Claire Fox: 'I Find That Offensive'

When you hear that now ubiquitous phrase ‘I find that offensive’, you know you’re being told to shut up. While the terrible murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists demonstrated that those who offend can face the most brutal form of censorship, it also served only to intensify the pre-existing climate that dictates we all have to walk on eggshells to avoid saying anything offensive – or else.

Indeed, competitive offence-claiming is ratcheting up well beyond religious sensibilities. So, while Islamists and feminists may seem to have little in common, they are both united in demanding retribution in the form of bans, penalties and censorship of those who hurt their feelings.

But how did we become so thin-skinned? In ‘I Find That Offensive!’ Claire Fox addresses the possible causes of what is fast becoming known as ‘Generation Snowflake’ head-on (no ‘safe spaces’ here) in a call to toughen up, become more robust and make a virtue of the right to be offensive.

Part of Biteback's Provocations series.

Fagburn also enjoyed Peter York's Authenticity Is A Con.

Free Speech: Oh Do Shut Up!

Yet another right-wing shitbag leaps to the defence of Bindel and Tatchell - here, Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times - completely missing the point in the process.

Fagburn preferred it when Liddle was pointing out what a pointless wanker Saint Peter has become.

Peter Tatchell: You Don't Understand, It's All About Me

First they came for Peter Tatchell...

Many people have been talking about this for years, can Saint Peter explain why he only thought it became an issue this weekend?

Though presumably you'll now do your usual trick of claiming you started it?

Oh, and why did you sell this to the Telegraph?

Why did you take money for serving their left-bashing right-wing agenda?

PS For someone claiming to have been 'no-platformed', he's sure getting heard a heck of a lot right now - also on BBC News, Newsnight...

Edit: The open letter PT signed last year was, of course, about 'no platforming'. Apologies.

Peter Tatchell Watch: I'm Free

The emails from the officer of the National Union of Students were unequivocal. Fran Cowling, the union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) representative, said that she would not share a stage with a man whom she regarded as having been racist and “transphobic”.

That the man in question is Peter Tatchell – one of the country’s best-known gay rights campaigners, who next year celebrates his 50th year as an activist – is perhaps a mark of how fractured the debate on free speech and sexual politics has become.

In the emails, sent to the organisers of a talk at Canterbury Christ Church University on Monday on the topic of “re-radicalising queers”, Cowling refuses an invitation to speak unless Tatchell, who has also been invited, does not attend. In the emails she cites Tatchell’s signing of an open letter in the Observer last year in support of free speech and against the growing trend of universities to “no-platform” people, such as Germaine Greer, for holding views with which they disagree.

Cowling claims the letter supports the incitement of violence against transgender people. She also made an allegation against him of racism or of using racist language. Tatchell told the Observer that the incident was yet another example of “a witch-hunting, accusatory atmosphere” symptomatic of a decline in “open debate on some university campuses”...

The Observer.

A predictably disingeneous piece about Peter Tatchell.

As the article states this isn't about 'no-platforming', Peter here is just piggy-backing on a current hot topic to serve himself, something he's made an art of for the last 30 years.

Nor, rather obviously, has he been denied of freedom of speech or been censored.

One (1!) student panellist, Fran Cowling, said she wouldn't be attending as she thinks Tatchell's been racist and transphobic.

Perhaps, quite understandably, she just didn't want to be near this awful man?

It's surely more remarkable that other people are still willing to enter into serious discussion with this increasingly silly, erratic and ridiculous self publicist.

It is predictably hypocritical of Saint Peter to wibble on about free speech when, for example, he has argued for no-platforming of Islamic 'hate preachers' at the East London Mosque and the Muslim scholar, Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

He's even had a book withdrawn for commiting the supreme crime; criticising Peter Tatchell!

He's tried to hound other people out of their jobs.

He supported the prosecution of a Northern Ireland bakers who didn't want to make a cake with a pro-gay marriage message on (until two weeks ago!).

He's even tried to have music and musicians banned.

Going crying to The Observer to complain about a young female student who'd dared to criticise him seems part of his infamous arrogant and bullying behaviour.

He must have known this would lead to her being harrassed online - presumably this was his intention?

It's hardly the action of some self-proclaimed champion of free speech.

But observers of Peter Tatchell will know all Peter Tatchell is interested in now is Peter Tatchell.

