Sign of the times of the day (UK Edition): Police tell cafe owner: Stop showing Bible DVDs, or we will have to arrest you
Police have threatened a Christian cafe owner with arrest –- for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen….
The Salt and Light cafe in Blackpool has for years repeatedly played the entire 26-hour-long Watchword Bible, a 15-DVD set produced in America in which a narrator reads the whole of the New Testament, on a small flatscreen TV on the back wall….
The sound is turned down but the words flash on to the screen against a series of images….
Mr Murray said the two uniformed officers from Lancashire Constabulary arrived at lunchtime on Monday, the cafe’s busiest time of day. WPC June Dorrian, the community beat manager, told him there had been a complaint and he was breaching the Public Order Act 1986….
[Mr Murray said.] ‘I said, “Are you really telling me that I am facing arrest for playing the Bible?” and the WPC fixed me with a stare and said, “If you broadcast material that causes offence under the Public Order Act then we will have to take matters further. You cannot break the law.” ’ …
Note: Section 29E of the Public Order Act warns that people who play images or sounds that stir up hatred against homosexuals could be guilty of an offense. A police spokesman said: “At no point did the officer ask the cafe owner to remove any materials or arrest the man and we took a commonsense and objective approach in dealing with the complaint.”
(Via: Eugene Volokh)
September 27th, 2011 | 10:12 am
Yet another one of these cases in which there is a brush with the law but ultimately no one is charged or prosecuted. Sure, it’s regrettable when something like this happens, but displaying Bible verses in England is not against the law. And in the United States, a religious group publicly proclaiming “God Hates Fags” protesting military funerals won 8-1 in the Supreme Court.
September 27th, 2011 | 10:18 am
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September 27th, 2011 | 10:42 am
David: Huh? So you think it’s no big deal when police officer tells you to stop doing something that he has no right to tell you to stop doing? Seriously? It’s ok for a police officer to threaten you with prosecution for said non-offense if they never actually go ahead with the threat if you meekly olige? Just another day in a free society, huh?
I refuse to believe you’re sincere in this position. I’m quite certain, given your record, you’d be apoplectic if a police officer told someone the law compelled them to take down a sign that said “Marriage rights for all!” or some such sentiment, and would not in fact think it was A-OK as long as no charges were actually filed.
September 27th, 2011 | 11:05 am
So you think it’s no big deal when police officer tells you to stop doing something that he has no right to tell you to stop doing?
Brian,
I think it is a very big deal when a police officer abuses and misuses his authority. Had I been in the cafe owner’s shoes, I would have been very upset. My point is not that these individual cases are not upsetting. My point is that so far no one has ever called one to my attention in which it was not acknowledged implicitly or explicitly that the police were wrong. I would be very angry if a police officer made someone in the United States take down a sign that said “Marriage rights for all.” What I wouldn’t do is try to argue, or imply, that we don’t have free speech in the United States. Joe’s headline was, “In England, Displaying Bible Verses May Be Against the Law.” My point is that this case, traumatic though it may have been for the cafe owner, is not a case in which displaying Bible verses was deemed to be against the law.
Unless something changes and people actually are prosecuted for this kind of thing, I am sympathetic to people like the cafe owner, but I consider it an embarrassment to the police, not an indication that the law prohibits religious speech.
September 27th, 2011 | 11:18 am
This is an example of why I think, “V is for Vendetta,” is one of the silliest movies ever made: it would have us believe that in the future Britain will be ruled by some Christo-fascist regime in which lesbians will be imprisoned and Muslims will have to hide the Qur’an. If anything, all the signs point to a situation where committed Christians are ground down between radical Islamists wanting to impose Sharia law and radical secularists determined to exturpate all religion from society. The movie’s scenario is so laughable that it could only be believed by the febrile imagination of a secular liberal. But precisely because of that, “V” has also a very sinister intent, which is to serve has a sort of justification before the fact for a coming persecution of Christians.
September 27th, 2011 | 11:24 am
David N, I take your point, but I think it’s at least a *little* worse than that. Police wouldn’t even try something like that, unless there was a climate that made them think there was *some* reason they had the authority to do it. Unless this particular officer is so out of touch with reality that he needs to be in in-patient treatment, I think there’s still something a bit worrisome going on.
