THE High Court, sitting at Nottingham Crown Court, is today being asked to decide whether a local authority – Derby Council – should a allow a Pentecostal Christian couple, who strongly disapprove of homosexuality, to be foster parents.
Owen and Eunice Johns: yet another 'persecuted' Christian couple
According to the Christian Legal Centre, which is championing the case of Eunice and Owen Johns, this is the first time that a court has been asked to decide how local authorities should deal with foster carers who have “traditional views on sexual ethics”.
The CLC says:
The implications are huge. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of Christian foster carers and adoptive parents hangs in the balance, and that the outcome of [today's] case will have a direct effect on whether Christians decide to apply to be foster carers or adoptive parents. It may not be long before local authorities decide that Christians cannot look after some of the most vulnerable children in our society, simply because they disapprove of homosexuality.
The Johns have been trying to foster for three years. In 2007 Derby City Council withdrew their application to be foster parents because of their Christian, biblical views on marriage and the family. They had applied to be respite carers for children between the ages of 5 and 10, “wanting to offer children a loving and stable home”.
However, said the CLC:
When it transpired to the social worker that the John’s had traditional views on the family and homosexuality, they received a letter which stated that their application had been withdrawn.
The couple got in touch with the CLC, who were able to persuade the council to reinstate the application. However, just a few months later, and after several letters asking the council to clarify their policy on the suitability of foster carers with traditional views on sexual ethics, the Council’s adoption panel failed to come to a final decision about the couple’s application to be foster carers, and the matter has now been taken to the High Court
Said the CLC:
This is a vital case for Christian freedoms. The council has an obligation to respect the Johns’ religious beliefs, but also to comply with equality law, which prohibits discrimination because of sexual orientation. The case will decide whether the Johns will be able to foster without compromising their beliefs.
Interfering busybody Lord Carey
Meanwhile, senior bishops, according to this report, fear that if the ruling goes against them, it could have have devastating consequences for those with religious beliefs.
In an open letter, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, the Bishop of Winchester Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, the Bishop of Chester Rt Rev Peter Forster, and Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester warned that Labour’s equality laws put homosexual rights over those of others:
Even though the Office for National Statistics has subsequently shown homosexuals to be just one in 66 of the population.
This figure, by the way, is highly suspect.
The episcopal clowns wrote:
The High Court is to be asked to rule on whether Christians are ‘fit people’ to adopt or foster children – or whether they will be excluded, regardless of the needs of children, from doing so because of the requirements of homosexual rights.
Research clearly establishes that children flourish best in a family with both a mother and father in a committed relationship.
The supporters of homosexual rights cannot be allowed to suppress all disagreement or disapproval …
Lord Carey clearly has learned nothing from an earlier attempt to interfere with the course of justice in the UK. Earlier this year he was castigated by a judge for poking his nose into the case of another Christian bigot, Gary McFarlane, a Christian relationship counsellor who lost his job after refusing to work with gay or lesbian couples, was not a victim of unlawful religious discrimination.
In criticising Carey, Lord Justice Laws made it clear that there can be no justification for different laws for religious believers, stating:
The precepts of any one religion – any belief system – cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other’ and said if they did, then we would be ‘on the way to a theocracy’.
Mrs Johns is quoted as saying:
The council said ‘Do you know, you would have to tell them [foster kids] that it’s OK to be homosexual?’  But I said I couldn’t do that because my Christian beliefs won’t let me. Morally, I couldn’t do that. Spiritually I couldn’t do that.
Ben Summerskill, chief executive of gay rights charity Stonewall, said:
Too often in fostering cases nowadays it’s forgotten that it is the interests of a child, and not the prejudices of a parent, that matter. Many Christian parents of gay children will be shocked at Mr and Mrs Johns’ views, which are more redolent of the 19th century than the 21st.
Hat tip: BarrieJohn
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
November 1st, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Well said, Ben Summerskill. Forget about fostering: I don’t think that people who “strongly disapprove of homosexuality” are fit to bring up children, full stop!
November 1st, 2010 at 12:14 pm
“The council said ‘Do you know, you would have to tell them [foster kids] that it’s OK to be homosexual?’ But I said I couldn’t do that because my Christian beliefs won’t let me. Morally, I couldn’t do that. Spiritually I couldn’t do that.”
