Well of course this is what creationist nutcases seem to think. Watch this video, which proves just how wrong their position on the science is. The world is not 6,000 years old.
Padraig Reidy argues against banning Islam4UK at Indexoncensorship:
Are the ban and the convictions really a problem for the group? Their reactions to previous bans would suggest that, organisationally, things will carry on as normal, just with a new title and web domain. Moreover, last night’s and this morning’s broadcast news were filled with Choudary and chums, highlighting how their convictions and banning proved that democracy and free expression are at best a sham and at worst a conspiracy against Islam. It’s not quite free publicity, but it’s exceptionally cheap.
So a mixed week for Anjem, but an exceptionally bad one for justice and free expression. The conviction of the five Luton protesters throws up massive problems. While their slogans were nasty, they called soldiers “baby killers” and “rapists”, they were part of a political protest, of which police had been made aware. Anyone who’s been on a protest knows that the language is rarely of the “rectify the anomaly” variety. How many times has Tony Blair been called a murderer? How many times have “Nazi scum” been ordered off our streets? A protest’s sole function is to get noticed — and strong language gets you noticed.
If there had been a public order issue at Luton, the police could have told the protestors to disperse, or even detained them temporarily; it’s far from ideal, but it beats a conviction.
I couldn’t agree more. There’s no way the banning wasn’t in response to the group’s so-called planned march through Wootton Bassett and banning the group on those grounds is patently ridiculous. Is the right to protest contingent on who you are, what you say or what your political agenda is? From the conviction of the protesters in Luton it would appear so and Peter Tatchell is right when he says:
But I defend their right to express their opinions, even though they are offensive and distressing to many people.
Insult and offence are not sufficient grounds in a democratic society to criminalise words and actions. The criminalisation of insulting, abusive or offensive speech is wrong. The only words that should be criminalised are untrue defamations and threats of violence, such as falsely branding someone as a paedophile or inciting murder.
Some sections of the Public Order Act inhibit the right to free speech and the right to protest. They should be repealed.
Following hypocritical homophobe Iris Robinson’s spectacular fall from grace, a Facebook campaign has begun in her honour:
Posters have also been placed around Belfast encouraging people to download the song [Mrs Robinson by Simon & Garfunkel] and it is currently at number 45 in Amazon’s download charts. The Official UK Charts Company told AFP yesterday that download sales of the song in Northern Ireland last week were up 1,200 per cent on the week before.
The song was made famous in the 1960s film The Graduate, in which a much older woman seduces a young man. Robinson, 59 at the time of the affair, reportedly took 19-year-old Kirk McCambley into her marital bed while her husband Peter, Northern Ireland’s first minister, was away.
It contains the lines: “It’s a little secret, just the Robinsons’ affair. Most of all, you’ve got to hide it from the kids” and “God bless you please, Mrs Robinson. Heaven holds a place for those who pray”.
Robinson, an evangelical Christian, said God had forgiven her for the affair. She said in 2008 that gays were an “abomination”.
Brilliant. Now if there’s going to be a rigging of the charts, this makes far more sense than a crazy, staged battle by the record label between Rage Against the Machine and X-Factor winner Joe McElderry. Do it! Buy your copy now! Celebrate Iris’ love of hot twinks!
Iris Robinson gave the impression that she was just an innocent, gay-hating fundamentalist. But she was so much more, and her political career has been obliterated for it:
In an attempt to limit the damage caused by the Iris Robinson scandal,the Democratic Unionist Party moved today to expel her from the party.
Robinson will also leave her Westminster and assembly seats early this week as the DUP punishes her for the furore over her toyboy lover and the £50,000 loan she secured for him.
Her husband, Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland‘s first minister, also came under further pressure tonight in his fight to maintain his position and remain leader of the DUP.
The East Belfast MP has one week to turn his fortunes around as he faces allegations that he failed to report the loan given to his wife, which is a breach of the ministerial code.
The Free Presbyterian church founded by his predecessor, the Rev Ian Paisley, and which is inextricably linked to the DUP, dealt a blow to Peter Robinson today when a senior minister and close confidant of Paisley, the Rev David McIlveen, called on the first minister to step down. “I do believe that his position is becoming increasingly untenable,” McIlveen said. “He has a major problem with regard to solving his own family difficulties and I personally cannot take the view that a person’s private life does not affect their public life.”
