Poor Stephen Green

Poor old Stephen Green! There he is, this upright Christian, director of Christian Voice, fighting the good fight with all his might against the right of people to televise and show such entertainments as Jerry Springer: The Opera, and what does he get? Grief, that's what he gets. The poor dear.

You can read here how upset he is about having to cough up for his own legal actions (it's a press release he's probably written himself). Now he says he's facing bankruptcy because of it. He – or his press release – goes on:

The High Court ruled last December that Stephen Green could not prosecute Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC, and Jonathan Thoday of Avalon over the BBC2 broadcast of Jerry Springer the Opera and its subsequent theatre tour. The Court ordered costs against him.

In a hearing a fortnight ago, Mark Thompson and Jonathan Thoday were awarded costs totalling £90,000 against Green, who is the National Director of the prayer and lobby group Christian Voice. The BBC's solicitors were awarded £55,000 and Olswangs Solicitors, who acted for Thoday, got an order for £35,000.

The costs order is better than it could have been; the BBC originally demanded almost £78,000 after instructing David Pannick QC, probably the most expensive barrister they could find, while Thoday wanted over £58,000.

The money is due to be paid today, but Stephen Green doesn't have it.

He has written to both Mark Thompson and Jonathan Thoday inviting them to waive their costs in the interests of goodwill and justice.

Green, you'll remember, interpreted a splat of bird shit on his shirt as a sign from God that he shouldn't take part in an interview. Somehow, you're just not surprised that loonies like that can be stupid enough to try to prosecute perfectly legitimate theatre and television. Not only did he help to ensure an end to Britain's blasphemy laws by his actions, but he's lost a fortune in the process.

If you want to see the bird-shit incident, click on the video below.

With friends like that . . .

Oh, the embarrassment! Remember those homophobic bishops and other frockists meeting for the GAFCON in Jerusalem, which we mentioned in an entry yesterday? And how they were there, in Jerusalem, talking about the evils of homosexuality in their campery while a successful Gay Pride event was going on in the same city?



Well, they've had an endorsement for their cause, which you'd think they'd be pleased about. But they may not be, because it's come from none other than the esteemed Robert Mugabe (below, probably berating gays), who's made some sort of statement about how degenerate the Church is ahead of his highly contested presidential election tomorrow, which, on account of the fairness of the Zimbabwean system, he expects to win.



With an endorsement like that, you never know: the GAFCON lot might just all turn queer.



Ekklesia, linked to above, says, "In a campaign comment ahead of today's uncontested election in Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe has condemned Archbishop Rowan Williams as lacking a 'moral compass' and said that gays in the church are a sign of 'moral degeneracy'."



This thoroughly upright and decent president made his comments after two African archbishops turned down opportunities at a press conference earlier this week to condemn violence against lesbian and gay people. They said it was not the churches' business to get involved in arguments with governments.



Mugabe's rabid hatred of gays is not new, though. Indeed, as the Ekklesia site points out, "British gay and human rights activist Peter Tatchell has been badly beaten by the dictator's security staff trying to make a 'citizen's arrest' of Mugabe for his abuse and crimes against sexual minorities.'



But you get the feeling they'd rather he'd just kept his mouth shut. Just this once.

Gay and proud

Oh, the irony! Thousands of Gay Priders march through Jerusalem as, in the same city, those conservative (read "bigoted") bishops who want to give Church liberals a bloody nose fail to get their schism within the Anglican Communion.

It seems the Jerusalem Pride went off without event, even though past marches have been marred by violent protests by ultra-Orthodox Jews. This time around there were some small protests away from the march route.

Meanwhile, those really frothy bishops who want to break away from the main Church because of the American Episcopals' stance on gay priests will be sadly disappointed.

According to Reuters – reporting on the GAFCON, or Global Anglical Future, conference – "Conservative Anglican leaders meeting at a rebel summit expressed frustration with the church's leadership on Thursday but indicated that an outright schism might be avoided."

This week-long convention of hundreds of conservative bishops and clergy, says the Reuters report, "opened on Sunday amid talk that it was a first step towards a split between conservative and liberal wings in the 77-million-strong Anglican Communion".

But mid-way through the conference, conservative leaders spoke only of making GAFCON a "movement", without indicating how such a process would be handled and if there was enough support among the bishops to initiate a split.

"There is a sense of betrayal and abandonment by the existing leadership and Communion structures," Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya said at a press conference.

