civil liberties cynicism
Last night I was watching the BBC News, feeling the shock and the disgust that many of you were also doubtless feeling about the recent attempted terrorist attacks. Anything I might wish to say about them will follow in due course, but this post is purely about the BBC reporting.
Part-way through the news, they cut to London and started with a whole spiel about the Gay Pride march which also took place yesterday. It was so completely irrelevant to the headline in question that my reaction, along with that of those I was with was initially "have they cut to the wrong video?" As the article continued it became clear that they hadn't, but the question of why it had been included there still remains.
Obviously, in ordinary circumstances, the march would have made the news without question and the cynic in me says that if the terrorism had been allowed to push it out of the headlines completely - as it did with everything else - the so called Civil Liberties groups would once again have been banging their drum and kicked up a fuss. Feel free to disagree, but nothing about these silly groups would surprise me any more, and the pressure that they have been known to exert in the media is outrageous.
Part-way through the news, they cut to London and started with a whole spiel about the Gay Pride march which also took place yesterday. It was so completely irrelevant to the headline in question that my reaction, along with that of those I was with was initially "have they cut to the wrong video?" As the article continued it became clear that they hadn't, but the question of why it had been included there still remains.
Obviously, in ordinary circumstances, the march would have made the news without question and the cynic in me says that if the terrorism had been allowed to push it out of the headlines completely - as it did with everything else - the so called Civil Liberties groups would once again have been banging their drum and kicked up a fuss. Feel free to disagree, but nothing about these silly groups would surprise me any more, and the pressure that they have been known to exert in the media is outrageous.
Comments
march on tv.
your post makes you sound dangerously
homophobic James.
Obviously it's important to show that life continues as normal, but there are better ways of including such items in the news thant the way it was done on Saturday.
Now, my allegations as to how the civil liberties groups might have reacted can't of course be proven but the fact is such a reaction wouldn't have surprised me in the slightest, given their past record.
Past rants I've had on this blog include the fact that Civil Rights groups pushed for Civil Partnerships citing equality for all and then couldn't give a damn when the law didn't offer such equal rights to two sisters living together.
Then the same groups - who'd only weeks earlier made it clear that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was wrong in any circumstance - welcomed the move by an Australian pub to ban heterosexuals.
My rantings therefore are certainly not directed at gay people at all but instead at those members of civil liberties groups who champion a cause of equality for all but really just like making a public spectacle for their own specific interests and their own sense of self-righteousness. For the record, such people are just as likely - in fact probably more so - to be heterosexual.
I wish they'd just bugger off.
Except not literally.
If you see what I mean.
"Past rants I've had on this blog include the fact that Civil Rights groups pushed for Civil Partnerships citing equality for all and then couldn't give a damn when the law didn't offer such equal rights to two sisters living together."
As I explained in the blog entry you mentioned, the main proponents for extending the Civil Partnerships Bill to encompass carers and siblings were actually opponents of the Bill, who cared little about the actual needs of such people and have since been entirely unconcerned about the issue.
"Feel free to disagree, but nothing about these silly groups would surprise me any more, and the pressure that they have been known to exert in the media is outrageous."
That's funny; my boyfriend feels the same way about vegetarians! He says that we exercise a disproportionate influence for such a small consumer group, as evidenced by the recent Mars controversy.
(Personally, I think he just doesn't want to share his Mars bars.)
I'm afraid that remains rather opaque. But I'm sorry that your lifestyle choice makes you so uncomfortable with an immutable and inconsequential characteristic that I happen to possess, Scott.