Hitchens and Raabe

So, the latest brain-spew offered by self-styled "voice of reason" Peter Hitchens is all about Dr Hans-Christian Raabe. You may know him as the man fired from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for failing to disclose some of his more 'colourful' past - like his complete inability to deal with evidence that has anything to do with his beliefs as a member of the very conservative Christian group, the Maranatha Community, nicely illustrated by his co-authoring of a 2005 paper entitled "'Gay Marriage and Homosexuality: Some Medical Comments", which rather charmingly linked homosexual activity with paedophilia.


Raabe has claimed he is a victim of TEH LIBERALZ and TEH GAYZ and he has been fired unfairly, because all he did was publish a study which practically replicated the findings in a 1998 Home Office Report!

As Hitchens says, at the beginning of his article:

"Who said these words? ‘Approximately 20 to 33 per cent of child sexual abuse is homosexual in nature.’ I will tell you.

It was the Home Office, on Page 14 of Sex Offending Against Children: Understanding The Risk, published by the Policing and Reducing Crime Unit in 1998. I have a copy.

For saying roughly the same thing, Dr Hans-Christian Raabe has just been sacked – by the Home Office – from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). That’s right. He has been sacked from a body to do with drugs, for having unfashionable views about sex, views that the Home Office has itself espoused."

Oh, except - surprise, surprise - that's not what happened.

The Home Office report he refers to, "Sex Offending Against Children: Understanding The Risk" (PDF) was authored by Don Grubin. One line, on page 14 of the report (p. 23 of the PDF), says: "Bradford et al. (1988) suggested reasonably that approximately 20 to 33% of child sexual abuse is homosexual in nature and about 10% mixed".

A summary of the Bradford et al. article is here.

Note that neither the Home Office, or the Bradford article actually say anything like what Raabe and Hitchens are claiming they do. There is a world of difference between saying:

"While the majority of homosexuals are not involved in paedophilia, it is of grave concern that there is a disproportionately greater number of homosexuals among paedophiles and an overlap between the gay movement and the movement to make paedophilia acceptable." (Raabe)

and what the Home Office report clearly says, at page 18 (27 PDF):

"As described above, some offenders target only boys, some only girls, and some children of both sexes. This does not appear to reflect, however, sexual orientation towards adults."

 Here is the rest of Hitchens' bile. As usual, when there is so much absolute nonsense in one concentrated piece, my comments go in red.

 A pathetic creature called James Brokenshire (MP - see his voting record here, because it looks to me that Hitchens and Brokenshire might get along very nicely, given that he also hates TEH GAYZ) has allowed his name to be put to the letter that formally dismisses Dr Raabe. This is the first known instance of anyone being fired from a Government post under the provisions of Harriet Harman’s Equality Act 2010, Section 149, though I don’t think it will be the last. Well, given that the Act came into force only four months ago, I should hope so. Section 149 may be read here. I would contend it is less the product of ultimate evil that Hitchens seems to think it is, and more a piece of legislation to ensure that human beings are not discriminated and demonised by, let's say, frothing primitive throwbacks who's names might rhyme with 'kitchens', and 'garb'. What would I know though?

Mr Broken Reed did not actually sign the wretched epistle, as a smudged rubber stamp indicates. I don’t blame him. It is a cowardly document and so sloppily prepared it even manages to misspell Dr Raabe’s address.

Dr Raabe is accused of having expressed ‘controversial’ (read: 'disgusting, but we're too polite to say, and also a bit scared of what the Mail would do if we outright condemned you for them') views on homosexuality and of having ‘failed to declare them’, though they are traceable in seconds on the internet and he had no good reason to think they had anything to do with his appointment. Except for the part where they made his appointment to a public body untenable due to, y'know, being a raving bigot and all.

It has come to something when a man is required to guess which past words of his may be regarded as ‘controversial’ when seeking a state appointment, and be dismissed for getting such a riddle wrong. Not really a guess, is it? "Hmm, I wonder which of my past works will look controversial? It could be the one where I claimed that homosexuals and paedophiles are inextricably linked.... No, no one could ever call that controversial!"

I have spent several days trying to discover exactly what the Home Office means by ‘controversial’ in this case, or who defines this word. No reply. I think we should also wonder why it is a sacking offence, in a free society, to be controversial. It's not. Well, it might be. I imagine that if I went to work and instead of pouring pints, I started punching customers in the face, that might be described as 'controversial'. I also imagine I would be sacked. However, I wouldn't say I had been sacked for being 'controversial', I would say I had been sacked for a) breaking the law and b) being the kind of idiot who punches people in the face for no reason. Unless I was some kind of moron who was trying to complain that I had been unjustly fired in the face of all evidence. Then I'd probably pull the 'controversial' card.

When I asked them if their own publication’s words on the subject were ‘controversial’, they wouldn’t say. They’re hiding something. No, they're really not.

And what they are hiding is this. That when the Prime Minister defined himself the other day as a ‘muscular liberal’, he meant exactly what he said. The official ideology of Britain, from Downing Street downwards, is a militant and highly intolerant political correctness, originating in Marxist thought and forced on us by EU directives (so much for ‘Euroscepticism’). Do I have to comment on this, or can we all just agree it's barmy and move on? Yes? Thank you.

Interestingly, this miserable dogma is all he has to offer in response to the growing challenge of Islam in our streets and in our culture. Not centuries of Christian tradition, and the heritage of Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution, but ‘equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality’. Yeah! Let's fight an imagined threat with centuries of intolerance! Damn those pesky forrins, women and gays, not discriminating against them means we'll all be Muslim by Monday!

The affair of Dr Raabe is one of the most fascinating episodes of modern times. The doctor, who is German-born and so at least can’t be accused of ‘xenophobia’, (because they would do otherwise!) works in a poor district of Manchester and observes every day in damaged lives the dismal effects of the law’s feeble attitude to supposedly illegal drugs.

He can see for himself that the official policy of ‘harm reduction’ is actively doing harm. His appointment to the ACMD (to a seat reserved specifically for a GP) was a great moment for every mother and father who wants the State to stop complacently accepting mass drug abuse as an unalterable fact, and instead to help keep their children safe from the little packets of madness on sale at the school gates.

It was a great blow to the selfish, irresponsible people who have for years spread the false idea that drugs can be taken safely, and denied the growing evidence from the mental hospitals that many young cannabis-users go irreversibly, horribly mad. Or to people who don't like people just plain making shit up to suit their horribly warped agendas advising the government on science.

His dismissal is a great loss to those who care about the lives and minds of the young.

I will reserve for another time an examination of the fascinating role of a senior figure in the supposedly impartial BBC in what happened next. He deserves a lot of time to himself, and I shall get round to that.

But let us say that a campaign to remove Dr Raabe, boosted by anonymous misty threats of resignations from the ACMD, roared rapidly into action. Can we just do that thing where the fact that this is so obviously hyperbole and lies from Hitchens means that we just move on?

And that, preferring political correctness to an honest, decent doctor worth dozens of any of them, this Government swiftly bowed to that campaign (see my last comment, please). And that the person directly responsible for this grovelling hawked himself to the people of Old Bexley and Sidcup as a ‘Conservative’. And they believed him.

It would be funny if it were not so disgusting. A bit like Hitchens' columns every week, really.