But he added that "there is a genuine desire to continue to reach out to other Anglicans around the Communion who share our common faith."

But there's Lambeth to come, and there could be fireworks. Well, there've been some of those before this ten-yearly meeting of the frockist tendency gets going towards the end of next month.

One bishop, Michael Nazir-Ali, has already said he won't be attending.

"I would find it difficult to be in Eucharistic fellowship with, and teaching the common faith alongside, those who have ordained a person to be bishop whose style of life is contrary to the unanimous teaching of the Bible and the Church down the ages," the Pakistan-born bigot said in a statement released in Jerusalem during a media conference earlier this week.

He was referring there to Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, who, against the wishes of huge chunks of the Anglican Communion, was mumbo-jumboed into bishophood and, as you can imagine, is rather saddened by the whole nasty business.

Catholics moaning after pill goes free

Just when you're about to applaud Scotland for making the morning-after pill freely available, you read this: "Pharmacists will be able to opt out of providing the free emergency contraception service as a matter of conscience."

Well, we know what sort of conscience that is, don't we? It usually comes down to religion, of one sort or another.

I read this thing in the Scotsman about how women in Scotland are going to get easier access to the pill right across the nation.

The emergency contraception is set to be supplied for free in most of Scotland's 1,200 community pharmacies under changes to their contracts.

Last night, the plan was welcomed by sexual health groups and doctors. However, some campaigners expressed fears it could fuel rising rates of sexually transmitted infections.

Shona Robison, the public health minister, announced an expansion of services provided by community pharmacists at a conference in Glasgow.

As well as free emergency contraception, changes to the contract will lead to pharmacies providing smoking cessation services and free chlamydia testing and treatment. Some pharmacies already offer such services, but provision across Scotland is patchy.

Women can get the emergency contraceptive from their family-planning clinic or their GP for nothing, but, if they're unable to do this, at least they can by it, currently for £26.

But then they go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like how pharmacists can refuse to dispense it if they have a conscience thing about it. Why are they being given a licence to be a pharmacist if they then refuse to carry out what is expected of a pharmacist? It's a bit like going to have repairs done on your car, but the mechanic can't fix the hub caps because he doesn't believe in wheels. Or your general practitioner can fix your recurring headaches but has a sort of conscience thing about carbuncles.

You just know the Catholic Church is going to be quoted somewhere, and you're right. The paper says:

And last night, a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland said: "This gives the false impression that careless sexual activity is OK because there is always a fix. That message is likely to lead to more, not less, sexually transmitted disease and higher recourse to abortion."

You just know it's not sexually transmitted disease that is the spokesman's first concern, somehow. You just know it's that God thing – you know, how the sex act is not for enjoying but just for creating ever more offspring on a planet that's already creaking under the weight (environmentally speaking) of what it's got walking on its surface at the moment.

Do you ever hear journos – when they go for the obligatory quote from a man in a frock – take that up with Catholics who try to tell a woman how she should manage her own fertility? Like hell do you!

57 varieties of homophobia

You can bet the bulk of those complaining about a Heinz ad that features a kiss between two men will be religious types. Just a theory. However, the campaign now is not to get the ad off British TV, but to get it back on.

It shows one chap, cooking and called "Mum" by the couple's young children, and then, as the kids leave the kitchen, the "other half" comes in, clearly in a hurry, and "Mum" demands a goodbye kiss from him before he leaves for work. Not amusing, particularly, but kinda nice, and certainly not offensive; and of course it clearly would not have caused one iota of concern had it been a man and a woman.

While the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have received 205 complaints about the ad (at the last count), they haven't ruled on it. But Heinz themselves have decided to pull it, and that's got gays up in arms. Some have organised an online petition, which you can sign here. It's got 1,300 signatures so far, according to this story in Pink News. The ASA have even received 50 calls and emails from people wanting the ad reinstated.

The paper says:

Gay equality organisation Stonewall said the complaints were part of an orchestrated campaign, similar to the one that targeted their "Some People Are Gay: Get Over It" billboard adverts.

Heinz won't talk to Pink News, but have told the UK's Independent, "The advertisement was intended to be humorous, not designed to cause offence to anyone. Clearly it failed in its intent to amuse and that is why we took the decision to withdraw it."