That said, you’re right to say that this doesn’t add up to such things actually being outlawed, and so our reactions should be tempered accordingly. But I don’t think it’s entirely crazy for someone to look at it it go, “Hmmmmm. This isn’t good” and be referring to more than the particular policeman’s grasp of his job.
September 27th, 2011 | 11:56 am
pentamom,
I don’t disagree significantly with what you say. If these kinds of incidents keep happening or grow more numerous, clearly it is cause for concern, even if there are no arrests.
September 27th, 2011 | 12:03 pm
Note: Section 29E of the Public Order Act warns that people who play images or sounds that stir up hatred against homosexuals could be guilty of an offense.
Would that include pride parade participants dressed as phallic images, making images and sounds that stir up hatred against themselves?
September 27th, 2011 | 3:24 pm
Yet another one of these cases in which there is a brush with the law but ultimately no one is charged or prosecuted. Sure, it’s regrettable when something like this happens, but displaying Bible verses in England is not against the law.
But the cafe owner had to endure harassment from the authorities.
Gays find it objectionable to be harassed by the authorities for being what they are and for living what they believe. But apparently a different standard exists and Christians should just get used to it – there’s a big surprise (double standards? Who woulda thought?)
Of course, the real problem is that Christianity itself is being defined as intolerable because it interferes with the humanist definition of what constitutes appropriate sexual behavior, how families are to be defined and what it means to be human and/or to be part of a family.
It’s always a point of concern when people are bullied for their religious beliefs – but it’s more so when they’re bullied by people who are trying to institute a state religion on an unwilling populace.
Go ahead and whimper all you want about how humanism isn’t (in this instance) a proper “religion”, because of some loophole you’ve thought up in the definition of what is and is not a religion….it still looks like a duck, smells like a duck, and wants to burn all the heretics.
September 27th, 2011 | 3:49 pm
David, it wasn’t acknowledged they were wrong. In the article, the act is mentioned as stating that criticizing sexual orientation is permitted, but inciting hatred is not. It’s a judgment call, and he could very well be arrested-the exoneration may or may not come later depending on how is act is defined.
The policeman wasn’t overusing any authority at all-that was the point. Someone complained under the act, they investigated it, and the owner defended that it was in the Bible. It’s not a police officers call to make a judgment on that, and its even possible that not to be a factor-if ALL they played were the Bible verses prohibiting homosexuality, all of us would have to agree that the officers might be right.
The worry is that you have to defend any off-hand remark or public display of comment under this regime. That you have to hash out legal status of speech to such a fine degree.
September 27th, 2011 | 5:32 pm
Blake’s comments are all too typical of many people on this issue and are very disturbing: there seems to be, on the advocates of same sex marriage, a really vengeful streak. “Those Christians are really going to get what’s coming to them, by golly!” This only indicates that there is one sure law of all revolutions: that the oppressed becomes the oppressor. Sure, the new oppressors can justify their revenge all they want; it has never made the world a better place. Only the blood of Christ has broken and can still break that vicious cycle. But it looks like the new order has rejected this option and is going to sink into a vengeful moral anarchy.
September 27th, 2011 | 7:24 pm
Dave,
I’m an American who believes in freedom of speech, so I don’t have any great love for Britain’s hate speech laws. The point, however, is that they are not designed to promote homosexuality and oppress Christians. They prohibit speech that promotes hate based on race, religion, and sexual orientation. Here’s a case from Wikipedia:
As I say, I believe in freedom of speech. But Britain has a different tradition than we do, and if you want to be consistent, you really have to oppose laws against racial hate speech and anti-religious hate speech in addition to laws against hate speech involving sexual orientation, because they are all going to result in disputes where both sides have a claim that they were the wronged party.
And although I think in this case—if we accept the cafe owner’s side of the story—the police were in the wrong, it is not difficult to use the Bible to foment hatred. It was done by Christian anti-Semites for century upon century. Racists used the Bible to justify slavery. Different groups of Bible-believing folks hate each other—for example, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. So I don’t think, in a country with hate speech laws, it can just be declared that quoting the Bible is always permissible. Not everything in the Bible is pretty.
Lament the existence of hate speech laws in Britain and I’ll join with you. But claim their purpose is to persecute Christians, and that’s where we part company. There have been times in history, and there are places in the world today, where Christians have been persecuted. But present-day Canada, Britain, and the USA are not places where Christians are persecuted.
