Street cred

I know that not all people who watch the long-running British soap Coronation Street are thick, but some of them must be.

Why else would they complain that a character – not a real person, but a character – seems to be having a go at Christians, as we see from this Daily Express tale?

Viewers complained after Street veteran Ken Barlow, played by Bill Roache, said Christians forced their views on “vulnerable people”.

At one point Ken accused his grandson Simon’s school of indoctrinating him, before vowing to tell the youngster “the truth” about religion.

The regulator Ofcom has received “dozens of complaints”, says the story.

You can bet your bottom they’re all from Christians. One moron on the ITV1 message board said, “In case it has escaped the minds of the writers, producers and directors of this extremely popular programme, in the last census over 70 per cent of respondents claimed to have some Christian adherence.”

Your point being? Most people don’t like Hitler, but they don’t write to a film company if, say, Hermann Göring is depicted praising him in any given scene of a movie about him. They don’t write to the producers of a TV cop drama if the baddy is badmouthing the goody.

Ken Barlow is a character. Let’s just shout that a bit: Ken Barlow is a character – a CHARACTER.

Just like real people, characters in TV drama have opinions.

Another message read, “To choose this script on the most holy day in the Christian calendar is insulting and greatly offensive.”

Er, hang on a mo. Like most soaps, Corrie follows the calendar. Easter Sunday in the real world was also Easter Sunday in Coronation Street. Events in people’s lives tend to provoke comments on those events.

When Barlow said (and you can see another version of the story here on the BBC website) that Jesus’s rising from the dead “may not necessarily be true” and that scientists think the Big Bang created the universe, he was clearly saying this because the story was smack bang in the middle of a particular day in the Christian calendar.

And they’d all been to church. Isn’t it natural that people who do something then go on to talk about it?

Barlow said at another point, apparently, that he believed “children should be told the truth” and that Christianity was comforting because “that’s how they get their hooks into you, when you’re vulnerable”.

It's just conversation between characters, but crazy Christians can't stand it.

What are you people on? Go and get a life, FFS!

Gagged!

I think I’m finding this a bit disturbing.

Pink News has the story of a “charity worker who revealed to a colleague that he did not believe in gay marriage or the ordination of gay clergy”, and has now been suspended from his job.

The story goes on:

Born-again Christian David Brooker, 44, who works as a hostel support worker in Southampton for the non-religious charity Society of St James, told co-worker Fiona Vardy about his beliefs but denied being homophobic.

Soon after the incident on 26th March, Mr Brooker received a suspension notice which was issued to “safeguard both residents and staff” following the “events that happened last night”.

An investigation and a disciplinary hearing have been ordered.

The Christian Legal Centre (CLC) have assigned a human-rights lawyer, Paul Diamond, to defend Brooker.

Now I don’t much like the CLC. Its director, Andrea Minichello Williams, is always bleating about something from a clearly right-wing, bigoted point of view.

This time, she said, “This case shows that in today’s politically correct, increasingly secularised society, even consenting reasonable discussion on religion between two employees is being twisted by employers to discriminate and silence the Christian voice and freedom of expression.”

I find it hard to dismiss that out of hand. Oh, the “secularised” bit, yes: she’s talking bollocks. Secularisation does not impede the expression of opinions. Anyway, plenty of believers are secular. It doesn’t mean having no morals or even no religion.

Where I find myself agreeing is on the question of Brooker’s being prevented from expressing an opinion. I don’t mind that people don’t agree with gay marriage, as long as that opinion isn’t translated into their work, if their work calls on them not to discriminate.

The story says that the Society of St James maintains that its action was based on Brooker’s decision to promote his religious views, “which contained discriminatory comments regarding a person’s sexual orientation”, at work.

Are we now to be prevented from expressing opinions at work? If so, well let’s ban all opinion, because any one opinion can, potentially, in some way, be deemed offensive by some people. A might not like B’s politics, may even find them abhorrent. Is B to be suspended because she expressed the opinion that, say, trade unions have too much power, that capital punishment should be reintroduced, that public football games should be banned because the fans are thugs, or that Gordon Brown is a pillock?