The ASA said that 200 of the complaints related to the gay kiss in the advert, and that it would not make a judgment on whether or not to investigate a potential breach of taste-and-decency rules until the end of next week.

Anyway, take a look for yourself in the video below.

Queen of Diamonds

George Broadhead is 75 today – Happy Diamond Birthday, George!

George has been a campaigner for gay rights and humanist values for forty years, and, with little sign of hanging up his spurs, has recently turned his focus to the Pink Triangle Trust (PTT), Britain’s first and only gay humanist charity.

Together with his partner Roy Saich – a founding trustee of the PTT – George set up one of the first local groups of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE), in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, in the early seventies. Then, in 1974, after moving to Kenilworth, he and Roy (who also runs the award-winning Humanists website) set up the South Warwickshire Area Gay Group (SWAGG) and, later, Coventry & Warwickshire Humanists. SWAGG was mainly a social group, organising events at the 18th-century Pump Rooms in Royal Leamington Spa to raise money for groups campaigning for gay rights.

For more than a quarter of a century, George was Secretary of GALHA (the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, which started out life as the Gay Humanist Group), of which he is now a Vice President. For many years, he was the editor of Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine, for which he wrote his "World Watch" column.

But it isn’t all work for George, who enjoys a quiet hour sipping chilled white wine on his patio, surrounded by treasured exotic plants and a most unusual water feature. If our fickle British summer allows, I hope George finds the time to be there today to raise a glass or two in celebration of his three-quarter-century diamond birthday! And I wish that I could be there to join him.

So, George, a very Happy Birthday and long may your ammonite gurgle!

Fear or freedom?

Anglican wrangling about sexuality and authority in the church is missing the big picture about how the relationship between religion and society is changing, says a new book from the think tank Ekklesia to be published next week.

Christians need to be beacons of hope, not signs of decay, it argues, suggesting that the "conservative versus liberal" stereotype disguises a deeper tension between establishment religion and the Christian message of radical transformation.

It's called Fear or Freedom? Why a warring church must change, and has a preface by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu (one of the truly likable faces of Christianity).

"The book contains essays by clergy, a peace activist, an equalities adviser and two New Testament professors," says Ekklesia. "It is aimed at substantially challenging the argument that will take place at the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops in July."

The book's editor, Ekklesia's Simon Barrow, adds, "Many Christians and other onlookers are completely baffled by the nasty arguments within Anglicanism right now. These rows are missing four key ingredients: an understanding that 'top-down' models of the church are dying; that the world needs models of reconciliation and peacemaking, not examples of animosity; that many want to affirm gay Christians on deeply traditional grounds; and that disagreement without courtesy and love is destroying the credibility of the church's message."

Ekklesia says that the attempt by some Anglican leaders to exclude women, gay people and those they disagree with from church life disguises two larger crises. First, the end of the Christendom era, where Christianity could expect a privileged position in society, an idea that has been "exported" around the world; second, a global challenge to the use of religion to sanction oppression – "which leaves many people feeling that Christians behave less morally than others".

Fear or Freedom? will be on sale at the Lambeth Conference, which should be a barrel of laughts this year, with half of Christendom wanting to get its collective hands on Archbishop Rowan Williams's throat for his perceived inability to tell the American church where it can shove its acceptance of gay priests and bishops.

What is Jacqui Smith playing at?

Campaigners are outraged by the British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's assertion that gays are safe in Iran, provided they behave discreetly. Like hell they are!

It's thought that as many as 4,000 lesbians and gays have been executed in that country since the Islamic revolution of 1979.

Smith has said in a letter to Lord Roberts of Llandudno (which has also appeared in Britain's Independent newspaper), that, while there are "cases where people able to demonstrate a need for international protection", there is not enough evidence to support a moratorium on deportations to Iran, where many gay men have been known to be hanged for their sexuality.

Back in 2005, Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine, published by the Pink Triangle Trust, drew attention to the Iranian situation, with a disturbing picture (above) that has since done the rounds of the Internet, showing two teenagers having the ropes put about their necks by two masked executioners on a scaffold in the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran. This happened in July 2005.

Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni were hanged for allegedly being rapists. But gay campaigners insist the teenagers were killed under sharia law for the "crime" of homosexuality.

The matter also gets attention in Pink News, Britain's online gay outlet, and the Pink Triangle Trust has expressed its own horror at Smith's stance, with its secretary, George Broadhead, talking of an "outrage".

