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Joan Bakewell 'To Be Prosecuted For Blasphemy'

Shortfatdyke

10:17 / 19.03.02

or: have the police really got nothing else to do?

in a direct contrast to brixton police chief brian paddick's progressive attitude, the metropolitan police commissioner, john stevens, an evangelical christian, is attempting to prosecute writer joan bakewell for reading a 'blasphemous' poem (the love that dares to speak its name), on a bbc programme about taboos, last december.

i don't know the poem, but apparently it describes jesus having sex with men. when it was originally published in gay news in 1976 the publication was taken to court by mary whitehouse. the paper lost, and was fined.

bakewell could go to gaol.

The Natural Way

10:27 / 19.03.02

Okay, now you're telling me that this guy pulls some hefty weight in the police force?

Great. That's just fucking great.

Why do I live in a world peopled by cocks?

Shortfatdyke

10:36 / 19.03.02

we can but hope that the crown prosecution service will treat this with the contempt it deserves. it's worrying on more than one level, because some want the law - which dates back to the seventeenth century and only covers christianity - extended to other religions.

[edited to add link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4366648,00.html ]

[ 19-03-2002: Message edited by: shortfatdyke ]

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:01 / 19.03.02

I hope it does go to trial, as we might be able to get the blasphemy laws overturned at last. Then we can dig up Whitehouse's corpse and piss on it.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:19 / 19.03.02

Does Stevens think that his powers as Uberplod should extend to broadcasting? I can never work out if these people think that they've got some sort of moral right to tell the rest of us what we can and can't listen to, or if they honestly believe that there's a great silent majority out there who think like them.

Stop the world, I want to get off.

Mourne Kransky

18:57 / 19.03.02

Loz' sweet & optimistic thought:
quote: I hope it does go to trial, as we might be able to get the blasphemy laws overturned at last.

I remember going on the "Blasphemy March" through London in 1976 when queers were a lot less fashionable and we thought the same. It was sickening that Denis Lemon, honourable man and editor of Gay News(a dull but worthy newspaper compared to the gaypers of the 21st Century), was found guilty then and it seemed entirely contrary to natural justice to me and many others.

In the age of Tony Blair approving "faith schools" and creationist teaching, I wish I felt optimistic that, this time, a more reasonable view would prevail. Sure hope so but there are still an awful lot of votes coming from people whose Messiahs are strictly Daily Mail readers.

Joan Bakewell would be such a star turn on the witness stand though.

m. anthony bro

19:16 / 19.03.02

so, seriously? You can do this at all? You can go "wait, Jesus was no cocksucker", and then take someone to court and maybe stick them in the pokie for that?
You don't have some sort of bill of rights that says "say some shit, you're allowed"?
ker-azy.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

12:59 / 20.03.02

The Blasphemy law dates to 3 million years BC, give or take, and I think hadn't been used for about a century or two until Mary Whitehouse, head of the Offensive Christian-Conservative Axis dug it up to prosecute this tiny gay paper for printing an apparently crap poem that by allegory suggests Jesus really does love his fellow man.
If Blunkett has been persuaded not to put religion in his curbing freedom of speech bill then this bill should be repealed too.
Mike, we don't have rights in this country, it's not the English way.

The Planet of Sound

13:07 / 20.03.02

This is truly unbelievable; I saw the (very funny) programme, and Joan only mentioned the poem, maybe quoted a bit, in the context of one of Mary Whitehouse's first pogroms. It was a programme, on after the watershed, exploring why certain things are taboo and social reactions, after all. If this arse really wanted to get annoyed, he should have seen the episode with Ben Dover the pornographer...

I'm sure she's loving every minute of it, though, the lovely scandal-generating lady.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

13:37 / 20.03.02

Actually, I believe that the poem does not so much suggest that Jesus loves to polybag the Giant-Sized Man-Thing, but that a centurion watching the whole thing quite fancied him. It's pretty surreal that this is considered blasphemy, and I at first actually thought this was a deliberate attempt to get the law struck off the statutes as an anachronism. It seems, depressingly, not to be.

I support the broadening of incitement to hatred laws to cover religions, I think, although that's a pretty conflicted issue anyway, but to assign this privileged status to Christians' hurt feelings (as Bakewell clearly was not inciting hatred) is a grotesque anachronism. It's like a statute saying that noone has the right to comment adversely on my shoes.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:58 / 20.03.02

My God, that's just dumb. And sad. And scary. And horrible.
Ahhh, fuck it. I give up. Bring back the ducking stool & dying of cholera at the age of 12.

Although... if reason does prevail (not that that happens often, I know) it would be great to see Stevens proved- legally, in a court of law- to be a fucking moron. (C'mon... don't you all just love the fact that David Irving has been legally proven to be a racist fuck?)

Shortfatdyke

10:41 / 17.06.02

for information:

i've heard that the crown prosecution service has dropped the 'case' against joan bakewell, and that the broadcasting complaints commission has rejected complaints against the programme.

Fra Dolcino

08:12 / 18.06.02

They dropped it, if they were ever going to pursue it, because of the small matter of the Human rights Act: Article 9, freedom of conscience pretty much overrides the older blasphemy laws.

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