Again Christian's mistakenly compare LGBT equality to totalitarian fascism

There is always an issue when you start to compare any group to Nazis. You'd better be careful just what words you use to refer to yourself by in doing so, also you better be fully aware of what groups were targeted by the Germans in the 30s and 40s.

It is a lesson that Alan Craig of the Christian Peoples Alliance would do well to heed as he decided to write about "Confronting the Gaystapo" in last week's Church of England newspaper.

He talks for example about facism, then talks of the German Nazis "intended assault on our civilization, our values, our way of life." Seeing as facism can be defined simply as:

the tenets of a centralized totalitarian and nationalistic government that strictly controls finance, industry, and commerce, practices rigid censorship and racism, and eliminates opposition through secret police.

Is the argument that there is only one way that things can be done just such a regime. Isn't a totalitarianism just that sort of thing. I'm not jumping to a false conclusion here he goes on to say:

Our civilisation, our values, our way of life – indeed the national character – are inevitably formed from the values of the Christian faith, as over a thousand years and more 'Christianity' and 'Englishness' have become fully entwined and fused.

Strange that in that 1000 years or more just what an Englishman's take on Christianity is has been known to change at the whim of the Sovereign. Obviously it became slightly defused and refused to a different strand through Tudor times.

He refers to same-sex marriage, although I'd want to correct him to equal marriage, it is the way he does so in light of his other Nazi imagery as SSM, the parallel to the Schutzstaffel, Hitler's SS cannot be accidental.

He makes two rather sweeping generalisations:

In recent decades gay militants have been in the van of the secularist and new atheist assault on Christianity, and as a consequence our culture has corroded and debased and national confusion and self-doubt has grown.

Christian believers have been a lone voice against the resulting sexualisation, narcissism, hedonism, selfishness and materialism.

This ignores two things. Firstly not all those who are attracted to people of the same sex are atheist, many of us have come through the churches. Many of us remain in the churches not because they are totally accepting of who we are, often in spite of how sometimes our churches refuse us into full communion because of so-called pastoral guidelines that emphasis one human condition above all others as being singled out for exclusion. I'll let you guess what that is but by the general tenet of this blog post you should work it out easily. Many of those who are LGB that have been turned off religion have been done so by the church itself, there's a willingness to accept drunkards, work with prostitutes, aid drug addicts etc, but there is a cold shoulder often given to those who say they love someone of the same gender.

The other thing that has been pointed out during the recent occupy movement outside St. Paul's is the admission charges to get into the most recognised centre of the Church of England for whom Mr Craig has no issue writing for. Christ himself turned out the money changers in the Temple for desecrating his Father's House through their commercial practices. Just who is charging materialistically for the narcissism of seeing the work of man's hands? Isn't it selfish to say "no you can't have".

Looking at the calls for equal marriage it is just that a call for equalness, not to usurp anything. Indeed most of those calling for equality are merely asking for religious groups to have the opportunity to take part, if they want, not forcing them to do anything. But also marriage has been open to those outside of religion for longer than homosexual acts have been legal in this country. Hedonism is not restricted to the LGB communities look at any high street on a weekend evening and you will see straight couple behaving hedonisticly. Not every high street has a LGBT friendly bar.

So stop laying all the ills of this world on one group, especially when you complain about them saying wanting long term relationships when you claim they are hedonistic. Surely wanting to have access to long term committed relationships is a sign of the opposite. If you deny that then you are building the stereotype that you can't have a long term commitment.

Update The Church of England Newspaper has backed its decision to publish the piece as it appeared saying the writer had some "pertinent views".

'Reform' too Positive but 'Ficticious' Figures are Fine #BBCFail

I've just sent the following complaint off to the BBC.

Earlier this evening during the main national evening news there was coverage of the No to AV's claim that the AV referendum would cost £250m of tax payers money. There was no counter argument to this figure so many watching could have taken it as factual reporting.

Through the day the Yes to Fairer Votes spokespeople had pointed out that £130m of this was supposedly for counting machines which the Electoral Commission say will not be used here. £82 million was based on the cost of running the General Election, not all of this cost will be separate this time as there are local and assembly elections in much of the UK anyway. All of these counter arguments could be heard on Sky or ITN, but were lacking on the BBC.

Seeing as the BBC are refusing to use the word 'reform' when talking about the referendum as it seen as being too positive and biased to the Yes campaign, I'm surprised that they allowed this figure branded about by the No campaign to not be investigated and stated as if it were fact.