Damn right, too. Has the woman no shame?

Bacon, egg and hogwash

Goodness knows who's paying for it (the taxpayer, we can only assume), but, according to Inspire magazine, there's a "prayer breakfast" at Westminster tomorrow, with up to a hundred MPs going along to mumble the mumbo-jumbo over their croissants or baked beans.

"The parliamentarians will also spend time with four Christian agencies: Care, Interserve, Tearfund, World Vision and Bible Society to discuss their work," says the magazine in a very short piece.

Are our paid representatives doing this in their own time? You can bet your bottom they're not.

RTD OBE

It’s good to see that another high-profile nonbelieving gay man has been awarded an honour by the establishment. Writer, producer and Doctor Whopremo Russell T Davies was awarded an OBE for his services to drama last week in the UK in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

As well as his success with Doctor Who, starring Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant, and its spinoffs Torchwood, starring John Barrowman and Eve Myles, and The Sarah Jane Adventures, starring Elisabeth Sladen and Thomas Knight, Davies was responsible for The Second Coming, also starring Eccleston, in 2002 and, before that, the groundbreaking Channel 4 drama Queer As Folk in 1999.

Davies said of his honour:

I'm delighted to accept, and I hope it does the whole industry a bit of good, for the writing of television drama to be recognised.

Meanwhile, the BBC issued a statement saying:

We are delighted for Russell – he is one of this country's greatest writers and it is fantastic that his talent has been recognised in this way.

It seems that being gay and an atheist, not to mention trying to finish off the UK government and the Royal Family via farting aliens, six little words and crashing the Titanic into Buckingham Palace on Christmas Day was not held against him!

Blessed be buggered!

The gay marchers of Brighton are going to get religion whether they want it or not, it seems.

For the second year running, the Rev. Debbie Gaston will "bless the Brighton Pride parade", according to this story on the GaydarNation website.

Not only will atheists and agnostics have to be "blessed", but those of religions other than Christianity, too. The story continues:

The vicar from the Brightwaves Metropolitan Community Church will give the parade her holy best wishes before it goes on its way through the streets of Brighton on Saturday 2 August.

How outrageous. It reminds me of when, some years ago, the Terrence Higgins Trust used to have prayers said at its candlelight vigils in Trafalgar Square (which GALHA managed to put a stop to), the blessing of the banner at Leicester Pride a while ago and the long-running column in Gay News entitled "Our God Too"!

A service is being held for Pride the following day, anyway. Surely, Christians could just go to that, or hold one before the march so those who actually wish to be "blessed" can be "blessed".

It's good that churches such as the MCC are taking part, along with countless other groups, no doubt, but isn't it a bit presumptuous to believe that the entire march will feel better for having a Christian "blessing"?

Well done, whoever you are!

We now know who they are. Well, not exactly who, but the type of person they are. I refer to a loose-knit but seemingly well-organised, Internet-based campaign called Anonymous, whose avowed target is the Church of Scientology.

This crazy cult has drawn a lot of criticism, and on at least two occasions in recent weeks police have blocked free expression.

But have a look at this UK Times article. It makes fascinating reading.

"Their target", says The Times "was the Church of Scientology – and this was an altogether new way of protesting." It continues:

It was all so different from how it used to be. For more than a decade, a small group had gathered opposite the Church's London offices to stage lonely demonstrations. Some were former Scientologists, some just angered by an organisation that they claimed split up families, extorted money and employed its followers as slave labour. Leafleting passers-by, explaining themselves to the police and countering – they claimed – the harassment of the Scientologists, they were happy if a dozen turned out.

Then, earlier this year, something odd happened. Simultaneously and apparently without warning, in London, Toronto, Sydney, New York and other cities worldwide, young men and women began protesting en masse. They wore strange clothes, spoke their own dialect, distributed cake and operated under the name of Anonymous. They returned the next month – and the month after.

The paper asks, "Who were these people?", and answers thus:

To the police, watching last Saturday's London protest, they are a quirky bunch of middle-class kids. “These are the nicest protesters I have ever had the privilege of policing,” one said. “They even bring lunch.” Sure enough, behind the barricades, there is a large table of crisps and soft drinks. Demonstrators offer biscuits to passers-by. One of their placards reads: “We have cake, they have lies.” The police description is broadly accurate - most Anonymous members are indeed middle-class teenagers. They see themselves as guardians of free speech, fighting a malign organisation that bases its ideology on stories about aliens. They cover their faces because they are scared of reprisals. But also because anonymity is, well, what they do.