If by “promote his religious views” the society means that Brooker was shouting his views in a ranting sort of way and being insulting to colleagues and clients – gay or straight – that would be one thing (and we don’t know whether that is the case). However, if he’s conducting his work as it ought to be conducted, should he be prevented from having an opinion, and merely discussing it with a colleague?

That colleague might hold some equally bigoted views about other things.

This attempt to stifle people’s views is where I part company with a lot of humanists and others who think that matters of sexuality should never be talked about among colleagues if – heaven forfend! – one has a rather critical opinion about it. And especially if that opinion is informed by religion.

I don’t like opinion exclusively informed by religion, because I prefer people who think for themselves, freely and without the shackles and encumbrances of a body of opinion that, with the best will in the world, a person can subscribe to only some of.

Those who subscribe to all the tenets of, say, NuLabour, or the Tory Party, or the British Humanist Association, or the International Humanist and Ethical Union, or the Church of England, the Catholic Church or Islam is a moron.

Freethinkers will think freely, while obviously taking account of some of these tenets and filtering what they see as the good from what they perceive as the crap and the ineffectual. Most people who subscribe to an organisation will in most cases share most of its tenets with most of their fellows.

So why not brook Brooker’s bit of bigotry? At least he’s exposing himself to being talked out of it. If he kept it entirely to himself he might act on it without anyone’s knowledge, and so get away with a tweak here and an adjustment there to his work that disadvantages a client whose sexuality he feels uncomfortable with.

If we all had the same opinions about everything, the world would be a dull place, and there would be no debate.

But this is only my opinion, and I’m assuming I won’t be suspended for it.

Unfinished business

The world is about to end. Again!

This time it’s not because mosques are out of alignment. It’s all down to mobile phones.

I kid you not.

According to the Scotsman, an Indian Muslim organisation has issued a fatwa over mobile-phone etiquette.

Is this because the mobile phones are ringing out in the mosque in the middle of Friday prayers? No.

Are people texting when they should be praying? Nope.

Using their vibrate mode to induce an interesting sexual experience? No again.

Dying to know?

In the north Indian city of Kanpur, a panel of clerics from the Islamic group Jamia Ashraf-ul-Madaris has set new rules over using phones.

The panel objected to the use of aayats (verses from the Koran) as ringtones. It argues that people answer calls halfway through the aayat, leaving the verse incomplete.

Ghyasuddin, a senior cleric, said: “This kind of action amounts to a gunah [sin].”

So now you know. The verse is incomplete, so Allah will no doubt send his avenging angel to smite the guilty – and, we assume, their mobile phones.

Good job Christians haven’t cottoned onto this idea. You can just see the train carriage full of people getting calls on their mobiles – as so often happens – and they’re all sitting there waiting for the Lord’s Prayer to reach the “for ever and ever, amen” bit before they press the button and say, “Hello? I’m on a train.”

But it could be even worse: it could be the entire Decalogue or the Nicene Creed.

Web of deceit

Oh, dear! I think I’ve just had one of my childhood illusions shattered.

Spider-Man? Some sort of religious icon?

There to encourage kids to become priests and nuns?

Shit!

And yet . . . and yet . . .

Oh, dear! I think I’m going to barf. Look! Even the comic we uncovered for our photo has our hero practising for the Crucifixion. This is worrying!

Scotland on Sunday told us yesterday that the Catholic Church in Scotland

has made the amazing claim that Spider-Man is an emissary of an even higher power.

They claim the superhero’s story has strong parallels with the gospel and that his selfless sacrifices and struggle against evil can even be compared to the life of Jesus.

As part of the annual Lentfest, run by the Archdiocese of Glasgow, children from Catholic schools were offered the chance to watch a special showing of the Hollywood adaptation of Spider-Man starring Tobey Maguire.

The screening entitled Search for the Hero described the big-budget blockbuster as a “parable for our times” and organisers hoped the web-slinger’s travails would inspire youngsters to consider joining the priesthood or becoming nuns.

Oh, well, when you’re desperate for recruits, I guess you’ll try anything.

Yes, spandex-clad superheroes can be compared to some sort of world-saving messiah figure (if you’re that way inclined), but we don’t have to see them as Jesus figures. Anyway, JC didn't wear tights with his underpants outside them. And we know, for instance, that Clark Kent has had sex with Lana Lang (among others, no doubt) and has weaknesses (certainly in the Smallville series). Is Lang his Mary Magalene? Is Kryptonite his Pontius Pilate?

