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Trust slams ban on Dutch
MP
This magazine’s
publisher, the Pink Triangle Trust (PTT),
has condemned the British Home Secretary
Jacqui Smith’s decision to ban the Dutch MP
and filmmaker
Geert
Wilders from entry into the UK.
Wilders – maker of
Fitna, which juxtaposes verses from the
Koran with acts of violence by modern
Muslims – was to have presented the film to
members of the House of Lords. The peers did
see the film, but minus Wilders.
Smith defended her
decision on security grounds, claiming it
would have stirred up hatred. The Foreign
Secretary, David Miliband, was equally
appeasing of Muslim sentiments, and agreed
with Smith, saying the film – which he had
not seen – stirred up hatred.
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Geert Wilders |
The PTT’s secretary,
George Broadhead, says, “We maintain that in
a free society anyone should have the right
to criticise religion without being banned,
dubbed racist or, even worse, threatened
with death as the humanist author Salman
Rushdie was [20 years ago] over his book
The Satanic Verses. As gay activist
Peter Tatchell has been at pains to point
out, Mr Wilders has never threatened
violence towards Muslims.
“There can be no doubt from reading its holy
books – the Koran and the Hadith [the
sayings and actions of Mohammed] – that
Islam is a homophobic religion, which at
worst has led to the barbaric torture and
murder of LGBT people in Islamic theocracies
like Iran and Saudi Arabia. But it also
oppresses women and is vehemently hostile to
apostates and unbelievers like humanists.
“As the website the
Skeptic’s Annotated Qur’an
indicates, virtually every page is a
manifesto for intolerance. It is chock-full
of the dire punishments in store for those
who don’t adhere to its beliefs.
“Those politicians who bend over backwards
to portray Islam as a religion of tolerance
and peace are either abysmally ignorant or
deliberately ignoring the facts.
“Moreover, Jacqui Smith’s decision to ban Mr
Wilders is in blatant contrast to her
decision to allow Ibrahim Mousawi, chief
spokesman of the Lebanese group Hizbollah –
a militant Islamicist if ever there was one
– to enter Britain last May – a clear
example of double standards.”
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Meanwhile, the decision
to prevent Wilders, an MP in a European
democracy, from entering another European
democracy in order to show a film in
private, has led to diplomatic questions and
much debate in the media, including the
Internet.
It has also meant that
the film has now been seen by far more
people than was the case before Smith’s
intervention.
See the Pink Triangle
blog’s take on the matter
here,
here,
here,
here and
here.
Blair’s
new dodgy dossier
Religion fan Tony Blair
had some praise for humanists when he spoke
at a Washington “prayer breakfast” this
month.
But he was damning them
with faint praise.
He did not, he said,
“decry the work of humanists, who give
gladly of themselves for others and who can
often shame the avowedly religious”.
Twisting the good that
humanists do into “God’s work”, and
speaking, it seemed, for millions of people
throughout the world who have done good
things, Blair said, “Those who do God’s work
are God’s people.”
There were, he said,
“limits to humanism and beyond those limits
God and only God can work. The phrase ‘fear
of God’ conjures up the vengeful God of
parts of the Old Testament.
“But ‘fear of God’ means
really obedience to God; humility before
God; acceptance through God that there is
something bigger, better and more important
than you. It is that humbling of man’s
vanity, that stirring of conscience through
God’s prompting, that recognition of our
limitations, that faith alone can bestow.”
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The original
dodgy dossier. |
Qualifying the good works even nonbelievers
do, Blair proclaimed, “We can perform acts
of mercy, but only God can lend them
dignity. We can forgive, but only God
forgives completely in the full knowledge of
our sin. And only through God comes grace;
and it is God’s grace that is unique.”
Under an unflattering
headline, the forthright Pink Triangle
blog
concluded, “This is the man who, six
years ago, relied on questionable
‘intelligence’ to take us into an immoral
bombing of Iraq. It seems that the Bible was
the original dodgy dossier.”
