Not in my name. Not in my daughter’s name

This is nasty.

There are people out there, operating under the guise of one organisation (let’s call it ‘Mediamarch’ who are – and I quote – “a peaceful protest group seeking stronger obscenity laws and restoration of basic decency to all media”), who have seeded the idea that the entire internet should submit to censorship.

And – now here’s the clever thing – the same people are then popping up under the guise of a different organisation (let’s call it ‘Safer Media’ which – and I quote again – “campaigns to make media safe for children”), who are making supportive statements for the first organisation’s campaign. And actively promoting the first organisation’s values which, unsurprisingly, dovetail neatly with their own organisation’s values.

So, to people who don’t dig deeply beneath such things, it all begins to sound as if there are a couple of different organisations out there, each putting forward similar views, and each with – probably – a combined, but substantial, membership behind them.

Erm, no.

Because behind both of these organisations which, and I’m still having trouble getting my head around this, want to impose their hardline, right-wing, pseudo-social, quasi-religious values on everyone else in the UK, behind *both* of these organisations is one person:

Miranda Suit.

Miranda was born in Sidcup and raised in Chislehurst in Kent. She is a member of an organisation called the Christian Peoples (sic) Alliance.

Miranda is a committed Christian.

Unfortunately this puts Miranda in the minority, because, as recent census figures have clearly shown, those who consider themselves to be practising Christians are significantly outweighed by those of us who don’t.

Anyway.

Miranda says that society needs to tackle some of the causes of social breakdown.

Yet Miranda feels, for some peculiarly obscure reason, that the best way for society to meet her objective is not for society to change or improve itself, but to have change inflicted upon everyone in society.

So that’s ‘change from the outside’, not ‘change from within’. Which I find odd, because ‘change from within’ is at the heart of all Christian doctrine, isn’t it?

Anyway.

Miranda goes on to echo Kim Jong Il when she says that her objective is ‘best met by censoring the media’. She is also quoted as saying that her ‘… campaign is based on research linking violent entertainment and pornography with violent and sexual crime. Inspired by her Christian faith, she is particularly concerned about people who become addicted to harmful media material, especially children.’

The focus of Miranda’s censorship is ‘media’ in most of its forms. She specifically cites: television, films, music and pornography. Strangely not radio, but perhaps she doesn’t listen to the radio.

Miranda also believes that ‘pornography must be outlawed so that it cannot undermine marriage and the dignity of women and encourage sex crime (sic). All schools should teach Christian values.’

Whenever people throw the words ‘Christian values’ at me, I want to remind them that at the time of the Virgin Birth, Mary was 14 years old.

I also want to remind them that according to ‘Christian values’, homosexuals should be put to death.

And let’s not forget other ‘Christian values’, such as it being acceptable for me to sell my daughter in to slavery.

Or that people who work on the Sabbath should be stoned to death.

And that any farmer who plants the wrong kind of crops next to each other should also be put to death.

These preachings can be found in the Old Testament and, let’s face it, if the Old Testament isn’t ‘Christian value’ enough for you, what more do you want, blood out of a stone?

On to my point.

There are three fundamental problems with the position being taken by Miranda Suit (or ‘Safer Media’, or ‘The Christian Peoples (sic) Alliance’, or ‘Mediamarch’) and these are so painfully obvious that it almost hurts to spell them out but…

1. Censorship is wrong. It is as wrong for the Government of the Peoples Republic of China to censor what the inhabitants of that country can see, listen to or read, as it as wrong for anyone to dictate to me what I may or may not see, read or listen to. There are enough free pieces of ‘parental control’ software out there. Get some, learn how to use it, inflict your parental rules on your offspring. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. You’ll just make me angry and believe me, you don’t want me to be angry.
2. Don’t ask the state to do your job. This is a no-brainer for most of us but perhaps, for some people, it needs spelling out. If you don’t want your children to interact with certain types of information, be a parent and lay down the law. The media is not the all-pervading peddler of pornography you believe it to be. You need to man up. Own the role of being a parent. Lay down the law and enforce it, that’s your job. That’s what being a parent is all about. If your children do as you ask, you are obviously a good parent. If, however, your children ignore you, you are a failure. But even being a parental failure is no excuse to seek to censor what other people in this country can, and can’t do.
3. Mainstream religions lack foresight and imagination. If you choose to believe in witches, demons, dragons, Harry Potter, or that some African guy got nailed to a tree, had his body placed in a cave, miraculously came back to life but – get this – wasn’t such a miracle worker after all because he had to roll back the stone at the mouth of the cave to get out, that’s up to you. I really don’t care. But if you even attempt to inflict anything that has been fermented in your narrow-minded brain upon me, I will fight you tooth and nail every single step of the way. And sometimes I fight dirty. All of the Abrahamic religions have sought to control people and contain and restrain us. I will fight against religious control in the same way that I would fight against any other form of fascism, whether it is rooted in an idealogical or social framework.

Have I made my point here?

Have I been eloquent enough?

Is my defence against this person who wishes to inflict her archaic religious fundamentalist values on the whole of the UK sufficiently robust?

If your answer to these questions is ‘yes’, would you like to do everyone in the UK a favour?

Go on, just imagine how warm and fluffy it will make you feel!

Would you like to hit the email address below and drop Ed Vaizey an email? Mr Vaizey is the Conservative MP for Wantage (Oxfordshire).

He is also (currently) the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Culture, Communications and Creative Industries), in the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

So if you agree with me, please hit the link below and send Mr Vaizey a quick email – even if you just give him the address of this post (https://brennigjones.com/blog/?p=4382) and say ‘I agree with what he said’!

Why should you ping Mr Vaizey an email? Because Ed Vaizey seems to be getting dangerously close to Miranda Suit. And I think that MPs, even Conservative MPs, need reminding, now and then, that they work for *all* of us.

Thanks.

Email Ed Vaizey here: vaizeye@parliament.uk