Petition to Ban Donald Trump From the UK Gains Momentum

Good versus evil. David versus Goliath. Tolerance versus Bigotry. Suzanne Kelly versus Donald Trump. 

Kelly's petition to ban Trump from the UK hit the international headlines yesterday as the number of signatures rose from 42,000 to over 250,000 in one day. That number has reached over 400,000 and is still climbing.

Around the world people have expressed revulsion at Trump’s unashamed bigotry and pathological addiction to untruth. One of his favorite expressions is “I don’t know if it’s true or not but it sounds like it’s true,” but he draws absolution conclusions from the premise that it (whatever the subject of the day is) is true.

Harmless when you’re exaggerating your wealth, but a tremendous danger to society when you’re fabricating lies about people on the basis of their religion or nationality, which is Trump’s trademark these days.

And a danger to himself when he lies about cities like London, saying there are parts that  have such entrenched radicalism that the police fear for their lives. London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson, said the only reason he wouldn’t go to parts of New York was the very real risk of meeting Donald Trump.

Sarah Wollaston, MP, tweeted “Do we get to ban Donald Trump?” on December 8, the day Suzanne Kelly started her online petition to the UK Government to do just that.

Per the UK Independent Prime Minister David Cameron was dead serious when he called Trump’s bigotry “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.” And Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader, was more to the point, saying Trump’s comments were an “affront to humanity”. He called for people to unite against racism. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said “For someone trying to be president of America it frankly shows why he is utterly unsuited for the role.” Master of the understatement.

Sunder Katwala, Director of the nonpartisan think-tank British Future, wrote on their website that “...It is important that the UK Government makes very clear that [Donald Trump’s] extreme view is rejected and repudiated in the strongest possible terms.

“The UK Home Office has set out clear guidelines which have led to the exclusion of preachers of hate from the UK.  Theresa May has excluded extreme Islamists on these grounds, and also kept out those who have fanned extreme anti-Muslim prejudice, such as the bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. Trump’s statements are more extreme than theirs.

“Unless and until Trump were to retract these highly prejudiced comments, there is a good case for making clear that he would be refused entry to the UK by the Home Secretary.”

JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, said that Trump was worse than the evil Lord Voldemort of her novels.

And over 400,000 British citizens and residents despise him enough to want to make sure he can’t taint their country with his obnoxious presence.

In Scotland, Ronald Gordon University, which had bestowed an honorary degree on him, withdrew it yesterday after a petition to do so garnered over 7,500 votes. Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish First Minister, fired Trump from the position of Business Ambassador. She said his comments “are obnoxious and offensive, and have rightly been condemned by people across the political spectrum.”

In the US on Tuesday the White House issued a statement urging the Republican Party to denounce  Donald Trump, stating that his inflammatory proposal disqualifies him from the Presidency.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said: “Donald Trump sounds more like the leader of a lynch mob than of a great nation like ours.”

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter wants to ban Donald Trump from the city, St. Petersburg Fla Mayor Rick Kriseman tweeted that Trump should be banned from his city, and Portland, Oregon, city council will vote next week to formally denounce Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims.

Hillary Clinton said that the GOP candidate traffics “in prejudice and paranoia. It is not only shameful. It’s dangerous.” Bernie Sanders, speaking to Jimmy Fallon on Tonight’s Show, called him a demagogue, one who, a few months ago, was telling Americans to hate Mexicans. “Now he wants us to hate Muslims. That crap won’t work in America.”

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls tweeted "Trump, like others, stokes hatred and conflations: our ONLY enemy is radical Islamism."

Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German daily newspaper, ran an editorial with the headline, “How Donald Trump is betraying America.”

Evil versus Good. Donald Trump is execrable, his bigotry offensive. But we’re seeing what amounts to an international, grass roots movement to counter it. And that is something to behold. 

Straight Irish Couple Defend Gay Marriage - Christianity As It Should Be

I grew up under the mantle of Catholicism in small, post-colonial town in Africa and a parish where the bishop, who believed that women should give their husbands sex whenever they wanted it and even if they were divorced because the Catholic church doesn't recognize divorce, required people to kiss his large ruby ring before they spoke to him. The parish priest sunbathed naked but for a small towel over his genitals in an all-girls’ school and fiddled with little girls’ top buttons during religious instruction classes. Another priest, on holiday at the same time and place as a girl from the parish, appeared in her room in the middle of the night with a huge erection. Fortunately she had a mind of her own. But he didn't lose his job.

The concept of God was an all-judging, moralistic, all-punishing son of a bitch and Catholicism was about intolerance, rank chauvinism, the repression of women and the rape of young minds. Women couldn’t be priests or hold high office because men couldn’t control their sexual urges in their presence, which was women’s fault.

Later I learned that when my mother was a child the parish priest at her boarding school raped a girl who was a year older then would go and have Sunday lunch with the family and sit across the table from the girl and behave as if nothing untoward had happened. I also learned about how frequent a pastime raping children was, and that the Vatican was in bed with the Mafia; that bishops around the world used charity money to aggrandize themselves, investing in property.

Popes did nothing about any of this. With all the poverty in the world the Vatican was the wealthiest ‘organization’ in the world. My grandfather pointed out the irony of people with nothing begging at the gates of that grand city and being turned away.

Recently, in the past five years or so, I’ve become aware of the power of fundamentalist Christians who promote the violation of pretty much every human right if you’re not straight, or you're a woman or not a person with a white skin and, in many countries, if, God help you, you’re an immigrant. Just as jihadists find ‘passages’ in the Koran to vindicate their crimes against humanity so do fundamentalists and even main-stream Christians find passages in the Bible to back their vilification of anybody who is different to them.

And yet, out of the mud grows the lotus flower. A lot of people are increasingly disgusted with the twisting, from the Vatican to fundamentalists, of what surely was Christ’s intention—to create a tolerant world of love, peace and understanding.

Today I came across the most heart-warming video promoting just that. It was created by Brighid and Paddy Whyte, an Irish couple in their late seventies, whose son Padraic told them he was gay thirteen years ago, when he was twenty-three. They embraced and supported him then and now in their video they urged people to vote yes in the Irish referendum on gay marriage. In the video you can see how close they are and how much mutual respect there is. It’s absolutely beautiful. They alternate with each other in talking about their experience of gay people bringing love and joy into their lives and thus strengthen family values.

I’m so grateful to them for being who they are; not big-time, plastic celebrities, just straightforward, 'ordinary' people with big hearts and big minds who aren't ordinary at all. They’re a reminder of what Christianity is supposed to be about.

Kudos to Ireland for holding this referendum and to the majority of Irish voting yes. Kudos to gays around the world for persevering against a mindless and utterly inhumane persecution that’s gone on for generations. Their fight isn’t over but the momentum of support and recognition is like a tidal wave; there’s no turning it back now. They're an inspiration to anybody who has had to fight for their rights in any way.