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The following is the text of an e-mail I recently received. I’ve added my signature – if you’re a UK citizen who cares about the right to free speech, I urge you to follow the link.
Dear Friends,
I’ve had an idea – an unusual idea, but I think it might just work.
As you know, England’s chilling libel laws need to be reformed. One way to help achieve this is for 100,000 people to sign the petition for libel reform before the political parties write their manifestos for the election. We have 17,000 signatures, but we really need 100,000, and we need your help to get there.
My idea
My idea is simple: if everyone who has already signed up persuades just one more person each week to sign the petition then we will reach our goal within a month!
One person per week is all we need, but please spread the word as much as you can. In fact, if you persuade 10 people to sign up then email me (simon@simonsingh.net) and I promise to thank you by printing your name in my next book … which I will start writing as soon as I have put my own libel case behind me. I cannot say when this will be, but it is a very real promise. My only caveat is that I will limit this to the first thousand people who recruit ten supporters.
When persuading your friends remember to tell them:
(a) English libel laws have been condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee.
(b) These laws gag scientists, bloggers and journalists who want to discuss matters of genuine public interest (and public health!).
(c) Our laws give rise to libel tourism, whereby the rich and the powerful (Saudi billionaires, Russian oligarchs and overseas corporations) come to London to sue writers because English libel laws are so hostile to responsible journalism. (In fact, it is exactly because English libel laws have this global impact that we welcome signatories to the petition from around the world.)
(d) Vested interests can use their resources to bully and intimidate those who seek to question them. The cost of a libel trial in England is 100 times more expensive than the European average and typically runs to over £1 million.
(e) Three separate ongoing libel cases involve myself and two medical researchers raising concerns about three medical treatments. We face losing £1 million each. In future, why would anyone else raise similar concerns? If these health matters are not reported, then the public is put at risk.
My experience has been sobering. I’ve had to spend £100,000 to defend my writing and have put my life on hold for almost two years. However, the prospect of reforming our libel laws keeps me cheerful.
Thanks so much for your support. We’ve only got one shot at this – so I hope you can persuade 1 (or maybe 10) friends, family and colleagues to sign.
Massive thanks,
Simon Singh
Remember Iris Robinson? The delightful MP who thinks homosexuality is “offensive” and “an abomination”, primarily because her Bible tells her so? Well, it turns out she can be pretty selective in her Bible study – Leviticus 18:22 is fine and dandy, but Exodus 20:14 appears to have been skipped over…
My favourite part is the bit where, having soured her adulterous affair, she demands that her teenage ex-lover pay back the money she gave him – but insists that he launder it by paying it through her church (thus avoiding any awkward questions at tax time). But, hey, at least the whole incident proves she isn’t gay, so I imagine her ticket to Paradise is still good.
In the wake of the recent Connecticut “gay exorcism” video, in which a bunch of abusive fucknuckles attempt to “cure” a 16-year old boy of homosexuality by casting out the demons of gayness, it turns out the UK has it’s own share of half-baked medievalists as well. Reading stories like this really makes me despair of the human race – have we really failed to such an extent that superstitious imbeciles like John Ogbe-Ogbeide can say, straight-faced, “evil spirits are telling you what’s wrong is right, the opposite sex is not attractive”? Evil spirits? The only evil thing in this story is a bigoted and under-educated so-called pastor who thinks that his naïve, backward worldview somehow trumps both scientific research and other people’s human rights.
As with so many other issues, the members of this particular Pentecostal denomination are falling back of faith to defend their own personal prejudices. Ogbe-Ogbeide can’t deal with the idea that there are people out there who are different to him, and so, fearful that he might one day be raped in the arse by an unexorcised gay man (who would no doubt have AIDS and would probably be a child-molester and a sheep-fucker as well, because it’s all the same thing really, isn’t it?), has decided to protect his precious chocolate starfish by using the Word of the Lord to banish those evil demons of the queer. Whatever floats your boat, Johnny, but as soon as you start extending your personal phobias into the wider community, you cease to be just a rather pathetic and paranoid individual and start to become an abuser. Veteran campaigner Peter Tatchell states that, “There needs to be a thorough investigation of all the churches who are doing these exorcisms,” and I couldn’t agree more. Banishing non-existent demons in violent and distressing rituals is a human rights violation, pure and simple, and the sooner Social Services start a case file on Mr Ogbe-Ogbeide the better for everyone.
“It’s not natural!” is the rallying cry of the Proposition 8 hate-campaigners, homophobes and bigots alike. Well, Dr Nathan Bailey of (ironically enough) the University of California has news for you – not only is it natural, it’s also widespread throughout the animal kingdom, and may well confer evolutionary advantages. Homosexual behaviour has long been reported in some animal species – bonobos, dolphins and seagulls, principally – but Dr Bailey’s recent research shows that, far from being an aberrant activity restricted to just a few species, homosexuality is in fact common in nature, from fruit flies on upwards. Writing in the journal Trends In Ecology And Evolution, he suggests that same-sex behaviour may be influenced by natural selection across species, and might in fact be an advanced adaptive strategy. It looks as though the gay-bashing fundegelicals may be obliged to find themselves a new, more appropriate slogan – might I venture to suggest, “We’re a bunch of throwbacks who’ll hate anything different from ourselves!” Admittedly, it’s more difficult to fit on a placard, but you can’t fault it for accuracy.