Anyway, the news story continues:

But Lentfest director Stephen Callaghan claimed the solid moral bedrock in the Spider-Man trilogy meant they ranked “among the most prominent spiritual films of our time”.

The film studies graduate said the films were infused by both overt and subtle nods to the Catholic faith.

He said: “As a trilogy there is absolutely no doubt that it explores Catholicism.

He’s a film-studies graduate, yes, but he’s also the director of this Lentfest thing. What else is he going to say? He’s casting around for meaning, as most of the Deluded Herd are. You can draw parallels with all sorts of things – and clutch at straws when belief in this stuff is dwindling in the UK and America.

I just hope I can forget about this story before I catch Spider-Man II next time it’s on the telly. It’s a bit like discovering that Batman is a child molester, or that Doctor Who is an axe murderer.

I really don’t want to think about this . . .

The origins of Easter

Since its conception as a holy celebration in the second century, Easter has had its nonreligious side. In fact, Easter was originally a pagan festival. The ancient Saxons celebrated the return of spring with an uproarious festival commemorating Eastre, their goddess of the Spring and the Dawn.

The Easter Bunny is not a modern invention. The symbol originated with the festival of Eastre through her earthly symbol, the rabbit.

As it happened, the festival of Eastre occurred at the same time of year as the Christian observance of the Resurrection of Christ. It made sense, therefore, to alter the festival itself, to make it a Christian celebration as converts were slowly won over. The early name, Eastre, was eventually changed to its modern spelling, Easter.

In pagan times, solar-gods and vegetation-gods were worshipped, with special mysteries to symbolise their death, the search for, and the finding of, their bodies, and their resurrection.

The Spring, or Vernal, Equinox was the period of the triumph and sacrifice of the Roman god Mithras. He was a vegetation-god as well as a sun-god, the two often being associated. A stone image was mourned, sepulchred in a rock tomb and, after an interval, restored as re-living. The same form was followed with the gods Osiris, Attis, Adonis and Dionysus.

As with the Easter Bunny and the holiday itself, the Easter Egg predates the Christian festival. Eggs have always symbolized life and regeneration and so have been used in fertility rites. After the long, hard winter was over, the earth burst forth and was reborn just as the egg miraculously burst forth with life. The egg, therefore, was believed to have special powers.

Of course, as with Christmas, committed Christians celebrate Easter as their unique festival but, given its pagan origins, there is no reason why others should not celebrate it as well.

Happy Spring Equinox!

Match of the day

The big match tomorrow will be Christians versus soccer fans (we often wish it were the Roman tradition of Christians versus lions, but you can’t have everything!) – and the religious types are up in arms about it.

They don’t want the UK’s Premier League to show what they claim is “disdain” for Christians by holding big games on Easter Sunday.

A number of bishops, according to the Daily Telegraph, say there will be chaos as Christians struggle to get to church.

Perhaps they have a point, but without knowing just how difficult it would be to get to church it’s hard to say, and it sounds a bit like a throwback to the Lord’s Day Observance Society.

One point the bishops raise is a valid one – even if not really relevant to their concerns for worshippers’ safety – and it’s this: why should the big shops, such as garden centres, not be allowed to open on Easter Sunday (just as they can’t on Christmas Day) while soccer matches (just as commercial) can go ahead?

I’m not one for defending religion just because it’s religion, but find myself agreeing with it on a point of fairness. No doubt they’d like to see no soccer and no garden centres. But why not the other way round: have both garden centres and soccer games?

One has to ask, though, why should these restrictions apply only at Easter and Christmas and not other days? In other words, why favour one activity – religion – over others merely by recognising the days religion holds as anniversaries of impossible events in a belief system that has outlived its worth as an explanatory model?

And what is it to the religionists whether garden centres can open or not, while 22 men kick a ball around a field? Why are they making this comparison if it’s the football games and churchgoers’ safety they’re worried about? How does the restriction on one outlet bolster their argument for restricting another?

Their main concerns, though, seem to be about elderly and disabled people who would want to go to church on Easter Sunday, but, if a soccer game is being staged near them, they may not be able to get out – or may feel too intimidated to do so.

