Of masturbation, the BBC and religious tossers

The sound of my wife laughing her head off alerted me to some BBC lunacy this morning.
She was watching their Sunday morning 10 AM (unintentional) comedy show.
This is supposed to be a quasi-religious chat show about modern morality, where people in funny headgear and back to front collars mingle with ‘plain speaking’ media commentators (i.e. twattish motormouths from right wing rags) and a token person with a three figure IQ. The predecessor had a live audience, but that seems to have abandoned because even the Beeb and their religious advisors must have noticed how dim the churchgoing public are when allowed to rant freestyle to a camera.
There are now three 20 minute ‘questions’ and the viewers are supposed to text or e-mail 'Yes' or 'No' to instant polls. That way, the respondents are just as dim, but at least the Beeb recoups their dosh from the phone companies. I say this confidently, because, in all honesty, who but a superstitious numpty would bother paying for the privilege of registering their worthless opinion on a publically subsidised TV show?
My wife was laughing because Peter Tatchell was the token literate guest, and the first question was prompted by Hungary’s decision to lower the age of consent to 14. Peter was there to say it made sense, because 14 year old kids often have some sort of sex life anyway so why not help them through the messy adolescent years instead of dragging them through the courts.
More precisely, my wife wasn’t laughing at Peter, but because a Hungarian lawyer being interviewed via Skype was shut off rapidly. His ‘crime’ was to point out that a century ago religious zealots were so horrified by the idea of teenagers masturbating that even that was, technically, illegal. He was probably about to say, "haven’t we moved on", but the presenter, the vicar and the right wing hack were all so startled by the word ‘masturbation’ that they nearly fainted and the presenter ended the interview right there by saying it was inappropriate for that time in the morning.
The other reason my wife was laughing was that the presenter (young, female) had a blouse on that displayed her cleavage like melons on a market stall, and the camera angle on cutaway shots was so low that the view up her short skirt bordered on the gynaecological.
The lesson, I guess, is that uptight churchfolk can safely have a sly one off the wrist over an attractive TV presenter while, in theory, considering the moral mess our society has got itself into, but using a medically accurate term to describe the practice before the watershed is right out.
Incidentally, the poll showed only 16% supported Peter’s decriminalisation argument. This was taken by the vicar, the hack and the godly media tart as ‘evidence’ that the moral majority had spoken.
No, what it actually means (though Peter was far too polite to be this blunt) is that even 16% of the kind of lardarsed Daily Mail reader who’s too lazy to go to church so watches religious TV instead thought the vicar and her chums were talking bollocks. In fairness, this may have only been because it was a black lady vicar, and religiously handicapped Daily Mail readers probably hate them even more than outspoken gay men.

Kermit is risen. Hallelujah!

Me and ‘her indoors’ have just finished laughing at an inane Pentecost special on BBC 1. We’d turned on expecting our usual Sunday morning gigglefest at The Big Question, but this was even better. Classic tripe – and the Beeb’s religious programming unit really don’t know how much joy they (unintentionally) give to us heathens at times like these. Christians, by comparison, must be squirming in embarrassment.
In case anyone’s wondering, no, the nipper wasn’t watching. She’d spotted more sophisticated fare on a kiddie channel. Anyway, even her voluntary enjoyment of religious TV would constitute child abuse in our book, and swivel-eyed loons in pastel hued 100% polyester clothing so isn’t a role model for any infant.
The tragedy unfolded from some waste of a potential carpet warehouse in Peckham, and was led by the startlingly monikered Rev. Frog Orr-Ewing, backing music courtesy of a bunch of shoegazers who look and sound like U2 might if they couldn’t afford effects pedals and a light show.
As if the name wasn’t bad enough, Orr-Ewing had us wondering if Posh Boy Cameron has relatives born wrong side of the blanket. The facial features were identical (apart from a weird birthmark suggesting he’d wandered into a door with his eyes closed while praying), as were the mannerisms and oratorial style. Quite disturbing. Someone really should look into this.
On a more serious note, we probably ought to ask why the Beeb gave a Sunday morning spot to an atrocity exhibition which included (I kid not) two rhythmically challenged teens doing a creationist rap and numerous blatant adverts for the Alpha Course – the last commercially orientated bastion of homophobia in the UK, coming to an empty church near you if you’re not careful.
Various background pieces on the participants (inserted to break up the monotony of white care in the community types shuffling and waving their arms about to dirges they didn’t know the words to while token black folk looked on in horror) suggest there is serious money in this racket too. Frog and his ersatz Muppets were seen ‘ministering’ in a sink estate playground, and dropped numerous hints that they (and numerous others) will be funded to pester the public during the London Olympics.
So, do you know where YOUR council funds are going these days?
And another thing.
I see the programme, while based in Peckham, was produced by BBC Manchester. Now I remember from college days that this is where the Beeb’s religious team hang out, and these days the employees to my certain knowledge include an advisor on media strategy to the Catholic church and an Evangelical Alliance stooge. The latter also not only sits on the Beeb’s main ‘independent’ religious advisory bodies but is elsewhere employed as a TV producer by the Beeb, runs a website for an offshoot of the Evangelical Alliance and also does the PR for a ghastly megachurch in the Manchester area.
So, do you know where YOUR licence fee is going these days, and are you going to protest about it being used to publicise homophobic, anti-scientific, Christofascist scams which leech off the public purse and screw up the lives of the dispossessed?
Alternatively, like me, you could just draw attention to them, and take the piss relentlessly until the Church of Kermit is too much of a laughing stock to do serious harm.

