There is an outright onslaught on Christianity in the Western world. The faith on which our civilisation was built is being mocked and regarded with contempt. This is painfully visible in the U.K. which suffers possibly the highest number of incidents of intolerance against Christians in the Western world.
It did not start out like that. The inclusion of ‘religion and belief’ as one of the ‘protected characteristics’ in the 2010 Equality Act should have boded well for Christians. But what emerged instead was a hierarchy of protected characteristics with Christianity at the bottom of the list.
This became apparent in research which Voice for Justice U.K. carried out into the experiences of Christians in British society. Christians were subjects of mockery, discrimination and harassment, kept in place by threats of job loss often supported by anti-discrimination law. Freedom of speech and conscience had been abandoned as Christians found they had to censor themselves, in schools, in their workplace, even within their church. If Christians expressed their views on sex and marriage they could find themselves on the wrong side of anti-discrimination policies.
Nowhere was this more conspicuous than with respect to LGBT ideology. Pushed to wear lanyards and adopt language and logos they disagreed with to make them voice opinions that are not their own, Christians sometimes pre-emptively left employment to avoid compromising their beliefs or being sacked.
Those working in education were most threatened. As schools have the responsibility for propagating this ideology, any hints of resistance meant loss of employment. Kwabana Peat, Olive Jones, Bernard Randall, Ben Dybowski, Keith Waters, Kristie Higgs, Glawdys Leger, Joshua Sutcliffe and many other Christians lost employment for falling foul of LGBT ideology. If pupils questioned this ideology they could be bullied by teachers. Faith schools were no better.
LGBT ideology has become the new global religion and in the U.K. this status is held in place thanks to the Equality Act.
LGBT ideology, by any metric, constitutes a significant belief system. It has clearly outlined dogmas, such as queer theory. It has its own holidays and festivals. It has propaganda, clothing, symbols and colours. It has its own blasphemy laws and it has its own degrees of belonging. LGBT+ dogma appears to be permitted a level of proselytisation not permitted to other beliefs.
How did this come about?
First homosexual behaviour was converted into an identity. Huge symbolic importance was attached to ‘coming out.’ In an early propaganda manual by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, the importance of turning homosexuality not just into an identity but into an ascribed characteristic was clearly outlined:
The mainstream should be told that gays are victims of fate, in the sense that most never had a choice to accept or reject their sexual preference. The message must read: “As far as gays can tell, they were born gay, just as you were born heterosexual or white or black or bright or athletic. Nobody ever tricked or seduced them; they never made a choice, and are not morally blameworthy. This twist of fate could as easily have happened to you!”
Twenty years later Ben Bradshaw explained that homosexuality was equivalent to race sex or disability. Without the belief that sexual orientation was an ascribed characteristic, subsequent discrimination legislation and same sex marriage could never have been achieved.
Initially, equalities legislation ignored sexual orientation. When in 2005 the Labour Party proposed an Equality Bill in its election manifesto, it focused on religion and belief. The party wanted to appeal to Muslim voters and believed that they might feel offended if they were ‘lumped together’ with homosexuals.
When the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SOR) were subsequently introduced there was little time for them to go through the same rigorous legislative processes. Instead they were drafted without opportunities for debate. The impact of sexual orientation on religion and belief was not given proper consideration. This resulted in legislation where, for example, Catholic adoption agencies had to shut down because they wouldn’t cater for same sex parents (even though plenty of other adoption agencies did). It set the pattern which we see holding sway today where there is a clear hierarchy of rights.
Key to this process was the National Secular Society (NSS), which realised it could use sexual orientation legislation to help suppress religion in the public realm. To this end the NSS issued 10 press releases championing the Sexual Orientation Regulations. Even Stonewall issued only three. The British Humanist Association similarly pushed for more gay rights while arguing against protections for religion and belief.
It did not end here. Kirk and Madsen in their propaganda manual discussed ways of undermining Christianity:
Use talk to muddy the moral waters, that is, to undercut the rationalisations that ‘justify’ religious bigotry and to jam some of its psychic rewards… This entails publicizing support by moderate churches and raising serious theological objections to conservative biblical teachings.