With his tireless and tiresome yet successful campaign of self-promotion in the media, by reducing a movement to himself, it is hard to think of anyone who has done more damage to furthering the cause of gay activism in this country.

Whilst most many gay men on the left now think he has become a liability, the likes of The Daily Mail declare him a 'national treasure'.

One would hope Peter will apologise for his disgusting behaviour - but when has Mr Vain ever done that before?

In the interests of 'free speech', if nothing else, can this odious mentalist 70s gay dinosaur now shut the fuck up and retire?

• Help I'm Being Persecuted: Hypocrisy and free speech, Scott Long 2015.

PS The second half of The Observer feature; a potted biography of Tatchell, where Saint Peter is credited for every advance in gay rights over the last 50 years, is so fawning, ridiculous and uncritical it could have been written by him.

Festivus: Seasons Greetings

Artist's impression.

This holiday season, as many as eight state capitols will be graced with a rainbow-festooned Festivus pole—a 6.5-foot-tall display crowned by a glittering disco ball. The pole was designed by Chaz Stevens, head of The Humanity Fund, a scrappy advocacy group that champions separation of church and state, free speech, and constitutional equality. Stevens hopes to place his display in Republican-dominated states—Arkansas, Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia, Michigan—as a protest against what he views as their support for laws respecting an establishment of religion.

Several states quickly agreed to display Stevens’ pole, which was wise: As I explained in 2014, the First Amendment bars the government from allowing some groups from expressing their beliefs on state grounds while excluding others based on their viewpoint. Once states allowed Christians and Jews to erect mangers and menorahs in capitol halls, they were constitutionally required to let Stevens display his own expressive symbol...

Outward, Slate.

Seinfeld reference klaxon!

There follows a Q&A with Chaz Stevens...

In 2013, I got a tip saying, did you know there’s a manger up in Tallahassee in the capitol? So I write to Tallahassee, saying I want to put up a Festivus pole, thinking there’s no way in hell they’ll say yes. Three days later, they say yes. Up goes the pole...

Right around the corner, Kim Davis and her crazy people in Kentucky say, we’re not gonna give marriage licenses. That just drove me nuts. The very day that happened, I said to myself, those little fuckers! I am going to troll the living shit out of them. I’m going to wrap my pole in gay pride and put a disco ball on the top and stick it in the bowels of the Florida rotunda.

PS Somewhat spookily today's Independent republishes Christopher Hitchens' 2011 essay, The True Spirit of Christmas, which touches on this nonsense...

But what is all this clutter doing on the White House lawn or in the public rooms of the executive mansion, or on public property and in public schools? Quite apart from the clear stipulations of the First Amendment, this seems to me to violate the Tocquevillian principle that American religion is strictly based on the voluntary principle and neither requires nor deserves any taxpayer-funded endorsement. 

It also offends - by being so much in my face, without my having requested it and in spite of polite entreaties to desist – another celebrated precept about the right to be let alone. A manger on your lawn makes me yawn. A reindeer that strays from your lawn to mine is a nuisance at any time of year. Angels and menorahs on the White House lawn are an infraction of the Establishment Clause, which is as much designed to prevent religion from being corrupted by the state as it is to protect the public square from clerical encroachment...

Free Speech: Manic Street Preacher

A Christian street preacher has won an appeal against his conviction for delivering homophobic sermons. Michael Overd, 50, who regularly preaches on the streets of Taunton, Somerset, was found guilty of the offence in March.

He was convicted of a public order offence after a conversation with a gay man who objected to his preaching.

Judge David Ticehurst quashed that conviction yesterday after a hearing at Taunton crown court and awarded costs in favour of Mr Overd, who lives in Creech St Michael and is supported by the Christian Legal Centre (CLC).

Speaking after the case, Mr Overd said that the crown prosecution service had failed to provide sufficient evidence to justify his conviction.

“Today the court was faced with the farcical situation of a witness telling the judge that he couldn’t even remember what I had said but simply asserting that it was ‘homophobic’, as though the mere assertion that something is ‘homophobic’ is enough to curtail free speech,” he said. “Reasonable, law-abiding people now feel that they can’t say certain things, and that is dangerous....'

The Times.

I'll have to agree with you here, you lunatic bigot.

Long may you be free to speak utter nonsense!

Though, if you came shouting near me, I'd give you a big girly slap, and tell you to 'Fuck off out of here!'