Carla Bruni is a beautiful woman, but she’s just made herself even more attractive in my eyes by roundly criticising Pope Benedict’s medieval stance on contraception in Africa. You all know Ratzinger’s backward (and, given his influence, arguably homicidal) views on condom use, so it’s refreshing to see a prominent Catholic stating emphatically that His Holiness is clearly in the wrong.
“I find that the controversy coming from the Pope’s message – albeit distorted by the media – is very damaging… I think the Church should evolve on this issue. It presents the condom as a contraceptive which, incidentally, it forbids, although it is the only existing protection.” Carla Bruni, in an interview with Femme Actuelle magazine.
Her husband, Nicholas Sarkozy, has been a staunch supporter of the Pope, so it remains to be seen what he makes of his wife’s outburst. She’s taken a lot of flak in the French media for being bold enough to take a stand, but deserves our applause for standing up to the lies and propaganda of the Catholic Church.
The BNP reckon they can swing more votes their way at the next election by using Jesus as a campaign sloganeer.
The gist of their argument is that Islam is taking over Britain, and the BNP are the defenders of the true English Faith, that is to say, Christianity. Given that Christianity was imported to Britain by the Italians, might it not make more sense for the British Nazi National Party to be seen as defenders of paganism and Druidry? Surely these are the “true” English religions?
I can easily imagine Nick Griffin in a long white robe (with perhaps a hood and a burning cross as accessories…)
Should you ever need to avail yourself of the services of a mental health professional, you would probably want one who knows what the fuck they’re doing. Unfortunately, a recent study by the BMC Psychiatry journal shows that a full sixth of the profession still think they can “cure” homosexuality through treatment, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Read the full story at the BBC site here, and try to avoid beating your keyboard against the desk in anger.
David Chenery-Wickens, the so-called “Vicar of Fibley” (thanks for that, Sun headline writers!) has been plastered all over the papers this morning since his sentence has been handed down – 18 years for the murder of his wife in 2008. What’s interesting – to me at least – is the fact that all the reportage has highlighted, if not focused upon, his role as a minister. Granted, he’s a minister in the Spiritualist Church, which is just barely in the borderlands of mainstream Christianity, but the general feeling seems to be that as a man of religion, his crimes are somehow worsened by the sin of hypocrisy. This pattern repeats itself any time a preacher or prominent Christian commits a felony; the judgement is always tempered with a sense of, “he should have known better.”
If an atheist murders his wife (or anyone else, for that matter), no column inches are devoted to their belief system, or lack of one. Does this perhaps reflect a subtle media bias in favour of the “morality comes from religion” position? I’m tempted to suggest that the number of crimes committed (proportionally) by Christians is much the same as it is among atheists, Muslims, Buddhists et al, so why the need to differentiate between offences carried out by the faithful and those performed by non-believers? I propose that it’s because there’s nothing the general hoi-polloi hate more than a hypocrite (witness the vilification of ex-RBS boss Fred Goodwin when he announced he intended to keep his (obscenely bloated) pension last week), and the media are happy to feed that hatred. The unstated but widespread assumption that Christians are somehow “good people” means that they have further to fall, whereas we atheists can bludgeon old ladies to death with impunity, since we are perceived to be amoral and hence can’t be accused of hypocrisy.
(Note to atheist readers: I strongly advise you against putting this theory to the test.)
It’s clear that there’s a long way to go in the struggle to have humanism recognised as a valid foundation for morality. In a certain twisted way, I sort of look forward to the day when we see the headline: “Humanist Kills Wife, Eats Brain” splattered across the red-tops. At least it would put us on equal footing with the religionists.
So it’s fine to kick out an MP from another European state who criticises the barbarism of Islam, but we’re good to go if a bunch of bigoted fuckwits from darkest Kansas want to come to the UK and scream abuse at gay people? A touch of double standards here, surely?
Personally, I’m perfectly happy for Phelps and his inbred family of hate-weasels to try and picket on this side of the Atlantic – it will make the Basingstoke performance of The Laramie Project substantially more popular (book your tickets here, folks!) and will expose them to the ridicule of the (likely far more numerous) Anonymous counter-picket. Free speech does mean freedom for Westboro’s fucktarded views as well – but it also gives us the opportunity to tell them just what a hateful, deranged, pathetic, misguided bunch of ignorant numbskulls they really are.
His political and economic views are diametrically opposed to my own. His immigration policies and views on Europe seem, to my mind, short-sighted and isolationist. He idolises Margaret Thatcher. His hair is ridiculous. Yet none of these things would have prevented me, or the Home Secretary, from allowing Dutch MP Geert Wilders to enter the UK. However, it seems that our Government is now sufficiently afraid of pissing off Muslims that they’re willing to give freedom of speech (and old Mozart-toupee) an express ticket out of Heathrow.
Most atheists will know of Wilders from his film Fitna, which is highly critical of Islam. His visit to Britain was intended to accompany a showing of this film to the House of Lords, but Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has ruled that the Dutch MPs opinions are “hate speech” and that he therefore cannot enter the UK. This is the same Home Secretary who happily allowed openly homophobic reggae musician Bounty Killer a performance license, and who tolerates the ongoing presence in the country of the racist politician Nick Griffin. The real reason underlying the Home Secretary’s decision is undoubtedly a fear of similar events to those which accompanied the infamous Danish cartoons of a few years back – a violent demonstration by extremist Muslims, willing to use any excuse to propagate their hatred of Western culture. Who is truly the Islamophobic here? Wilders, who speaks out against the extremists, or Smith, who fears them enough to bow to their demands?
It seems our Home Secretary (and the equally cowardly Prime Minister who supports her actions) needs to read a little more Voltaire…
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