Conservative churches, defined by the authors as “homohating”, are portrayed as “antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology.”
The strategy proposed by Kirk and Madsen appears to have set the tone. For example, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission was so thoroughly infiltrated with anti-Christian sentiment that it even described Christian values as being like an “infection” that could harm children. Still today we are seeing due legal process threatened with virulently anti-Christian views.
This hostility towards Christianity is particularly problematic when, as we see in the Equality Act, legal processes are triggered not by objective actions but rather by what goes on in someone’s head. For example, harassment is defined as “unwanted conduct” which may have the effect of creating an “offensive environment” for the individuals. How the recipient ‘perceives’ this unwanted conduct is more important than the intention. Where Christians are perceived as “haters”, and workplaces are full of DEI initiatives telling us LGBT people are discriminated against, this can leave the door open to vexatious claims.
In fact, as research conducted by Voice for Justice U.K. showed, Christians frequently experience discrimination and a hostile, intimidating and offensive environment. But the employers who are supposed to protect them against this are often the perpetrators. And their weapon is the Equality Act.
Voice for Justice U.K. has recently published a report exploring the state of Christianity in British society today. It is also running a Commission of Inquiry into Discrimination Against Christians. For further information or if you think you would like to contribute to the Commission of Inquiry, see here.
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I wish I could be there.
as an additional benefit there will be no BBC staff to spoil the day.
will Lineker attend, despite the ban?
Presumably BBC staff are also banned from attending the anti-West hate marches too, what with keeping up the pretense of being impartial, but The Times usually is paywalled so I haven’t actually clicked to find out if this is mentioned.
At this point in time anybody not actively calling out the sick actions of Hamas and their civilian supporters over there is literally condoning that sh*t. Therefore, in my book, that makes you 100% a terrorist supporter. Unless there’s blatant opposition to this evil ideology, regardless of how you feel about Israel and Jews, then you’ll be lumped in as complicit and labelled a “useful idiot”. There’s no justification for fence-sitting 7 weeks down the line. You’re either supportive of terrorism or you speak up and condemn it. No p*ssing about in the middle. But whenever I’ve seen a lone person holding a sign calling out Hamas at one of these hate marches they get turned on by the aggressive tea towel terrorists. Telling.
Same as with the constant tearing down of hostage posters. If you were genuinely a compassionate person who wished for a peaceful resolution these things shouldn’t trigger you to act with such hostility. But they show through their actions they have zero interest in peace and nothing but contempt for Israel/Jews. Therefore “Hate Marches” is entirely appropriate when they consist of people with this mentality. They’ve nailed their colours to the mast good and proper by now, in my opinion.
The lady doth protest too much.
There’s an app called ‘Press Reader’, which, assuming you have a local authority library card, allows you to access just about every newspaper, magazine & periodical.
This is the most informative and useful remark in the whole thread. Thankyou.
EppingBlogger may of been saying they wanted to be on the antisemitism march.
Apart from that you’re spot on. Everyone knows what “from the river to the sea” really means, therefore your second paragraph applies to anyone who doesn’t condemn people who chant it.
And look what happens if you speak up against the whole ‘pro-Palestine’ mob at Uni. This student couldn’t even finish his points. They’re all so completely triggered and it looks exactly like a cult to me. No dissent is allowed or tolerated. Free speech dead in the water within our higher education establishments. ”Debate” just isn’t a thing anymore, apparently. They’re incapable;
”People don’t understand the scale of intimidation at Western universities against students supporting Israel
This was Cardiff Students’ Union (Hi @cardiffstudents
) Annual General Meeting on Nov. 23rd
A student speaks against an anti-Israeli motion. He’s threatened off the stage.”
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1728581349022294491
I’m sure debate is thriving on campuses across the UK.
People need to debate if there’s 57 or 102 different genders or if Hamas will let Jews leave Israel or massacre them all if they got their way.
