UK And Irish Broadcasters Castigated For Mocking Christianity

THE BBC has been called ‘a disgusting corporation of pigs’ and Ireland’s RTÉ has been forced to apologise for a New Year’s Eve show that included a satirical report about God being implicated in a sexual harassment case.

First, the BBC’s The Goes Wrong Show Christmas Special which featured the Angel Gabriel supernaturally impregnating the Virgin Mary.

Accord to the Metro, the corporation was unapologetic after it was hit with complaints from viewers.

The half-hour humorous stab at the Nativity aired last week – and soon after the complaints came flooding in. Some viewers blasted it as “offensive” and “an insult to the Christian religion”.

One of those offended, Kieran Martin, used social media to express his disgust:

You disgusting corporation of pigs. Hope you come crashing down very soon you woke scum.

Ahead of its broadcast, the BBC’s official synopsis teased:

The angel Gabriel develops a firework obsession, a donkey-actor argument resulted in unnecessary nudity, and there is way too much fire.

While the BBC did not publish the nature of the complaints, the corporation argued that:

It’s inevitable that some aspects of our programmes will occasionally strike some in our audience as inappropriate. This programme follows the fictional Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society as they attempt to put on a variety of plays, always with disastrous and comedic results. In this Christmas special, the troupe performed the Nativity, with the usual technical hiccups and blunders that viewers of the programme would expect.

In a statement, the BBC added:

Our Editorial Guidelines uphold the right to freedom of expression and the right of programme-makers to include material which some members of the audience may find inappropriate or offensive.

However, we are always very conscious of how jokes might resonate with those with direct experience of the subjects we cover, and we never set out to mock or undermine their beliefs and experiences.

Regrettably Ireland’s state broadcaster felt the need to apologise after more than 1,000 people complained about a comedy sketch that depicted The Almighty as a rapist. A “newscaster” said in a broadcast produced by Waterford Whispers News, a satirical news website:

The 5bn-year-old stood accused of forcing himself on a young Middle Eastern migrant and allegedly impregnating her against her will, before being sentenced to two years in prison, with the last 24 months suspended. Following the news, movie producer Harvey Weinstein requested a retrial in Ireland.

Among those who took offence was Ireland’s Catholic primate archbishop, Eamon Martin, above, who tweeted:

This outrageous clip should be removed immediately & denounced by all people of goodwill. To broadcast such a deeply offensive and blasphemous clip about God and Our Blessed Mother Mary during the Christmas season … is insulting to all Catholics and Christians.

But Atheist Ireland defended the broadcaster’s right to transmit material deemed offensive. Yesterday it said in its Secular Sunday newsletter:

The Catholic Bishops have started the new year by returning to the 1960s, trying to impose their values on RTE. They called on the station to remove a television comedy clip which they said is blasphemous and offensive.

Somebody should remind the Catholic Bishops that the people of Ireland voted to remove the offence of blasphemy from our Constitution and laws. People have rights. Beliefs do not.

RTE has apologised for any offence caused by the comedy sketch, but has not removed the item from its website.

Both religious people and atheists should support the right of other people to see and hear ideas that they believe to be offensive, unless the statements are defamatory or incite discrimination, hostility or violence.

Atheist Ireland will continue to campaign to ensure that the forthcoming hate speech legislation is not used to bring back blasphemy laws by another name.

In a statement, RTÉ apologised and said it would respond to complaints according to statutory rules. It did not promise to remove the sketch from the RTÉ Player.

RTÉ recognises that matters which can cause offence naturally differ from person to person, within comedy and satire in particular. Having reviewed the feedback and complaints received up to this point, RTÉ wishes to apologise to those who were offended by the segment.

The last prosecution for blasphemy in Ireland was in 1855 when a priest who accidentally burned a Bible was prosecuted and later acquitted. In 2015 police investigated comments made by Stephen Fry on television in which the comedian described God as “capricious”, “mean-minded”, and an “utter maniac”. Gardaí dropped the investigation after deciding insufficient numbers of people had been outraged.

One man who was jailed for blasphemy in the UK was Freethinker founder G W Foote, above, who, in 1881, addressed the issue thus in his Arrows of Freethought:

Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit. God is to them merely a word, expressing all sorts of ideas, and not a person. It is, properly speaking, a general term, which includes all that there is in common among the various deities of the world. The idea of the supernatural embodies itself in a thousand ways. Truth is always simple and the same, but error is infinitely diverse. Jupiter, Jehovah and Mumbo-Jumbo are alike creations of human fancy, the products of ignorance and wonder.

Which is the God is not yet settled. When the sects have decided this point, the question may take a fresh turn; but until then god must be considered as a generic term, like tree or horse or men; with just this difference, however, that while the words tree, horse and man express the general qualities of visible objects, the word god expresses only the imagined qualities of something that nobody has ever seen.

When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being.

Ideas of god may be good or bad, beautiful or ugly; and according as he finds them the Atheist treats them. If we lived in Turkey we should deal with the god of the Koran, but as we live in England we deal with the god of the Bible. We speak of that god as a being, just for convenience sake, and not from conviction. At bottom, we admit nothing but the mass of contradictory notions between Genesis and Revelation. We attack not a person but a belief, not a being but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.

Lord Brougham long ago pointed out, in his “Life of Voltaire,” that the great French heretic was not guilty of blasphemy, as his enemies alleged; since he had no belief in the actual existence of the god he dissected, analysed and laughed at.

Mr. Ruskin very eloquently defends Byron from the same charge. In “Cain,” and elsewhere, the great poet does not impeach God; he merely impeaches the orthodox creed. We may sum up the whole matter briefly. No man satirises the god he believes in, and no man believes in the god he satirises.

We shall not, therefore, be deterred by the cry of “blasphemy,” which is exactly what the Jewish priests shouted against Jesus Christ. If there is a God, he cannot be half so stupid and malignant as the Bible declares. In destroying the counterfeit we do not harm the reality. And as it is better, in the words of Plutarch, to have no notion of the gods than to have notions which dishonor them, we are satisfied that the Lord (if he exist) will never burn us in hell for denying a few lies told in his name.

The real blasphemers are those who believe in God and blacken his character; who credit him with less knowledge than a child, and less intelligence than an idiot; who make him quibble, deceive, and lie; who represent him as indecent, cruel, and revengeful; who give him the heart of a savage and the brain of a fool. These are the blasphemers.

When the priest steps between husband and wife, with the name of God on his lips, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he resists education and science, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he opposes freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he robs, tortures, and kills those who differ from him, he blasphemes.

When, in the name of God, he opposes the equal rights of all, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he preaches content to the poor and oppressed, flatters the rich and powerful, and makes religious tyranny the handmaiden of political privilege, he blasphemes. And when he takes the Bible in his hand, and says it was written by the inspiration of God, he blasphemes almost beyond forgiveness.

Who are the blasphemers? Not we who preach freedom and progress for all men; but those who try to bind the world with chains of dogma, and to burden it, in God’s name, with all the foul superstitions of its ignorant past.