Wicked witches of the West?

It’s come to something when a police force has to have a unit devoted to “religious violence”.

This story in the Independent tells us: “Police officers in London will receive extra instructions on helping children accused of witchcraft and sorcery with plans to expand the training nationwide if it proves effective.”

Because of the modern trend of using lowercase initials for actual bodies with actual titles (a Guardian sin, mainly, though it’s creeping in on the BBC website, too), it’s impossible to know whether this thing the Indie calls “the Metropolitan Police’s religious violence unit” is a unit that happens to deal with religious violence among other things, or is the Religious Violence Unit.

But, either way, we actually have a unit that deals – exclusively or inter alia – with something called “religious violence”, a phenomenon that is accepted without further explanation.

I’m fed up of saying I have nothing against religion but . . ., because there seems to be more and more about it to object to. Yet these Christians who visit violence upon kids whom they suspect of witchcraft and sorcery presumably follow their Big Man’s examples of humility, turning the other cheek, compassion, understanding.

But, then, maybe JC went along with that Exodus 22: 18 thing: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Then again, there are several interpretations of that. One is that, in the original Hebrew, the word m’khashepah was used, and that means specifically a woman who uses spells to harm others.

Do these Christians really believe their kids want to use magic to harm others?

Just a few thoughts to be going on with . . .

Gays are paedophiles? Yeah, yeah …

Someone in Australia has been a very silly boy. A young politician, 19-year-old Peter Watson, has been expelled from the Aussie Labour Party there for homophobic rants – including linking homosexuality with paedophilia – on the Internet.

This is how ABC News, linked to above, quotes this naïve chappie:

“I said that homosexuality and paedophilia were linked because there’s been some research done … and it’s been published by the Catholic Church, that suggests that 30 per cent of male paedophiles are homosexual.” (Which means that 70 per cent are heterosexual, presumably. And published by the Catholic Church, no less! Right, bound to be bang on, then.)

“I made the comments, so I do agree with it.” (But of course you would.)

“These comments I made about homosexuals were made when I was like 14, 15 years old, so we’re talking about four, five years ago.” (Oh, are you now backing away from the comments, then?)

“[But] I do agree in some sense.” (Ah, just some sense now. Which sense would that be, then? Not common sense on your part, that's for sure.)

He’s been talking to ABC Radio’s AM programme, in which he says, among other things, that homosexuality devalues society, and you can hear the interview here and read a transcript.

And there’s a video on the first link above. Go and hiss and boo.

Freedom to be dotty

A street preacher from Taunton in Devon, UK, has been found not guilty of verbally abusing a couple of gay guys after he told them they’d burn in hell.

“The couple claimed he deliberately targeted them after a previous altercation with them in 2010 when they walked past him holding hands led to [his] being spoken to by police,” says the Huffington Post.

“But the 47-year-old born-again Christian and former paratrooper denied abusing them, arguing that he was using his freedom of speech to air his beliefs in the centre of Taunton, Somerset, when he told the pair: ‘Even these two dear men whom I have met before, caught in the sin of homosexuality, can have the forgiveness of the sin, should they so repent.’”

I hate to be agreeing with the dotty Stephen Green, he of the tinpot Christian Vice – sorry, Voice – when he says this is a victory for freedom of speech, but it is.

Once we start telling people they can’t disagree with others and tell them they’re wrong, it won’t be long before our lords and masters begin to use precedent to deliver all kinds of draconian legislation concerning what we can and can’t say.

Let’s be happy that nutters can call us sinners if they wish. We then continue to be free to call them nutters. Along the way comes debate – as here, and in other outlets – and eventually people begin to think. It’s probably only because debate has been more freely entered into over the past few decades that gay people have gained the freedoms they have in the UK (and what it can do to benefit politicians, of course, who could take away our newfound freedoms when it suits them, but may find it harder now than, say, two decades ago, because there’s more public opinion to reverse).

The gay couple are thinking of going to the European Court of Human Rights, saying (according to the Huff): “We tried to stand up for our human and gay rights and we have been let down.”

Is that so? Well, it’s unfortunate that some nutjob decides to invoke hell and all that biblical bollocks, but there are millions of opinions out there and we can’t just stop people from voicing them. If he incited others to violence against the couple, that’s another thing. If he followed them down the street and wouldn’t stop haranguing them, that, too, is another thing. Seems he didn’t do that.