We have to create safe space for everyone, and often the roads around soccer games are not all that safe – whether to the Deluded Herd or to others.

Oh, didn’t really mean that bit about the lions. Only the virulently bigoted and homophobic ones deserve that. Anyway, where can you find lions on a Sunday?

Nourishment for arseholes – sorry our souls

A bishop is bleating that TV isn’t offering the Deluded Herd enough magic and mojo today, which Christians call Good Friday.

He’s Harold Miller, the Bishop of Down and Dromore in Northern Ireland, who, according to the BBC, claims there are no additional religious programmes, and those that are on will “do little to feed our souls”.

Miller says he would like to have seen more in-depth religious schedules running from Palm Sunday to Good Friday, but instead “pretty well nothing” has been on offer.

He pointed out that the morning service which was usually shown on Palm Sunday was “kicked off by the Formula One”.

Bishop Miller stressed that he “no longer expects anything of religious depth from ITV”[;] however[,] “the BBC, as our primary public broadcaster[,] really ought to find some way of recognising and painting the story of Good Friday.”

However, he praised the output of Radio Ulster as “almost perfection when it comes to religious broadcasting”.

Glad I don’t have to listen to Radio Ulster, then.

One has to ask the usual question, of course: why the hell should the millions of people who don’t give a monkey’s butt about religion have their usual programming shoved aside (probably wouldn’t make much difference to most viewers of television, for whom it’s just audible wallpaper, but the principle still holds)?

Why don’t the churches club together and run a digital TV station? Then they can have wall-to-wall wailing, chanting, preaching, hymn singing, genuflecting, wafer munching and talking to invisible people. And the rest of TV land can remain secular.

But the likes of Miller don’t want that. They want religion to be thrust on all of us, because they think it’s good for our souls.

Blood and sand

I’ve been sent an email that’s doing the rounds, and, as you can see, is worth looking at:

In Iraq, vigilantes are attacking and murdering gay men.

The London-based Iraqi LGBT organisation is asking you to sign their petition and if you are in London, to consider going to a demonstration on Thursday, April 16, 2009, from 12:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. at the Home Office Direct Communications Unit, 2 Marsham Street. If you are on Facebook, you can find out more about this event here.

And that last link asks you to sign into Facebook, so it does seem that you have to be a member to view the page.

Hat tip to Stuart Hartill of Clinging to a Rock.

Blair criticises “Supreme HQ”

Religion fan Tony Blair can’t be all bad if he can find it in his heart to knock Pope Ratzo and the Vatican, as we’re told he has.

And it’s over gay rights that he’s been having a go.

The former UK Prime Minister, who converted to Catholicism after his resignation, said the Vatican needed to rethink “entrenched” attitudes towards homosexuality, which, he said, are out of step with the feelings of most Catholics.

He added, “There is a huge generational difference here. There’s probably that same fear amongst religious leaders that if you concede ground on [homosexuality], because attitudes and thinking evolve over time, where does that end? You’d start having to rethink many, many things.”

Pat on the back for Attitude magazine, where the interview appears: it’s quite a scoop. And it’s Blair’s first interview specifically on gay matters.

Religion and health

Britain’s National Secular Society (NSS) and the question of hospital chaplains were in the spotlight this morning on the country’s flagship radio news programme, Today, on BBC Radio 4.

The National Health Service (NHS) spends around £40 million a year on hospital chaplains of several religious persuasions, something that should be funded by the churches and other religious groups, said the NSS’s president, Terry Sanderson, on the programme.

The balance was provided by a Catholic priest and hospital chaplain from London, Paul Mason, who said the chaplains did a lot of good work and there was a call for their services.

I suppose the question that has to be asked is this: for those who need them, do they do a good job in the therapeutic sense, irrespective of whether what they do is officially called therapy, and irrespective of whether what they believe about invisible people and impossible events is a load of bollocks?

Forty mill is a lot, but a small part of the total NHS budget. Yes, as Sanderson says in a BBC news website report, it could pay for another 1,300 nurses or 2,645 cleaners, according to the NSS’s calculations. But knocking various kinds of, say, psychotherapy on the head might do that, too. Yet people would, presumably, say psychotherapy is important to patients’ wellbeing and chances of recovery. Talking therapies can take several forms.