Herein lies the crux of the matter – by this statement alone Mrs Johns has demonstrated she is unfit to care for the variety of children who will be coming through her home for respite care. She has demonstrated that her fielty to her faith will cause her to, if the topic comes up, cause untold damage to a child exhibiting non-normative sexual behaviours. It is simply not in the interests of children to be put in an environment where they may be threatened with damnation (and if the Johns are at least honest, with stoning) for not being completely hetereosexual at all times. The last thing a child in care between the ages of 5 and 10 needs is to have any hint that they might grow up to ‘exist wrong’, and to be pointed out as an abomination.
And thus we come to the problem Dawkins goes on about so often – adults trying to instill religion in the children in their care. If we had a society where religion was something adults talked about and thought about and discussed, and where children just ran and played and dressed up and just were themselves without having some horrendous moral value attributed to something as simple as a boy deciding to wear a dress or a girl kissing another girl, then the Johns and any other Christian of Deeply Held Beliefs(tm) would be perfectly capable parents because their personal faith wouldn’t overlap with the children’s lives.
Unfortunately for the moment we have a society where children are seen as prey animals by the religious, and not just in the Catholic priest sense. Everything about these faiths is engineered to control and cajole children into following behaviours arbitrarily determined to be moral because it says so in some part of some old book. It is nothing more than bullying and blackmail on an enormous scale, and while I hate to see less foster care available for children who need stable homes, I hope the court tells the Johns where to shove their self-important bigotry.
And one last thing – despite Carey’s claim that research consistently shows a household with two hetereosexual parents in a committed relationship (which he’d probably like to pretend means marriage) is the best environment, research is in fact starting to show that homosexual couples, particularly lesbian couples, produce better outcomes (health, happiness, achievement, etc.) for their children than married hetereosexual couples do.
November 1st, 2010 at 12:22 pm
The elephant in the room here is: would the John’s consider it acceptable for members of the various racist organizations in Britain be given fostering rights?
November 1st, 2010 at 12:31 pm
I think anyone with prejudices towards group or people should not be allowed to be foster parents. I mean these kids often have had a rough trot already without having their parents beliefs projected upon them.
November 1st, 2010 at 12:33 pm
The Johns are probably very nice, very caring people. The problem is, they have decided that their invisible magic man and the superstitious nonsense of ancient books is more important than giving a loving home to any child.
November 1st, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Pentecostals are biblical literalists. The Johns should be questioned closely on just how much their faith means in guiding them; truly, if you get down to brass tacks, biblical literalists have no place in decent society.
(You all know the salient points on this – for a humorous once-over, I’ll toss it to The Chaser’s War on Everything http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95hH1H5qK08)
I would also like someone to explain to me how a child should be brought up by believers of a religion that does faith healing and speaking in tongues.
November 1st, 2010 at 12:42 pm
As I’ve pointed out on one newspaper site, Christians aren’t discriminated against at all, homophobes are, and conflating the two interests is actually quite insulting to most Christians – who rarely agree with dictats from their ‘spiritual leaders’anyway.
As others pointed out on various newspaper sites, the guys grumbling about this are just a handful of bishops, well past their sell-by date, and who can’t even pretend to speak for the vast majority.
Just think it’s worth stressing, as Christians I’ve talked to since this story broke seem pretty miffed at being lumped in with a few crackpots.
November 1st, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Thanks for posting this. One nit to pick, if you don’t mind. File it under “Know Thine Enemy”: it’s Pentecostal, not Pentacostal.
November 1st, 2010 at 1:07 pm
The law is often an ass but the law applies equally to all citizens. What the Johns seek, as do so many religiots, is the privilege to ignore bits of law that conflict with their ridiculous beliefs; in a civilised and egalitarian society this is unacceptable. The Johns should be barred from fostering on the grounds of bigotry and stupidity.
November 1st, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Strangely enough, David McNerny, as I have pointed out before, a great many Christian fundamentalists still adhere to the belief that God “cursed” the black people in Noah’s day, even though they don’t say much about it publicly. They don’t think that the teachings of their holy book have changed just because the mores of society have, any more than this deluded couple do!
November 1st, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Anonymous: I know fundamentalists who foster chidren, and to them it is a golden opportunity “from the Lord” to bring up these unfortunate children “in the faith”. How any local authority or other official can possibly fail to appreciate that any child entrusted to their care is going to be systematically brainwashed with their primitive views is quite beyond me!
November 1st, 2010 at 1:40 pm
The wrong question is addressed. The issue is: Are Pentecostals fit to foster children? Would you want your children fostered by a couple of bible believing fundamentalists, happy to square their bible nonsense with real life, living according to Stone Age beliefs, and shoving all this nonsense down the throats of defenceless children? What a horrible fate for the kids, trained not to think independently, taught about hell fire, bodily self pollution (masturbation to the rest of us), and forced to attend groups “sharing our witness” and simlar nonsense. I once worked with one of these types and they are bad news.
