This week, I've been campaigning around the university on behalf of the LGBT Network Europe.

We are asking the Scottish Parliament to consider amending the Marriage (Scotland) Act so that same-sex couples will be allowed to register a civil marriage, or, if they wish and there is agreement by the relevant faith group, a religious marriage.

We believe this to be important for a number of reasons:

+ there are over 70 legal rights that married couples have and civil partnered couples do not -- these include but are not limited to the right to adopt children as a couple, the right of a step-parent to ask for and be granted parental rights and responsibilities over their partner's biological children, and the right to be considered jointly for tax purposes

+ there are many gay men and women of faith and there are a growing number of faith groups that would happily marry these people, but, as the law stands, same-sex couples are not entitled to a marriage and civil partnerships are not legal if they are performed by a minister, in a religious building, or include any religious references within the ceremony

+ if a same-sex couple has registered a civil marriage in Spain or Holland, where there is no difference between a marriage registered by a same-sex couple and one registered by a heterosexual couple, and then comes to Scotland, their relationship is downgraded to a civil partnership 

Because of the last point, all of this is going to eventually lead to a court case that will be heard in Brussels, but we know that it could be up to three years before it gets there, and we want the Scottish Parliament to look at it before that. It is the first in what will be many, many steps -- all we're asking for at the moment is for them to look at it, and think about it, and have an open debate about why it can be done or why it can't be done.

The petition closes on March 6th.

It is available to sign here on the Scottish Parliament website until then, and, crucially, you do not have to be in or live in Scotland to sign it.

This post is unlocked and I am leaving it that way, and please feel free to spread it around.

To all Americans:

Vote tomorrow.

I can't even begin to articulate how important this is. You have a voice. If you care about your life, your future, your childrens' future, or your country, please, please start using it.

We are probably going to end up filing this under the heading of, Things I Really Can't Believe I Actually Sat And Wrote.

For the people who have no earthly idea what I'm about to talk about, a number of months ago John Barrowman embarked on a quest to find out what made him gay. He's spent his entire adult life believing -- and the last ten years or so telling the press very loudly -- that he was born this way, that he didn't choose it and that it wasn't caused by the environment he grew up in. The programme aired on Thursday night. It didn't really tell me anything that I didn't already know, other than the fact that we're now apparently dumbing science down to the most appalling levels, but I suspect it wasn't meant for me. I think it was meant for people who are struggling with their sexuality, parents and relatives who are struggling with a loved one's sexuality, and people who think that those of us who are of a different sexual orientation than they themselves are immoral and wrong and damned to eternal torment. The fact that the people in the third category will hardly have been watching a show that was billed the way this one was doesn't seem to have troubled them much. I intended to write a short review of it, and what happened is that I ended up writing... well, something not quite so short. It has subtitles, for crying out loud.

( 1. Establishing Orientation. )

( 2. The Ex-Gay Story. )

( 3. John and Scott. )

( 4. Gender Non-Conformity. )

( 5. The Gay Gene. )

( 6. Uterine Hormones and Maternal Immunological Responses. )

( 7. The Bottom Line: Why I Care, and Why I Don't. )

There was a column in the LA Times last weekend about the incidence of rape on college campuses:

What campus rape crisis?

To summarise, the oft-quoted one-in-four statistic regarding the number of women who are or will be victims of rape is inherently flawed because 'rape' can really mean 'one-night stand', and this is a result of promiscuity, alcohol, and the sexual liberation of women in the last fifty years. I should at this point mention that the column was written by a woman. I'd suggest reading the whole thing, but here is the paragraph that made me spit just a little harder than the others.

"If one partner puts a condom on the other, does that signify that they are consenting to intercourse?" asks Alan D. Berkowitz, a campus rape consultant. Short of guiding the thus-sheathed instrumentality to port, it's hard to imagine a clearer signal of consent, although Berkowitz apparently finds it "inherently ambiguous."

*gets out soapbox*

I carry a condom in my wallet, and I have done since first year undergrad.

I am a teetotal lesbian.

The probability of my ever having consensual penetrative intercourse is right up there with the probability of Sinatra ever staging a comeback. The probability of my ever getting drunk enough for a man to be able to claim that I gave 'tacit consent' is only slightly higher -- and this is a different rant, but since I'm on the subject and since it's a term that Ms. MacDonald seems fond of, there's no such thing as 'tacit consent'; if consent isn't clear and unambiguous, then it's not consent.

