Gay Marriage Controversy
Here in Oxford we have a good welfare initiative, based around the idea of College Families. The idea is that first years get 'married' and are then assigned two or three Freshers ("children") to look after when they arrive in October.
The system is designed to work so that each parent is studying a different subject and the children will be doing the same as one of their parents. Ideally one parent will be male and the other female so that the families can be mixed-sex whilst each child has a parent of the same-sex; which for some welfare issues is important.
Two of the male first years in Brasenose however have gone to the student papers because they are not allowed to marry and Brasenose is therefore 'anti-gay'. Honestly. The whole thing makes my blood boil. As our JCR President said when the paper interviewed her "we have a very friendly and approachable LGB rep, and are in no way an anti-gay college". At the end of the day the parenting system is as it is for clear and logical welfare reasons, and is in no way related to the attitude of the college towards gay people.
One of the OUSU wasters, Aidan Randle-Conde (oh that name can be said with such venom) thinks otherwise, but this is a classic example of our liberal Student Union sticking its nose in pointless issues and yet again managing to avoid doing anything useful. Personally I feel that the first years are self-centred and attention seeking. I could use many words to describe them here but this is a family blog (for family people, but there is something for you here) and I'm sure you can come up with something suitably descriptive. To be honest, it is people like this who make it harder - not easier - for society as a whole to accept homosexual people.
The ultimate - and slightly humourous irony is that if College Marriages are seen as representive of the real world then our first year friends still have an issue because they are (in college terms) brothers. Now there's something for OUSU to waste more time on; "Brasenose is anti-incest".
The system is designed to work so that each parent is studying a different subject and the children will be doing the same as one of their parents. Ideally one parent will be male and the other female so that the families can be mixed-sex whilst each child has a parent of the same-sex; which for some welfare issues is important.
Two of the male first years in Brasenose however have gone to the student papers because they are not allowed to marry and Brasenose is therefore 'anti-gay'. Honestly. The whole thing makes my blood boil. As our JCR President said when the paper interviewed her "we have a very friendly and approachable LGB rep, and are in no way an anti-gay college". At the end of the day the parenting system is as it is for clear and logical welfare reasons, and is in no way related to the attitude of the college towards gay people.
One of the OUSU wasters, Aidan Randle-Conde (oh that name can be said with such venom) thinks otherwise, but this is a classic example of our liberal Student Union sticking its nose in pointless issues and yet again managing to avoid doing anything useful. Personally I feel that the first years are self-centred and attention seeking. I could use many words to describe them here but this is a family blog (for family people, but there is something for you here) and I'm sure you can come up with something suitably descriptive. To be honest, it is people like this who make it harder - not easier - for society as a whole to accept homosexual people.
The ultimate - and slightly humourous irony is that if College Marriages are seen as representive of the real world then our first year friends still have an issue because they are (in college terms) brothers. Now there's something for OUSU to waste more time on; "Brasenose is anti-incest".
Comments
Incest - fun & games for all the family!