At the end of last year I was asked to be a guest on something called GB News, a British version of Fox News and just as severe and rabid. I appeared three times but haven’t been invited back and, I suspect, never will be. The first two appearances went smoothly enough and I managed to get my point across. But then it all changed.
The actual programme on which I appeared was the amusingly named Common Sense Crusade with Calvin Robinson, where a young man who was denied ordination in the Church of England but was made a deacon in a small breakaway denomination holds forth on issues of the day. He’s an arch-conservative. Well, of course he is.
What happened during my third appearance was unprecedented in my 40-year television career, during which I hosted a daily show in Canada for 17 years and have appeared on Al-Jazeera, Fox News, Russia Today and pretty much everything in between.
Outnumbered two to one, I argued the case for bubble zones around abortion clinics. I said that women have a right to access medical services without harassment, and that even prayer in close proximity was a form of intimidation. I was asked how as a priest I could justify this. I said that if anything it was “sinful” to deny women choice, that the Abrahamic faiths believe that life begins at the first breath rather than at conception, and that the Old Testament even calls for abortion in one case — it does.
It was fairly heated but my main point was that we could and should compromise. Allow prayer but keep it outside of the bubble zone. We can pray anywhere if we genuinely believe in the power of prayer, and must remember that in North America there’s been deadly violence against abortion providers, and clinics have been attacked. Including one in Toronto. I think I did quite well, and a number of people wrote to me to say so. We had, I thought, agreed to disagree.
Then I got home and looked at Twitter. Robinson has tweeted to his 232,000 followers that “for a Christian to be pro-abortion and anti-prayer is bad enough; for a priest it is unfathomable”. And, “Twisting scripture like that is wicked...judgment awaits. I pray he repents.”
For the next 48 hours I received myriad threats, insults, libels, and abuse. I was emailed, and someone found my phone number as well. One jolly soul even injected anti-Semitism. “The Lord rebuke you and your Talmudic values. Conversos all over infiltrate the church to bring it down. Synagogue of Satan.” And to think I always assumed that Conversos were a type of Latin American cigar! (My father, you see, was Jewish.)
I’m a big boy, and I survived. But here’s the point. Cancel culture is real, but those on the hard right hardly have clean hands. They claim one thing but do another. Days of hatred and intimidation do not encourage open discussion; being condemned as a tool of the devil by hundreds of ostensible Christians doesn’t encourage someone to speak their mind. Also, authentic free speech requires integrity. I’m not “pro-abortion” but pro-choice, and prayer shapes and forms my life.
Surely GB News’s Calvin Robinson knew what his tweet would provoke. There are numerous ways of silencing people, and they can be subtler than firing or gagging.
I’m not a supporter of any particularly political party and I’ve seen the hard left behave in a very similar way, trying to intimidate opponents into silence. There are now virtual no-go areas in social discourse and that can never be acceptable. My concern however, is that those on the right pretend that only they are victims in all this when the reality is that truth and moderation are the genuine casualties in what has become a horribly polarized conflict.
I’ve been fired by more conservative media platforms than I can remember but have no illusions about the libertarianism of the hard left. Yet the vast majority of people are reasonable and tolerant, and don’t look to gag their critics or harm those with whom they disagree. I suppose that this tendency to impose censorship has always existed but it seems to have become worse and more empowered in recent years.
Not going to work with me I’m afraid. I’ll continue to speak truth to power, whether it’s right, left, or otherwise. Even if it hosts a strange show with a strange name on a strange British television network.
