I don’t understand, to be honest. Some atheist subgroup of the University College of London student union (UCLU) was asked the other day to remove a ridiculously unoffensive picture from a Jesus&Mo cartoon from their Facebook page. This one :
The correct answer to this request would have been to raise a joint middle finger, and point to the law. But that didn’t happen.
Ophelia Benson got a mail from one of their members, only for this to turn out to be some weird backpedalling effort :
UCL Union (UCLU) did make a request for the University College London’s Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society (UCLUASHS) to remove an image of the prophet Muhammed after a complaint was filed, but this was never anything more than an informal request. Before the President had contacted the students’ union to discuss the issue further, an individual blogger, neither a member of UCL nor UCLUASHS, decided to exaggerate the story, making accusations of “Muslim-led censorship”, in order to garner attention for himself. This subsequent coverage has unnecessarily strained relations between UCLUASHS and UCLU.
Who cares about strained relations ? Some religious dimwit gets himself into a knot over the most innocuous image you’ll ever see, demands censorship, and these guys actually fall over themselves to comply ?
I read that the UCLASH president has resigned over this :
CL’s Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society said its president Robbie Yellon was stepping down to be replaced by former vice president Michael Thor.
“Robbie stepped aside because he signed up as president to organise events and run a student society,” said Michael Paynter, secretary for the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies.
“He did not appreciate the stress he would be under when dealing with a controversy like this, so he wanted to make way for someone else.”
Fair enough, I can see how that job would come with some stress. I just hope someone else steps up and tells the UCL clowns and those who think a cartoon of two people in a bar may be offensive to a supernatural being, to get a fucking clue. This kind of statement is not acceptable :
The society was asked to remove the image because UCLU aims to foster good relations between different groups of students and create a safe environment where all students can benefit from societies regardless of their religious or other beliefs.
That’s even worse than accomodationism. Those “good relations” rely entirely on the atheists playing nice, giving in, feigning good relations, glossing over any differences for the sake of some fake politically correct truce, that to me has the smell of a rotting carcass. No, you accomodating wankers have it completely wrong, I’m afraid. I can’t be kind about this. UCL needs someone with a spine to stand up and tell the theocrats from the Muslim youth association who complained about that Facebook page to go and read up on freedom of speech, directly followed by telling them to fuck the hell off.