Humanistic
agenda
A longstanding UK
humanist group has welcomed what it calls
“the humanistic agenda” suggested in the new
American President’s inauguration speech, in
which he called for a more inclusive and
progressive America.
Making a commitment to
“restore science to its rightful place”,
Barack Obama said, “We are a nation of
Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and
non-believers,” and spoke of “our common
humanity”.
Coventry and Warwickshire
Humanists’ chairman George Broadhead said,
“This humanistic agenda, which acknowledges
the presence of nonbelievers in the American
population, and by implication their worth
on a par with religionists, is very
encouraging for humanists worldwide. It is
especially encouraging after the heavily
pro-religious agenda espoused by former
presidents, notably George W Bush.
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President
Barack Obama:
giving the thumbs-up to the
humanistic agenda. |
“We were also very
encouraged by the statements made by Mr
Obama in his books The Audacity of Hope
and Dreams from My Father. In the
former, he writes, “I was not raised in a
religious household [. . .] Without the help
of religious texts or outside authorities,
[my mother] worked mightily to instill in me
the values that many Americans learn in
Sunday school: honesty, empathy, discipline,
delayed gratification, and hard work. She
raged at poverty and injustice. Most of all,
she possessed an abiding sense of wonder, a
reverence for life and its precious,
transitory nature [. . .] Given the
increasing diversity of America’s
population, the dangers of sectarianism have
never been greater. Whatever we once were,
we are no longer just a Christian nation; we
are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a
Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a
nation of non-believers.’
In Dreams from My
Father, Mr Obama writes that his mother
stood alone in her community as a “witness
for secular humanism”.
Broadhead commented, “We
humanists have known for a long, long time
that ethical humanist values build character
and that you don’t have to adhere to
supernatural beliefs to lead happy and
fulfilled lives and show concern and
compassion for your fellow human beings. It
is very gratifying to learn that the new
President recognises this.
“It is also gratifying
that he has recognised, as humanists do, the
rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgendered people.”
Under the heading “Civil
Rights”, the new administration sets out its
agenda for the LGBT community on the White
House website.
It begins with a quote
from a speech Barack Obama gave in June
2007:
“While we have come a
long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969,
we still have a lot of work to do. Too
often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited
by those seeking to divide us. But at its
core, this issue is about who we are as
Americans. It’s about whether this nation is
going to live up to its founding promise of
equality by treating all its citizens with
dignity and respect.”
Lastly, but not least,
Broadhead said that humanists welcomed Mr
Obama’s move to strike down the Bush
administration’s ban on giving federal money
to international groups that perform
abortions or provide abortion information.
Meanwhile, right-wing
Christian homophobes in the USA have
“discovered” Obama’s positive approach to
gay rights, and, predictably, do not like
it. You can read our Pink Triangle
blog posts on that
here and
here.
Religion is divisive,
says survey
A survey has found that
religion is more divisive in the UK than
race.
Six out
of ten respondents to a poll carried out by
Ipsos MORI for the Equality and Human Rights
Commission agreed that religion was the more
divisive characteristic, while only two out
of ten disagreed.
“Black, Muslim and
non-Muslim Asian respondents were more
likely than the country as a whole to agree
that religion was more divisive,” a story in
the Daily Telegraph said this month.
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Trevor Phillips of
the Equality and Human Rights
Commission as seen by Daily Mail readers:
Britain is “by far the best place in Europe
to live if you are not white”, he tells the
paper. |
The study suggests that
there has been a substantial shift in public
opinion. It says Britain is “increasingly at
ease with racial diversity”, with 84 per
cent of people agreeing that “ethnic groups
should be free to celebrate their customs
and traditions while seeking to integrate
into the British society”.
“A total of 75 per cent of
respondents said they would be ‘happy for
[their] child to marry someone from another
ethnic group’,” says the Telegraph,
quoting the report. “Fewer people (70 per
cent) said they would be happy for their
child to marry someone of a different
faith.”
The study was commissioned
to mark the tenth anniversary of the
Macpherson report into the Metropolitan
Police’s mishandling of the inquiry into the
murder of the black teenager Stephen
Lawrence in 1993.
