The Cedar Lounge Revolution

I can’t let this go past, following on from Chekov’s comments earlier. The article Chekov referred to is by John Waters in today’s Irish Times. It’s about the lesbian couple who won their case in the High Court as regards guardianship, and it really is a piece of work. Most stuff I can tolerate, but this?

At the hear of this case is the agreement by the father, purporting to waive most of his natural claims in favour of ‘uncle’ status. Of course it is morally impossible for the father to do this.

Er… no, actually it’s not, and perhaps out from under the shade of whatever tree Waters has been most of his life he might recognise that sperm donation is not new, it’s not particularly different and that his talk of ‘natural’ claims and ‘moral’ impossibilities is just that – talk (incidentally, what is it about men of a certain age who move from nuance to absolutism, and that’s a big hallo to Nick Cohen too).

We need to be clear that what has happened in this case is that a man’s child has been, in the language of creation, stolen. The fact that he colluded in this wrongdoing is beside the point.

Nah, mate. This is talking the language of bollocks. The fact that he ‘colluded’ is absolutely central. Again. Get out of the shade John. What too of adoption? What of single parents, where a father (or mother) is denied access for one reason or another? What of children in foster families? What of the universe of complexity in human relations which leads to family building and shaping that somehow despite everything tends to work out broadly speaking for the best. Optimal? Perhaps not, but we live in an entropic universe. Nothing is optimal. Not for John, meat and two heterosexual parents, Waters though. Dismiss everything beyond the specific, the normative, the familiar. Ignore the reality that sperm donation has been a fact of human life (incidentally, what does JW make of statistics printed some time back in the Guardian that showed the percentage of children genetically different to their purported parents – due to who knows what, well, okay, they suggested affairs – was remarkably high? What of the sacred wheel of life in that context? Is that ‘natural’ or ‘moral’?).

Drunk with liberal hubris, have we reinvented the wheel of life, deciding that two lesbians playing House can trump the claims of the forces that create human life?

This last is perhaps the most pernicious aspect of his piece (uncharacteristically – and go look at the printed version – clearly lacking at least three or four paragraphs, one wonders if the Senior Counsels the IT employs were chewing on the top of their pencils into the wee hours of last night about that missing text). “playing House” is so revolting dismissive, so teeth-grindingly ignorant that it is beyond redemption. And all smothered in a sort of pseudo-Biblical, pseudo-New Age language that no doubt read well at 12.30 am this morning, at least in our correspondents head. Well, two can play at that game.

By his words ye shall know him.

smiffy adds:

It really was a phenomenally nasty article ( “playing house” ) even by Waters’ standards.  One or two quick additional points, though. What’s notable in this is the stark hypocrisy of Waters’ argument. He is quite happy to throw around pseudo-philosophical terms like ‘the wheel of life’, ‘the language of creation’, ‘the natural order of things’. What he seems blithely unaware of is the fact that such arguments can easily be turned against him (and let’s not mince words here – this piece is entirely about Waters own domestic situation. I’m surprised he didn’t open by saying ‘Speaking as a sperm donor myself …’).

Waters has spent the last decade complaining about the bias against fathers, particularly unmarried fathers, in the family law system, and such a bias certainly exists. However, surely if there’s any justification for such an approach it comes precisely from the same ‘natural order’ that Waters clings to in this piece. Mothers, fans of the ‘wheel of life’ view of the world might argue, are the ‘natural’ rearers of children and when relationships break down surely the civil law should reflect this. Indeed, given that men are ‘naturally’ poor caregivers, why should they have any ‘natural’ claims on children at all? At a push, one might even argue that a family ‘naturally’ contains two parents who live together, so the female couple at the centre of this case could be seen as a more ‘natural’ family than two biological parents of a child who don’t live under the same roof.

In the hope of avoiding confusion, I should state that the positions listed above aren’t ones I would necessarily share. However, unlike Waters, I don’t share them because I find terms like ‘wheel of life’ to be utterly devoid of meaning and irrevelant to any debate between rational adults. What’s his view?

Similarly, and more insidiously, for all that Waters derides ‘liberals’ and ‘feminism’, his plea for equal treatment rests entirely on a liberal position if it is to make any sense at all (admittedly, quite an ‘if’ in Waters case). The only reason the general principle of sexual equality, which Waters relies on, achieves such an overwhelming consensus of support is the struggle of various minority and otherwise oppressed groups in demanding equal rights, usually in the face of opposition from people just like Waters. Now he’s piggybacking on their achievements while denying them the same respect and equal treatment he feels is his due.

One quickly notes that Waters rejection of the judgement in this case is based solely on what he perceives the rights of fathers to be. Nowhere does he refer to the best interests of the child in question (other than to note that the court – unlike him – felt it was important). A rather telling omission.

As a minor aside, for someone who is fond of throwing the term ‘Kafkaesque’ about, I don’t think he has any real understanding of what it means, other than as an alternative to ‘Orwellian’ in the Waters catalogue of cliché.