and a wish to continue improving the world in which we live, based on mutual respect. I recognize that there are some groups within religions who are not homophobic -- well, the gay ones wouldn't be, anyway, but I'm talking now of groups such as those you mention, groups that are not necessarily identifying as gay organizations as such, but will no doubt have many gay members. As long as religion isn't forced upon us by the likes of our governments, then I can't really put my hand on my heart -- whatever that is supposed to do -- and say it should all be banned. Part of the ideal world is that people should be able to respect each other's belief system, even if they don't share that system, or have no belief system at all. What makes me want to puke is how Bush and Blair are said to have prayed together before setting their murderous sights on Iraq. Now we see that Bush wants to have exemptions in employment law to allow religious employers to discriminate against people if they don't come up to those employers' religious ethos. This is what's just been passed by our legislature here in the UK. If you're a poof and you want to be a caretaker for a church school, forget it, mate! I'm not sure how this works at your side of the Pond, but the particular law here was being enacted to protect people against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and religion. It's going to do just the opposite in some cases.
Then there's Islam, many of whose adherents want to put women in burqas, perform mutilation on girls' genitalia, stone people to death for sex outside marriage, being gay or whatever. Five times a day they go and stick their arses in the air and say how good Allah is. Give me a break! Orthodox Judaism hates poofs as much as evangelical Christians and Muslims do. You'd think that an ethnic group that has seen and experienced so much suffering would have somewhere in its "racial awareness" -- for want of a better concept -- the notion that you shouldn't discriminate. Gays were with them in the concentration camps, though not in the same numbers. You would think that the shared suffering would have created a shared awareness of how easy it is to demonize groups because they are perceived to be different. Many of them, I'm sure, would gladly invoke some Mosaic edict and have us all tied to stakes and stoned. So you see where I'm coming from, Raj: I don't like organized religion, because it's too influenced by people with their prejudices and hatred; I like the idea of spirituality because it is a personal thing. Sometimes, you get people who can manage both, and they are the ones who would want to see a world shared by all with mutual respect and love, and believe that their god -- the entity called God -- would want things to be this way. Raj Ayyar: How would you define a humanist ethic that is relevant to this weird age of hybridized globalization? Andy Armitage: Globalization -- now there's a thing. It's got out of hand, hasn't it? I don't object to a certain reliance of market forces. I think the market as a model of economic activity has a certain elegance to it, and ought to regulate itself to the benefit of all who take part in it. Unfortunately, it's not like that. The big players have the money, money buys influence, influence crushes those who don't share the views of those big players. We've seen how Walmart can influence what people read because it decides what magazines it will put on its shelves for people to buy. If it doesn't like a particular ethos, it can decide not to stock that magazine, that book, that video or whatever. A lot has been written about how Walmart has used that influence -- and other big players, too, mainly American corporations to have gone on to dominate their particular segment of the market. We now see how the oil industry can influence governments and -- as is possibly the case with Iraq -- force them into war. Think of the strategic advantage of America's having influence in Afghanistan and Iraq. Think of the opportunities for those oil buddies of good ol' Dubya. My sympathies are with those tireless campaigners who turn up at G8 summits and protest at this kind of thing. When market forces become big, really big, they can distort the mechanism. At its simplest, it's supply and demand: I demand a product, you supply it; my friend wants one so you sell another; in turn I provide a service, you know a guy who will buy it; and so on. The system should regulate itself if everyone plays fair. People don't. People grow big. People bring too much clout to bear on governments and local authorities, and, before you know it, they've bought advantage (a prime piece of land, a government decision) and the elegant market process is distorted. So a humanist ethic would not support globalization -- in my book, at least. It would look to the small-is-beautiful model. There's nothing wrong with private enterprise, some classic liberalism (in the economics sense of that phrase) and I wouldn't wish to see everything run by the state. I do, however, believe that certain "natural monopolies" should be state-run (telecoms, the railway system, the health service), while the nonessential things such as everyday commodities can be part of the market -- as long as those that can affect our health, such as food, safety products, things that can potentially cause harm are heavily regulated to ensure that nothing nasty happens to us.