The paper also quotes Trevor
Phillips, the Commission’s chairman, who
wrote in an article for the Daily Mail
that Britain was “by far the best place in
Europe to live if you are not white”.
The prince’s P’s and Q’s
The human-rights
campaigner and G&LH contributor Peter
Tatchell has defended Prince Harry after his
use of the word queer.
Harry was castigated for
using the word Paki to describe a
friend and colleague. Tatchell thinks this,
too, was not meant to be offensive.
While Tatchell condemns
the fact that there was not a similar furore
over the use of queer as the use of
the word Paki, he does not think the
prince was being homophobic.
“I cannot see anything
offensive about the context and manner in
which Harry used the word queer,” he said in
a news release. “It wasn’t said with hate,
aggression or malice.
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The soldier
prince. |
“Later in his video diary
[in which the words were used] the prince
mouths to another soldier, ‘I love you’
before kissing him on the cheek and licking
his face. Kissing another bloke in front of
his mates and putting it on film doesn’t
seem very homophobic to me. On the contrary,
Harry comes across as quite gay-friendly.
“We should kick up a fuss
about real homophobia, not imagined
prejudice.
“The prince is third in
line to the British throne. For him to
happily give his soldier friend a public
kiss and lick his face strikes me as rather
liberated and enlightened, for a straight
man. If only more heterosexual men were
relaxed about same-sex affection like Harry,
the world would be a better place.”
Religion on the airwaves
It’s emerged that the BBC
is spending a minimum of £10 million a year
on religion-related programming.
The corporation’s
Religion and Ethics department – which is
spending the money – has been accused of
undermining the BBC’s obligation to
impartiality. The information was elicited
through a Freedom of Information Act request
by a member of the National Secular Society,
Alan Rogers, who asked the corporation how
much it spent on its religious affairs
department in Manchester.
The BBC told him that the
all-inclusive cost of the unit, programmes,
staff and overheads in the financial year
2007/8 was £9.8 million.
According to the BBC’s
latest annual report the amount of religion
broadcast on BBC radio rose from 1,078 hours
in 2006/7 period to 1,114 in the 2007/8
period.
And God said, “I probably
don’t exist”
Britain’s advertising
watchdog is effectively being asked to
decide whether God exists.
Christians have been
protesting to the Advertising Standards
Authority (ASA) over the so-called “atheist
bus” campaign, which has seen buses in
several cities – notably London and its
Underground – bearing posters saying,
“There’s probably no God. Now relax and
enjoy your life.” The idea has been taken up
in other countries, including the USA and
Spain.
The idea was that of the
comedy writer Ariane Sherine, who floated it
in a Guardian “Comment is Free”
column last year. It took off, and thousands
of pounds poured in from donors.
But
Stephen Green, national director of the
Christian Voice lobby group, complained ASA,
saying the ads breach its codes on
substantiation and truthfulness.
“It is
given as a statement of fact and that means
it must be capable of substantiation if it
is not to break the rules,” he said.
“There
is plenty of evidence for God, from people’s
personal experience, to the complexity,
interdependence, beauty and design of the
natural world.
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Underground
atheism |
“But
there is scant evidence on the other side,
so I think the advertisers are really going
to struggle to show their claim is not an
exaggeration or inaccurate, as the ASA code
puts it,” he added.
Sherine had objected to Christian adverts on
some London buses that carried an Internet
address warning that people who rejected God
would spend eternity in “torment in hell”.
Twenty-eight-year-old
Sherine sought five-pound donations
towards a “reassuring” counter advertisement
and also got the support of the British
Humanist Association and the atheist
biologist, writer and now campaigner,
Professor Richard Dawkins, author of, among
others, The God Delusion.
“You
wait ages for an atheist bus, then 800 come
along at once. I hope they’ll brighten
people’s days and make them smile on their
way to work,” she said.
The
British Humanist Association’s director,
Hanne Stinson, said the BHA was not taking
the Christian Voice complaint seriously.
