A gay rights group is launching an all out attack on Catholic schools in Britain, calling for the their closure because Catholic schools "bully" gay students by teaching them that homosexuality is immoral.She then goes on to quote from a blog called The Cafeteria Is Closed, which in turn quotes from a Catholic site called LifeSite, which describes itself as "your life, family and culture outpost."
This circle-blogging is not a healthy activity. Cutting and pasting from other sources inevitably leads to the facts being ignored. There is no substitute for a little research, or at least reading a media release.
If Lucyna had read the first paragraph of her source, she might have seen that Catholic schools are not being criticised for "teaching that homosexuality is immoral." They are being attacked for failing to implement Government policies for dealing with bullying of the traditional kind: beating up kids. Specifically, the Catholic schools are refusing to recognise that kids are being beaten up for being gay, or at least appearing gay to their attackers.
If Luycna has gone to the trouble of reading the media release from the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association which she attacks with the full force of her spleen, she might have seen that GALHA based its remarks on a report by a House of Commons Select Committee on Education and Skills, to which the media release helpfully provides a link. The Select Committee was particularly concerned with the attitude of the Catholic Education Service, which doubted that homophobic bullying should be specifically addressed.
The fact is that gay kids are getting beaten up for being gay by other kids who have issues with homosexuality. This is happening in Catholic schools which are funded by the British Government. The Catholic Church is not prepared to do anything about it. GAHLA has good reason to say that these schools should be returned to local authority control, particularly given the prevailing attitude of the Church against homosexuals.
All it takes is a little time with Google to find out the facts before blogging. That's not to much to expect, is it?
9 comments:
Speaking of fact and its enemies... we're going to get our own creation vs. evolution park in the Coromandel!
(Split the link in half so it doesn't get cut off this time around.)
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/
story.cfm?c_id=301&objectid=10443259
According to Bob Altemeyer, an American social psychologist who has spent his long academic career studying right wing authoritarianism, RWAs tend to take things at face value, even to the extent of agreeing with contradictory or nonsensical statements, when they come from apparently authoritative sources. His experiments show they are almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence, which is kind of scary in a political context.
IIRC, Lucyna once cited a claim that in France, birth statistics showed that Muslim babies were now outnumbering "French" babies; When presented with the facts, she refused to budge, presumably because her source was someone high up in the Vatican.
Links to Altemeyer's book (highly recommended)
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/ALTAUT.html
Free online version here:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Following IW’s latest allegations against the police, I was intrigued to read a post on kiwiblog by Mr Tips - another Catholic blogger on NZ Conservative - explaining in detail how IW’s statements avoided actual untruths. In other words, he appeared to be aware that the allegations were carefully worded in such a way as to suggest wrongdoing without technically lying. Condoning that is as bad as condoning lying, according to my ethical standards.
That is an extraordinary admission. I must try to track it down.
I assume, Anonymoust, that you mean the comment where Mr Tips says
You see, in that VERY carefully worded statement, Wishart says that Helen Clark and Annette King wants us to believe that Idour was the source of the beastiality video AND the ONLY source of the story itself to Wishart.
Wishart does not deny he spoke with Idour about the story per se. Instead, he is denying that Idour actually BOUGHT the movie to the party.
So does Idour.
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2007/05/investigates_allegations_again.html
It was a combination of that post and a subsequent one in the same thread (all part of an exchange with sonic)
Sonic (citing IW): “…Investigate's coverage did not rely on anything from Idour." A pretty clear-cut denial you would agree?
[Later}
Sonic: So Mr Wishart now says Idour is his source, and furthermore admits that he approached him.
Mr Tips: Sonic, I am bemused why you continue to think Wayne Idour was the ONLY source.
Speaking of Mr W, I see Eve’s Bark has slipped to number 5 on the bestsellers list for NZ non-fiction. Maybe it would have done better in the fiction section?
Paul with the number of gay clergy in the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, why would they encourage kids at their schools to bully those that appeared to be gay as well.
I thought a good turnout of gay kids at Roman Catholic schools would auger very well for the priesthood.
BTW spotted this on the Briefing Room for the Exclusive Brethren fans:
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/18406/exclusive-brethren-26
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