Bearing in mind that many of the people who feel the need for chaplains are at very dark and low points in their lives – many of them facing an imminent appointment with the Reaper – shouldn’t we look for savings elsewhere, such as among highly paid NHS managers and their perks, or the defence budget, or the arts?

None of us would like to see the arts starved of money, but is life and whatever helps it along more important? What about sport? Anyone can find a way of playing sport without having to spend huge amounts of money. Yet the country has a sports budget. Why not knock that on the head, and pay for nurses and cleaners and better drugs, more dentists and more R&D?

There are all kinds of ways of asking these questions, and, yes, I do think the various churches and mosques and other places in which the Deluded Herd find their pleasures should stump up some cash. After all, when a chaplain pops to the local hospital to see Mr Jones, is it not the equivalent of popping to his home to see him? Why should he or she get extra pay for the former?

Clergy do carry out home visits to the sick, one assumes. There are a lot of Mr and Ms Joneses sitting at home, possibly ill, lonely or both, being visited – and no one’s paying for those visits except the religious organisations themselves.

But it may be that some churches take on extra staff in order to cope with chaplaincy duties. Perhaps the existence of some chaplains (and I’m using this word to cover all religious representatives) would not be possible without money from the NHS.

So, while I can see a case for churches and other places of “spiritual” nourishment to fund what their representatives are doing, anyway, I can see a case for the NHS to fund some therapy, if, indeed, that is what it amounts to.

The litmus test is: does it help people to get well? Is the NSS being petty in this regard? Should it be concentrating its efforts elsewhere (and it does seem to be having success with its debaptism campaign, and all power to its elbow)? Is its objection borne more out of the fact that this particular kind of “therapy” involves religious belief?

And the religion in this case is not being forced on anyone who doesn’t want it, unlike the case in schools, which we are right to be concerned about.

Just questions. Make up your own mind. You can hear the debate on the Today programme here.

Praying the wrong way – shock, horror!

Oh, dear! The world will come to an end. Allah will be most displeased and send his avenging angel to smite the guilty. What will we do?

But let me explain this awful catastrophe.

You see, a load of mosques in Mecca in Saudi Arabia – that nation of equality, fairness and impeccable human rights – have been found to be out of alignment with some bloody great monument thing in Mecca that they’re supposed to be in alignment with so that Muslims can face the right way to pray.

Oddly enough, the Al-Hayat newspaper quotes the Islamic Affairs Ministry deputy secretary as saying it doesn’t really matter. “[I]t does not affect the prayers,” he is quoted as saying.

Oh, well that’s all right, then. We can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Not a job for real men

Poor potential teachers, who daren’t take up teaching in primary schools lest they be thought gay! Oh, dear! Poor souls!

This finding comes in a report from the UK’s largest teachers’ union, the NUT.

“The reality is that men and women become teachers because it’s an invigorating job,” says Tony Souter, a joint divisional secretary of the union, “and working with kids gives a real kick to people who want to do something that benefits society, rather than become a banker.”

I think he’s spelling that last word with a w.

“But we’re not paying teachers enough, which leads to a perception that it’s a woman’s job providing a second income.”

But aren’t women paid the same as men? And what’s wrong with “a woman’s job”? And, anyway, how much money do they want?

Anyway, if these real men think being thought gay is is a crap idea, it’s as well that they won’t become teachers, because schools don’t need men like them.

It’s a nice, neat, elegant, convenient, self-regulating mechanism?

Atheist foghornism

So atheists have been guilty of foghornism, according to Madeleine Bunting, writing in the Guardian.

Her piece is about Holy Week, which began yesterday in the Christian calendar with Palm Sunday.

She then says we can no longer assume that everyone will be aware of the days that make up this week (Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday), because “in a recent UK poll, only 22% could identify what Easter was celebrating”.

Yes, that is shocking, because it’s a matter of general knowledge and history. But, then, I would guess that most people don’t know what several special days are in the calendar, be it a saint’s day or the exact date of the Queen’s birthday or International AIDS Day. Perhaps many don’t know the significance of Bonfire Night or the anniversaries of famous battles.

