Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall...
 

...........In my opinion.Stonewall has awarded their annual bigot of the year award to Cardinal Keith O'Brien for his views on same sex marriage ,which it must be said, he has been quite vocal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...itics-20175530

What Stonewall have spectacularly failed to realise is that the Cardinal is a Catholic and so is against same sex marriage the same as he will be against abortion as part of his faith .He has just as much right to voice his opinion against same sex marriage as Stonewall have in favour .
As a result sponsors such as Barclays and Coutts have threatened to drop their sponsorship unless the Bigot of the year award is removed because they see it as offensive and quite frankly i agree

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Stonewall clearly think their opinion is the only one which isn't bigoted. Maybe they've been taking lessons frm Gordon Brown. :D

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Indeed ,you can have any opinion you want as long as it's theirs

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Reminds me of that bigot in chief Henry Ford.... :D

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

And that is the problem with so many left wing pressure groups.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Bloody hell I'm even agreeing with Russ today... :confused:
:D

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

I have thought of stonewall as an unpleasant little group since their campaign of outing people many yeaars ago i have seen nothing since to make me change my mind. Sometimes i think you can do more harm to your cause by your actions then good and i feel stonewall proves it quite well.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

To be honest i have never had time for stonewall and if anyone deserves the name bigoted its them if you ask me.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Ok Just for the discussion as this is a forum after all. Stonewall is out there to bring prejudice out in the open so with this in mind they have done what they have set out as its been on the national news and in the newspapers and now on this Forum. So they have done a cracking job.

Question:... should Cardinal Keith O'Brien be named as bigot of the year? Answer:.... NO
but as I have said Stonewall have to step out of the box which gets people talking.

Lets change the NO GAYS to NO IRISH OR BLACKS Which was quite prevalent in and around London in the 60s in Bedsit land. Both are wrong and illegal now.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Personal insults to a religious man simply following his religion are not doing themselves any favours though and will only serve to alienate the gay community .If i where gay i would be worried about this type of "award" and it's repercussions

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

In theory yes, Stonewall ought to be doing a good job. However all they do (and have done for about 20 years) is simply scream "BIGOT!!" to anyone daring to so much as question gay rights. OK you may ask why someone would want to question them but their attitude is what stifles debate. As previously stated, people are free to hold any opinion providing it fits with that of Tatchell and co.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

I'm sorry, but anyone stating the following:

Is a moron who deserves slating regardless of his reasons for thinking what he does. Having religious beliefs is no excuse for spouting unsubstantiated rubbish that has no factual basis whatsoever.

If he wants to say that he objects to same sex partnerships because of religious reasons then fine, but the above just shows he is willing to say any old rubbish to back up his beliefs, which makes him a ermm bigot...

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

I say lets have a poll added to the top of this thread. Then the members here can vote who is the bigger bigot. Stonewall or Cardinal Keith O'Brien

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

...granted however for them in return to label him a bigot because they strongly disagree with his views makes them bigots.

Hence this thread.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

I disagree. They'd be bigots if they labelled him a bigot for saying he objected to same sex partnerships on the grounds of religious beliefs. Which they didn't.

I'll grant you that it's a little childish to have a 'bigot of the year' award in the first place, but given that they have one, O'Brien is a worthy recipient. Having the right to an opinion is no excuse for being a rubbish spouting moron.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Erm, by that logic, if I call someone a racist because they openly espouse denigratory opinions that people of a different skin colour were less intelligent / more violent / smelt funny / acted strangely just because of their skin colour, that would make me a bigot?

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

This is it. The logic this thread appears to be predicated on is that you can't call someone a bigot because that makes you a bigot for not allowing the other an opinion. Which is nonsense...

The reality is that some people are bigots, and Cardinal O'Brien appears to be one of them. The people in Stonewall may well be bigots themselves, but not because they're calling O'Brien a bigot for a genuinely held belief. They're calling him a bigot for talking bollocks to back up his beliefs.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

A novel way for them to claim the moral high ground.

Well by definition, intolerance of intolerance is also intolerance...

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

The Catholic church does believe that same sex partnerships are harmful to their physical ,mental and spiritual well being though ,whether you,me or anyone else thinks it's rubbish or not is not the point ,he personally cannot be a bigot for saying what his religion believes .

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Then perhaps his religion itself is bigoted?

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

If his particular brand of Christianity is considered bigoted then that's a valid viewpoint - which means aiming the title at him makes Stonewall out to be even more petty and childish than it usually is.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Agreed ,one of the reasons why breakaway religions happen is because people don't agree with aspects of the main religion ,hence the Church of England for example .Allowing same sex partnerships/marriage or even abortion in the Catholic church would mean a fundamental change to the beliefs of that church.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

And childish semantic games are, by definition, childish semantic games.