Free Speech: Transgressions

With gay marriage now legal in America, there is also the sense among online social justice communities that trans rights are “the new civil rights frontier” (as Time magazine wrote next to a photo of Orange is the New Black star Laverne Cox). Social media has acted like an accelerant on this fire: sites like Buzzfeed and Huffington Post’s LGBT section offer uplifting tales of transgender children’s achievements and famous adults coming out, alternating with occasional three-minute hates for “TERFs” (trans exclusionary radical feminists), a group who are said to be inciting violence against trans women by refusing to accept them as women. Sharing such articles has become a badge of progressive correctness. The word “TERF” is sprayed around like confetti, with very little understanding of what it means. I’ve been called a TERF, even though I think trans women are women and absolutely have a place in feminism. I think it’s become a politer way of saying “witch”...

Helen Lewis, New Statesman.

The censorship movement thrives off a sense of victimhood, the idea there are powerful forces denying them their room to speak. When journalists or debate organisers actively seek out their opinions, it is interpreted as aggression because it must be filtered through the required prism of conspiracy and suspicion.

That sense of victimhood is combined with a constant demand for political purity, whipped into a tribal frenzy by social media. Any deviation from the moral lines of the tribe is treated as harshly as possible, typically with Twitter users encouraging their followers to pile on the transgressor. The storms they create are man-made. They are not just the result of many individual decisions. Usually, they are whipped up and encouraged by a small number of prominent social media users...

Ian Dunt, Free Speech Isn't All About You, Politics.co.uk

See also Zoe Williams, Silencing Germaine Greer Will Let Prejudice Against Trans People Flourish, and Hugo Rifkind in The Times today, on l'affaire Greer, Right-on Bigots Are Their Own Worst Enemy. 

And Roger Scruton's A Point Of View: Why We Should Demand The Right To Be Offensive.

Yes, he's a right-wing shitbag, but often they seem to be the only people daring to speak out about this pitchfork-waving Victim Olympics nonsense.

The above quotes and citations also should not be seen as an endorsement of anything else they've written neither, obvs.

And nobody's defending Germaine Greer's odious comments, so don't be silly.

Liberty: If I'd Known You Were Coming...

Is there a real threat to the religious liberty of Christians in the west? If a Belfast bakery refuses to ice a customer’s cake with a gay marriage message it believes is contrary to the Bible, and then is taken to court, is this a threat to religious liberty? In the US, the claim of “religious liberty” is fast becoming a standard Republican talking point, and we can expect to hear much more of it as the primary season advances.

Democracies can certainly persecute unpopular minorities. No one doubts, for example, that homosexuals were discriminated against in both law and practice throughout most of the 20th century and that this discrimination was both unjust and widely approved, as it still is in Russia and large parts of sub-Saharan Africa today. It’s at least possible that conservative Christians might at some stage end up as despised and disadvantaged a minority as some of their victims have been in the past.

Whether it is in fact happening is a different question. Many of the cases of supposed discrimination amount to Christians wishing to retain a right they had until recently to discriminate against others. They claim then that it would violate their consciences to do or say certain things which society as a whole has determined are moral. This won’t do. Conscience cannot provide “a get out of jail free” card, neither metaphorically nor, should it come to that, literally. We all have consciences but there is no guarantee they will lead us to the same conclusions. This fact is literally tragic, as the Greeks knew. Nonetheless, any society has to privilege some ethical viewpoint and some virtues.

'What kind of cakes are they?' 'Fruitcakes.' Irish Times.

In the west we privilege conflicting but broadly liberal values. We no longer privilege the authority of the Bible. So, once we have determined that discrimination against homosexuals violates the principle of equality – and that is the settled position in both law and public opinion now – the fact that some people are compelled by their consciences to disagree does not exempt them from behaving as if it were true. There cannot be a special exemption for mistaken beliefs held on religious grounds when these harm others.

The difficult cases come when what is at stake is not behaviour, or not just behaviour, but speech or opinion. If there were a clear line between advocacy and action, this would be less difficult. But there is not, any more than there is a clear line between act and orientation. This is where the bakery case, unlike others, is complicated. Christian attempts to convert others may be obnoxious and embarrassing but they should not be illegal as well. There is always a case for tact when dealing with difficult employees. No one should be compelled to make propaganda for a cause they think false or pernicious. With all that said, the overwhelming fact is that claims of persecution are not just groundless but morally distasteful. Compared to the monstrous persecution suffered by Christians in Muslim countries like Iraq or officially atheist ones, being asked to ice a cake for a gay wedding is hardly martyrdom. It’s just the price of living in a civilised society.