There's more, for those interested in this debate, and what Anonymous stand for.

Religion trumps education in Wales

Religion has won out over children's education once again. It's in Wales this time, where an Assembly committee has voted to give free transport to religious sectarian schools but deny it to kids who want to go to a Welsh-language schools (this is where lessons are taught through the medium of the Welsh language rather than English).

Given that so much lip service is paid to the language in the principality, it seems surprising that Assembly Members (AMs) should kick it in the teeth, and allow religion to trump it. A story on the WalesOnline website tells us:

A cross-party body voted to close a loophole denying those attending faith schools access to free transport, but refused to back similar proposals to strengthen the right to free travel to Welsh-medium schools.

The faith school vote in a cross-party committee was won with the backing of Labour AM Ann Jones, who said it put her in the “dreadful” position of having to choose between her conscience and party policy.

Her decision was applauded by Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan.

Well, it would be, wouldn't it?

A final vote is expected in the Assembly in autumn.

180

What's in a number? Well ...

In numerical terms, 180 (spoken as one hundred eighty in American English, but one hundred and eighty in British English) it is the natural number following 179 and preceding 181. It is the sum of six consecutive primes (19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41) as well as the sum of eight consecutive primes (11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37). The sum of Euler’s quotient function over the first twenty-four integers is 180. 180 is a refractorable number because it is divisible by the total number of its divisors. 180 degrees is called a straight angle, makes a semicircle and, in normal space, is the sum of the interior angles of a triangle. 180 is a Harshad number in base 10, CLXXX in Roman numerals, 10110100 in binary, 130 in duodecimal, B4 in hexidecimal and 90 in vigesimal. On the Fahrenheit scale, 180 degrees is the spread (or difference) between the freezing and boiling points of water.

A ton 80 or "180" (as announced with the "and" in exuberant style by every UK television darts commentator) is the highest score possible when all three of a player’s darts land in the triple 20 on the board. It’s also the highest possible score on the British Law School Application Test (LSAT). The Unicorn 180 Club "is open to all darts players, men and women, who score the magical 180 for a pub, club or representative team in a recognised darts match", but not, one assumes, to law school students who achieve 180 on their LSATs. 180 (note the italics) is a darts video game released in 1986 for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit and MSX computers.

In many extreme sports, 180 is where a rider rotates through half a turn and lands rolling backwards. Whereas, in pounds sterling, it’s currently the amount required to purchase the necessary equipment for the Freesat service offered by the BBC and ITV in the UK, which is intended as a free-to-air alternative to Sky's digital satellite platform.

180 Amsterdam is an international agency based in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, 180degrees.co.uk is the website of Rob Gauntlett and James Hooper (pictured together here), who, in May 2006 at the age of 19, became the youngest Britons ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. In 2007, they went on to break a world record by travelling pole to pole using only human or natural power and, according to Wikipedia, 180 is also the only nonalcoholic energy drink to be produced by a beer company, Anheuser-Busch of Missouri!

In 180 BC, in Greece, Perseus persuaded his father, King Philip V of Macedon, to have his younger brother Demetrius executed. Rome completed its subjugation of all of Italy, deported 40,000 Ligurians to other parts of the Republic and colonised Lucca. In Egypt, aged just six years old, Ptolemy VI became ruler as co-regent with his mother Cleopatra I, and, following the death of Aristophanes of Byzantium, Aristarchus of Samothrace became librarian at Alexandria. Meanwhile, in Bactria, Demetrius I started his invasion of north-western India, and Apollodotus I became king of the western and southern parts of the Indo-Greek kingdom.

In China, Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty ascends to the Chinese throne after quelling the clans of Empress Dowager Lü. The Greek scholar and grammarian Apollodorus of Athens and the Lusitanian chieftan and general Viriathus were both born in 180 BC, while the Roman statesman, consul and censor Lucius Valerius Flaccus, the Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, Aristophanes of Byzantium, the de-facto ruler of the Chinese Han Dynasty (and wife of Emperor Gao), Empress Dowager Lü, and the fourth emporor of the Chinese Han Dynasty, Liu Hong, all died.