---------- Post added at 16:10 ---------- Previous post was at 16:06 ----------

Sorry, the suggestion that same sex partnerships are harmful to people's physical health is demonstrable rubbish. And if it's harmful to someone's mental health it's because of the attitudes of the likes of O'Brien.

Let's face it. O'Brien is a bigot.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

no he's a Catholic ,you seem to be applying your own personal religious beliefs to the argument.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

As are inconvenient truths. With many left wing people and activist groups the trend when faced with such is to simply write it off.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

No. There is no way that it is a religious belief that a same sex partnership is harmful to someone's physical health. It is a rubbish claim designed to back his religious belief (which he's entitled to) that it's a sin to be in a same sex partnership. There's furthermore no reason why he should have that belief, as there are plenty of people in the same religion that don't share that belief.

So, O'Brien is either stupid, or he is willingly telling falsehoods to back up his beliefs. I suspect that latter, and that makes him a bigot. If he were to say that he objects to same sex partnerships because he beliefs that the bible dictates that marriage should be between a man and a woman it would be a completely different matter.

---------- Post added at 16:36 ---------- Previous post was at 16:32 ----------

Not sure what being left or right wing has to do with anything, but bringing it into this discussion makes you look rather silly.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

That wasn't Stonewall but OutRage! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OutRage!

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Why? You don't consider Stonewall to be left wing?

With many pressure groups and people with view they reflect, if they feel the are confronted by an example of the issue they're against, instead of debating and actually listening to the other person's views they simply attack or write them off. Similar in fact to what you did.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Ahem

I believe Stonewall are right (if a little childish) to call O'Brien a bigot, because, on the basis of what he's said, I think he is a bigot.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

That's not in doubt. But you appeared to be responding to my comment of "intolerance of intolerance is also intolerance."

A lot of activist groups simply wave that idea off, rather than accepting or admitting the double standards.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

That was in response to the notion, which this thread appears based on, that someone who calls someone else a bigot must himself be a bigot, which to my mind is a silly semantic game, as is intolerance of intolerance is also intolerance. There's a real world out there, with real bigots, and really intolerant people, and I think it's good they are called out. That's not to say that people aren't entitled to opinions or beliefs. It does mean that if your opinion means you act like an idiot, I will call you an idiot. If that's intolerant, then so be it.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

OK so you admit to being intolerant, glad you're onboard.

Not that I'm suggesting there's essentially anything wrong with intolerance alone. My issue is with people who claim to hate/oppose/be activists against any form of intolerance yet demonstrate intolerance in the way you allude.

Along with what was said earlier, it seem for some people that intolerance is only wrong when it fits in with their views when in actual fact I'd suggest intolerance is far more a human trait than people would admit.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Yes it can mean exactly that if you are a Catholic .You have to include other doctrines of Catholicism to understand why he believes it .The Catholic church believes in heterosexual partnerships for life and no sex before marriage so promiscuity, particularly amongst the gay community was blamed for the spread of aids ,if they had stuck to a traditional form of partnership i.e one partner and no promiscuity as taught by the church then diseases like aids would not have spread the way it did .

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

But intolerance is not the same thing as bigotry.

I am intolerant of rapists and kiddy-fiddlers - I would be amazed if someone called me a bigot because of that.....

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

In fairness it wasn't myself who started the thread..

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Perhaps then it's time for a most delusional and deliberately offensive person of the year award. I'm sorry. There's no excuse for the type of things O'Brien says and the way in which he says them. I think he's a bigot and an obnoxious prat, and Stonewall are right in singling him out. :D

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Ruth Davison was voted politician of the year at the same award ceremony and was promptly boo'd during her acceptance speech when she said the bigot of the year award was offensive and should be withdrawn

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

I think that says more about Stonewall's attitude than anything else.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

What's the problem? O'Brian says gay marriage is a 'grotesque subversion', Stonewall calls him a bigot. It's just tit-for-tat nonsense. I don't think O'Brian's religion exempts him from being criticised..

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Stonewall would have been better off giving the award to the catholic church rather than an individual, a few years ago they gave the award to Heinz because the company bowed to public complaints and removed an add that showed two men kissing ,they didn't single out the person who pulled the add

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall......
 

Stonewall isn't criticising his opinion - it is launching an ad hominem attack on his person. To call someone a bigot is to claim that their opinion should not be listened to. Having spent so many years demanding to be heard and accepted it is gross hypocrisy of Stonewall to behave in this way.

Re: Bigot of the year award goes to Stonewall...
 

Sunday @ 10:00 this subject is being discussed on BBC 1 Sunday Morning Live with the question is Stonewall's "Bigot of the year" award inappropriate? and they have a poll running.

You can even have your view via text...