I carry a condom in my wallet because I live in the world, and because sexual assault is an ugly truth but it is a truth nevertheless, and because all the self-defence classes in the world don't change the fact that I'm five feet four and weigh 115 pounds. It doesn't mean that I'm promiscuous, it doesn't mean that I'm looking to hook up, it doesn't mean that I'm giving consent. It means that this is my body and I reserve the right to protect it from what I can for as long as I can by using whatever means necessary and expedient, and if to do that I have to provide a rapist with a condom, then that is what I'm prepared to do.

Now is probably an opportune time to point out my squeefulness over what I spent my morning doing and the fact that I really do think he's just a fantastic bloke does not in any way mean that I a) want to have sex with him, b) am 'a little bit bi', or c) 'like some men', all of which are things that I've been told I am in the last four days or so, and I'm just saying for the record that I can be a fangirl without wanting to get naked and sweaty with the people I go flaily squee over.

Having said that, I will now proceed to go flaily squee.

I've been awake since 6.30am and I came out of the BBC this afternoon into absolutely-pissing-it-down and got drenched and I've had a couple of hours up to my elbows in abdominal fat and small intestine, but I've spent my entire day walking around with the biggest, most idiotic grin on my face you could possibly imagine. At this point it's a toss-up who's going to get to me first, my anatomy group to throw me into the new mental health unit at Gartnavel (the glee with which I went into the DR this afternoon was probably disturbing if you didn't know the why of it) or sixpence1969 to stab my eyes out with sporks (at some point I decided that it would be a waste of a perfectly good opportunity if I didn't send her text messages to wind her up about where I was).

( In which our heroine spent three hours locked in a TV studio with John Barrowman. )

Lovely man, lovely day, I'm so glad I went, and when I find out when it airs, I'll let you know.

"Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well-considered, and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child's spirit." -- Erik Erikson (1971)

I've been getting involved with the Glasgow arm of an organisation called the Teddy Bear Hospital, and the central aim of it is that medical students go out to primary schools within their local area and talk to children about going to see the doctor, and the children bring their teddy bears into school and tell the students about the teddy and the students examine the teddy, and, hopefully, this is the sort of thing that will make little kids less afraid of doctors and hospitals and all things medical. It's a good thing, and I say that speaking as someone who *was* a little kid who was *terrified* of doctors and hospitals and all things medical.

My own personal fear had a lot to do with that I never really knew anyone who went into hospital for something small; there were always machines and tubes and they never quite looked like what I was used to them looking like. Eventually, when I was nine and the fear was keeping me from seeing my dad, as I couldn't get any further than the lift, I got over it because someone took the time to sit down and explain things to me and make it all seem not quite so scary. And that was a big thing for me. It meant that I got to spend his last six months *with* him, not hovering outside the door of the ward.

So, in that respect, Teddy Bear Hospital is a thing worth doing well.

In Glasgow, one child in every ten is a victim of some kind of abuse.

The central aim of Teddy Bear Hospital is not to ferret out cases of abuse, but those statistics being what they are, the likelihood is that at some point everyone involved in it will come across at least one child who is being abused, and, if that happens, whether it's because a child has outright told us or because they've shown us something on their teddy or because there's something that just doesn't seem quite right and sets off a warning bell, it is our responsibility not as medical students but as fellow human beings to bring that to the attention of someone, and to that end, I've spent my night in child protection training.

So:

If you have children or nieces and nephews or godchildren or grandchildren, or children of friends, go right now and give them a hug and tell them that you love them.

I've heard some awful things tonight and seen some worse things, and it's left me a bit shaken up and feeling like I need to... I'm not sure, but like it's important, more so than usual, that the kids who are loved should know that they're loved. I'm going now to call my goddaughter and say goodnight and blow kisses down the phone and tell her I love her so very very much.

I'm aware that I'm *massively* bucking fannish trends by talking about The West Wing today instead of Harry Potter*, and I'm making an informed decision to not give a damn.

In my fit of massive exhaustion last night, I came home and put SGTE, SGTJ in the DVD player and collapsed on the bed, I noticed this thing that I hadn't noticed before, and I giggled like a six-year-old over this bit in CJ's meeting with the Organisation of Cartographers for Social Equality and felt the need to share the love.

Dr Huke: Salvatore Natoli of the National Council for Social Studies agues, 'In our society we unconsciously equate size with importance, and even power.'

The tiny little silent exchange between CJ and Josh after that line is priceless. It doesn't translate well to text, but, really, if you've never noticed it, go and watch. The facial expressions of Allison Janney and Brad Whitford are worth their weight in comedy gold.