No thanks. They are not fit to foster.
November 1st, 2010 at 1:49 pm
You only have to look at the previous story on this site to see just what great parents religiots make!
November 1st, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Well said, Broga!
November 1st, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Presumably strict Muslims would be just as unacceptable as they have similar views on homosexuality. It’s inaccurate to describe this hoo-hah as an attack on Christianity, but totally characteristic of each religion’s blinkers and special pleading.
November 1st, 2010 at 2:10 pm
It must be hard to be a consultant for a foster-agency: where to draw the line? No racists, obviously, but religious people? In many ways they’re as deluded as the racists are when it comes to their ‘convictions’. Being superior because of the colour of your skin is as silly as believing in the rules and regulations of the Invisible Man, and may be just as harmful for the children involved. It’s time some regulation is created that stipulates that any unsubstantiated claims people have about their morality or superiority, automatically disqualifies them to take care of young children. But it will still be tough!
November 1st, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Bingo, chick-a-boom. This is not an attack on Christianity, much as they would love to feel persecuted (their own book tells them it’s a good thing, after all). It’s simply trying to prevent homophobes (of any or no faith) getting their hands on children and pouring that hate into them. As said above, we wouldn’t be happy with National Front members trying to adopt and saying openly “well of course we’ll teach them that we want those blacks to go home, it’s what we believe”.
Freedom of speeh is important, but it is somewhat different from freedom to incite hatred. Children generally trust their parents and absorb their beliefs and attitudes, so hate is exactly what these sort of people would spread to them if given the chance. While they act as though it is their beliefs that people are trying to control, rather we are trying to quarantine them. They can sit in their house and fear the homosexual agenda all they like, but every child has the right to avoid being poisoned with such prejudice. Even their own biological children, though that’s an enormous can of worms…
November 1st, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Whereas I agree with the statements already made, and the thought of any child being raised in a religious environment makes my blood run cold, what if the Johns have the ability to be great foster parents?
Denying them the opportunity is wrong. We would be equally angry if anyone we knew was denied the opportunity due to sexual orientation or colour.
Social services should keep a close eye on them, as I hope they would any foster parent. The religious always fuck up, they should be given the opportunity to prove us wrong.
November 1st, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Tony e: Sexual orientation and colour are not matters of choice. Bigotry is.
November 1st, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Even leaving everything else aside, we must remember that foster parents are subsidized with taxpayer money. I’m not in the UK – I believe this is the site that discusses it in your country? http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/individ.....carers.htm
Public funds should never be used in service to discrimination. End of. That’s the low-hanging fruit.
November 1st, 2010 at 5:03 pm
‘Even though the Office for National Statistics has subsequently shown homosexuals to be just one in 66 of the population’
Brilliant thinking, so it’s all right to discriminate against a minority as long as it is a really tiny minority…
November 1st, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Child care law states, “The welfare of the child is paramount.” Note that word: paramount. Not desirable, preferable, a good thing, on the whole what should be sought. Paramount.
Just to digress a little, I doubt if that requirement is met by the Roman Catholic Adoption Agencies. The instillation of their religion is paramount and the priest will call to check on that. Of course, they will argue, and I have heard them do it, that to make the religion paramount is the essential step in making the welfare of the child paramount.
What about the placing of foster children? There are thousands of excellent and loving foster parents who never set foot in a church although they may well have religious beliefs in the usual sense of never having thought about them. What is essential is a caring, kind and tolerant concern, and not hard line prejudice, and that is not all that difficult to assess. One of the best ways is their track record although there has to be a first placement.
Placing children with foster parents who have a literal belief in the bits of the bible they happen to select, instilling a fear of hell fire in an attempt to keep the child to what they see as the straight and narrow, and often an indecent enthusiasm for the “spare the rod and spoil the child” policy is child abuse. Is this what Social Services wants: rescue the child from one kind of abuse only to make the child the victim of another.
Much fostering is short term because of circumstances such as the ill health of a parent. Should these children be subjected to the brain washing of bigots and what kind of attitudes will be there when the child is returned to the parents.
Gay couples are as likely to make loving foster parents as anyone else. And have often acted as such.
November 1st, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Barriejohn,
Agreed, I don’t like the idea of a kid being brought up by religious nutters, but if they offer a stable environment, it’s got to be better than living in care?
