When you say "next week", is that w/c 19th June? If so, sadly I won't be around, as I'd love to give those religious nutters a piece of my mind, and I wouldn't mind seeing the show as well. I can't bear bloody authoritarian God Squadders of *any* religion who want to impose a theocracy on all of us, and they should be opposed directly by anyone who believes in free speech. If they're offended by a play/film/TV prog/painting/whatever then that's just tough titties - religion offends me big time, and has the blood of millions on its hands, but I don't go around giving grief to religious believers just because they offend me - if they leave ordinary folk alone then I'll leave them alone. An old cliche right enough, but live and let live. I agree with Fat Freddy: fuck 'em if they can't take a joke :-D

Just to confirm, yes the dates in question are Monday 19th and Tuesday 20th June - tonight and tomorrow.

Here's who we're up against:
 http://www.stopspringer.com/nottingham.html

Also see the leaflet they'll be handing out:
 http://www.stopspringer.com/leaflets/evangel.pdf

Please come bearing suitably worded banners, as we're likely to be outnumbered so need to be as visible as possible. I've personally erred on the side of seriousness with mine, rather than taking the opportunity to have a pop at religion, but feel free to express yourself however you see fit (free expression is the point of this, after all).

Looks like they're planning to do 6:30-7:30, so if people can only come down for an hour or so (before the Iraq talk at the ICC, which I know some are going to - talk part of it starts at 7:30 and it's only round the corner), that'd be just fine.

See you there!

So we finally met Stephen Green from Christian Voice:  http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/

I can confirm that he indeed does not appear to think very much. He's quite happy with "god did it" as an answer to almost anything.

Not only that, but he doesn't listen either! He essentially comes across as a rather crap politician stuck in some kind of religious role, churning out lines like a stuck record.

Once the protest had died down and most of the Christians had gone home, a few of us remaining anti-censorship types ended up talking to him.

His debating tactic involved continually interrupting and talking over us (despite that, we still gave him time to speak), rubbishing plenty of things we said without any shred of evidence to the contrary, using logic along the lines of "evolution can't explain the coloured feathers on a mallard duck, so therefore evolution is bogus" (despite us saying "we don't claim to have all the answers, but your view is incredibly simplistic and seeks to stop the need to ask the question").

In short, talking to him was an incredibly frustrating experience - largely because not only does he barely give you space to put your point of view across, he also doesn't listen in the brief seconds you do manage to get a word in edgeways.

He makes good use of the "if I don't acknowledge you have a point and just go lalalalala with my fingers in my ears, you can't win" tactic, which back in the school playground was a surefire way to a sound beating.

In conclusion, I found him to be a rude and arrogant arsehole - far more arrogant and smug than any atheist I know of, even those with a reputation for smugness.

In contrast, most of the other Christians we spoke to were very polite and receptive to our side of the argument, once they'd realised that actually we random collection of anarchists / humanists / socialists were pretty decent folks, who were there to make a serious point against censorship and did in fact have brains on our shoulders.

I ended up having a friendly debate / chat with a couple of middle-aged Christian guys (Ken and Graham) who essentially wanted to apologise for the arrogant Christian Voice weirdos - kudos to them, we actually ended up seeing eye-to-eye on a fair few issues, and I could happily have gone for a drink down the pub with them (although I got the impression they didn't drink).

Funniest thing was, while being talked at by Stephen Green, some random Christian passer by (not involved in the protest) came up to our little group and said (to Green) "Look mate, I'm a Christian too, but I agree with the anti-censorship lot. It's not our place to pass judgement on others, it even says that in the Gospel."

At which point Green started being a patronising arsehole to him too, pulling the "yes well I know which verse it is and you don't so nyah" kind of playground superiority tactic, so I offered the passer by the warm hand of friendship on our side of the debate if he felt pushed out by those claiming to represent his views.