In AD 180, the praetorian prefect of the Roman Empire Tarutenius Paternus achieved a decisive victory against the Quadi, while, in Europe, the Goths reached the banks of the Black Sea. In Oceana, Lake Taupo erupted, forming ash clouds as far as China and Europe. In Methodus Medendo, Greek physician Galen describes the connection between paralysis and the severing of the spinal cord, and his popular work on hygiene was published. Elsewhere, twelve Christian inhabitants of Scillium in Numidia (who later became known as the Scillitan Martyrs) were executed in Carthage for refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to the Emperor. And Commodus created an official cult of the Zoroastrian god Mithra!

Sima Fu, the Chinese strategist, general and politician was born in AD 180, and the "philosopher-king", Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, died. His son, Commodus, became emperor, heralding a period of political instability. During the concluding part of the Hellenistic period and shortly afterwards, Christianity grew rapidly throughout the Roman Empire, culminating in the Emperor’s conversion to Christianity.

The following quote can be found in post 180 in "Is condemning homosexual sex homophobic?", which is being discussed in the Interfaith Issues folder on The Religion Forum:

As one who suffered rejection growing up, I always had a tendency to care for those who were rejected by others. My theological beliefs has nothing to do with how i perceive a person in love. Also Old Testament laws from Leviticus would not apply to New Testament Christians. The law that Jesus proclaimed was one of love your neighbor as yourself. Loving someone and caring for someone deeply, doesn't mean acceptance or approval of specific acyivity necessarily though.

Usual disingenuous bollocks there, then.

In astronomy, when two planets are 180 degrees apart, they are said to be in opposition, an aspect that is considered to be negative in influence in astrology!

"Celebrating 180 years of deafness" was a report published in the Guardian on 31 May 2008. "The Smith family have inherited deafness for eight generations. But many of the difficulties faced by their forebears no longer apply, thanks mainly to technology. They tell Rebecca Atkinson why they are proud of their unusual legacy."

The Web-based currency converter xe.com boasts "The 'full' version of the Universal Currency Converter ® contains every known world currency. That’s over 180 currencies in over 250 geographical locations!", the Zune 180 is Microsoft’s attempt to capture the iPod Nano and cellphone market in one go, whereas the Olympus C-180 is a digital camera from . . . er . . . Olympus.

On Page 180 of From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe by Alexander Koyré, we're told that Richard Bentley accepts, without any criticism, Bruno's concept of the universe as "an infinite space with an immense number of star-suns". In Santa Cruz in 1997, the seventeenth annual Dickens Universe was attended by 180 conference-goers. Meanwhile, in the Whoniverse, issue 180 of Doctor Who the Magazine was published on 27 November 1991, while episode 180 of Doctor Who the Series, The Age of Steel by Russell T Davies, was first broadcast on BBC 1 on 20 May 2006.

Which is all just a fun way of saying in exuberant style that, with this post, the Pink Triangle blog has just scored 180!

With this document I thee divorce

Peter Akinola

Well, they've done it, the African bishops. Bugger off, they say. You can keep priestood poofters. We're off. It's schism time.

And it's in an 89-page document called "The Way, the Truth and the Life", drawn up by what Britain's Daily Telegraph here calls "conservative Anglicans", whom we would call frothing bigots. It gets the support of several African churches, including those of Rwanda, Nigeria and Uganda.

Peter Akinola of Nigeria has always been a leading gobshite in this antigay bigotry. The Telegraph says:

The traditionalists dealt a serious blow to Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, by claiming that he can no longer hold the Church together.

They warned that the Church was gripped by its most serious crisis since the Reformation. It could only be saved by the repentance of the Americans who triggered the row by ordaining a homosexual bishop, the Rt Rev. Gene Robinson [of New Hampshire], five years ago.

Akinola says in the document, "There is no longer any hope, therefore, for a unified Communion."

Whatever you do, don't mention religion

The headline above says it all. This is the message at the UN at the moment, where Muslim countries have "won a battle to prevent Islam from being criticised during debates by the UN Human Rights Council", according to the Daily Times.

Religions deserve special protection, says the paper, because any debate about faith is bound to be "very complex, very sensitive and very intense", according to the council president, Doru-Romulus Costea.

This ruling will not affect findings by council experts, just its chamber debates. And, while it affects all religions, it's the Muslims who achieved the change, because they can't stand the idea that someone might even talk about their hideous belief system, let alone dare to criticise it.

