What is in Kelvin's Head?

How did I do with last year’s predictions?

31/12/2025
Here’s a run down of how I did at last year’s predictions.
- Good results for Nigel Farage following the English local elections in May. Terrible results for Conservative Party.
Exactly what happened. YES
- No progress towards the marriage of same-sex couples in the Church of England
Exactly what happened. Indeed, I think things may have gone into reverse. YES
- Turbulent year for WordPress, which powers about half of the internet.
The year began with Automattic dramatically cutting its contribution to development leading to stagnation in development and much acrimony. Subsequently restored. Deep divisions remain about Gutenberg. I’m claiming this as a YES.
- 2025 will be the hottest year on record.
Final figures yet to be calibrated but all reports indicate that this, unfortunately is a YES.
- No trade deal for UK with US. Increasing talk of re-aligning economy closer to EU.
Well, there was a trade deal in May called the Economic Prosperity Deal but it doesn’t seem to much and some of the basics have already been reversed. I suppose I have to be honest and say I didn’t get this quite right so it is a NO. But…
- Ceasefire in Russia-Ukraine war but no long term solution.
Hard to assess this one. No long term solution, certainly. There have been a series of ceasefires proposed but none seems really to have been fully implemented. Partial YES.
- “Assisted Dying” aka doctor assisted suicide becomes legal in at least one of the jurisdictions of the British Isles.
I have to put this down as a NO as it completed its parliamentary journey in the Isle of Man but hasn’t received Royal Assent yet, so not technically legal.
- Turbulent year for economy but stock market higher at end of year than beginning. (FTSE currently at 8,173)
Stock market at 9,931 today and there was quite a lot of volatility in the first part of the year. So this one is a YES.
- There will be fewer Commonwealth Realms (ie countries which share the monarchy) by the end of 2025 than there are now.
This one is a NO though there has been significant progress in that direction in Jamaica and moves that way in Grenada.
- Philip Mountstephen.
Well, I was pushing Philip Mounstephen’s name as he appeared to be the only senior bishop in the C of E who actually believed the [absurd] position of the C of E bishops on same-sex relationships. But it is a NO – nothing significant to report.

So – five and a half out of ten this year. Not as good as some years. A couple of near misses.
new year, predictions. 2025

15 responses to “Some Bisexuals are Christian (and there’s lots of them)”

Rosemary Hannah

23/09/2015

I never realised I was bi until I fell in love with a woman. I think the essential point I would like to make is that I am not in a relationship with a woman because I fancied making love to a woman from a desire for novelty, nor, especially, because I wanted to make love to a, to some woman. I fell in love with a single, available woman, and a woman who was free to love me, and did love me. One very particular person. And because we love each other, we make love to each other. That, I think, is what some conservatives miss.

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Chris Mayo

23/09/2015

One of the clearest and best reflections on bisexuality and sexual fluidity. A beautiful offering that will speak to the hearts of many. Thank you Kelvin.

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Antonio

24/09/2015

In order for one to have a solid “Christian” argument it must be historically accurate, theological sound, and Spirit-filled. You provided none of these. You did not quote one Scripture, one theologian, or even state that the information that you received was directly from G-d through personal devotion such as prayer.

What you said was very well written, and reflects growing trends in modern society, but that was all. In order to convince more people you should at least quote St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas and provide evidence that can be found in the Hebrew Bible, as well as the Greek New Testament.

Your argument was neither Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, nor Protestant.

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1. Kelvin
  
  24/09/2015
  
  Bless you for your comment, Antonio. I’m struggling though to think how I could have explained more clearly that I don’t think the bible to be a complete and adequate explanation of modern day human sexuality. For the same reasons, interesting though they are, I don’t think that Augustine nor Aquinas explain it all either.
  
  And of course, I am neither Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic nor Protestant.
  
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2. JCF
  
  04/10/2015
  
  Can we please-please-PLEASE come to the realization that when a (self-identified) Christian states something, we can just ASSUME that this Christian has been formed in a way that is, FOR THEM, “historically accurate, theological sound, and Spirit-filled”, and go on from there? That not every self-disclosure requires a point-by-point unpacking of First Principles?
  
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Rosemary Hannah

24/09/2015

If I was inclined to be very naughty I might inquire how Antionio can possibly establish the need for a Christian argument to meet his criteria without his calling on the criteria and creating a perfect circle.