The bishop, the religious ranter and the nice Mr Hill – the tale continues

Further to our story of yesterday about Mr Green and the contrite Bishop Benn, it seems that the latter has now specifically asked the former to withdraw the latter’s endorsement of the former’s idiocy in a booklet called Britain in Sin.

Green, you see – well, you do see if you know much about him – is, ahem, a bit of a, how shall we say, er . . .

He runs this tinpot right-wing outfit called Christian Voice, which is enough to give religion a bad name – if it didn’t already have one, which it does.

One form in which it doesn’t have a bad name is when people just get on with it and believe in others’ freedom to do their thing, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else or frighten the horses.

And that makes me think of a think tank I’ve often quoted in this blog called Ekklesia, which I monitor. You don’t have to believe in a god in order to appreciate the words of some who do.

And it’s Symon Hill’s article on the Ekklesia site that has informed me of the contrite bishop’s wish to wash his hands of the tommyrot that Stephen Green has upchucked into print.

Hill writes:

Along with several other bloggers, I drew attention two days ago to Bishop Benn’s endorsement of a booklet called Britain in Sin, written by Stephen Green of the fundamentalist group Christian Voice. The booklet opposes the welfare state, legislation guaranteeing equal pay to men and women, power-sharing in Northern Ireland and the UK’s membership of the United Nations.

A couple of days ago an email came to Ekklesia from the press office of Bishop Benn (well, Suffragan Bishop, but that waters down the alliteration) to say that, after endorsing Green’s booklet, the good bishop wished to disassociate himself from it. Later, his press officer sent another email, quoting Benn: “I have asked Stephen Green of Christian Voice to immediately withdraw my apparent endorsement of his booklet. I apologise for any hurt caused or misunderstanding given.”

By the way, in my post yesterday I appeared to make light of OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder, and Symon Hill, who suffers from it as a clinical condition, ticked me off in a comment.

No offence meant, Symon. I know it’s listed in clinical circles as a clinical condition, but I dare say we can still use it – as people do with many other bits of terminology – with a degree of levity. And it was so used, diluted by the words “something of a” before it, as well as being a play on several initials: “OTT OCD”.

And thanks for looking in.

The cautionary tale of the bishop and Mr Green

Here is a cautionary tale. If you’re ever asked to endorse something, damn well read it.

The poor old Bishop of Lewes, Wallace Benn, failed to do that with a booklet by Stephen Green, the “foghorn”, as Hugh Muir puts it in the Guardian, for Christian Voice, a grubby little outfit that shouts a lot from a very right-wing Christian perspective.

We all know that Green’s a tiny bit batty when it comes to gay matters – something of an OTT OCD situation with him. Obsessive because he seems to think of little else. Compulsive because he keeps trying to create a stink about such things. Disorder because – well, it’s a disorder.

Muir writes (last paragraph):

Green last crossed our path with claims that Tesco’s profits dropped because it sponsored a gay event. He believes in that sort of thing. Believes in all sorts of wacky things: that we’ve sinned by signing up to European legislation, by banning the cane, passing parking laws, by outlawing marital rape. That the Queen has broken the Ten Commandments by allowing her governments to pass gay-friendly legislation.

He then talks of the booklet, and the fact that the good bishop called it “interesting and disturbing reading”.

However, the good bishop has now been forced to eat his endorsing words.

He “now concedes to the Ekklesia website that he actually hadn’t really read it. Indeed he wishes to ‘completely and absolutely’ disassociate himself from the document. Oh Lord, what a mess.”

You gotta laugh.

The new word of the month: Gaystapo

The Church of England Newspaper called gay campaingners Nazis recently. Well, one of its contributors, a right-wing, nasty piece of work called Alan Craig, did.

He coined the portmanteau word “Gaystapo”. The newspaper defended it.

Well, it’s his opinion, but to label as Nazis some of the people whom the Nazis sent to concentration camps and gassed is rather under the belt. The man must himself have Nazi sympathies even to suggest such a thing.

Anyway, in the Huffington Post, Patrick Strudwick has a go at him. It’s worth a read. And there are some links there, too.

Mad Mel is Bigot of the Year

Melanie Phillips, that bastion of freethinking and compassionate journalism, is Bigot of the Year, I see.

