Child Safety 1, Bigotry -1

I wasn’t going to blog today, then I read this (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8648317/The-Right-Reverend-Michael-Evans.html ), laughed at the pathetic lies in the intro and opening paragraphs and cheered.
For the record, Amnesty did not, as the poorly informed or dishonest tool who wrote it insists, “come out in favour of abortion” in 2007. Amnesty had (and still has after extensive , separate and independent debates in every national section), a neutral stance on the topic.
In fact, what happened was that the Vatican led an attempt to replace neutrality and allowing individuals and local groups to make up their own minds on individual cases with a blanket anti-abortion stance. If the theo-fascists had been successful anyone imprisoned for helping women procure abortions – or even just giving sex education which included contraception advice in a conservative country – could not have been adopted as an Amnesty ‘prisoner of conscience’.
Thankfully, common decency prevailed. The Catholics lost – badly - in every vote in every debate in every country where Amnesty has a national network, and so the international secretariat did not change the policy.
The Vatican (and conservative factions of the church in particular) reacted by causing Catholic churches, schools and buildings to withdraw any facility used by local Amnesty groups, to close Amnesty groups in Catholic schools and colleges, and not to allow Amnesty workers to talk to kids in citizenship lessons or Amnesty materials to be used in any relevant course.
In doing so they added to a situation where bogus ‘human rights groups’ and ‘religious charities’ have open access to British schools, but genuine human rights material is blocked on school computer networks and informed discussion of human rights cannot take place. A situation which, ironically, has always existed on the Isle of Man anyway, making it the last part of the British Isles where young people only gain a basic knowledge of human rights, social and political activism and democracy in general by emigrating.
As for a Catholic bishop wittering about the UN convention on the rights of the child while he knows his church used the Vatican’s diplomatic immunity to block all police attempts to investigate the widespread sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests…..
Sick, sick, sick!
Still, look on the bright side. One less over-privileged professional hypocrite to worry about.
A nation’s parents and children can sleep a little easier tonight.