Well if you’re a Jew and at Uni in a Western country then I wish them much strength because this just gives a glimpse of what you’re up against on a day to day basis now, and the trouble is I can’t see this ending any time soon. Same with the protests. They’re showing no sign of going away are they? In fact, the guy in the vid may have been a Jew, and is he not entitled to offer up his perspective, even though he is clearly in the minority? If this is going on all across universities nowadays then the future looks bleak, because what sort of damaged and warped individuals are these establishments spitting out at the end of their courses? Deeply unpleasant, all of it.
Look at pro-Palestine marches, JSO, EDI managers etc to see the kind of damaged, warped deeply unpleasant individuals universities have been spitting out for at least 10-15 years.
You make a good point. They say there’s no such thing as bad press. The one exception being BBC press.
I’ve just returned from the march, which was friendly, peaceful, restrained. A slogan on one of the placards caught my eye: “In the age of information IGNORANCE is a choice“.
And whilst the attention of the British people is consumed with Js and Ps I am more concerned about the approaching deadline of the closing date for rejection of the WHO Amendments to the pandemic treaty.
The BBC is making the rules up as it goes along.
Bowen, in the Telegraph today, how he sees no wrong in his failure to perform basic journalistic due diligence.
A law to themselves. No government oversight. No OFCOM action.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/11/25/bbc-bowen-wrong-gaza-hospital-no-regrets/
How is Davie going to react – doubling done on his impartiality drivel whilst all around him “give him the finger” metaphorically or maybe in actual fact with people like Bowen confirming what everyone knows and sees daily?
Doesn’t this just demonstrate that the idea of an “impartial” state-owned, financed and run news and media empire is just impractical, and the solution is simply to privatise it, at which point they can do as they please?
The fix might be to have an honest, trustworthy and transparent government that works on behalf of the population it governs. That would solve many problems.
I think governments will do what they can get away with, and even the best leaders will often be corrupted eventually. Best to severely limit state power and have a vigilant public ready to push back.
Yes please
Too far to travel on a Sunday and with railway engineering works past Salisbury and the prospect of 2 hours on a coach trundling through the countryside from station to station, it just wasn’t possible.
The BBC doesn’t bother anymore to even try to hide its blatant antisemitism and bias. The real issue is why the Government doesn’t DO SOMETHING about it.
If BBC employees aren’t allowed to attend pro-Hamas marches, also prohibiting them from attending pro-Israel marches seems pretty logic and the inappropriate utilisation of Nazi-stereotypes by the government of Israel to paint its localized campaign against the people living in Gaza as Somehow in the general interest of mankind and all that’s good just and beautiful doesn’t make it so. That’s just the upteempth outburst of Israel-Palestine violence in the middle-east and the inevitable outcome will be that Israel will declare victory at some point in time when the government thinks that’s politically convenient.
Did you read the article? It’s a march against antisemitism to show support for British Jews.
Since when was destroying a violent terrorist group not in the general interest of mankind?
How many of the outbursts of violence did the Palestinians start? I’m pretty sure it’s all of them.
Did you read the article? It’s a march against antisemitism to show support for British Jews.
In the given situation, when the government of Israel is once more – it’s usual schtick – labelling any opposition to anything it ever did as antisemitism¹, this is a march in support of the policies of the government of Israel. Whether or not the marchers believe in the imaginary Nazis they’re supposedly marching against is of no concern for that.
In the largers scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter in the slighest who’s currently killing whom in Gaza. That’s just another area of the world where the erstwhile Western colonial powers have tried to put their fantasies into practice and achieved the usual outcome of endless chaos and bloodshed².
¹ The previous Israel-declared antisemite was Andrew Bridgen, by the way. They’re really generous with that particular label.
² Also featuring in large parts of Africa and even in Europe — the Serbian kingdom of the southern Slavs went down in flames as most of the non-Serbs forced into this country because of the right of self-determination of all right peoples but none of the others didn’t really want to live in it.