Allegedly raising £50,000 for your teenage lover whom you’re committing adultery (and betraying your friend) with, and allegedly choosing to retain £5,000 as a kick-back were never really signs of mental illness were they? They were signs of greed, arrogance and double standards. So next time a Christian fundamentalist politician starts pontificating on the evils of homosexuality you know they’re either a) gay or b) up to no good somewhere. It’s certainly clear who the most moral turned out to be after all. The real danger of course is that her disgusting, hypocritical behaviour actually has an impact on the Northern Irish peace process.
Arch moralist and homophobic hypocrite Iris Robinson’s affair was with a teenager young enough to be her grandson:
As Mrs Robinson’s lover was named as Kirk McCambley, a 21-year-old cafe owner, it emerged she was facing allegations over a business venture she supported on his behalf.
The 60-year-old mother-of-three, an MP since 2001, admitted on Wednesday that she had a brief relationship 18 months ago with someone she had been supporting after a family death, and that her guilt led her to try to kill herself last March.
He was named by the BBC as Mr McCambley, a Catholic man, who was 19 at the time of the affair.He confirmed to the Spotlight Programme that he had an affair with the married woman.
It is understood that the lover set up his business in a building constructed by Castlereagh Borough Council, supported by the EU Building Sustainable Prosperity Programme and administered by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment.
It has emerged that 24 hours before the surprise announcement, a BBC documentary team had confronted her husband, Peter Robinson, at Stormont with questions about the couple’s financial affairs.
Asked if he was confident that neither he nor his wife had done anything illegal, Mr Robinson said: “I am absolutely certain that everything I have done has been done as it should.”
That doesn’t look necessarily true:
According to a BBC Spotlight programme broadcast last night, Mrs Robinson, 60, also demanded a £5,000 kickback from Mr McCambley for helping arrange the transaction.
Today, her husband Peter Robinson, who is Northern Ireland’s first minister, denied he had done anything wrong.
It was claimed he knew about the solicitation and had demanded the return of the money, but had not alerted parliamentary authorities.
So Iris, who famously said gay people were an ‘abomination’ and likened us to paedophiles and murderers isn’t just an adulteress but she’s facing an allegation of corruption too. Talk about pigeons coming home to roost! The allegations against her include:
• that she gained £50,000 for her 19-year-old lover Kirk McCambley from two property developers.
• that she took £5,000 of the money for herself.
• that when Peter Robinson found out about the loan and his wife’s affair he insisted she pay the money back but that he did not inform the authorities about his wife’s conduct.
• that when her relationship with the young man broke down she demanded the loan back and wanted £25,0000 paid into the account of her church, the Light and Life Free Methodist Church in East Belfast.
• that the payments which were used to fund McCambley’s refurbishment of a riverside cafe outside Belfast came from two major property developers, Ken Campbell and Fred Fraser.
• that Iris Robinson lobbied on behalf of Ken Campbell for a building scheme he was involved with in her Strangford constituency.
It doesn’t look good for Iris and her ‘mental illness’.
It’s now pretty easy to see Iris’ attack on gay people as the cynical embarrassment most rational people took it as. It had nothing whatsoever to do with a clash of gay rights and religious rights – it was a vile attempt to legitimise the basest of bigotries – her thoroughly immoral behaviour has proven that – and she should be as condemned now as she was then. Yesterday Iris said God had forgiven her. But what do you think? Vote here.
Last January Christianist counsellor Gary McFarlane lost his appeal against dismissal for religious discrimination. McFarlane had argued that as a devout Christian he was entitled not to have to work with gay couples on religious grounds, even though his employer Relate was publicly funded. The tribunal found unanimously against him, arguing correctly that he was fired for not abiding by his employer’s equal opportunities policy, yet he’s tried again:
A Christian relationship counsellor who refused to work with gay couples has lost his appeal for unfair dismissal.
Gary McFarlane, from Bristol, was sacked by Relate last year after saying he would not “encourage sin” in gay and lesbian couples.
He said that he had “overcome” his prejudices against same-sex couples since he began working as a Relate counsellor in 2003, but when beginning training to be a psychosexual therapist, he said his Christian beliefs meant he could not help gay and lesbian couples with intimacy issues.
Let that be the end of the line for this nasty bigot, trying to dress his prejudices up as somehow justified under religious equality legislation. Time for Lillian Ladele to exit the same stage shortly too, I think.
Civil registrar and Christianist zealot Lillian Ladele is at it again:
Controversial claims that Christians should not have to condone homosexuality will be made in the court of appeal today, as a registrar says she suffered discrimination by being required to conduct same-sex civil partnership ceremonies.