It’s one of Stonewall’s annual awards. There are some positive ones there, too, as you can see from the second link in the story linked to above.

Another celibate man in a frock talks of ‘foolish’ gay marriage

Another suitable case for treatment has been sounding off in Scotland about same-sex marriage.

It would render marriage “meaningless”, avers the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, Mario Conti. And those who advocate it are “foolish”.

Earlier this week it was Cardinal Keith O’Brien, leader of the Catholics in Scotland (see Gay marriage would “rewrite nature”, says celibate man wearing a frock).

As to whether marriage is meaningless, is that not a question for those who are married and not those whose vocation renders them unable to be so (unless they give up their nonsense, of course)?

And why is allowing same-sex marriage foolish? In what way? Only fools advocate same-sex marriage? Everyone who advocates same-sex marriage is a fool, an idiot, a prat?

The 2010 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey found that 61 per cent of the Scottish public support allowing gay couples to wed. Are they all foolish – 61 per cent of the entire population (some of them, no doubt, followers of the Catholic Church if not all its tenets)?

Nope. These blithering idiots of preachermen don’t think much for themselves. They don’t need to when they have a huge canon of Catholic literature to make up their minds for them.

In a letter to the Herald this week, Conti wrote:

In a proposed consultation regarding the redefinition of civil partnerships, we are talking not of human rights or of civil liberties, nor of legal or fiscal equalities, but of redefining a particular relationship to give it a meaning it doesn’t possess.

We would use a word which carries huge significance, and render it meaningless in respect of one of its essential attributes, its capacity to create a natural family – I mean of course marriage. That 60 per cent of the population, according to one poll, is of a mind to accept that change may suggest to some a liberal society, but to others a foolish one.

There you go, then. It’s a foolish society.

As for redefining a relationship to “give it a meaning it does not possess”, who gives things meaning? Meaning is an entirely human concept. Humans attach meaning to things, and meanings change according to how things are viewed.

Oh, I was forgetting. Catholics don’t do that sort of thing. Only God breathes meaning into things. Silly me!

Gay marriage would ‘rewrite nature’, says celibate man wearing a frock

It could come only from a bloody Catholic! People who want marriage for same-sex couples want to “rewrite nature”, according to some idiot in Scotland called Cardinal Keith O’Brien.

Unsurprisingly, he says any plans for same-sex marriage will be strenuously opposed. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? He’s just doing his job. That’s what he does: fosters hatred.

He was responding to an announcement by the Scottish government of a consultation on the issue.

“The view of the church is clear,” says this nutcase: “no government can rewrite human nature; the family and marriage existed before the state and are built on the union between a man and woman.

“Any attempt to redefine marriage is a direct attack on a foundational building block of society and will be strenuously opposed.”

Well we can sit here all day and pick holes in the logic of this hogwash. For starters, it’s not within nature for a man and woman to get married at all. It’s within nature for them to shag; but, then, it’s within nature for two men or two women to put their things together, too.

And whether marriage existed before the state is irrelevant. Many things existed before the state that states have subsequently changed, and he doesn’t seem to be objecting to those, be they a ban on barbaric punishments or laws against walking around stark naked. (I’m sure you can think of more, dear reader.)

Anyway, Scotland’s Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, says the government is in favour of marriage equality while allowing religious groups the right not to hold ceremonies. What more does this buffoon want?

What a bunch of winkers!

A picture of a religious figure winking is disrespectful – so disrespectful, in fact, that it’s been banned by Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

Jesus – not only winking but giving a thumbs-up sign – appeared on a mobile phone ad just before Easter this year. I’ve looked in vain for a picture, but the various news sites that carry the story – well, the ones I could be bothered to look at, anyway – have avoided using the pic, including the BBC and the Independent.

The BBC says that “the Phones 4U advertisement was ‘disrespectful’ to the Christian faith and must not be used again”. The inference we must all draw is that it’s disrespectful to use a figure that’s revered by millions of people, but if it’s Jesus it’s wrong and if it’s, say, John Lennon or Lady Gaga it’s OK.

Sorry, but I don’t see the difference. Either you’re hurting people’s feelings or you’re not.

Oh, I was forgetting. It’s disrespectful only if the figure concerned is part of a myth.

Anyway, I’d have thought a Jesus winking and giving a thumbs-up would please the Deluded Herd. It seems to be saying Christianity is cool.