November 1st, 2010 at 6:15 pm
It annoys me how their views are always referred to as “traditional”. That makes it sound so benign.
They really should come up with something more accurate and descriptive.
Here are a few that would be better:
Stone age
Backward
Bigoted
Blinkered
Thick
Feel free to add your own suggestions.
November 1st, 2010 at 6:16 pm
@tony e – Aside from what barriejohn said, the prospective foster parents have already proven us right by stating flat out they are not going to teach any children in their care that being homosexual is ok. Therefore by extension any children with homosexual tendencies who end up in their care will be told by them that their very constituency and existence is “not ok”. They have said quite plainly they will not be good, supportive foster parents of children who don’t meet their arbitrary standards that come out of a bronze age book.
November 1st, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Tony e: I have to agree with JohnMWhite. It would be far better for a gay child – and even preferable, to my way of thinking, for ANY child – to be brought up “in care” than in the environment which these bigots offer. Just imagine the horror for some gay kid upon finding that he has been fostered by a couple who consider his sexual orientation to be “an abomination”. What is he supposed to make of that, and where can he go for advice and support?
November 1st, 2010 at 8:43 pm
@barriejohn, I suspect you may not realise quite how dreadful being “in abuse”, I mean “in care”, really is. A very large proportion of the graduates of the “care” system end up in prison and on drugs. I suspect that being gay and having homophobic parents who try to foist an extreme religion on you is not as bad as that. One case study would be Jeanette Winterson, presuming “Oranges are not the only fruit” is largely biographical. She, I believe adopted or fostered, was brought up by extreme religious homophobic parents, she ended up running away from, after an attempt by her parents’ religious community to exorcise her lesbianism. But she ended up going to Oxford and becoming a prize-winning novelist, even if she never wrote as good a book as her first one.
November 1st, 2010 at 8:49 pm
My, I hope that none of the bigots posting here are allowed to foster either!
Seriously how far are the ‘thought police’ allowed to interfere? Are all people that come in contact with children to be screened to ensure that the bigoted mantra ‘gay is good’ is spread ever wider.
I just love all you ‘liberals’ with your long list of things that are ‘totally unacceptable’. People are different, live with it. The vast majority of people aren’t homosexual, (lucky for the human race), live with that.
November 1st, 2010 at 8:51 pm
@ivan: “I suspect that being gay and having homophobic parents who try to foist an extreme religion on you is not as bad as that.”
You can suspect that all you wish, that doesn’t make it true. Everybody’s mileage varies. Miss Winterson achieved her aims in spite of her upbringing, and that’s great, but not everyone makes it. She ran away, so what does that tell you? Everybody is different, and some people would respond to their community treating them as some sort of demon-infested monster by writing a book, and others would respond by hanging themselves. It’s not a constructive environment in any manner, regardless of whether some people survive it and thrive in any case.
November 1st, 2010 at 8:53 pm
@ Mary D: “People are different, live with it.”
Yes, that’s kind of the point. Unfortunately these potential parents don’t want to live with it, and apparently neither do you, because they are of the mind that being different is not ok and would try to force children under their care to not be as they are.
November 1st, 2010 at 9:19 pm
@ ivan
Read your post again.
“I suspect that being gay and having homophobic parents who try to foist an extreme religion on you is not as bad as that”
Are you gay and been in that position? If not you are extremely naive.
“She, I belive adopted or fostered, was brought up by extreme religious homophobic parents, she ended up running away from, after an attempt by her parent´s´religious community to exorcise her lesbianism.”
Er, compare those two quotes. Notice anything?
November 1st, 2010 at 9:25 pm
MaryD: What you are doing is called “projection.”
November 1st, 2010 at 9:48 pm
Apparently at least one reader swallowed the propaganda that only one person in 66 is gay. As early as 1948 Alfred Kinsey established that ten percent of the population are exclusively gay, and 37 percent had had at least one homosexual experience.
(I do not have the Kinsey Report in my library. I obtained this information from Wikipedia, a usually reliable source when they report the contents of other publications.)
Masters and Johnson might have given different figures. But their claim that they “cured” two-thirds of gays makes clear that nothing they wrote can be taken seriously.
November 1st, 2010 at 10:19 pm
@david, @john: I agree entirely with what Freethinker and Ben Summerskill have said. But barriejohn went a lot further in saying that children should be taken from their natural parents and put into “care” (an oxymoron) merely because their parents were religious and homophobic. If you can’t recognise that for the extremity it is, then I think you are naive, or even in denial, in misunderstanding how utterly terrible the conditions are for children in “care” in this country. Putting up with homophobic parents was pretty much routine for gay young people when I was young, and I had lots of gay friends. Except in extreme cases, it is not in the same scale of emotional damage of being put into “care”.
