Christian Voice Watch

The Daily Mail ran a silly story about the lack of Christmas cards with religious imagery for sale in British supermarkets. The figures published suggest that just 3% of cards stocked were religious.

The figure doesn't seem particularly surprising. If say 20% of Brits are keen on religion, but don't send religious cards to people not interested, then 20% of people would send religious cards to 20% of their friends. This means that just 4% (a fifth of a fifth) of total cards sent would be religious. And no doubt they would still send some Santa cards to kids etc, so perhaps 3% is a actually a good estimate of the demand for religious cards.

Anyway such logic is not apparent to Christians who think the are being hard done by the supermarket buying departments.

In particular Stephen Green of Christian Voice had some choice words of paranoia:

I can't believe this is being led by consumer demand.

I believe there is anti-Christian prejudice in the buying departments involved.

There's too much of this multicultural indoctrination and too much of an idea that if they put out Christian cards they will alienate or discriminate against or offend other faiths.

There's a kind of militant atheism and nasty secularism at work in this country which is completely opposed to Christianity.'

Every little publicity helps

As the Daily Mail has reported, retail giant Tesco have stopped sponsoring Cancer Research UK and switched their support to London Gay Pride.

Christian Voice quoted the Daily Mail wind up merchant, Richard Littlejohn, who said: If gays want to dress up as Carmen Miranda or mince up and down The Mall in nothing but their knickers, that's fine by me. But why would Britain's biggest supermarket want to be associated with such an event, at the expense of cancer victims?

Now Christian Voice are trying to arrange a boycott of Tesco. The organisation writes:

There are five important and effective things Christians can do:

1. Pray that God will send shame and confusion into the Tesco boardroom (you can argue He has done that already). Pray that every decision they take is the wrong one, that turnover falls, that profit turns to loss, that the share price drops, that investors leave, that directors are sacked.

2. Boycott Tesco and encourage others to do the same.

3. Mount a witness with banners and/or give leaflets out to shoppers outside Tesco's high street stores Tesco Direct

4. Email/write to Tesco Group

5. Sign our petition: Boycott Tesco

Christian Voice humourously blogged about Stonewall's Bigot of the Year Award:

The respected journalist Melanie Phillips has been congratulated by Christian Voice on her award of Bigot of the Year by the Stonewall homosexual lobby group. But we have accused Stonewall of cowardice for not inviting any of those shortlisted to their awards dinner last night.

Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, was also shortlisted for the award for his comments about Elton John's designer baby and for championing the right of African nations to keep sodomy as a criminal offence.

The others shortlisted on the Stonewall website were the Rt Rev Arthur Roche, Scottish Section 28 campaigner Sir Brian Souter and Bill Walker MSP. Not one of those shortlisted was actually invited to the awards ceremony and dinner, an omission described as a grave discourtesy by Christian Voice.

Stephen Green said today:

It was a great honour to be shortlisted for Stonewall's 'Bigot of the Year award and I am disappointed not to have won. I really must put more effort into opposing the gay rights lobby before next year's event. All the same, I congratulate Melanie Phillips for her winning position of standing up for the right of children not to be abused by Stonewall-devised homosexual imagery in sex education.

Yesterday I described Stonewall's failure to invite those shortlisted for such an important award as a grave discourtesy. I expressed disappointment that a group which has, as I put it, "such lofty ideals as the promotion of buggery and gross indecency" should be so lacking in the fundamentals of social intercourse.