Stonewall's Agenda - Bigot of the year

Extracted from last Sunday Times' Rod Liddle column:

"Oi, you big nancy, I know who the real bigots are - Rod Liddle

"Sometimes I really don't know why I bother.  Slog my guts out week
after week hunched like a drunken goblin over the keyboard and, when it
comes to official recognition for this selflessness, what do I get?
Nothing, nil, nada.

Late last week the gay rights organisation Stonewall released the
shortlist for its prestigious and sought-after bigot of the year award:
believe me, I've worked like a black to win the trophy - but my name's
missing again.  It must be a fix.

The award is largely restricted to people who have said nasty things
about poofs in the past 12 months and I'm absolutely certain I've
written reams of stuff about how we need to set fire to Alan Carr and
section anyone who voluntarily watches Mamma Mia! - but to no avail. All
caviar to the limp-wristed general, as Shakespeare might have put it if
he'd been a - what's the word? - homophobe.

Actually, looking at the shortlist makes you worry about Britain;  hell,
the one thing we used to be good at, the one thing you could depend upon
with the British, was some good straightforward call-a-spade-a-darkie
bigotry.  It's what we fought a war for etc.  And yet there's nobody on
this shortlist I would call a proper bigot, nobody who truly punches
their weight.

Hot favourite for the title, for example, is the Bishop of Winchester.
He is nominated for having spoken in a House of Lords debate about
freedom of speech, during which he said that people "should be allowed
to question the current political orthodoxy" that sexual orientation is
a fixed characteristic, like race.

He didn't actually say he would agree with people if they said that,
just that they ought to be allowed to say it without being arrested.
Come to think of it, that really is what we fought a war for - and the
polar opposite of bigotry.

"We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is
a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil
still," as JS Mill put it.  Perhaps he's on the shortlist too.  But the
Bishop of Winchester did not do anything so outrageous as quote from the
Bible (Paul, or Leviticus) about homosexuality;  he simply said that
people should be allowed to express a point of view which differs from
what may, or may not, be the majority point of view.

But this is Stonewall's agenda;  real bigots need not apply.  The debate
has moved on and it is no longer about what you and I would call naked
bigotry - instead it is an assault upon those who believe in freedom of
speech and freedom of conscience.

For example, also on the shortlist is the community paediatrician Dr
Sheila Matthews, who sat on adoption panels in Northamptonshire and
politely requested that she be allowed to abstain when considering
adoption requests from gay parents because it conflicted with her
religious beliefs.  This is the point:  she didn't sit on these panels
and veto prospective gay parents, growling darkly about not letting the
shirtlifters near our kiddies.  She simply asked that she be allowed to
abstain.

Needless to say, she was sacked - until the public (which is split 50/50
on gay adoptions - maybe there should be another 30m people on that
shortlist) demanded she be reinstated in a slightly different role.  But
you begin to see that when the word "bigotry" is bandied around by
organisations such as Stonewall, the boot is now firmly on the other
foot.  A boot which, incidentally, the rest of us pay for.

The bigot of the year award is a big glitzy event held in London in
November and attended by scores of celebrity homos all mincing around
mwah-mwahhing one another before they burn in hell for eternity.

Actually, I didn't mean any of that, not remotely.  It's just that if
the Bishop of Winchester pulls out, I'd like to be considered as a
replacement on the shortlist.  Come on, sign up some real bigots.

Sunday Times report:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rod_liddle/article6823207.ece
(C) Copyright acknowledged © 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.

--
paul
beholder, eye of ... perspective, point of ...
http://www.watman.clara.co.uk/horns_of_a_dilemma.html
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Gregoire Kretz (16.09.2009 00:12)