November 1st, 2010 at 10:37 pm
JohnMWhite, Barriejohn,
Again I think you have made some valid points. I totally agree in that I don’t like the idea of kids being brought up to think along particular lines or doctrines.
As you both know I actively detest religion but surely the needs of the child must exceed that. It would be great if all prospective foster parents were athiests but that is not living in the real world.
I honestly believe, if they pass screening, and nowadays you have to be good to pass, they should be allowed to help kids. We cannot tell them what they can tell their kids, rightly or wrongly, like ourselves, the individual must come to their own conclusions about life. If we start to want to mould people into our viewpoints then surely we are no better than the religious that we attack? They must have the exact same rights as us.
November 1st, 2010 at 10:44 pm
But barriejohn went a lot further in saying that children should be taken from their natural parents and put into “care†(an oxymoron) merely because their parents were religious and homophobic. Where the bloody hell did I say that?
November 1st, 2010 at 11:22 pm
@ MaryD
Being gay is not good or bad, it is just what some people are. Being heterosexual is not good or bad, it is just what some people are. Being homophobic is bad.
Given our current knowledge of the reprodutive process it really wouldn´t matter for the human race if everybody was gay.
Us “bigots” and “liberals” have such a long list of things that are “totally unacceptable” because there are so many people who use their bibles to think with and their arses to talk out of.
November 2nd, 2010 at 12:57 am
tone e: “The religious always fuck up, they should be given the opportunity to prove us wrong.”
Can we try that experiment with something other than children’s mental health please?
“It would be great if all prospective foster parents were athiests but that is not living in the real world.”
True, but we should be able to ensure that they aren’t homophobes or have other ‘quirks’ that make them unfit to care for, and shape the minds of, children.
Mary D: “to ensure that the bigoted mantra ‘gay is good’ is spread ever wider.”
If you can’t see the irony in that statement, you’re beyond help.
November 2nd, 2010 at 1:03 am
I had to blog on this issue: http://chunkymonkeymind.blogsp.....ainst.html
It’s not okay to raise someone else’s kids with your harmful dogma.
November 2nd, 2010 at 5:43 am
“Meanwhile, senior bishops, according to this report, fear that if the ruling goes against them, it could have have devastating consequences for those with religious beliefs.”
No, no, no.
Religious beliefs have devastating consequences. Simple as that.
The Johns’ religious beliefs are dangerous to the well being of any child in their care, homosexual or otherwise. It’s bad enough that children are born into Pentecostal and other fundamentalist religious families: the State has no business inflicting that on a child.
The problem about the ‘care’ system is relevant and terribly sad, but shouldn’t direct a poor choice being made regarding fostering. Otherwise we might as well allow people with all kinds of abusive views to foster children: fascists and flat-Earthers alike.
November 2nd, 2010 at 7:36 am
The Johns’ religious beliefs are dangerous to the well being of any child in their care, homosexual or otherwise. It’s bad enough that children are born into Pentecostal and other fundamentalist religious families: the State has no business inflicting that on a child.
That was my point, Carasek. I am in no way advocating that children should be removed from their families and put into “care” because their parents are religious – even though we need to be aware of the damage that can be done to them by this sort of upbringing – but gay or straight they should not be fostered with people like this.
November 2nd, 2010 at 7:59 am
@barriejohn
I hear you, buddy.
November 2nd, 2010 at 8:50 am
I know Carasek – but Ivan, for one, got hold of the wrong end of the stick!
November 2nd, 2010 at 10:04 am
@MaryD
Must be wonderful for you to sit there is your smug self righteousness and look down on that part of humanity that offends your values. The core of the matter, which you are too befuddled by religious nonsense to understand, is that Carey, Rowan Williams, Ratzinger and the rest of that horde want special privilges, a special reverence for their particular views. Richard Dawkins put it well when he said that ignorant religious bigots are trundled out, usually by the BBC, to discuss scientific mattters whenever ethics are mentioned. They not only have no right to this respect but damage their listeners or viewers by their ignorant comments.
You have my sympathy for your mental and emotional straightjacket – produced by your religious indoctrination.
November 2nd, 2010 at 10:30 am
To me, the devastating consequences for those with religious beliefs would be that they might start thinking, dump the excess luggage and stop being believers. All of god’s self-appointed representatives would be out of a job, and that would be devastating.
