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BRIGHTON, September 29 – Stephen
Green, the national director of the vehemently anti-gay Christian
fundamentalist Christian Voice, is one of the panellists on tonight’s
Question Time (BBC1 at 10.35pm), which comes live from Brighton at the end
of the Labour Party conference. And two local politicians want the BBC
to drop the controversial and outspoken Green.
Also on the panel are Secretary of
Health Patricia Hewitt, Tory party leader contender Ken Clarke, Liberal
Democrat president Simon Hughes, and the Independent’s editor-at-large Janet
Street-Porter.
Earlier this year, Green famously
tried – unsuccessfully – to stop the BBC screening the West End hit musical
Jerry Springer: The Opera. And during the summer, the Co-Operative Bank
asked Christian Voice to “take its banking elsewhere”, and eventually closed
the account when Green refused to retract comments by him and his
organisation on gay people.
The two openly gay councillors on
the Brighton and Hover Council have condemned the inclusion of Green in the
programme.
“We utterly condemn the BBC for
inviting this man to broadcast his bigoted views on prime time TV in the
city of Brighton and Hove,” Paul Elgood (Liberal Democrat) and Simon
Williams (Green Party) said in a joint statement this morning, putting aside
any political differences in a shoe of LGBT unity.
“While we recognise the importance
of different views on a political debate programme, we believe Stephen
Green’s views go way beyond acceptable boundaries of debate.
“We also think it is extremely
insensitive of the BBC and the production company to invite Mr Green to
Brighton. Our city has one of the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender (LGBT) communities in the UK.
“At present LGBT people are not
protected from incitement to hatred in the way that ethnic minorities are;
if they were, Mr Green’s views would not be allowed to be broadcast.
“If he appears this evening we will
make a formal complaint to the BBC,” the joint statement concluded.
Stephen Green, who lives, according
to the Christian Voice website, in Pen-y-bont, Wales, also runs a spoof
anti-gay website which mimics a genuine police website aimed at protecting
and helping LGBT people at risk of homophobic attack.
Green is the registrant of True-Vision.org,
and the site uses the copyrighted “rainbow eye” graphic used by the True
Vision gay and racial hate crime initiative of 21 English and Welsh police
forces and the Crown Prosecution Service one their “report it” publicity and
information packs. There is, however, a slight variation in the colouring of
the eye.
 
The "official" eye (© True Vision) and the
"spoof" eye - right
Christian Voice does admit at the
bottom of the long front page on its “look-a-like” that the site is a spoof.
LINKS
BBC Question Time website (those not in the UK and
unable to get BBC1 can watch a
“video
on demand”
recording of the programme by following the link on this page
True Vision website (the official one run by
police forces)
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Recent Articles
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September 28:
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September 27:
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September 26:
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September 24:
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September
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Holding Iran
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The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, joined the largest
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have involved youth or were related to sexuality and gender identity.
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