I’m offended, call the cops!
The BBC is tipping its hand again. Check out this bizarre subhead:
Anti-religious campaigners have condemned the conviction of a “militant atheist” who left rude images in Liverpool Airport’s prayer room.
‘Anti-religious campaigners’ being their hand-tipping tendentious hostile ill-mannered term for secularists and, you know, people who believe in freedom of speech – otherwise known as liberals. And what is up with that ‘militant atheists’ and what are the scare-quotes for? Who, exactly, is being quoted there? Anyone? Or is that just a very underhanded way of throwing more mud at atheists while pretending it’s someone else doing it. That’s what it looks like to me.
Anyway – what it’s reporting on is jaw-dropping to a Yank.
[Harry] Taylor, 59, of Griffen Street, Salford, admitted at Liverpool Crown Court religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress…The atheist admitted leaving images of important religious figures in sexual poses but said he was simply challenging the views of others. The chaplain at the airport, who was “severely distressed” by the discoveries in November and December 2008, immediately reported the images to the police, prosecutors said…The maximum sentence for such an offence is seven years in prison.
I can’t even think of anything to add to that – it’s so grotesque it speaks for itself. Is the UK a giant daycare center instead of a country, or what? Are you allowed to go outside without someone holding your hand? Do the police come along to check your underwear every couple of hours?
Evidently they do. Mind you, I’m not familiar enough with UK law to know if any laws have actually been violated in this story. However, the article doesn’t mention anything about ‘victims’–no one held against his or her will, no one injured or coerced, no one put out in any way except for the precious neighbors, it seems. Is it illegal for a proper businessman to pop round for a bit of domination and cattle-prodding if that’s how he rolls? Even if he lives in a sleepy little village?
Sorry for the OT–yeah, the *John Lennon* airport thing is just absurd. This militant leafleting must be stopped! Argh.
Can’t comment on much of that, but the quotation marks aren’t scare quotes: they’re real quotation marks, because they’re quoting Taylor himself. That’s what he calls himself.
And I actually think there is a distinction to be made between people who are anti-religion, and people who campaign against religion, therefore it seems to me not out of line to call someone who campaings against religion (if that is indeed what they do; I have no idea if that’s what happened in this case) an “anti-religion campaigner”. (I’d prefer that to “anti-religious campaigner”, but then again, I’m pedantic.)
Now, the cleric who was “severly distressed” by this? He needs to get out more. And to find that what might best be called a prank has a possible sentence of *7 YEARS*?? What century are we in, again?
What about the ‘chaplain’? (and those are scare quotes) Doesn’t someone have a right to face his acusers? The CPS says that they judge cases on their merits. Where are the merits here? So, Taylor is an eccentric? I thought personal eccentricity was an Englishman’s birthright! Good heavens.
Considering his offence, the story about Taylor should remind the beeb of something, at least: specifically, this picture that was on a billboard in front on an Anglican Church in New Zealand (God’s a hard act to follow). The BBC thought it was okay to print it too, even though people were offended. Shouldn’t the CPS take a look?
I’m continually surprised by stories like these coming out of the UK. There seems to be some cultural attitude (not shared by all, to be sure, but mainstream enough to be considered unremarkable) that being offended is, in and of itself, a great evil. It’s astonishing that this man was even arrested and prosecuted, let alone put before a jury.
America has its problems, but this sort of thing is met by most Americans with utter incredulity. What disturbs me is that the media/public reaction in the UK is not automatically – “Oh my. . . are you mad?”
Can anyone explain this?
Sure, the words ‘Anti-religious campaigners’ have meaning, but they are tendentious, and the BBC has a settled habit of choosing tendentious words to describe atheists, secularists, etc etc etc. This looks like more of the same.
Am I the only one who finds the presence of a room in which I can say my prayers before boarding the plane as comforting as having the flight attendant ask me to cross my fingers during lift-off?
And what the thundering *fuck* is a chaplain doing in an airport named after the guy who sang ‘Imagine there’s no Heaven…’?
I can’t find anything that reports the specific law that was broken but I imagine it was something like the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/ukpga_20060001_en_1
This was brought in to protect Muslims who often suffer genuine physical threats at the hands of bigots and fascists but who do of course still have the normal protection of the law.
Many of us resisted it fiercely at the time and pointed out its dangers. We were given repeated assurances that the act targeted only those threatened by others on the basis of their religious beliefs and even secured an explicit guarantee that freedom of speech would not be affected (3A.29J). It appears the act is now being used in precisely the way we feared.
Notably, although jurors in the UK have the option to affirm their oaths, all twelve swore on the bible.
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2010/03/03/atheist-accused-of-leaving-insulting-religious-images-in-liverpool-s-john-lennon-airport-prayer-room-100252-25948815/
I suppose we can’t get to see the actual images. It is possible that, being an airport, people were frightened.
Maybe if lots of people were to do similar things that would make the law an ass. Sam Harris has called for a torrent of criticism of Islam for (I believe) exactly this sort of reason.
“Is the UK a giant daycare center instead of a country, or what? Are you allowed to go outside without someone holding your hand?”
Yes, and No, respectively – or that is the way it is going.
At the same time, we can’t defend ourselves, because all the money is going on “security” and ID cards, and ….
The actual cartoons were, apparently ALL in normal public circulation before they were collected together.
Which MIGHT raise an interesting legal point or two.
It is to be borne in mind that there has been a peculiar inflation of maximum penalties for criminal offences in the UK over recent years, to the point where they now bear no relation whatsoever to sentences actually handed down.
Doesn’t change the fact that Harry Taylor sounds more in need of being told to grow up or perhaps just to be ignored, than to be sentenced to any time in prison.
Peter – ah, it’s that law, is it. I remember the campaign against it well; I posted a lot about it myself. Just as you say – here is the very sort of thing the sane people warned against.
All the event proves is that it is possible to be a dickhead and an atheist at the same time.
Religious figures in sexual positions – how bloody juvenile!
And leaving them in a chapel – that’s just obnoxious. Mind you, it’s not clear what a chapel is doing at an airport, but all the same.
No, Ophelia, UK is not a giant day care centre, but we do have a lot of day care centres for children in which, occasionally and unfortunately, some of them are sexully abused by male and female staff members. What worries me is that the the court reports in the press have never identified the religious profession, if any, of those found guilty!
Interesting point. In the US we’ve had some bogus ‘child abuse in day care centers’ cases mixed in with the (I assume) real ones. The bogus ones often involved charges of devil-worship and the like.