I was glad to see your Supreme Court decision in June going in favor of the Texas chaps who'd appealed against a guilty verdict because they happened to be doing what gay guys are naturally drawn to do together, but the police broke in and found them. I'm not sure how that will play out, but I'll watch with interest -- and keep an eye on events on GayToday. Our own law changed in the late sixties, but it didn't really decriminalize homosexuality, as many said at the time: it kept it illegal but with certain exemptions. You could make love to your boyfriend only in absolute privacy, with no one else in the same house (so having it off in a hotel room was a no-no); you had to be over twenty-one and it had to be consensual. The last point, of course, I agree with. The age of consent came down to eighteen in 1994 (and that was a Conservative government), and the New Labour government brought it down to sixteen, same as for straights, a couple of years ago -- but only after pressure from Europe. We've just begun a consultation process in the UK, whereby people and interested parties will be able to comment on a discussion document issued by the government on gay "marriages". These would not be marriages in the heterosexual sense, oh, no. But there would be the ability for one partner to inherit the other partner's estate without paying the huge amounts of inheritance tax that is currently imposed on you if you're not in a formal marriage. Likewise with pension benefits: gay partners would get whatever married hettie partners get now. And there would be next-of-kin considerations. At the moment, some bigoted, homophobic families have been known to bar a loving bereaved partner from the hospital and then the funeral, which can be very distressing. We can already adopt kids as a couple if we wish. It used to be the case that in any unmarried partnership -- same-sex or opposite-sex -- only one person could be the official adoptive parent, which means that if that person died then the other would have no rights to keep the kid, and both he or she and the kid would suffer. This legislation was passed last November. Bundled with what I've just been talking about, we'll get "marriage" of sorts, although the government will not want to call it that. I suspect there'll be other things that only "properly" married people have, too, although we'll have to see how things shake down. My concern is that it's taken this long for gays to be recognized as human beings with feelings. Our age of consent was equalized only a couple of years ago; gays in the military were allowed not long before that; and only now, in the third year of the twenty-first century for fuck's sake, do we get some semblance of recognition and equality -- and you'd expect more from a Labour government. Raj Ayyar: Since 9/11, we have witnessed a proliferation of incidents and laws that racially profile, harass and oppress many Brown people in the US and elsewhere in the West. Is this an issue that has been or should be addressed by humanists of any persuasion? Andy Armitage: I feel there's a propensity for hatred in people who perceive "the other", whatever that "other" may be. And I would guess that the events of 11 September 2001 have given some people just the excuse they need -- even if it's working at a subconscious level -- to hate someone whom they perceive as "other", "different", "not one of us". I can understand a certain amount of suspicion if people are led to believe that every Muslim is out to drop a bomb, but there's so much hysteria created by right-wing media -- usually at the tabloid end, which, let's face it, doesn't cater to people with brains usually (not in this country, anyway). Humanists ought to address these issues, yes, as they ought to think about any issue that can come into the realm of ethics. I don't know what sort of incidents against brown people you've had over there, but I would hazard a guess that some redneck has picked on a guy because he has a brown skin (and could be a Hispanic or somebody with a suntan) and decided he wants to beat the shit out of him. The trouble with some humanists, though, is that they'll give themselves that name purely because they don't subscribe to a religion, but for me humanism is something more than that: it's a conscious awareness of fellow human beings, the environment, the animal kingdom, and a conscious decision not to do harm and to try to do good where we can. Raj Ayyar: Andy, we have an organization called Black and White Men Together in the U.S. It aims to fight racism within the gay community. Are gay communities in the UK integrated along racial lines, or do different gay ethnic groups hang out in ghettoized pockets and niches of their own, rejected by the white majority? Andy Armitage: I think you'll find it's the former: the sexuality holds them together better than their ethnic background does. I haven't lived in a town or city for fifteen years now, so don't get to see at first hand what's going on in that respect. There are, of course, racial problems in Britain, mainly England, but that's racial groups generally, not those in