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.
Thanks for covering this. I wrote about Wallace Benn's endorsement of Green's viciously nasty booklet both on my blog and on the website of Ekklesia (for whom I work). I'm glad that Benn withdrew the remark after several bloggers, as well as Ekklesia, drew attention to it.
ReplyDeleteI have good reason not to defend Stephen Green, having been viciously attacked by him on his own blog. However, please don't suggest that Green has OCD. I actually *do* have obsessive compulsive disorder. It is a mental health impairment, not an excuse for bigotry.
Symon Hill