Monday, July 21, 2008

It Seems That Mercy, And A Lack Of Discrimination, Are Only Supposed To Go In One Direction

Recently, Christian Voice, the group who brought a private blasphemy prosecution against the BBC for broadcasting 'Jerry Springer - The Opera', lost their case, and now the head of the group has to pay legal costs of around £90,000.

Oddly enough, he's called upon the BBC and Avalon (the management company behind JSTO) to not make him pay costs. Funny, really, you would have thought that - like, say, charity performances of the show which had to be called off, meaning cancer charities didn't receive money - this could be seen as God's will, and I can't help but wonder if he would have been lenient had the judgment come down in his favour.

Anyway, the BBC have decided that they'd like to have their legal costs repaid please (probably don't want to go 'wasting licence-payer's money' as the cliché from their critics has it), which means that the head of Christian Voice is in considerable financial trouble. Damn those heathens for insisting on following 'Due Process'… oh, hang on, Christian Voice seem to be in favour of Due Process. Oh, this is all too complicated for me to follow.

Still, I thought I'd have a little look at the Christian Voice website, and it turns out that, like many of us, they've had a bit of a run-in with the bank in the past and had letters in the post (from the Co-Op, in this instance). Christian Voice feel that the Co-Op have been prejudiced and discriminatory towards them, which is a pretty serious charge, isn't it?

The full details of their concern are here, but I'll just excerpt the most choice quote for your delectation:

"The Co-operative Bank has objected to Christian Voice banking with them. The ‘ethical’ bank who claim not to discriminate, have discriminated against Christian Voice because our Christian beliefs lead us to oppose homosexual rights and homosexual practice."

It's a rather tangled and tautologous paragraph, but I think I can probably condense it for you: "I have prejudices, but no-one should be prejudiced against me because of my prejudices."

You know, I really don't think this is the kind of behaviour Jesus had in mind for his followers when he went to the cross.

2 comments:

Jason Arnopp said...

Ha! This has put a spring in my step, Mr Soanes. Serves 'em right for trying to persecute someone for something as dumbly archaic as blasphemy.

John Soanes said...

Couldn't agree more, it would have set a bizarre precedent.
But then again, we would feel that, seeing as how we're even at this very minute using the interwebs as a means of conveying messages, and that is - let's face it - little more than witchcraft.
J