September 27th, 2011 | 9:21 pm
I’m not sure where you are coming from. My point is more that I disagreed with your response to Brian about police officers abusing authority. I don’t think it was such, and the problem is the officer can’t really parse a situation which the courts have to.
I didn’t really mentione either of the two points specifically, nor about persecution in the USA today. My main worry is that speech laws like that can’t really define what is hate speech and what is legitimate criticism in situations like the cafe owner.
September 27th, 2011 | 11:26 pm
Blake’s comments are all too typical of many people on this issue and are very disturbing: there seems to be, on the advocates of same sex marriage, a really vengeful streak.
Don’t project.
I’m not the one who is “vengeful” here.
I don’t support gay marriage because I firmly believe that every child has certain rights, and gay marriage is fundamentally incompatible with that.
If that makes you so angry that you must resort to personal attack, that’s up to you. But be clear: you are the one behaving in ways that might accurately be described as “vengeful”.
I don’t share your belief that there is a single correct way to think, and that anyone who doesn’t think that way must be demonic. I can recognize that you can disagree with me, and yet it does not mean you are a bad person. People have strong emotions. But don’t project your rage onto me. I don’t like it and I think it uncivil.
September 28th, 2011 | 3:47 am
[...] In England, Displaying Bible Verses May Be Against the Law. [...]
September 28th, 2011 | 6:53 am
Gotta say – The exchange between Heraclitus and Blake is pretty darn funny. So hair-trigger they don’t even realize they’re on the same side! :)
September 28th, 2011 | 8:09 am
Oh, and they both immediately blame the other’s ‘aggression’ on their being ‘liberal’!
Almost wanna bust out the popcorn. :)
September 28th, 2011 | 8:24 am
Heraclitus, are you sure you meant to criticize Blake? He is not an advocate of same-sex marriage.
September 28th, 2011 | 3:07 pm
Gotta say – The exchange between Heraclitus and Blake is pretty darn funny. So hair-trigger they don’t even realize they’re on the same side! :)
That you take pleasure from conflict says more about you than anyone else, I think.
Misunderstandings are very easy on the internet. When I see people talking cross each other, I usually feel embarrassed and want to turn my head away. Pain for the sake of pain isn’t my thing.
As far as blaming him for being “liberal”, I can’t understand why a conservative would call me “vengeful” – vengeful against what?
September 28th, 2011 | 5:19 pm
Blake – It’s not the conflict itself that’s enjoyable – it’s the fact that two people who are very happy to accuse others of malice and ill will found themselves doing so to their allies. Either one of you could have read carefully, just to check and see if your accusations had basis in fact, but neither of you did. A comeuppance, if you will – even Joe Carter says we can be happy when justice is served. :)
I’m really looking forward to pointing this out the next time you arrogate an entire worldview onto someone for disagreeing with you about a particular issue, regardless of what they actually write.
September 28th, 2011 | 5:53 pm
“Misunderstandings are very easy on the internet. When I see people talking cross each other, I usually feel embarrassed and want to turn my head away. Pain for the sake of pain isn’t my thing.”
Exactly. I would guess Heraclitus typed the wrong name. That’s all.
September 30th, 2011 | 9:50 am
The leading case on the subject is Hammond – v – DPP
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2004/69.html
There the court reaffirmed the speech of Lord Reid in the House of Lords in Brutus v Cozens [1973] AC 854, 867 that “vigorous and it may be distasteful or unmannerly speech or behaviour is permitted so long as it does not go beyond any one of three limits. It must not be threatening. It must not be abusive. It must not be insulting. I see no reason why any of these should be construed as having a specially wide or a specially narrow meaning. They are all limits easily recognisable by the ordinary man. Free speech is not impaired by ruling them out.”
This is a public order offence and the words used are merely one element in it: not only must the words must be “threatening, abusive or insulting,” they must be used “within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.” In Hammond, it was pretty clear that, had police not intervened, there would have been a breach of the peace.
September 30th, 2011 | 10:21 am
I would add that quoting the bible can cover a multitude of sins: a particularly infamous example being that cryptic note that Lord Breadalbane scribbled and passed across the table to the Master of Stair, when he and his cousin, the Earl of Argyle, went to see him to urge action against the MacDonalds of Glencoe – “Jer 48:10”
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