But, then, the ASA has been known to be a pusillanimous bunch of twats before, as we saw on this blog nearly a year ago when it cosied up to the Catholic Church and banned an ad showing two male priests about to kiss – on the strength of a handful of complaints.

Why doesn’t it concentrate on ads for stuff that’s harmful, such as most fast foods, mobile phones aimed at kids (think of the radiation) and clothes made in sweatshops – to name but a few dodgy products?
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UPDATE: Since I wrote the above my helpful commenter Logicelf (see comments) has kindly sent me a link to a picture (for which thanks) on the Sky website:

Oh, gay marriage is so evil

"A secret recording has emerged on YouTube in which Missouri congresswoman Vicky Hartzler is seen comparing gay marriage to incest, paedophilia and allowing three-year-olds to drive," Pink News reports.

One day someone'll do a survey on just how many ways prejudice against gays can be dressed up. And it's not all religionists – indeed, some of whom are really rather OK – but it often is. And it is so in this case: she's an evangelical.

Is barmy pastor to blame for barmy Islamists’ murders?

Pastor Terry Jones is that chap who threatened to burn a copy of the Koran last year, decided against it (after some pressure, it has to be said) and then, last month, presided over a burning of it, anyway.

But should he be condemned for the violence that resulted on 1 April in Afghanistan, caused by people who don’t like his sentiments or that he presided over the burning of some sheets of paper – as if they were the only sheets left containing historic scripture?

Nope.

Digital Journal has a longish think piece on it, discussing the New York Post’s barmy idea that Jones has blood on his hands and a Telegraph piece by Brendan O’Neill (editor of Spiked), which says he doesn’t.

Mr Green respondeth

The real Stephen Green, as we called him in a previous post when his ex-wife accused him of beating her up, has responded.

She, as you'll see from the above link, made allegations in the Daily Mail about this nutcase who seems to spend most of his energy ranting about gays. He had beaten her and the kids, she said, and had been a thoroughly bad lot.

In the interests of balance, here is a link to his response, which appears on his blog.

He says, among other things: "The article was a catalogue of smears and distortions stitched together by a tabloid journalist [Frances Hardy] who specialises in TV, celebrities, women’s features and gossip. She also has an anti-Christian agenda. Just over a year ago, she wrote a sycophantic piece exalting the pro-paedophilia campaigner Peter Tatchell. In April this year, she gushed over the first two lesbians who have jointly put their names on the birth certificate of the baby born to one of them."

As for an allegation that was tantamount to one of marital rape, Green says, "I never once had sexual relations with my former wife against her clearly expressed wish."

He goes on, "Secondly, in connection with the published allegations that I assaulted her, the truth, sadly, is the complete opposite. I had to obtain a harassment order against her to stop a campaign of intimidation and on one of the occasions when she assaulted me, I reported the matter to the police and she received a police caution."

There's more.
__________
Update: I left a comment on Stephen Green's blog. I did wonder whether he'd use it, and he did. I mentioned the famous "Dr Laura" letter, which takes the piss out of Leviticus. He pointed me to a post of his own that tries to refute the letter, but fails. For one who you would think would call the Bible inerrant, he seems happy to say that this or that law has now been done away with because of Paul's vision or Peter's vision in the New Testament. You be the judge. You might like to argue the point with Mr Green. However, I think you would be wasting your time.

All gays were abused as children, shock, horror!

So, if you are gay you were abused as a child. Hmm.

But you can see what sort of idiotic pillock came up with that one when you see later in the Daily Mail story linked to above that he thinks anyone who leaves Islam should be jailed.

The real Stephen Green

So now we know the real Stephen Green, it seems. He beat his wife, he beat his kids, he made his family's life a misery, according to his ex-wife.

Read all about it, as they say, in this story in the Daily Mail. It's quite a revelation.

Oh, how are the mighty – or, in arch homophobe Green's case, the deluded hypocrites – fallen!

Does this mean we'll be spared his dangerous ranting in future? Let's hope so. Rather, let's hope he's thoroughly discredited in the eyes of his followers, and that they will come to see the light – but not the light that Stephen Green espoused.

Protesting too much

Is it something in the water supply that makes “journalist” Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail into the unutterable bitch she is? Is she on some sort of medication that’s rotting her brain?