the gay community. Of course, there's a pressure on many Asians and Afro-Caribbeans to be "real men" and to be a poof would really let the side down. I feel sorry for gay people in these groups, and it's hardly surprising when some off them leave their families as soon as they can and move to a big city where people tend to be more tolerant and there's an identifiable gay community to become part of. Raj Ayyar: Do you think that AIDS has left many gays sex-paranoid, lonely and phobic of connecting? How can we create a rich Eros-affirming, safer-sex-practicing gay community? Andy Armitage: I suppose it must have at first. I remember the eighties when people were really scared of it. This may sound odd, but I don't actually know -- or knowingly know -- anyone with AIDS, and the condition hasn't touched me as it has so many who have had partners become ill or die. Of course, safer sex is important for us all and for more reasons than merely AIDS. Exchange of body fluids can be an immunosuppressant activity, anyway, and all kinds of things can be invited in. Safer sex is important, and, yes, sex should be celebrated as something to enjoy and not to be afraid of. Unfortunately, it does have AIDS to contend with now. Now I know that HIV does not necessarily cause AIDS -- it's very controversial and complex, and maybe it's more convenient for certain interests to keep us believing that it does. However, it's still made people wary of unprotected sex, and that's bound to have had a bearing on people's lives. I know of one guy working for an AIDS charity who simply went celibate back in the eighties -- just like that. Said he wasn't having sex any more. Whether he's still celibate, I don't know, but that's the sort of effect it was having on some people, and I was scared, too, for a while. But our fear of it is something to overcome, however we achieve that, and if we want to practice safer sex we can do so in a variety of ways and still enjoy the act. Celebrate the sexual drive; be adventurous; be careful but be positive. Raj Ayyar: I read a great piece by Brett Humphreys published on the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association website and in your magazine. He wrote a warm appreciation of GayToday, describing it as "the finest online gay magazine." http://www.galha.org/glh/223/webwatch.html Brett's evaluation of GayToday editor Jack Nichols is right on target, since he recognizes that Nichols' passionate humanism is tinged with Taoist and Zen spirituality. What is your view of GayToday? Andy Armitage: There's so much to explore there. I haven't been around as many websites as Brett has, so I take his word that GayToday is the best. Looking at it, I have no difficulty in believing that: it's comprehensive, well laid out, up there with the news. Great news page on the Texas decision in June -- Jack sent me an email with a link, and I accessed it straightaway and felt instantly informed. I did ponder in a reply to Jack how George W. Bush might take it, since it's his state, and wondered if the news might finish what the pretzel began! I think Jack's done a great job -- and the rest of the people who have input into the site, of course. Jack and I have been in touch a lot by email lately, and he comes over as a really nice guy. And, incidentally, our summer issue has a feature written by him, previewing his forthcoming book The Tomcat Chronicles, and a book review. So it looks like GayToday and the gay humanist movement in the UK are doing things for Anglo-American relations! Subscribe to the Gay & Lesbian Humanist: http://www.galha.org/glh/subscriptions.html Join the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association: http://www.galha.org/galha/membership.html |
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Andy Armitage, Editor of the Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine
I've always had an interest in the English language, and I guess that's what got me into doing some editorial work and, with it, editing Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine. As well as the other things an editor does -- choosing material and cajoling people into writing it without payment for their efforts -- I enjoy the process of preparing written material for an audience: deciding on styles, writing headlines, making little adjustments to people's grammar and punctuation when it's in need of it -- and hoping they mentally thank me for it.
Dean Braithwaite: Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine's Assistant Editor. "He
puts in a lot of time and effort on the magazine," says Andy Armitage, "and
it wouldn't be possible to produce it without his efforts."
George Broadhead, the Secretary of Britain's Gay and Lesbian Humanist
Association, reached 70 recently, and as a present Gay & Lesbian Humanist
magazine's editorial team prepared one of the pages from the then
forthcoming magazine containing an interview George did with the magazine's
editor, Andy Armitage. The headline on the page reads, "Happy Birthday, Mr
Secretary!" and Armitage presented it to him at his party in London in June.
Interviewer Raj Ayyar