When the censor got censored
Stephen Green, the national director of Christian Voice was arrested at Cardiff’s Mardi Gras festival last weekend while handing out anti-gay flyers.
An Inspector Chad from the Minorities Support Unit, detained Stephen Green when he refused to stop dishing out the offensive literature to people entering Bute Park in Cardiff.
Green was kept in the cells at Cardiff Police Station for over four hours before being charged with using ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby, contrary to section 5(1) and (6) of the Public Order Act 1986′.
Green, who pleaded not guilty to the charges when he appeared before Cardiff magistrates on Wednesday, was predictably cocky in the press release he put out following the arrest:
“I thank God for the honour of being locked up for sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. All the same, I am astonished that South Wales Police have a special unit dedicated to silencing those who disagree with homosexuality.”
According to Mike Curry, the prosecutor, “Some of the people at the festival objected to the contents of the leaflet and police arrested him.”
While seeing a censorious bigot getting hoist by his own petard (Green campaigned for the banning of Jerry Springer: The Opera and claimed responsibility for the furore over the Gay Police Association’s “bloody Bible” advert), it needs to be borne in mind that freedom of seech cuts both ways. If you want to say things that other people don’t want to hear, you also have to accept that other people can and will say things that you don’t want to hear.
If all that Stephen Green was doing was handing out leaflets, then he shouldn’t have been arrested and the case against him ought to be dropped immediately.
Update
MediaWatchWatch has found a copy of the leaflets and notes that both the Christian Institute and the British Nationalist Party have expressed their support for Stephen Green.
Saturday 09 Sep 2006 | Paul | UK
