Rod Liddle parodies the nonsense that is the government’s approach to foreign visitors with unpleasant messages. It makes no sense to ban a critic of Islam but let in every homophobe with a passport
Perhaps we should not let anyone into our lovely country, for fear of the mischief they might cause. Almost all foreigners I have met have been devious and malevolent, eaten up with jealousy about what it is to be British, none too bright and with filthy table manners. You would not leave them alone with your wife for ten minutes. Nor, indeed, with your children. A complete ban on these vile people would spare us a lot of moral wrangling over which of them should be allowed in and which condemned to remain in their overheated, squalid and dusty little redoubts. At the moment official government policy seems confused and haphazard. Some of these people are allowed in, some are barred. There seems no rhyme or reason.
Perhaps the Phelps family will help us decide the issue, for they, too, are on their way. The Phelps clan runs the Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Kansas, and revel in the soubriquet ‘America’s Most Hated Family’. Those slim slivers of civilised America took against the Phelps family largely because of their robust views on homosexuality: ‘AIDS cures fags!’ is one of their buzzy, edgy little slogans. They picket the funerals of dead US soldiers, insisting that God wanted the soldiers to die because they were fighting for a country which finds nothing remiss with sodomy. As you may have gathered, the members of the Westboro Baptist Church are collectively — and as the US demotic has it — crazier than a s***-house rat.
They are coming here, supposedly, to picket a play being put on by a sixth-form college in Basingstoke. The play is called The Laramie Project and it is about a young American who is bullied because of his homosexual tendencies. Yes, OK. That’s the sort of play they do these days. Sixth-form drama societies don’t do The Winslow Boy any more. I suspect if they did do The Winslow Boy then it would be an adapted version where the kid really nicked the wallet and was justified in so doing because he felt oppressed in some way. But anyway, the Westboro Baptist Church has promised to come and picket. They have sent the following message as a warning: ‘Your Queen is a whore! You hate God; God hates you; You’re going to hell.’ This God will very soon destroy the UK, apparently.
Will they turn up to picket the parents arriving for an uplifting 90 minutes of pro-sodomite propaganda? I have my doubts; they have threatened to do so before but then failed to materialise at the last minute. But this has not stopped the idiotic local MP, the Conservative party’s Maria Miller, demanding that they should be barred. She has, her office announces pompously, contacted the Home Secretary. Maria is aghast at the ‘inflammatory language and behaviour’ of the Westboro Baptist Church. Or, more likely, she has seen an opportunity for publicity and the chance to be more PC- than-thou and has seized it with both of her little paws.
Of course, if the Home Office were remotely consistent it would indeed ban the Phelps family from these shores. Last week it banned an elected European MP, Geert Wilders, from coming here to show a film he had made about Islam which suggested that the religion had a sort of violent, authoritarian side to it. Wilders was banned and as a consequence of the furore more people have now seen his film than he could have imagined in his wildest dreams. That is not the point, of course. Jacqui Smith, our bovine Home Secretary, took the decision in order to placate that fairly swiftly diminishing number of British Muslims who do not understand the concept of freedom of speech. It was a despicable and cowardly thing to have done, as almost every sentient person in the country concurs; but once done, you might at least expect her to be consistent. Not a chance.
Geert Wilders says some pretty strong things about Islam in his film, and it is fairly crudely put; but he does not advocate killing Muslims, or urge violence against them. The Phelps family would like nothing more than for you to roast a homosexual on an open fire, and have advocated the killing of ‘faggots’. You might argue, I suppose, that the Westboro Baptist Church is merely a dignified way of referring to a publicity hungry, and fabulously insane, Deep South trailer-trash extended family and that to afford them the oxygen of a banning order would be a degree or two of magnanimity too far. But much the same could be said of Mr Wilders — who is pretty much by himself in his updated crusade against the Mohammedans. Mr Wilders does not even have a yee-haw God-fearin’ family to fall back upon — just the security guards, who follow him everywhere he goes, just in case an attempt is made upon his life by the more rigorous adherents of the peaceable and consensual religion which he regularly denigrates.
And never mind Geert Wilders; the government is wholly immune to complaints from the British gay lobby that every week or so some low-browed Neanderthal African-American rap or ragga artiste arrives at Heathrow ready to spew out lyrics which are both misogynistic and repulsively, obscenely homophobic. Last year, Britain was lucky enough to receive a visit from ‘Bounty Killer’, a cretinous performer whose real name is Rodney Price. Rodders is famous for his Westboro-level antipathy to gay people, as evidenced by his insightful and pointed lyrics. ‘Burn a fire on poofs and faggots’ is one of them. Another is: ‘Mi ready fi go wipe out dis fag wid pure laser beam’ — which for those very few of you Spectator readers not acquainted with the ragga demotic means that he is ready to wipe out a gay person with a pure laser beam. I do not know how Rodney got hold of the laser beam, nor if he properly understands its properties. But his intent is fairly clear.
The excellent — and ever principled — Peter Tatchell has written to Jacqui Smith asking for clarification of this apparent discrepancy: peaceable Wilders barred, murderous Bounty Killer allowed in. But you know that there is no feasible explanation except for the fact that homosexuals won’t kick up too much of a stink, whereas Muslims might well do. The decision to bar Geert Wilders was utterly devoid of principle.
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