Labour failure Donald Crichton was given much of page 3 of the Stornoway Gazette to tell us all why the local party is not falling apart despite having a vile homophobe trying to call the shots.
Ach, he claimed, there was no split at all at all. Everything’s fine.
“It’s only a few people trying to sow seeds of disunity within the party. This is a non-story …” blah, blah, blah, he snorted in his usual interesting style which so seems to ape his lord and master, Red Ed. Sorry, maybe not lord. That just came out.
Only a few people? Not according to the people who called up me earlier. They’re not happy the church elder is not only ignoring them but also publicly belittling them. He is also ignoring letters to him suggesting he is not a fit and proper person to be involved. What else did he say? Well, Mr Crichton really turned on the PR charm big-style in his Gazette interview.
“I am being portrayed in an internet blog (er, is there any other kind of blog?) as bigoted and homophobic and if you are trying to link it with the party directly you are treading on very dangerous ground, I would say, as a newspaper.”
Gosh. As well as being a bigot, he is also a newspaper. All that as well as being a threatening, charmless homophobe whose sentences make as much sense as his pathogical hatred of some of God’s own creatures.
Why do I say Mr Crichton is a homophobe? After all, he has gone to great lengths to ensure that certain poor folk who believe everything that comes out of his mouth phone me up and tell me he is not. He is a decent man, they keep insisting.
I still say it because Mr Crichton made it clear himself at Stornoway Primary hustings on May 3. Below is the Hebrides News report which showed everyone how Mr Crichton, in his own words, was prepared to flout the law because he, wrongly and illegally, claimed excluding gays from our islands’ allegedly-welcoming B&Bs was “an issue of conscience”.
So here we had someone standing for the party of equality and fair play for all who, taking his cue from the Free Church elder chairman and rabid homophobe, wanted these businesses run in the manner favoured by the Nazis, the Taliban and the BNP, all of which expressed the desire to curtail the freedoms of people whose sexuality they disapproved of.
As far as we know, Mr Crichton has never apologised for having made a mistake with those awful remarks. Yeeuch, it sickens me to think how low the once-great Labour Party, who I campaigned for myself as a teenager, has plummeted when such people are allowed to represent it.
VisitHebrides, on the other hand, is full of people who are all open-minded and welcoming to everyone. Yet, puzzlingly, they have simply failed to comment on what Mr Crichton said that night about B&B operators’ rights to refuse people they suspect of limp wrists, lisps or even too-dusky complexions. Maybe they too think the laws banning discrimination does not apply in the good ol’ Western Isles. Maybe we should just ask VisitScotland.
The sole candidate to suggest defying the law on this point, Mr Crichton’s seemingly-innocuous but actually hateful answer sparked a Facebook and Twitter backlash at the time, and is partly the reason why Labour is now in bits in the islands. The disgust spread like wildfire. He, and some of them, still can’t see it. The rest of us look on in astonishment.
A member of his audience that night, a local man who had been a regular attender for nearly three years, after confirming that being a homophobe is part of the job description for Free Church elders, told me recently that he vowed never to set foot in that church again after being sickened by Mr Crichton’s comments. What can I say? Apart from well done and remember that some other churches here also encourage similar homophobia.
Sadly, the campaigning and utterly brave Gazette, despite discussing Mr Crichton’s own references to being called a homophobe, failed to put any of these points to Mr Crichton. Observant readers will also note that nowhere in the Gazette piece is Mr Crichton actually quoted as denying he is a homophobe.
Threatening and talking drivel about it, yes, but not actually denying.
That may have something to do with the fact that to extremist members of loony religions that claim, according to the religioustolerance.org website, to revere the Bible – the Baha’i faith, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism – it condemns homosexuality and states that, after death, sexually active lesbians and gays will end up in hell, not heaven.
Religious homophobia is not just homophobia and a crime like any other but it has been accepted in the courts of this land already as being one of the most vicious and heartless of all.
HEBRIDES NEWS May 3, 2011
The debate chairman Murdo Murray raised a personal predicament with the law obliging him to go against his conscience and provide a double bed for a gay couple in his own home.
He said: “I want to say no if a homosexual couple wanted a bed but under the law I couldn’t refuse.”
Peter Morrison “totally disagreed with Murdo.”
Donald Crichton highlighted: “It is an issue of conscience and the state should not intervene over who you do or don’t have in your home.”
Alasdair Allan said: “If it’s a B&B then it is none of your business what people are and you shouldn’t be asking.“ He pointed out any B&B is a commercial enterprise and is not allowed to discriminate.
Charlie McGrigor said: “I don’t recall Jesus saying you can’t be homosexual. I appreciate it is your house but once you become a business you open up to the outside world.”
Roddy Cunningham asked Alasdair Allan “what role does government have telling businesses who they can deal with?” He pointed out banks reject people every day.
Mr Allan replied that businesses were banned from discriminating against people on the basis of being gay.