Guardian editorial.

Dunno really. 

If someone doesn't want to bake you a cake, fuck 'em, and go somewhere that does. 

And similarly, if someone asks you to put a message on a cake you really don't approve of ('God hate fags/bakers!'?), I guess you should be free not to do so.

But it's only a fucking cake for the Anti-Christ's sake.

Or am I missing the point here?

BBC: Free Speech

The BBC was accused of censorship on Thursday after its BBC3 debate show Free Speech dropped a question about being Muslim and gay at the request of the mosque where it was being filmed.

The live show, hosted by Rick Edwards and featuring a panel including government minister and Lib Dem peer Susan Kramer, broadcast a pre-recorded question by Asifa Lahore, self-described as Britain's "first and only gay Muslim drag queen" who asked: "One question I would like to ask the Muslim community is, when will it be right to be Muslim and gay?" ...

In a statement, a spokesman for the programme said: "BBC3's Free Speech is determined to discuss the issues that matter to its viewers. However, out of respect to the Birmingham Central Mosque, who hosted the programme on Wednesday 12th March, the decision was made to delay the debate on Muslim gay rights to a future programme.

The Guardian.

An absolute classic masterpiece of meta ironic fuckwittery.

Well done the BBC, another winner! etc etc.

PS The Daily Mail and the usual racist gay journalists will love this. 'Imagine if they said that about muslims! Err hang on...' etc etc.

Update: Or is it? 

Update2: THIS HAS MADE MAIL ONLINE READERS' BRAINS EXPLODE!!!

Nick Griffin: University Challenged

On Friday, Leeds Student, the paper I edit, printed an interview with Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP. Later that day, the NUS published an open letter demanding that I remove the piece from our website immediately, arguing that fascists should not be granted a platform to express their political views.
The NUS claim that: "Leeds Student risks giving legitimacy to a fascist organisation, and boosts the BNP's attempts to join the political mainstream." Adding: "We... demand the editor of the Leeds Student reconsider this grave error and remove the interview with fascist Nick Griffin from their website and newspaper immediately."
During the speaker-phone interview, Griffin was as vile as you might expect. His responses prompted much outraged gesticulation within our paper offices as we all tried to stay quiet. He told our interviewer James Greenhalgh, who is a gay student, that the sight of two men kissing is "creepy".
Of course I considered the effect these comments could have on, say, a vulnerable, first-year student who is struggling to come to terms with their sexuality – and I mitigated this risk as much as possible. The interviewer spoke to LGBT committee members before printing, and we decided to include the fact that the interviewer is gay in the piece. We also wrote an editorial explaining why we believe it is important that student papers do not shy away from confronting extreme politics...

Lucy Snow, writing for Guardian Education.

I'm with Lucy Snow, for what it's worth.
The NUS has often taken a childish, censorious "no platform" position on free speech. 
Although the interview was done in the wake of Griffin tweeting the addresses of the gay couple in the latest B&B case, it does seem odd/off that more than half of the interview is given over to his views on homosexuality.
I also would have liked it to be more hard-hitting - actually I'd much prefer it if he'd just smashed Nick Griffin's fugly face in with a shitty shovel* - but well done to James Greenhalgh for challenging this Neo-Nazi shitbag's attempts to windowdress his racist and homophobic views as the voice of moderate reason.

* Legal notice: This is a fantasy and not an incitement to violence. Fagburn is a pacifist along Gandhian lines. Thank you.

Religion: Hanging's Too Good For Him

An Evangelical Christian nutcase, Dale Mcalpine, has been charged with a public order offence after he carried on shouting a load of homophobic medieval nonsense at uninterested shoppers in Cumbria, despite being repeatedly told to shut the fuck up by a police officer.
As a passionate advocate of free speech I believe Mr Mcalpine should have been allowed to carry on making a fool of himself in public.
But I also believe that what Mcalpine really wants is to be made a martyr for his Christian beliefs.
This is also fine by me - so let's nail the silly old fucker to a cross and leave him to die outside TK Maxx.
It's the only language these people understand.