Three cheers for Ekklesia

I think it only fair to highlight cases where religious writers run a worthwhile story, and Ekklesia (see sidebar) do that often.
Yesterday they ran a story (Texas man executed after court case Bible row) on the Texan case of a man whose fate was decided after jurors consulted the Bible for guidance.
In brief, they decided he should die, and now he has. This despite a 30 day reprieve being requested to allow officials to examine a rifle for DNA evidence that someone else handled the weapon during the attack that led to a brutal murder.
Texas’s governor showed a lack of humanity, legal knowledge or, indeed, any intelligence at all probably not seen since the days of his most famous predecessor, George ‘Dubya’ Bush. We can only hope he doesn’t follow further in Dubya’s footsteps or we’re all in deep doo-doos.
Ekklesia’s Lizzie Clifford has also produced a fascinating paper on the latest wrangles over Thought For The Day, i.e. if the Beeb should allow non-religious contributors. Interesting update here, as Ekklesia’s Jonathan Bartley, always an engaging and provocative Anglican voice, was barred from the TFTD line-up after suggesting just that on Radio 4’s Today programme, which hosts TFTD.
Time For Religious To Kick The Broadcasting Habit gives a potted history of the programme, which flatly contradicts the Beeb’s claims of a fair-minded, non-evangelical stance.
As outlined in their press release:
“The new paper traces how the origins of TFTD came in a context of BBC religious broadcasting which was originally viewed as 'evangelistic and missionary'.
TFTD began as Lift Up Your Hearts, an innovation of extending religious programmes beyond Sunday into the working week. The original contributors were overwhelmingly Christian and Anglican. The slot's rebranding in 1965 to the more nominally neutral Ten to Eight was designed to reflect the changing beliefs of the listenership. But it was opposed by some in the Anglican Church as part of a general withdrawal of the BBC from its position as a central broadcaster in a 'Christian country'.
The paper also highlights how a number of other BBC radio stations, in particular regional programmes, have output which is similar to TFTD. But these successfully include contributions from the non- religious, as well as 'minority' religions, raising further questions about why TFTD has not followed suit.”
The Ekklesia paper can be found at http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/research/thought_for_the_day. And on that comment about regional radio, I should of course point out that Manx Radio is amongst the regionals with an open door for the non-religious, and I've done Thought For The Day slots myself as both an Amnesty International speaker and an Isle of Man Freethinker.
In fact, Manx Radio's only obstacle is a lack of willing speakers, not religious objections, and I suspect this might be the case on many a regional station. If you have one in your area, give it a shot. They'll probably bite your hand off!

Do carrots have souls?