“I’ve sought advice from some of our key
people here, but I’m afraid all I’ve got out
of them so far is peals of laughter,” she
said.
An ASA
spokesman said, “We’ve accepted the
complaint. We’ve logged it and we’re going
to be assessing it [. . .] and from that
assessment we’ll decide whether to contact
the advertiser.”
However, in Italy, a plan
to promote atheism in a similar manner has
been blocked – by, it is thought, the
Catholic Church.
The slogan – intended for
the side of buses in Genoa – read, “The bad
news is that God does not exist. The good
news is that we do not need him.”
Organisers hoped to begin
their campaign early next month. But a
billboard agency in northern Italy refused
to carry the ads.
“It is more than probable
that political and religious
authorities exerted
pressure,” said Raffaele Carcano,
national secretary of the Italian Union of
Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics. “In no
other part of Europe is the Church’s
influence as strong on politics and
citizens’ lives as in Italy.”
Meanwhile, a bus driver
from Southampton, Ron Heather, has refused
to drive buses that bear the slogan. And his
bosses, First Bus, have agreed to his
demands, saying he’ll have to drive one only
if other buses aren’t available.
Adopting equality
Nearly half of the UK
Catholic adoption agencies that the Roman
Catholic Church threatened to shut down if
they were forced to work with gay couples
have decided to comply with a new equality
law
Their decision came after
the exemption period expired at the
beginning of this year.
Five out of the eleven
agencies have said they’ll abide by the law
that makes it illegal to discriminate
against gay applicants, even if it goes
against their religious beliefs, according
to the BBC.
Mike Judge of the
homophobic Christian Institute said on BBC
Radio Five Live, “I think it’s iconic of a
situation where you’ve got a clash between
sexual-orientation rights and religious
rights where, in almost every circumstance
I’ve been aware of, religious rights have
been seen to play second fiddle.”
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Threat to children:
Cardinal
Cormac
Murphy-O’Connor
– said the new law threatened the future
of hard-to-place children. |
One of the agencies that
decided to obey the law, Catholic Caring
Services, has been disowned by the Bishop of
Lancaster, Patrick O’Donoghue, who is
vehemently against the new equality laws. He
said that the church-related agency is no
longer able to promote the Catholic “moral
teaching that a marital setting is better
for children rather than being placed with a
same-sex couple”.
The Equality Act came
into effect in April 2007 in England, Wales
and Scotland, and banned discrimination
against homosexuals in terms of access to
goods and services, including adoption
agencies.
Faith-based adoption
agencies were given a 21-month exemption
from the antidiscrimination law – an
exemption that expired on 1 January.
When the law was
introduced, the Catholic Church denounced it
and said the rights of one group,
homosexuals, were being given priority over
the rights of another, Christians.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy
O’Connor, the head of the Catholic Church in
England and Wales, said that the new law
threatened the future of hard-to-place
children, which the agencies specialise in.
Gay News defender
dies
Sir John Mortimer, the
author, playwright and barrister who
famously defended Gay News against a
charge of blasphemous libel, has died aged
85 after a long illness.
The publishers of Gay
News were tried for blasphemous libel in
1977 for publishing a poem by James Kirkup –
“The Love that Dares to Speak its Name” –
which appeared to imply that Jesus was gay.
Mortimer became one of
Britain’s most prolific writers. He created
the acclaimed character Rumpole of the
Bailey in both books and on television.
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Sir John Mortimer,
defender of
free speech. |
Among other things, he
also adapted Brideshead Revisited for
television. He was made a CBE in 1986 and
was knighted in 1998.
In 1971, as a barrister,
he successfully defended Oz magazine
against charges of obscenity, but a few
years later Gay News and its editor,
Denis Lemon, were found guilty, after a case
had been set in motion by the late Mary
Whitehouse, founder of the National Viewers
and Listeners Association (now known as
Mediawatch UK)
Whitehouse described the
poem – in which a centurion looks on the
crucified body of Jesus and fantasises about
his sexual experiences with him – as “a
blasphemous libel concerning the Christian
religion, namely an obscene poem and
illustration vilifying Christ in his life
and in his crucifixion”.
