The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Link: Faith, fundamentalism and the fight for students’ souls – Britain – Times Online.

From this story about legal action to contest the ban, I have belatedly discovered that my old student union, among others, has banned the University’s 77 year old Christian Union from meeting on its premises and deprived it of funding as an affiliated society. The Islamic Society, need I really add, continues to be both funded and affiliated.

Ironically, the concept of homosexuality as sin is common to both religions. Presumably, Birmingham University Guild of Students has not put the Islamic Society to the same “lesbian, gay and trans-gender” recusancy test it applied to the Christian Union? Interestingly, several other Christian Societies remain affiliated and funded. How come? Did the Newman Catholic Society change its constitution and/or submit to the test? I think the Pope should be told. The Pagan Society is also affiliated.

I would like to think this was extremist student nonsense, but that’s what I thought thirty years ago when Leftists at the Birmingham University Guild of Students first put forward the policy of “no platform for racists and fascists.” That anti-free speech stance is now the official policy of B.U.G.S. It is effectively also the policy of the British nation, as evidenced by laws on “hate speech” and the current legal, political and press onslaught on the BNP – an odious, but lawful, political party whose views I despise, but whose right to express them I would defend to the death.