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1. Martin W.
  
  05/10/2015
  
  It isn’t ‘a perfect circle’. What he said is perfectly clear. The Apostolic Christian faith is based on the teaching of the Apostles, not our perceptions. That faith is found in the New Testament. Kevin, despite his protests(!), is very much a protestant of the modern liberal kind.
  
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Pam

04/10/2015

You’re not Protestant Kelvin?

Thanks for your thoughts on this subject.

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1. Kelvin
  
  04/10/2015
  
  No, I’m not Protestant.
  
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  1. Pam
    
    04/10/2015
    
    I’m not sure what I am (faith-wise). It’s a great feeling.
    
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Alan McManus

11/10/2015

I’m Roman Catholic, I attend St Mary’s and those RC parish churches where I feel welcome (that’s one, in the whole of Scotland, at the moment) I have had relationships with men and with women, I dislike labels but admit they have their uses (I don’t know one bisexual person who doesn’t feel the same) I often am taken for gay and sometimes for strait and I usually don’t bother correcting people. I agree with every word Kelvin has said above and if anyone wants scriptural and other related references they can follow the link I’ve posted.

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Alan McManus

11/10/2015

I mean by clicking on my name. Kelvin can you add a “share this post” button, with options for Facebook, Twitter etc.?

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etseq

14/10/2015

The starting premise of this sermon is wrong and poisons everything that follows. Despite the ecstatic headlines promoting the results of two flawed “yougov” surveys, all of the larger, reputable, quantitative polling find the relative percentages of sexual orientation/identity, sexual relations between members of the same sex, and same sex sexual attraction remarkably stable over the last several decades. Yougov is really more of a marketing company than a professional polling firm – the only scientifically legitimate survey work in the UK is done by the government and some universities. So in the US it would be less Pew and more Zogby, with virtually no quality control over the design of the questions and reliance on cheap internet surveys with low response rates and little attempt at a representative sample.
This particular “survey” doesn’t pass the laugh test, especially the meaningless claim that half of UK youth are “non-heterosexual” (no legit sexuality study would ever be so heterocentric as to lump such a broad range of identities into one binary description) was based on a really bad screening question that prompted for a kinsey number (which is meaningless to most people and leads to guessing). Since the Kinsey scale is range it is similar to other likert scales, which prime respondents to to skew responses towards a median, you can’t reliably use it as a proxy for orientation categories. Even then, the only shift was in the 0-1 kinsey range, which is just as likely a statistical blip than any useful shift in self-identified orientation, desire or behavior.
Hate to be debbie downer but the gold standard in population surveys in the UK is the British Social Attitudes Survey and like the GSS in the US, the percentages for sexual orientation, same sex behavior and same sex desire have all remained fairly stable over the 30 or so years – 2-4%/6-8%/8-12% for each category, with some slight variations.

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1. Kelvin
  
  14/10/2015
  
  What sermon?
  
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Kathleen Jowitt

22/10/2015

First of all, thank you for this post, and apologies for the lateness of this comment. A lot of what you’ve written here resonates – I’m a bisexual Christian, a woman who has been married to a man for the last six years, but who knows that a future partner could be of any gender. For me, being out about my bisexuality is a simple acknowledgement of fact, a matter of integrity and honesty – I look straight, but I’m not, and, while other people’s assumptions about me are their business, it doesn’t hurt to remind them that there are more people in church than ‘gay’ and ‘straight’.

I would urge caution when using the ‘everyone is bisexual really’ line. (This post is very helpful on the question: http://www.uncharted-worlds.org/blog/2008/12/not-everyone-is-bisexual/) While I don’t think this is the way that you’re using it here, it is often used to silence and erase bisexual experience. Those of us who specifically identify as bisexual experience distinct problems and joys – the internalised biphobia, wondering whether we’re *really* bisexual even after a series of crushes on people of any and all genders, the tedious ‘you’re confused! make your mind up!’ from straight and gay acquaintances alike – and then the relief of meeting someone who *gets* it, who doesn’t question your identity, who accepts your judgement of who you are rather than extrapolating from their own incomplete dataset of what they know and assume of you. I don’t believe that’s something that everyone experiences.

Not everyone is bisexual; in fact, the only person whose bisexuality I can make a judgement on is my own. It’s only a small step from ‘everyone is bisexual’ to ‘no one is bisexual’.

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