How To Be Right… in a World Gone Wrong

by James O'Brien

The idea that ‘freedom of speech’ somehow equates with a freedom to spout undiluted, often inflammatory nonsense without being contradicted or called out is currently more popular on both sides of the Atlantic than at any other point in living memory.

those blokes would have been committing a criminal offence

Illegal for men under 21 for much longer.

Did a gay person tell you that they had chosen to be gay but could easily have gone straight if the clubs and fashion had been better?

Actually, in Graham Chapman's autobiography, he describes counting how many men to women he fancied and, on realising he was more gay than straight, deciding to be exclusively gay.

James: Which bit of the Bible?

lobsters?

Eating rules revoked in the vision of Peter.

The West Wing,

The episode has been heavily criticised by Orthodox Jews for what they see as its mockery and misrepresentation of the beliefs and practices of those who do follow all the rules.

14 years after Section 28 was consigned to the dustbin of history,

Section 28 was repealed in Scotland in 2000 but it took until 2003 for it to be repealed in England and Wales. Kent County Council created their own version to keep it in schools. This was revised in 2004 but only repealed in 2010. Repeal in 2000 was blocked by the House of Lords. Theresa May described this as 'a victory for common sense'.

flogging the idea that just to be different is somehow to be wrong.

According to this logic, opposing gay sex means either you are gay yourself or you are profiteering from homophobia. Is everybody opposed to consensual adult incest either incestuous or profiteering from hatred against the incestuous?

it is refreshing, in an age of increasingly reductionist and binary debate, to recognise the importance of sometimes saying the three most undervalued words in the English language: I don’t know.

a student union’s decision not to have a Rudyard Kipling poem on their wall

The students union painted over the poem If in such a way that the original could still be read under the replacement - Maya Angelou's wonderful Still I Rise. There was an apology to them from the university authorities for not having consulted first before they put up the Kipling.

people living closest to the largest number of takeaway food outlets were more than twice as likely to be obese.

Correlation does not prove causation