I have to post an item in support of my fellow freethinkers over at the Pink Triangle Trust blog. Seems they’ve been the victims of censorship – ironically by others in the gay and humanist community.
It seems GALHA (Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association) refused a post to their discussion forum alerting people to the latest edition of the PTT e-magazine ,Gay & Lesbian Humanist. It’s a publication I’ve endorsed, and even written for, just as I’ve endorsed GALHA for years and written a couple of pieces for GHQ (Gay Humanist Quarterly), their now discontinued magazine. I’ve supported both enthusiastically because I consider gay rights to be a good litmus test of contemporary secularism.
The censorship seems to be over a reference to Gaytheist, PTT’s own discussion forum, which itself partly came about because PTT thought setting up another forum, where free speech was a higher priority than GALHA’s, might be useful. Funnily enough, I’ve also blogged on the earlier little censorship battle which led to that!
You can see more on the latest row at http://ptt-blog.blogspot.com/2009/11/censored.html, and as I didn’t previously mention the latest G&LH is out, I’ll also tell you that there’s a direct link to the issue and the Gaytheist forum (equally open to gay or straight contributors alike) from that item.
9 years ago
1 comment:
Your support is most welcome, Stuart, and thanks for the plugs for Gaytheist, G&LH and Pink Triangle. It's sad when so-called humanists don't want freedom of speech. The fact is that they can't debate. For all their academic qualifications, some of them are not very bright. When someone writes an email saying you've been removed from a forum and then says he considers this an end to the matter, it smacks of a Victorian parent whose child must be seen and not heard. I wonder if they realise how ridiculous they look. But it's possible that their hive mind just doesn't see anything inconsistent about seeming to want free speech and at the same time banning it. At the GALHA 30th-anniversary bash, Adam Knowles, one of the committee and their chief censor, spoke of freedom of speech; in the Guardian recently, their chair, Andrew Copson, lauded J S Mill. You couldn't make it up, but they've been good for a laugh.
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