*

The thing that I will say here about Harry Potter is that I've said most of what matters in other peoples' journals and the part that doesn't matter not only doesn't matter because it shouldn't matter, it doesn't matter because the UK media haven't given a crap about this in years. I assume we all remember that the BBC didn't care about having a same-sex couple on a family show at 8pm? In 1991? I was SIX. We may have some way to go before we reach that level of tolerance in society at large, but in books and on TV, we're good, and I doubt Dumbledore is going to make a great deal of difference one way or the other.

We broke a Guiness world record last night.

In one 24 hour period, more than 38 million people worldwide took part in Stand Up & Speak Out.

It feels a little bit good.

Having turned BBC 1 on for long enough to confirm that the rerun of Silent Witness *is* a rerun and not a new episode as my mum's newspaper is saying, is it just me or does Harry's DCI look like she's about fifteen?

Another series of Witless comes to its conclusion, and while this series finale was not quite the train wreck that last year's was, I'm going to open by saying that Greg Dinner should feel free to write the whole of Series 12. He should feel that freedom. Because if every episode in this series had been like Suffer The Children, I would be overjoyed, but they weren't.

( Peripheral Vision. )

I am writing a real review of Double Dare, hoping that all I missed in the last five minutes after my tape cut out was a disgustingly nauseating scene between Nikki and Dad and/or Nikki and Harry that frankly I can live without having seen anyway. I have issues with correct police procedure and timelines that I need to yelp about.

The last thing on my television screen was a graveyard, shortly after Leo flailed about what he was going to tell the coroner, just in case I did miss anything important...

Anyway, until I get round to organising my notes into some sort of coherent format, which will be tomorrow morning now, I'm providing a link to the blog of Alison Graham at the Radio Times, who sums up all my issues with the sainted Nikki Alexander into an article far more pithy than I could ever write.

I'm kind of piggybacking onto alaira's WIP meme here, because I was clearing out my hard drive at work this afternoon and I found this, and it's been nearly a year and so I'm not in the slighest bit convinced that I'll ever finish it. For now, this is what I have, mostly written on the back of a training manual in Starbucks in the middle of the original series run, set in the last ten minutes or so of episode 5, a point that would have become more clear had it not stalled when it did.


Title: Tin Man
Fandom: The State Within (Nicholas/Christopher, unrequited Nicholas/Mark)
Rating: R
Warnings: Semi-explicit sexual references. Not much worse than the ones that actually made it to air.
Summary: He never, ever got involved.

( Once upon a time, Nicholas Brocklehurst was the golden boy of MI-6. )

That was one of the best and the most profoundly disturbing episodes they've done in a very long time.

I'll begin with a non-spoilery comment: why is it that every time I turn my television on lately, Martha Jones's mum seems to be on it? It's like she's becoming my female Alan Dale.

( Spoilers galore for SW. )

I need a Witless icon. Sadly, Emilia Fox tends to be in the middle of Tom Ward and Will Gaminara in every promo shot that exists, which would seem to rule out the easy option.

( I am dreading next week. )

Not for nothing, but if the BBC want me to not slash people, then they need to not have those same people have a five minute scene in which they follow one another through labs and into offices and apparently into some room where they both change clothes and back into offices all without ever breaking the conversation, fail to observe any sort of personal space, and have one of them not even look at the annoying woman who is supposed to be his love interest when she finally enters the scene.

I have Witless on mute, comments about the actual episode to follow when I've seen the second part properly (i.e., with the sound on) and edited my notes to remove words like 'a-squee'.

I want to wish a lot of love and enormous amount of luck to each and every person who is waiting for their A-level results to be released tomorrow morning.

I want to tell the people who get the results they want that they should ignore the claims that will be on the front page of every paper tomorrow morning that education is being dumbed down in this country, because this is not the time for that. You deserve this happiness. This is the time for you to scream loud enough for them to hear you in the next county, to hug your friends and family, to celebrate, and to take this moment to be really bloody proud of yourselves. This is the time for your country to say to you, congratulations, you did it.

I want to tell the people who maybe did not quite get what they wanted that it is not the end of the world. I know it's going to feel like it -- really, I do, with bells on -- and that quite possibly for many of you the only thing you'll want to do is curl up and have a good cry. I'm strongly in favour of having a good cry. It helps. But, once you've done that, you have to remember that neither your life nor your career begin and end with your A-level results. I would have laughed in the face of anyone who told me that four years ago, too, so I won't be offended. It's true, though. There's always an alternative, always a route to be taken that's not as direct but a lot more scenic. Many things might happen tomorrow, but the end of your dreams will not be one of them, no matter what.

And, for those for whom this spells the end of school and the start of university, I want to say one last thing. This is the start of the next big adventure: hang on tight, enjoy the ride, and savour every single moment.