A little story about a Welsh poet called Patrick Jones came to my attention last week, it's a fairly standard story of a writer who has the courage to challenge established dogma, and a set of ignorant bullies who threaten violence to shut him up because they don't agree with what he says.
"Hold on a second".. I hear you say, don't we have a strong principal of free speech in this country? well I thought so too but apparently not according to Mr Stephen Green (leader of the Christian Voice). According to the story this fundamentalist loony used veiled threats to prevent a planned book signing happening at Waterstones in Cardiff, claiming that the book insulted his "invisible" friend and that because he didn't "understand" why anyone would want to read Mr Jones' book no one should.
The two protagonists in this little affair were interviewed on BBC radio and you can see the original BBC story and listen to Mr Greens' bile here what struck me was the number of times Mr Green said "I don't understand", which seemed to underline his whole world view to me.
The irony and hypocrisy of Mr Green is breath-taking, apparently he is a prominent campaigner against all the "stock" fundamentalist Christian straw-men, for example, homosexuality, Islam (fatwa envy?), abortion, sex-education and blasphemy etc. if it weren't for the unforgivable capitulation by Waterstones the episode would simply be a source of comedy. As an interesting aside, during an interview on a recent channel 4 documentary Mr Green was the recipient of an actual message from God, yes really, a huge dollop of bird shit fell on his head whilst he was spouting his nonsense on camera (you can see from the film that it really shook him and he refused to continue), a critical comment on his intellect perhaps?
I am appalled at the weakness of support shown for free speech here. I can't understand why everyone concerned didn't just let Mr Green and his "flock" of muttonous followers do their stuff and then send a clear message to him (and his ilk) by lining up a few burly secular police men to throw his pious arse into jail. Then he could explain his "theology" after lights out to a tattooed, 17 stone, gender challenged body builder called Dave.
It must only be a matter of time before this pompous buffoon with his ludicrously inflated sense of entitlement gets his comeuppance, hopefully in the traditional manner befitting his "kind", i.e. the exposure of some sexual deviance, financial scandal or my personal favourite, a lonely bitter and twisted descent into obscurity.
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