JS:TO blasphemy case update
Stephen Green’s High Court blasphemy appeal against the BBC begins on Tuesday.
Can you hear a ringing sound? That is the death knell of the blasphemy law in the UK.
Stephen Green’s High Court blasphemy appeal against the BBC begins on Tuesday.
Can you hear a ringing sound? That is the death knell of the blasphemy law in the UK.
MediaWatchWatch was set up in January 2005 in reaction to the religious campaign against the BBC's broadcasting of Jerry Springer: the Opera.
We keep an eye on those groups and individuals who, in order to protect their beliefs from offence, seek to limit freedom of expression. And we make fun of them.
If you have any information, email The Monitor.
You may find this hard to believe, but John “Massah” Beyer wrote about blasphemous libel in 2002 – for a gay, atheist magazine. Yup, he did one in Gay & Lesbian Humanist as part of that (now folded) magazine’s special feature pages on the that infamous “blasphemous libel” trial against Gay News in the 1970s. I was editor of G&LH at the time and decided I’d like him to make a contribution. I think he was a bit suspicious at first, and all our exchanges were email, as far as I remember, but he eventually came on board. I don’t think he added much, but we gave him a platform. The features we commissioned make interesting reading, even if I do say so myself, as one of the contributors.
I wish that bell was ringing for religion. All I’m hearing is that the two sides are becoming more extreme (with the religious in a highly vocal minority).
‘Mr Green wants to prosecute Jonathan Thoday for the production of the play and Mark Thompson, then Director-General of the BBC, for the broadcast’
‘Then Director General’… does the Times know something we don’t?
Stephen Green on the right to be offensive in September 2006:
“Should the police have a partisan unit whose job is to round up Christian dissidents, treat them like thought criminals and trample on freedom of speech?
…I am constantly hearing stories of Christian preachers being told to shut up by bullying police officers with personal issues or axes to grind. In most cases they simply comply. But if we are to safeguard our historic freedoms, someone has to make a stand.”
Remove the log from your own eye Mr Green, before you remove the splinter from somebody else’s.
in some ways I wish that he would win the case as it would create such a big upset that “something would have to be done”