All in all, a very strange day. It's not often you can have a friendly chat with the opposition in a protest, but with the exception of a few more hardline Christians (mostly older women giving us evil looks, it seemed, one of whom came and had a bit of a rant at us about how we wouldn't be protesting against Muslims) I found the Christian protestors to be a fairly harmless, albeit slightly mislead bunch.

That even some of them seemed quite keen to distance themselves from the Christian Voice bunch is an encouraging thing indeed.

With the exception of Green, who I disengaged from as soon as I realised he wasn't even going to let me speak, a few of the other Christians bid us a warm goodbye, shook our hands, thanked us for the chat and said "see you tomorrow then".

See us tomorrow they will indeed - and hopefully the rest of the week too!

Someone (sorry mate, I don't know your name) asked me to post the leaflet I prepared, so here it is.

Please download and print out some copies to bring along if you get a chance. I turned up with about 120 or so copies today (60 A4 pages, sliced to A5), which seemed to go incredibly quickly, so I guess we'll need slightly more than that each day.

Any amount of copies you can print out or photocopy would be helpful! Tomorrow I'm going to see what I can do about photocopying a few hundred - will allow myself far more time for it, as today was totally hectic!

Thanks again to all who came down - was glad to hear that others had organised their own thing rather last minute and were only vaguely aware what was going on before they turned up. It's nice to know we can quickly scramble something like this together with rather decentralised organisation.

TUESDAY 21ST JUNE

Hi to the gerbil, from the long-haired Faith No More fan!

Had a quick look at the Christian Voice website, they are one of the most bigotted groups I have ever come across.

Stephen Green, their National Director, states (emphasis mine) "Of course we make DISCRIMINATORY PRONOUNCEMENTS on the grounds of SEXUAL ORIENTATION. We have been CRITICISING HOMOSEXUAL RIGHTS ever since we started eleven years ago. In fact you could say THERE ARE DOZENS OF SUCH PRONOUNCEMENTS IN MY OWN BOOK "The Sexual Dead End"."

This is no longer just about censorship. Last night, it was claimed as a victory by the grace of god that only 30 people went in. Let's give them a defeat by the mass on Firday night, the biggest night.

Sorry Roger Geowell, got two messages mixed up there :(

Good thinking indeed MetalTrotsky. I originally wasn't going to be able to make Friday, but it would appear I depart for the weekend on Saturday morning now, not Friday night, so looks like I will be there!! (Fancy a pint afterwards again?)

Thought I was out of the battle now, but actually looking forward to Friday night - bring it on!! Nice to meet you properly yesterday too.

I'll announce the Friday protest in a few places, though it's unclear what time the performance starts? Not sure if it's a 7:30 start or 8:30 start, however, I have no problem being there from 6:30pm so let's get down there and do our thing, and assume (from the Royal Centre website) that the play starts at 7:30pm.

Incidentally, I fully agree that this has now turned from a freedom of speech protest into more of an anti-bigotry protest. The crap these Christian Voice folks spout about gays is un-fucking-believable!! Who do they think they are!!??

"Judge not lest ye be judged"... except if you're gay of course, in which case Christian Voice would like to let you know that you are scum because God has "revealed" to them that he does in fact hate you.

Of course, why an all knowing, all powerful god would create something he knows fully in advance that he will hate is pretty stupid if you ask me. Sounds to me like God might be a bit of an idiot... unless of course he was simply a convenient platform created for stupid humans to use to further their hate for one another.

I don't have many gay friends (at least, not that I know of), but it would be good if we could somehow get some of Nottingham's undoubtedly numerous gay community to come and join us at the protest against these bigoted bastards. Any ideas where we could start? I guess I'll send out a few emails and see if anyone can help out.

So anyway, see you on Friday at 6:30pm, hopefully accompanied by the biggest crew of counter-protestors we can muster.

I've posted a report and photo from Friday's counter protest - see the comments on this other Indymedia article:

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2006/06/343308.html