There has been a massive rise in antisemitism since 7 October, therefore decent people need to show support for the victims and tell the evil scum it’s not acceptable, or do you think its OK for people to be abused, intimidated or physically attacked because of things the government of a country they may of never visited is doing.
Only terrorist apologists like yourself don’t know what “from the river to the sea” means, therefore anyone chanting it or not condemning those who do is a Nazi, and this appears to include yourself. Sadly Nazis aren’t imaginary in this country, 100,000s of them march through the streets of London everyday. How many of these marches have you been.
There has been a massive rise in antisemitism since 7 October
There has been a massive outburst of inappropriately calling people antisemites since the 7th of October. That’s the usual CYA-in-the-west manoeuver of the government of Israel when it has to deal with external political enemies of any kind. Ironically, both Hebrew and Arab belong to the so-called semitic languages, hence, what we really have here is semites calling other semites antisemites. Go figure.
I have, among other things, written in the past that (as far as I know) the Palestinians would happily massacre all Jews in Israel if they only could and referred to both parties in this civilian killing spree conflict as murderous pre-civilized barbarians because this is how they act. Hence, I think your canned Nazi!-accusations landed on the wrong piece of lawn. Must have been a navigational accident.
People having been chanting a slogan calling for the destruction of Israel. If this isn’t antisemitism tell me what it is.
Some people may well consider calling Jews who are defending their country pre-civilized barbarians antisemitic.
You claim to of written certain things in the past so maybe there was a slight navigational error, although nowhere near as bad as the one that caused a Hamas rocket to hit the Al-Shifa hospital.
Everyone one the pro-Palestine marches are Nazis so I may only of been out by 1 in 200,000.
Everyone one the pro-Palestine marches are Nazis so I may only of been out by 1 in 200,000.
That you hate Germans just as much as Arabs doesn’t turn the latter into Nazis.
I think it is more accurate that there has been a massive increase in actions – words and deeds – directed at Jews that are undeniably antisemitic.
That indicates to me that antisemitism directed at Jews is far more prevalent than was evident – and the Labour Party has serious internal issues with dissent from its members – giving Starmer a massive headache imho
Do you realise how racist it is to blame all the problems in the world on colonialism?
You’re saying that non Europeans have no agency or free will.
Europeans, along with Arabs, Africans who sold slaves to Europeans etc. have done many bad things in the past. People in the present choose how to react to past or present injustices.
Blaming England and France for the consequences of their actions is not blaming all problems on the world on colonialism.
It’s still racist as it’s saying non Europeans have no agency or free will.
The present set of countries in the middle-east west of Iran and south of Turkey was created by England and France out of provinces of the former Ottoman Empire English troops conquered during the first world war. That’s a fact. That the people living there have very much of a free will is exemplified by the near constant warfare in the area which also suggests that this particular partition wasn’t exactly wisely chosen.
RW’s comment ” The previous Israel-declared antisemite was Andrew Bridgen, by the way. They’re really generous with that particular label.” is misleading even for RW. To imply that Bridgen was an antisemite puts RW in the same league as the Tory whip Simon Hart and more so, Matt Hancock. Hart merely claimed Bridgen’s comment which came in a tweet (now deleted) on 11 Jan linking to a write-up by Israeli academic Dr. Josh Guetzkow of the recently released CDC adverse event analysis. was ‘offensive’. Bridgen approvingly quoted an unnamed Israeli “consultant cardiologist” who he said had told him: “This is the biggest crime against humanity since the holocaust.” That led Matthew Hancock to claim on the basis of the tweet, Bridgen was antisemitic; a non sequitur to most people of average intellect. Israel-declared ???
And while I tend to observe from the sidelines, I’m suitably impressed with Mogwai’s stamina.
Bridgen was openly critical of policies the government of Israel pioneered without shred of scientific evidence in support for them (Covaxx repeat boosting) and thus, he was promptly declared an antisemite. And not by me, as far as I can remember.
Gracias Richard.
I was raised on a diet of the Viz and Greggs, with a side helping of Chubby Brown. Although nowadays I credit plentiful garlic on a daily basis for most things.