However, Bunting uses this to “presume” that the “New Atheists” will hold a “fabulous party” to “celebrate” the fact that Christianity as a belief system is collapsing.

Then she has a nasty go at Richard Dawkins by saying he might “stump up for the crates of champagne out of his sumptuous royalties from The God Delusion”.

The implication here is that she thinks his earnings from that book are somehow ill-gotten gains, that, because of the subject matter, he perhaps doesn’t deserve to be paid for his work.

Maybe he will buy a crate of champagne, but that’s entirely up to him, as it’s entirely up to you, Ms Bunting, if you choose to help to pay for a crate of Communion wine for your local church out of your salary.

Increasingly, one hears a distaste for the polemics of the New Atheist debate and its foghorn volume, and how it has drowned out any other kind of conversation about religion: what it is, the loss of it, whether it matters, and what happens in a post-religious society?

Drowned it out? Stop being such a silly cow! Religion is all over the BBC, our national broadcaster. It’s in schools, being shoved down pupils’ throats, whether they want it or not. It gets to lead national days of mourning and celebration.

She goes on:

From sometimes surprising quarters there is an anxiety about the evangelical fervour and certainty of the New Atheists: they are so sure they are right, but there are plenty of people – and many of them would not count themselves as believers – who can’t share their contempt for religion.

She then gives one or two examples.

One wonders where Bunting has been living for the past few years. There’s evangelical fervour aplenty among religionists in this country, and they, too, are sure they are right.

Of course they think they’re right. No one blames them for thinking they’re right any more than atheists should be blamed for thinking they are right.

What so many of the Deluded Herd tend to forget is that religion has had a hold for long enough, and it’s outlived its usefulness. This can be seen by dwindling church numbers and the fact that so many people are now trying to get themselves debaptised.

Then there is the fact that religion is responsible for so much conflict, leading to segregated communities, violence and death. As Richard Nixon once said, “The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.”

Is Tinky Winky really gay? We have a right to know!

Well now we know. The American evangelist the late Jerry Falwell didn’t say Tinky Winky was gay.

I learned this from the interesting US blog run by Hemant Mehta et al., Friendly Atheist, in a post headed Even after his death, Jerry Falwell causes trouble.

Mehta is discussing a book that has had a load of disclaimers placed by it in the bookstore of Falwell’s Liberty University. Liberty are selling the book in their campus bookstore, but say it contains inaccuracies, including that Falwell said Tinky Winky – the well-known Teletubby, on the right in our picture, and looking rather fetching, don’t you think? – was gay because he carried a handbag.

Well, the book Mehta is discussing – The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose, who spent a semester at the university – didn’t actually make that claim. Just the opposite. Mehta quotes it as saying:

“I remember learning that Dr Falwell’s comments about Tinky Winky may not have been entirely his – they originated in an unsigned editorial in his National Liberty Journal newsletter.”

So that’s solved that one, then. And it was a disclaimer that wasn’t even necessary.

But the question we’re all now asking is this: is Tinky Winky gay? The public has a right to know. Write to your MP. Write to The Times. Demand that this vital information be available under the Freedom of Information Act.

Christians believe?

One would suppose that a Christian believes in Jesus Christ and accepts the gospels as true accounts.

Modern Christians seem to believe none of it, so how can they call themselves Christian?

Neil Richardson, a Presbyter of St Paul's Cathedral, and the writer of an article in the current issue of Gay & Lesbian Humanist, says, “The very concepts of heaven and hell belong to the dark ages of human cruelty and abuse and should not feature in the modern Christian thought world at all. Heaven and hell were the carrot and stick used by the Church to keep the masses in a state of mental subjugation and it was always very wrong to do so.”

Of course this is not so. Jesus himself was concerned with little else and the story of his resurrection makes no sense without the reality of the last judgement followed by heaven and hell.

To sum the religion up, you could just say Christianity is Hell.

Cover-up

Police were called to a school in Lancashire, England, after a Muslim woman refused to remove her full-length veil for security reasons.

The unnamed woman was turned away from a parents’ evening at Our Lady and St John Catholic Art College in Blackburn.

The school – a comprehensive – has a policy of asking people to remove any head gear that hides their identity, including crash helmets and hoodies.