November 2nd, 2010 at 10:37 am
Oh yeah, can’t really let this one slip:
@MaryD “The vast majority of people aren’t homosexual, (lucky for the human race), live with that.”
Quite apart from the obvious offensive bigotry implied in your statement, my view is that you’re behind the curve on this scientifically. David Anderson made the point that science allows for human reproduction even without sex if necessary, so being homo- or hetero-sexual is largely irrelevant as far as the necessary promulgation of our ‘race’ (surely species?) goes.
More than that, if humans keep reproducing at current levels our planet will get very overcrowded indeed. That is likely to cause all sorts of friction over land and resources. As such a significant proportion of the world’s population still have yet to evolve socially beyond primitive medieval religious ways of thinking, we are bound to face increased conflict.
The future of the human species likely demands increased use of contraception, family planning and to a small extent not forcing homosexuals into fraudulent marriages producing unwanted kids (of course if gay people want to have kids they should be able to, provided they can support them properly like anyone else). I guess your counterpoint to this might be that while religion increases human suffering, it also contributes substantially to a huge swathe of murder across the world everyday, reducing the numbers somewhat.
Religion does have a history of being successful at human slaughter. Some of us want to move on from that.
November 2nd, 2010 at 10:39 am
Something I find really sad about this…
This couple are old enough to have lived through race-riots, public discrimination against people of their colour, racist ‘jokes’ on prime-time tv, the Black & White Minstrels on prime-time tv ffs, casual violence against black people being almost the norm, etc. I sincerely hope that only the tv-shows affected them personally, but I’d be surprised if they never ever had to endure, or even pretend to laugh at, a racist comment or ‘joke,’ at some stage, usually preceded by ‘I’m not racist but…’ Yet they still can’t see the effect of their own bigotry.
November 2nd, 2010 at 10:45 am
@Daz
Is is sad, but there’s a relatively simple answer to the quandary:
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.†Prof. Steven Weinberg (Awarded 1979 Nobel Prize for Physics)
November 2nd, 2010 at 11:05 am
True. It’s still sad though.
Another point about the amazingly fair-minded MaryD’s comment. “The vast majority of people aren’t homosexual,..”
So.Fucking.What? The vast majority don’t like opera, heavy metal or Pat Boone. Or any one particular football team. Or sushi. Or flock wallpaper. If we have to discriminate on a what-the-majority-likes basis, we’re all in for hard times. The whole point in protecting minorities is that you protect all minorities. Including any that you, MaryD, happen to belong to.
(I’m willing to negotiate away the rights of Pat Boone fans to own hi-fi speakers. There has to be a line somewhere!)
November 2nd, 2010 at 11:45 am
Daz: How could you possibly object to this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqVLrPMXbaA
November 2nd, 2010 at 4:07 pm
@ Daz
Or flock wallpaper RATFL
November 3rd, 2010 at 7:44 pm
barriejohn: You’re a cruel and heartless man!
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/the.....player.htm
Track 19
It wasn’t just me suffering from delayed posts yesterday then.
November 3rd, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Almost 24 hours, Daz. I didn’t think anyone would actually read my comment! Many of my Christian friends in the 1960s had that record and played it over and over again. Even though a believer myself I thought it was excrutiatingly awful – Pat Boone must have been the inspiration for Daniel O’Donnell (though there are plenty of others cast in the same mould, sad to say!). Anyone who “has a thing” for Pat Boone would do well to avoid this clip though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9aBeRVToGk
November 3rd, 2010 at 8:43 pm
That’s rich, Summerskill talking about prejudice.
November 3rd, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Nice clip Barriejohn. To be fair he did manage to make a pretty good joke of it. Still, though, anyone who did what he did to ‘Tutti Fruiti’ deserves no sympathy!
I’ve taken to going back over old posts on this site because of the tendency of comments to show up so late. Hence me spotting your link.
November 3rd, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Just for you then, Daz. Another Christian without shame!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDWDWaVsfZo
November 3rd, 2010 at 11:42 pm
Barriejohn, that should be banned under human rights legislation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-JansNvGvs
FTFY
November 3rd, 2010 at 11:52 pm
Sadly, Daz, I think that Cliff and his fans are hearing something like that when he sings, whereas the rest of us hear something completely different!
November 4th, 2010 at 12:58 am
True. Mind you, it wasn’t as bad as the Millenium Prayer. Even as an atheist I winced at how he treated the Lord’s Prayer! It was like the worst ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’ round of ‘one song to the tune of another’ ever made.