If the BBC are truly trying to act impartially in the forthcoming referendum they need to be fair and scrutinise both sides of the debate equally. In the past week, and especially today, they seem to singularly have failed to do so.

My New Letter of Complaint re: BBC Question Time

Back in December I wrote to complain about lack of Liberal Democrat representation when Jo Swinson MP was removed from the panel. It was also the last time that Melanie Philips appeared on the Question Time Panel. She seems at present to have a better appearance than the 63 elected representatives of the UK's third largest party.

At the time you responded with comments from Executive Editor Gavin Allen:

"We have to keep a constant editorial eye out for the best possible panel and this can of course mean last-minute alterations. To ensure the widest range of political views are heard there are occasions across the series when nationalists or minority parties are invited onto the panel."

This week the right leaning journalist Ms Philips was backing up former Tory Chair Teresa May. Then on the left we had Lord Faulkner and Claire Short, along with former Labour MP George Galloway.

Along with the Chilcot inquiry (when only Galloway join the Lib Dems on anti-war marches) this week we had euthanasia (you had a very conservative panel and while it didn't come up electoral reform from the death bed of New Labour was a potential topic.

How can the Question Time team and Mr Allen stand by his previous ascertation, when we are weeks away from a General Election being called?

Last time I wrote to you I expected a considered response and was left under the impression that action would be taken so that such blatant bias on the panel would not happen as evidently as it did tonight. I am greatly let down.

I will be forwarding my previous correspondence with this to OFCOM.

Yours very disappointedly

Stephen Glenn

Is Now the Time for Balanced Election Coverage?

The bias of the media towards two party politics has been highlighted and condemned by Chris Huhne writing in the Independent today. It comes after Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative Party's media spokesperson accused the BBC of Labour bias and demanded they employ more Conservative-inclined reporters.

Chris point out:

"A hiring policy that sought out particular views in people who are meant to be professionally impartial would be a dangerous step towards a Berlusconi-style system. It would probably be illegal under anti-discrimination law."

What is needed is not a biased load of journalists for one of the big two parties but to a genuine impartiality. As Chris points out in all bar one election since 1979 the Liberal Democrats have climbed in support from the opinion polls one month out; the average increase being 3.9%. This is due to the media at that point having to drop their two-party view of politics in the UK and becoming more impartial. If the same happens again this time, on current opinion polls it would result in 22 more Lib Dem MPs.

At the heart of Chris's piece is the message that the media are already prejudging, indeed helping to ensure that General Elections in this country will return one of two parties as the main party and the other as the main opposition. He says in conclusion:

"Britain's broadcasters should not prejudge the voters, let alone the electoral system. The only fair approach, at a time of heightened political sensitivity, is to apply the rules as they would be applied in the general election.

"After all, both Labour and the Conservatives have recently announced their election campaigns have begun. It is time for broadcasters to begin election-style fairness too, and let the contest of ideas begin."

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the fairness of not of the proposed leadership debates prior to the next Westminster election. Alex Salmond even says it is unfair to exclude him from such a meeting.

However, one thing that Salmond doesn't have to contend with is being sidelined or excluded from mainline political discussion in the years between elections, here in Scotland the SNPs views are widely covered on Scottish news and politics shows. Yet the Lib Dems are often fighting for a voice on the national stage.

How often do you find Labour or the Conservatives not having a representative on Question Time? Never, but the same applies to the Lib Dems on a regular basis. Following that every Thursday you get This Week which has Michael Portillo and Diane Abbott as the two main foils to Andrew Neill, the Lib Dems get the even more infrequent guest slot on that.

It is an issue that Alex Salmond and his SNP don't really encounter, they are included on Newsnight Scotland and the Politics Show Scotland and therein lies an essence against Alex's argument to be on the UK-wide debate. The BBC already does make allowances for the SNP here in Scotland, indeed to some extent here too they focus on two party politics only this time between Labour and the SNP, there is however less exclusion of the others but it still occurs subliminally on the amount of airtime or positioning of the parties.

So with the main two parties, and for that matter the SNP declaring at the weekend that the General Election race is now on, why must we wait until the election is called to get fair representation of views in the media. For five months the Lib Dems could, on past evidence, be losing ground where they have been so close in recent times to overtaking Labour in the popular vote.