Staff say one-to-one meetings between female staff and women in all-body coverings would be allowed, but the school couldn’t have unidentifiable people wandering around corridors.

According to the Telegraph, the woman said, “The whole situation has upset me and I don’t like going to the school any more because I always leave crying.

“I can understand that people should be identified but I am just a normal person trying to lead a normal life. Why should how I dress make a difference?”

Well, for obvious reasons, dear. As the school told you, you can’t be identified. Apart from that, who in their right mind wants to talk to a walking body bag? It would be a most uncomfortable experience. We do things differently here. Get used to it.

Muslims and squiggles, Part III

Motoons artist Kurt Westergaard has accused the BBC of appeasing Muslim sensibilities by refusing to air a recent interview with him.

According to a story in Britain’s Daily Mail:

It had been expected to go out on BBC World, the BBC News channel, across radio services and on its website. But the corporation has kept the report under wraps amid claims it is frightened that it will “inflame” Muslims around the world.

Mr Westergaard told the Daily Mail last night: “I am disappointed on behalf of the freedom of speech. Every time you are afraid I think you make a step backwards. That is depressing me.”

He compared the BBC’s behaviour with the way countries tried to appease Hitler before the Second World War and added: “If you have an appeasement policy towards the radical Muslims then you are on a very wrong way and you have to start marching backwards.”

A BBC spokesman said last night: “No decision has been made yet. As and when one is, it will be based, as always, on editorial merit.”

Westergaard was one of 12 cartoonists commissioned by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 to produce caricatures of the marauding Muslim “prophet”. Muslims say no image of Mohammed should be produced or shown. And by that they mean by anyone, not just Muslims, which is of course ridiculous.

Their fatuous response has led to far more exposure for the cartoons throughout the world – but for some reason they don’t see that. They prefer to march in the streets, threaten, set fire to things, kill and incite violence, thus spurring bloggers and other media to show the cartoons again and again.

You’ll see that we’ve found a rather nice way of showing the cartoons for your viewing and listening pleasure, set to the tune of the Danish national anthem.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether the BBC does go ahead with the interview.

Gay sex should be legal – but . . .

A Zambian AIDS activist who’s also a Jesuit priest says same-sex relations should be decriminalised, and that the existence of laws banning such relations is “fanning the spread of HIV”, says Ekklesia, the Christian think tank.

But there’s a “but”.

Michael Kelly told a workshop on the role of the media and parliamentary involvement on HIV and AIDS, held in the Zambian capital recently, “The continued prevalence of such laws is driving people in same-sex relations underground and making authorities stubborn to the fact that even prisoners are having sex in prison.”

He said that instead of “criminalising” sexual orientation, southern African countries should follow the South African example and legalise gay partnerships, “to ensure access to prevention and treatment, as well as the involvement of these people and prisoners in the battle against the epidemic”.

But here’s the rub. Ekklesia says, “Still, Kelly later told Ecumenical News International, ‘I am not saying I support men-to-men sex.’ ”

Well, Mr Kelly, if you came out into the real world and did openly support it, and campaigned for acceptance as well as legalisation – important thought the latter is, of course – you might manage to change some hearts, and that might lead to changing some laws.

Saying, “I don’t approve of this but I think you ought to let it happen” is less likely to work.

It's no joke!

No, yesterday’s blog post For the want of a wimple was not an April Fool spoof. It just had you fooled into thinking it was, that’s all. So, if you thought it was, and thought you saw through it, then it worked. The joke's on you.

It was, in fact, a genuine story.

Gotcha!

But, if you were fooled into thinking it a joke, thanks for being a sport in our little double bluff!

For the want of a wimple

If you’re a man and want to become a nun (and who doesn’t?), change sex.

That is the answer of a 45-year-old Italian man, who’s really keen to get into the habit.

The man lives in a small town near Rome but intends to leave his job in May and travel to a country in northern Europe to have the sex-change op.

“I talked about my wish with a priest but I was misunderstood,” the anonymous man is reported to have said. “A conversation with a bishop was even worse.”

Meanwhile, a spokesman for CasaPound, a social justice organisation, Massimo Carletti, said, “All men and women should be equal and have equal opportunities.”

“He is determined to [achieve his dream] and we will help him,” Carletti said.