When it is to the benefit of those supporting and using such a violent terrorist group. The sort of people who imply they speak for mankind when they talk of a “rules-based international order”.
Are you really saying that destroying a violent terrorist organisation isn’t in the interest of mankind?
Have you had a mental health check up recently?
A cynical comment based on violent terrorist groups being the go-to tool of foreign policy for our governments.
“The sort of people” indicated I was referring to others and not myself.
You didn’t make it clear that you thought destroying terrorist groups was a good idea, in fact you seem to be supporting the non destruction of these groups. What are you actually saying, that destroying Hamas would benefit Israel so it’s a bad idea, or that it would benefit the UN, WEF or some other globalist group, so it would be a bad idea?
You definitely need to be booking that check up.
What a polarised world we live in. When to demonstrating against as against antisemitism is seen as support for the State of Israel, and support for the Palestinian people is seen as backing Hamas.
Could it be that on both sides there are propagandists who see benefit for their cause by stirring up hatred and ignoring calls for peaceful coexistence?
Most people do just want to get along. I remember a comment from many years ago that the Israeli government needs Hamas and vice-versa. Without each other, neither can maintain their position.
and for the downvoters: consider also that the actions of Zionists not only stoke anti-semitism but it can be seen as beneficial to their cause.
There are a very small number of Zionists in Israel that want all non Jews removed from Israel and the Occupied Territories. I condemn these people as strongly as I condemn Hamas.
Calling other people Zionists is factually incorrect, unless you think that Israel exercising it’s right to self defence is Zionism. In this case your deluded, as you are if you think most Palestinians want to get along with Jews. Don’t pretend you don’t know what “from the river to the sea” means.
I’d never heard this mantra until October 2023 but since then I’ve seen footage of pro-Palestinians chanting it and anti-Palestinians chanting it (something about turning Gaza into a parking lot).
It’s just another dog whistle calling on the masses to execute the plans of those who understand how to manipulate them.
The only anti-Palestinians that chant it are a tiny minority of Zionists.
Plenty of people hadn’t heard the chant before 7 October. You now know what it means, if in doubt this might help. http://www.quillette.com/2023/11/25/from-the-river-to-the-sea/
Do you think it’s an acceptable thing to chant on the streets of London?
If you’ve got any doubt what Hamas stands for watch the video from Lebanese TV in this article http://www.timesofisreal.com/hamas-official-says-group-aims-to-repeat-oct-7-onslaught-many-times-to-destroy-isreal/
Do you think it’s acceptable for anyone to do anything that could be seen as supporting Hamas?
but do the desires of such minorities have disproportionate influence given that our governments seem to be very supportive of the Israeli regime?
I don’t have a problem with people chanting it which is not the same as agreeing with it or not finding it inappropriate or offensive.
Those triggered to commit atrocities based on one phrase could equally be triggered by something else in the absence of that mantra.
I have asked my MP whether the UK government will be ending their relationship with Qatar.
Given that it isn’t Israeli government policy to cleanse the Occupied Territories I’d say the Zionists don’t have much influence.
You don’t have a problem with people chanting something that calls for the destruction of Israel, ethnic cleansing or genocide and is therefore antisemitic, REALLY!!!!
Your last sentence didn’t answer the question, please try again.
Saying and doing are very different things and as highlighted by the recent FSU interview extract with the KC, knowing the persons beliefs and intentions behind a statement is not so easy.
However, take for example the idea of putting satellite trackers on released Palestinians so they can be bombed as suggested today on one of the comments. If you had the opportunity to do such a thing even to a convicted criminal, would you do it? Or would you consider this high risk as it might kill many other innocent people? Or would you rather see the criminal spend their life in captivity? Or would you not release them to begin with?
Big talk is easy.
I’m not surprised. On my Google feed this morning I had the headline “Northumbria University announces ‘world-leading’ space centre”.
Click on the link and you find an anti-Israel diatribe starting at the third paragraph.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-67495296