Lillian Ladele, 48, has said she was treated unfairly in her role as a registrar for Islington council, which expected her to carry out the ceremonies despite her beliefs that they were “contrary to God’s law“.
“If this decision is allowed to stand it will help squeeze Christians from the public sphere because of their religious beliefs on ethical issues,” said Mike Judge, a spokesman for the Christian Institute, which is backing Ladele’s appeal.
“The rights of Muslims and homosexuals are protected, but the rights of Christians always seem to be on a lower level,” he added.
It’s a now familiar refrain. Arch Christians, now armed with equality legislation protecting their right to believe from discrimination, trying to suggest that their fundamentalist beliefs should somehow trump the rule of law. And Lillian Ladele failed in her earlier case against dismissal on quite logical grounds, which I don’t believe for a moment will be overturned. Religious equality legislation doesn’t give Christian zealots or anyone else the right to pick and choose who they are prepared to serve in the world of work, and nor should it – it’s quite absurd. Peter Tatchell puts the case against Ladele brilliantly when he says:
“The issue is very simple. Gay people have no right to discriminate against religious people, and religious people have no right to discriminate against gay people.”
Despite the absurdity of legislation protecting belief from discrimination he’s fundamentally right. So why sympathy for Lillian Ladele? As Afua Hirsch puts it:
Ladele told the court of appeal this week that she felt her religious views had been “caricatured”, a claim which deserves some sympathy given passages in the previous judgment like this one: “fundamental changes in social attitudes, particularly with respect to sexual orientation, are happening very fast and for some – and not only those with religious objections – they are genuinely perplexing” a patronising remark that is unlikely to have made this an easier pill to swallow.
I think it’s fair to say her devoutness has been caricatured, also to say that she should be allowed to have private homophobic thoughts for any reason she chooses. But homophobic behaviour is illegal, we are governed by the rule of law, and Christianity has a unique place in the British constitutional order; to suggest Christians are losing out in the equality agenda is blatant nonsense. I have sympathy for people whose beliefs don’t serve them well in the modern world, but I have no sympathy for anyone who thinks they can use their belief to opt out of having to abide by the rules by which the rest of us are supposed to treat one another. That way after all leads to the fate which befell Ian Baynham and nearly befell James Parkes.
Another Christian zealot is taking legal action against her local council employers, after they sacked her for homophobic behaviour:
Denise Haye, 25, worked at Lewisham Council’s legal services department.
Last September, she used her work email address to send an email to Rev Sharon Ferguson, head of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.
She wrote that Rev Ferguson should be “ashamed” of herself and that homosexuality was “not normal” and a sin. Citing the importance of repenting in the “last days”, Haye added, in capitals, “the wages of sin is death”.
Speaking to The Voice, Haye admitted she had used her work email address but said she did not realise her name would be visible and claimed she had sent the message out of working hours.
She added: “It wasn’t with any malicious intent and it wasn’t with any hatred, it was out of sheer concern.”
I think we’ve had enough instances such as this to know she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Sending emails from her work account during work hours, with homophobic and threatening content should be more than enough to get anyone sacked, regardless of their religious affiliations. There are other zealots posting around the Internet in her defence, claiming religious persecution, but their arguments don’t stand up either – you simply can’t morally relativise hatred, and defend it as ‘sheer concern’. I may not be a religious man, but I’m fully aware this is not what Christianity is supposed to be about, and fortunately Rev Ferguson understands this as well. Andrea Minichello Williams, founder of the Christian Legal Centre, which is supporting Ms Haye, has a different view:
“It is wholly disproportionate to end someone’s working career for the mere expression of orthodox Christian beliefs.”
What utter nonsense. We’re governed by the rule of law – it’s entirely appropriate.
(photo source – The Voice)
If you haven’t already, watch (and love) the greatest slapdown of modern Christian fundamentalism I’ve yet seen:
“Your God-rights, Kirk, aren’t given by God but by other people. That’s why when you need to know what liberties you have, you don’t open the Bible, you open the Constitution!”
Cristina is referring to the video former teen heartthrob Kirk Cameron has made for evangelical Christian Ray Comfort, in support of his reissuing of Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ but with a ‘special’ insert (read: one which tries to subvert the theory of evolution). Now I’d love to have a good bitch about the intellectual failures of creationism in general, but Cristina does it far better than I ever could. Just enjoy and have a particularly great time laughing as Cameron rails about the overwhelming prevalence of professors self-identifying as atheists or agnostics amongst university biology and psychology academics. Reason and logic – terrible things, eh?
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