I ask because she’s at it again, thinking there’s some sort of gay mafia running things, pushing homosexuality down everyone’s throat, insinuating it into every school lesson as part of some huge conspiracy.

I refer you to this piece of “journalism” in yesterday’s issue.

Schoolchildren, she says, “are to be bombarded with homosexual references in maths, geography and science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to promote the gay agenda.”

Her examples?

“In geography, for example, they will be told to consider why homosexuals move from the countryside to cities. In maths, they will be taught statistics through census findings about the number of homosexuals in the population. In science, they will be directed to animal species such as emperor penguins and sea horses, where the male takes a lead role in raising its young.”

So you can just see the school timetable. Monday, 10 a.m., double period of “Homosexuals moving from countryside to city”. Tuesday, 3 p.m., “The number of homosexuals in the population”. Friday, 11 a.m., “Homosexuality in the animal kingdom”.

We all know that’s not how it is. In all kinds of subjects, real-life situations are used as examples. No doubt racial groups have been used to make points; gender has been used to illustrate statistics; age and other demographics have been used to discuss social issues.

Now, the last time I looked, gays were a part of the community. Is there any reason, then, Ms bloody Phillips, why the gay section of society should not be likewise used?

Sorry, what was that? There is a reason? Oh, what is it, then?

What was that again. This is “all part of the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby to destroy the very concept of normal sexual behaviour”?

Oh, I see.

So a group of gay people have lobbied the powers that be, have successfully had gay-related subjects injected into the curriculum, and their whole purpose has been to destroy the concept of “normal” sexual behaviour? Is that it?

And how are you defining “normal”? Just what’s in the majority? What’s natural? Well there are a lot of things that aren’t in the majority (left-handedness, for instance; red-headedness) that you would consider natural. So let’s leave that one out.

That just leaves “natural”. But, if it happens and it’s part of a person’s nature, it’s natural, isn’t it?

OK, I think I’ve gone far enough in picking the flaws in this ridiculous woman’s excuse for an argument. Read it for yourself (it’s linked to above) and then write to the asinine woman and tell her.

On second thoughts, maybe not. She’d probably revel in getting criticism from what she perceives to be the enemy. It would just justify her ridiculous, vicious crusade against people who have as much right as she does to take part in society and enjoy a full natural life in so doing.

Fortunately, people like Melanie sodding Phillips have become caricatures of themselves by going on and on about sexuality – so much so that you wonder what they’re trying to hide. Doesn’t she just make you want to echo Mr Hamlet and say, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”?

Euro MP thinks it’s OK to ‘turn’ gay men straight

What a dork? But, then, he is an ageing Tory, so maybe we should make allowances. His name’s Roger Helmer, and he’s a member of the European Parliament, and he’s tweeted that, if it’s OK to do sex-change ops, why not “turn” gay people straight?

He’s come in for some criticism – notably from members of his own party in the Conservative gay group LGBTory.

Meanwhile, according to Pink News, a Christian therapist may be struck off for trying to “turn” a gay man straight. The story’s here.

Let us continue to go forth and multiply, then, eh?

From today’s Independent:

In an authoritative and ominous warning, the 2010 Living Planet Report of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the definitive survey on the state of the planet’s health, signals that that tropical ecosystems are being degraded and tropical species are declining at an increasingly rapid rate, with the world’s population now consuming the output of one-and-a-half sustainable Earths [our emphasis].

And ridiculous Catholics will continue to tell us that we must continue to breed and will not let a little thing like overpopulation sway them from their strict line on family planning.

Stating the bleedin’ obvious

A Vatican official is objecting to the awarding of the Nobel Prize to a pioneer of in vitro fertilisation.

Well, he would, wouldn’t he?

How the Pope will bring chaos to our streets

“Mass disruption warning on Pope day”, warns the Scotsman.

The paper’s report gives details of the mass disruption for Edinburgh and Glasgow.

And that’s only Scotland.

This geezer obviously feels himself far more important than the lives of ordinary people who want nothing to do with his evil, and the Scottish and Westminster authorities are happy to go along with it, because even those politicians who detest Ratzo the Vile as much as I do are so bloody pusillanimous that they won’t stand up and say the Pope should be kept out of the country unless he’s on a pastoral visit paid for entirely by the super-rich Catholic Church.