Time to admit a secret vice.
Every Sunday morning there’s a TV programme called The Big Questions which is essential viewing in our house. We watch it – well, almost religiously I suppose, but mainly while rolling around the floor screeching with laughter.
It’s the spawn of an earlier BBC quasi-religious but mucho PC and determinedly multi-culti thing from BBC Manchester whose name I now forget. I ought to know because (another confession) it was originally created by students and tutors from my old college as part of a ‘Christian Communication’ final year option. Two of the students got a first and at least one continues to work in religious programming: the main tutor is also a BBC employee and advises the English Catholic hierarchy on their media strategy.
The general format is you have three 20 minute ‘moral questions’ debated by a rigorously mixed studio audience under the stewardship of Nicky Campbell, who struggles to keep tongue firmly in cheek throughout. Lots of dog collars, weird beards, and turbans on show, and everyone seems to represent some two man and a dog pressure group with names you just could not make up.
This morning’s themes, unsurprisingly, included the Irish Catholic child abuse report. Only one ‘official’ Catholic apologist there, a Father John Owen who is apparently a communications officer for Welsh Catholicism. He distinguished himself by saying we should face the ‘fact’ (dragged from only he knows where) that 95% of offenders were homosexuals and most victims were teenage boys, so the real lesson (presumably) was to witch-hunt gays out of the priesthood. This went down badly, and I really thought we were going to see a priest lynched live on TV.
The next topic was ‘should prostitution be legalised’, and the floor given to various Christian ‘human rights campaigners’ against ‘traffiking’. Surprisingly, God’s Pimp himself, Rev. Steve Chalke, while a regular whingebag on the show, wasn’t there to solicit more public funds for his Stop The Traffik scam.
His argument was mouthed by a couple of former street girls who resembled the Betty Bowers spoof group Crack Whores for Christ in their demeanour and logic. They seemed to be on heavy medication, but then, Baptist converts always look like that to me.
The other ‘reformers’ were from Christian Concern for our Nation (or ‘Nazis for Jesus’, as they never had the nerve to call themselves). When even the lady from the W.I. (one of Chalke’s attempted allies for law change) opined that the UK should follow the admirable New Zealand model of legalisation and licencing for small brothels to keep sex workers off the street I think even they realised the argument was lost.
The final topic was ‘Do pets go to heaven?’ This allowed a lady cleric from the Gloucester Cathedral Animal Prayer Group (no, really, that was the name and she gets paid to run it) and someone else who runs a business offering pet funerals with some sort of new age shamanistic twist to say they do.
One of the Crack Whores for Christ intervened in support of fluffy bunny angels - or something, but by this point the medication was really kicking in. Her comments were followed by a short silence as the audience scratched their heads and fidgeted nervously. Finally, one cynic said if animals do go to heaven he wasn’t looking forward to meeting all the cows, chickens and pigs he’d eaten, or hearing what they had to say about his cannibalism.
In short, this is the theological equivalent of Britain’s Got Talent, and if you ever despair of campaigning against religious privilege you need to watch it. The sheer audacity and paucity of religious arguments – apparently the best the major churches can muster in some cases – will inspire you to mock without mercy and without fear of an intelligent response.
OK, it will have the side-effect that godbotherers can claim an audience exists for religious programming and use it to gain employment. But it would be worth a few pence of your licence fee just for the entertainment.
Alternatively, just as the excellent Platitude of The Day website (see sidebar) is much more thoughtful and funny than the ‘real’ thing (and the BBC ought to sponsor it) maybe the Beeb should just rebrand this programme along the lines of ‘talent search’ shows. There’s a much bigger audience out there for freak shows, and they could always recoup the money from phone-voting.

Will this revolution be televised?

Here’s an interesting question…
Why would a post on the Guardian's 'Comment is Free' website section be closed to public comment in less than 24 hours, and with only seven comments?
If you read the post at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/may/04/bbc-religion-ethics you might take it for a nonsensical bit of religious opportunism, but no more.
Andrew Graystone, who admits to being the Director of the Churches Media Council, argues that "Religious programming must be bold". He seems to have been given a chance to reply to a far superior Sunny Hyndal post of late April which suggested the CMC was lobbying for the BBC to restrict head of religious programming applications to professed Christians.
So far, so uncontroversial. But surely the Grauniad wouldn’t pull the comments plug so fast just to stop readers commenting how dull and unconvincing Graystone is.
I really do not know, though being a trainspotter who actually wonders who takes BBC religious programming decisions I sussed out Graystone a long time ago. I found, amongst other commitments, he also runs a website for the Evangelical Alliance and even works as a BBC producer.
In fact, if you were friendless and stuck in front of the TV over Easter 2008 you could have seen one of his worst efforts. He produced a totally pointless BBC crucifixion feature film, which was heavily publicised for weeks beforehand, avoided like the plague by most of the population and sank without trace. Possibly the worst case ever for an increase in BBC religious programming hours.
Which makes you wonder how on earth he ever managed to be in a position to ‘advise’ the BBC as an ‘independent’ representative of Christian opinion, while simultaneously working for both the Beeb and a group which thinks UK Christians should be prepared to violently overthrow the state if they can’t keep their privileges any other way.
Ah, so you thought the Evangelical Alliance is just a respectable, if batty, religious organisation?
Then who said: "If, as most Christians accept, they should be politically involved in democratic processes, many believe this may, where necessary, take the form of active resistance to the state. This may encompass disobedience to law, civil disobedience, involving selective, non-violent resistance or, ultimately, violent revolution."
The answer may be found in a Daily Telegraph article published in November 2006. You can read it in full at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533302/Christians-ask-if-force-is-needed-to-protect-their-religious-values.html . You may never want the EA's loudest and most obnoxious spokesman, Joel Edwards, to be let into any public gathering again without being frisked.