The Daily Times continues:

On Monday Egypt, Pakistan and Iran angrily protested attempts by a humanist group to link Islam to human rights abuses such as female genital mutilation and so-called honour killing of women. The interventions sparked a heated debate which threatened to sour the mood of the meeting. The council’s resolutions carry no legal weight but are intended to throw a spotlight on governments thatabuse their citizens.

Creeping Islamisation continues.

Bangle wrangle

That question of what one should be allowed to wear in school is being tested again. This time it's the Sikh girl from Cwmbach near Aberdare, Wales, who wants to wear a bangle at school.

It's a simple piece of adornment, and you might ask, What's the problem?

Well, if school policy were to permit all jewellery, not just ear studs and watches, there shouldn't be one, and this girl should be allowed to wear her kara. That is what religious freedom is about: fairness and equality (subject to the usual rules of social order).

But the school does have a studs-and-watches-only policy, so the girl is clearly seeking an exception to school rules only on the grounds of her superstition. And that's not on.

The case is being heard in the High Court, and it continues.

We shall not be moved

We've all said before that Islam is a religion that's stuck in the seventh century, and it refuses to budge. That's why it comes in for such a panning on questioning blogs such as this.

But now a theologian has come out and said it. According to The Times, "Professor Hans Kung, a leading Roman Catholic and theologian from Germany, warned in a lecture of a 'deadly threat to all humankind unless new efforts are made to build bridges with Islam'."

This is a problem, he said in London, because, unlike Christianity and Judaism, Islam has never undergone a "serious religious reformation".

"In the face of the deadly threat to all humankind," he tells the paper, "instead of building new dams of hatred, revenge and enmity, we should tear down the walls of prejudice stone by stone and thus build bridges of dialogue, bridges particularly towards Islam."

But how do you do that with a religion that wants to see gays killed in cruel ways, that sees women as way down the scale of importance, that moans and whinges as soon as someone draws an image of its founding mojo man? Do you just do what local authorities and police forces and other agencies have done, and simply kowtow to its increasing demands?

Many of its adherents won't be happy till British and other Western laws change to accommodate Islamic practices, and one sometimes wonders how long it will be before Islam rules the roost and the other Abrahamic religions are told to bugger off.

Just how do you engage in give and take with a religion like that? We'll stone a poof if you let us draw a cartoon? We'll all eat cruelly slaughtered animals if you promise not to wail in the streets on Fridays?

Professor Kung is being overoptimistic.

Then there's the issue of doctrinal differences. As a letter writer in today's Independent points out (he's talking, though, about Tony Blair's Faith Foundation):

[T]he Jewish faith holds that the Messiah has yet to come, the Christians assert that he has already come, in the person of Jesus Christ, and the Muslims accept that Jesus was a prophet, but believe that the Koran is God's last word on the subject, a view denied by both Jews and Christians.

That's a pretty fundamental disagreement.

You can say that again!

What's in a name (apart from a touch of lunacy)?

You're not going to believe this. Well, maybe you will once you know it happened in the good ol' US of A.

A man has changed his name to – wait for it – In God We Trust (the former pair of words as his first name, the latter pair as his surname). According to the Chicago Times, as quoted here by the Religious News Blog, this 57-year-old artist and bus driver was ecstatic when the court ruled he could change his name officially. In fact, the entire process took less than two minutes.

Mr We Trust said, "I feel great."

Well, as long as it's adults who do this kind of thing and don't inflict mad monikers on their kids, who are we to complain? He paid for the name change, after all. His former name was Steve Kreuscher, but he thinks In God We Trust represents more closely his devotion to an invisible being. Well, he said God.

Saying "I do" in the Golden State

There were protests, of course, and religious bigots reaffirmed their skewed ideas that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but the gays and lesbians of California were giving them the finger yesterday as same-sex marriages became legal following the ruling by the state's Supreme Court.

The Chicago Tribune (among many) tells us that, as the first candidates for saying "I do" arrived to exchange vows, Cardinal Roger Mahoney and seven other Southern California Catholic bishops "reaffirmed their opposition to same-sex marriage. In a joint statement, the clerics said marriage 'has a unique place in God's creation, joining a man and a woman in a committed relationship in order to nurture and support the new life for which marriage is intended'."

"In San Francisco," says the paper, "protesters arrived early on the front steps of City Hall, as did a throng of more than 100 reporters."