That makes them gay haters in my book.
However, Nick Griffin, the BNP's leader, has been elected to the European Parliament. There wasn't an increase in the BNP vote as such, just a decrease in Labour's. Either way, he was voted in, by the election process that's been deemed legal and binding. He's an elected representative.
And that makes me shudder somewhat, but I shudder even more when I hear so-called anti-fascists declare, as one did on BBC radio yesterday, that freedom of speech is OK, but not for fascists.
I shudder when so-called lovers of freedom of speech halt a BNP news conference, as happened, by pelting the speaker with eggs. I'm glad that the anchor of BBC Radio 4's teatime news programme, Eddie Mair, gave the spokeswoman for a group called Unite Against Fascism (UAF) a hard time. And I don't think Mair is a BNP supporter, somehow.
According to the UK's Daily Telegraph:
Protest organiser Weyman Bennett, national secretary of Unite Against Fascism, said he believed it was important to stand up to the BNP.
"The majority of people did not vote for the BNP, they did not vote at all. The BNP was able to dupe them into saying that they had an answer to people's problems.
"They presented themselves as a mainstream party. The reality was because the turnout was so low, they actually got elected."
Bennett has a point: the turnout for the Euro elections in Britain was pathetic. If more people had got off their arses – or asked for a postal vote and used it – the BNP might not have gained as much support.
But neither the UAF nor any other group has any democratic right to prevent me or anyone else from hearing the questions that journos might have put to Griffin and the answers he might have given had not this press conference been disrupted.
It seems that some people want free speech, but only the free speech they want.
