26/02/2005

Idiots Of The Week #3: Stephen Green ('Christian' Voice)

entry posted by Inquisitor at 2:00 (permalink). edited on: 19/05/2005 20:40.
categories: Idiots , Politics , Scumbags

Remember the ignorant bigots at 'Christian' Voice, the ones who posted the BBC executives' home phone numbers on the web for all to see during the Jerry Springer: The Opera fiasco? Well, they're even more ignorant than we thought they were, and much, much more bigoted.

First, Stephen Green creates a publicity disaster for himself by phoning a local-to-me cancer charity (Maggie's Centres) that was about to accept £3000 from a special performance of Jerry Springer: The Opera, and telling them that he and his pack of loudmouthed bigots would protest outside their cancer centres about how they would be going to hell for accepting the cash if they didn't refuse it, and then going and crowing about it in the press when the charity (regrettably) followed his advice. Of course, he isn't replacing the £3000 out of his own pocket; apparently, that's for "women and wimps". Blackmail is just so Christian a virtue, isn't it? Well, only if Stephen Green does it, apparently.

The Murdoch Times this morning has an article on how he's been copying his American fundamentalist brethren (who he is very much in thrall to) and is about to start protesting outside abortion clinics. The good news is that 'Christian' Voice probably don't have all that many members, as proven by their somewhat weak protests outside Television Centre during the JS:TO debacle. The bad news is that they know how to work the news media, and as Marie Stopes points out in the article there are already anti-abortion protesters in the UK. Green's organisation will provide them with their publicity.

So I have just visited their site, out of need to 'research', and the first thing I see is a lovely little banner ad, telling me that I am an "enemy of God" because I don't follow their teachings (even though I think Jesus was a pretty swell guy, but apparently I'm too strong on the whole equality thing.) Clicking on the 'About Us' link gets us a series of teachings on stuff like how we have, in a line stolen from Ian Paisley, "given away the Queen's sovereignty - owed to Almighty God alone - to the European Union." So not really a fan of democracy, either, is he?

Oh, and we've legalised trading on the Lord's Day, which gets almost as big a bill as the gays on this page (although he gaybashes freely elsewhere on the site: look at his amazingly distasteful parody of a police anti-discrimination webpage, "The Site The Gay Police Association Want To Ban!", which links to all sorts of American fundamentalist 'ex-gay' crap and overriden parts of Exodus.) He'd have a heart attack if he came up here, which he might have done to 'protest' Maggie's Centre - Scotland has liberal Sunday trading laws, where places like ASDA are actually allowed to open 24 hours, all week. This despite the Wee Frees. It's a law England should have had a long, long time ago...

[If you want to explore further, I recommend Nick Barlow's article on much the same subject.]

And I notice a link on the side entitled 'Our Own Holocaust'. Uh oh - sounds like an abortion reference, it's the kind of thing the fundamentalists love (see: their hitlist of abortion doctors, featuring names, addresses and phone numbers and crossing out the dead ones in strikeout, entitled 'The Nuremberg Files'). Whaddya know: [warning, link actually goes to 'Christian' Voice]

In Britain today, to kill an unborn baby after 24 weeks is illegal, unless the baby is diagnosed with a handicap, which as we have recently seen, can be as trivial as a cleft palate.  We compel the owners of the smallest public building to construct ramps for the disabled, whilst trying to eliminate disabled people before they are actually born.  Disabled people cost money to look after, and the Nazis would have appreciated the logic of our position.

Um... Stephen? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a 24-week abortion in the UK? (Not to mention that the 6m number he quotes is all abortions, not 24-week ones...) As you may be aware, the criteria for allowing a post 24-week abortion are:

• The continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman greater than if the pregnancy were terminated.
• The termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.
• There is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.
  >
  > (source: Woman's Health, linked to from directgov. Also see here.)

In other words, he's talking bullshit. This is easily disproven, with the aid of National Statistics. Just taking one year, say 2001, post-24 week abortions total 119 (mostly under the handicapped baby rule - and usually, this is serious stuff), from table 8. Out of 176,364 other abortions. Talk about corrupting the statistics or what...

Oh, and look under cleft palate, in table 23. The number? One. It would have to be pretty serious in order for two doctors to sign off on it, and that's even before the 24-week limit kicks in.

These statistics weren't hard to find, either. I searched for 'abortion statistics UK' on Google. It's the first hit.

Why do I get the feeling that people like Stephen Green want Vera Drake to be the future, not the past? There will be lots of Veras if abortion gets banned, because it won't go away; and there will be lots of people not nearly as nice as Vera is performing them. Women could die because of Stephen Green, and people like him, and I simply can not countenance that. It is, after all, to do with their bodies; and no-one else's to have a say over.

But then, Stephen doesn't believe that, does he:

[Women] should be in the home. The man should be the leader in the family and the woman should be the daughter or wife under the authority of her father and then her husband.
> -- quoted in Times article, above

Jesus Christ.

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