No-sex advice made Andrew a saint

To mark St Andrew's Day next Thursday, an academic has written to all 129 members of the Scottish Parliament urging them to honour Scotland's patron saint by embracing policies of pacifism and promoting women's rights. Alastair McIntosh, a fellow of the Edinburgh-based Centre for Human Ecology, criticised the saint's association with militarism and patriarchy as ignoring historic manuscripts. These showed he was dedicated to non-violence and female equality. He was martyred after converting the wife of a Roman pro-consul, who refused her husband conjugal rights, claiming that Christianity was more important. The pro-consul was so incensed that he ordered the saint's crucifixion on an X-shaped cross.