Mortimer led an appeal
against the conviction, but that was
rejected by the House of Lords. The European
Commission of Human Rights found that the
case was not admissible to be heard at the
European Court of Human Rights.
Right may
be not right
The Church of England is
looking at plans to ban its ministers from
joining far-right parties such as the
British National Party (BNP).
The move
comes amid fears that the BNP is trying to
win over voters by promoting itself as
Christian.
“Those in
favour of the move say it is impossible for
a good Christian to support a political
group that they say discriminates against
people on the basis of their colour and
stokes divisions in communities,” says the
Daily Telegraph.
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A vote winner?
Is the BNP
trying to win over voters
by appearing
Christian? |
“But some
claim the rule change would give too much
power to the General Synod, the Church’s
governing body, by allowing it to determine
what political beliefs are acceptable for
clergy.”
The
BNP tells the paper, “This
is a disgraceful way to politicise the
Church.”
Tougher sentences
for antigay crimes?
The Scottish Parliament is
looking at plans to allow courts to impose
tougher sentences for offences aggravated by
sexuality, sexual identity and disability.
The gay MSP (Member of
the Scottish Parliament) Patrick
Harvie has
proposed the Sentencing of Offences
Aggravated by Prejudice (Scotland) Bill.
But the Law Society of
Scotland is concerned about the proposed
measure.
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Scottish Parliament |
In a submission to the
Parliament’s Justice Committee, it said,
“The common-law system at present provides
flexibility to prosecute a wide variety of
criminal conduct and also allows for
aggravating circumstances to be taken into
account, both in determining the forum for
prosecution and the level of sentencing on
conviction.
“The creation of a new
statutory aggravation of a crime or offence
may detract from this flexibility and impose
evidential burdens upon the Crown which
would not apply at common law.
“The Law Society has
expressed similar concerns in the past when
addressing other legislation that would
introduce statutory aggravations.”
Cruelty to animals
The British Humanist
Association (BHA)
has launched a campaign to put an end
to religious slaughter of animals in a way
that causes them pain and distress.
The British government
decided to ignore its own expert body, the
Farm Animal Welfare Council, a few years ago
after it had recommended an end to the
barbaric practice (Pink Triangle
carried
a post referring to this last November).
Now, an MP, David Taylor,
is tabling an Early Day Motion in the
Commons, calling on the government to work
with Muslims and Jews to address the
animal-welfare issues involved in ritual
slaughter.
The BHA says that the
motion “also observes that bans on slaughter
without pre-stunning in Norway, Sweden and
New Zealand have been in place for over five
years without harming religious freedom or
community relations in those countries”.
The BHA has special
campaign pages on its website, which you can
find
here.
Barbaric slaughter is off the
menu
Meanwhile, a school in
Croydon in the UK has taken ritually
slaughtered halal meat off its menu after
parents complained.
After taking advice from
religious leaders, the chair of the Old
Palace School committee, Rosemary Jones said
in a letter to parents, “We have decided
that Halal meat should no longer be served
to our pupils in line with what we
understand is the general policy adopted by
multi-faith schools.”
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Halal slaughter:
Making a meal of
animal cruelty. |
Some parents of pupils at
the school – run by a Christian foundation –
had no idea that halal meat had been served
at the school for up to ten years.
LGBT History Month
February is LGBT History
Month in the UK, celebrating the lives and
achievements of the LGBT community.
Gay organisations
throughout the country are organising
events to mark the occasion.
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Gay's the Word
bookshop
©
Alan
Louis |
Meanwhile,
Gay’s the
Word, the first and now last surviving
British gay bookshop, will be celebrating
its 30th birthday with a month of special
events and promotions, coinciding with LGBT
History Month.
Gay’s the Word pioneered access to gay books
in the early 1980s, and has survived raids,
High Court battles and financial scares. To
celebrate, it is organising book events.
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