Author: Ophelia Benson

More Pitcher. He’s an embarrassment to the Anglican church and to the Telegraph (whether the Anglican church and the Telegraph know it or not) so let’s by all means rub it in.

He was so pleased with his stupid abusive self-admiring reply to Sholto Byrnes that he re-posted it on the Telegraph blog. Well all right then, that makes it worth ridiculing.

(I’m doing what I’m criticizing him for doing, of course, and I do it all the time. But 1) I’m not an Anglican vicar 2) I write more restrainedly when I write on other people’s sites and 3) I do it better than he does. Plus did I mention I’m not a vicar?)

He starts by alluding to “a more measured atmosphere than currently prevails on my own foam-flecked thread.” But the foam is his, yet he seems to be pretending that it’s other people’s. So: he’s sly, and devious, and a blame-shifter.

Then he calls people who criticize his extraordinarily abusive post about Evan Harris “attack puppies” then he wonders “how many of them actually read the piece before dutifully answering the Twitter-call.” As if no one would have criticized his extraordinarily abusive post had it not been tweeted. That’s wrong, I criticized it without having seen any tweets about it. But even more absurd is the implication that if people had read the piece they wouldn’t have criticized it, or not as harshly as they did. Nonsense. It was an extraordinarily abusive post – he said Evan Harris campaigns to euthanize terminally ill people. That’s both vicious and false.

Then there are four paragraphs of blustering “I never, and besides they did too,” fetching up at

As for the Lib-Dems’ attack-bunnies, if they consider that’s evil and vicious, then I’d hate them to be around if I was rude about someone

without having mentioned the abusive and dishonest claim that Harris campaigns to euthanize terminally ill people. What a disgusting man – abusive, cowardly, and unrepentant. That claim was evil and vicious, and his refusal to cop to it now is…enough to make you lose your lunch.

Then there’s a rant about how Christian he is, whatever people say.

Many of these people expressing outrage about my criticism of Harris would be the same people who criticise Christians for not being more robust and outspoken; I wish they’d make their minds up.

That’s a good illustration of how stupid he is. He doesn’t know what “these people” would say, so it’s imbecilic to wish they would make their minds up when he has no way of knowing that their minds aren’t made up. Of course it’s also rude, but that goes without saying by now.

Then there’s the sly nasty stuff about loving him but struggling to like him oh the hell with it he doesn’t like him. Cute. What is he, 12?

Then he flogs his book, then he closes, revoltingly, with “With every blessing.”

There is one ray of light though; David Colquhoun comments (May 9, 10:48 p.m.).

It is no wonder that Christianity is in decline. Attitudes like those of George Pitcher must be helping it in its way to oblivion rather effectively. I can’t recall reading any political diatribe that was quite so intolerant and hate-filled as his.

I am reminded of homeopaths, those lovely cuddly holistic people who, once the realise that there trade has been revealed as fraud, turn quite remarkably unpleasant.

There is some amusement to be derived from the fact that these groups of people, who are both adamantly opposed to science and to enlightenment values, spread there hate-filled messages via the internet, a product, ahem, of science and the enlightenment.

There’s for you, sir!

I think I’m going to start being more thorough about observing the antics of George Pitcher. I find him really remarkable, and all the more so because he’s an Anglican vicar. He’s such a bizarre ambassador for his institution.

Yesterday he extruded a little heap of sneers at Nick Clegg and atheism and Nick Clegg’s atheism.

One aspect of this new Con-Dem Government that hasn’t got an airing yet is that David Cameron is a devout Christian and his new deputy-dawg Nick Clegg is an atheist…I’ve had a right ear-bashing from Nicky’s press office in the past for describing his atheism as “numbskull”. I’m sorry, I’m sure he’s up there with AC Grayling and Dr Simon Heffer.

Really. This is a grown man, with a job that is considered respectable in some circles. His job in fact basically consists of being wise and telling everyone else how to be wise – and this is how he goes about it. Do admit.

And then there’s this whole idea that we can make morality a science by basing it on universal desire for well-being.

One problem with that is that we don’t all have the same view of what constitutes well-being, to say the least. We don’t agree on what constitutes well-being in general and we certainly don’t agree on what constitutes it for self as opposed to other.

And suppose someone did come up with a survey that found – convincingly – that aggregate well-being was higher when women were more or less forced, by the lack of opportunity to do anything else, to be wives and mothers and nothing else, and lower when they had wider opportunities and correspondingly more freedom. Suppose there is such a survey, that shows aggregate well-being higher and women’s well-being lower. Suppose a world where women are distinctly a minority, as they are in India and China because of selective abortion. Would that outcome – a less happy minority but a happier total – be moral?

No; not in my view at least. But the idea that we can make morality a science by basing it on universal desire for well-being seems to mean that it would be.

Sholto Byrnes did a nice job of defending Evan Harris.

A consistently strong voice for the NHS and for science, he shared the title of “Secularist of the Year” with Lord Avebury in 2009 for their work in helping abolish the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel. He has campaigned against faith schools and argued courageously in favour of abortion, euthanasia, immigration and gay rights…I think he has been one of the most principled MPs in parliament, sticking to his convictions and standing up for a true-liberal view of free speech and of the idea of liberty itself.

The fact that some of the policies he advocates led “one Labour MP” in this peculiarly nasty Daily Mail profile to say “he’s way to the left of us”, only serves to show that Evan — or “Dr Death” as the Mail’s Leo McKinstry calls him — has not trimmed and tacked to the centre-right as New Labour did.

Well said. Under that there’s a very long and very whiny self-justifying comment by George Pitcher, claiming that he wasn’t really so terribly nasty and dishonest as all that in his Telegraph blog post. He doesn’t even mention his foul accusation that Harris “supported the strange idea that terminally ill people should be helped to kill themselves,” much less take it back or claim he said it by accident. Horrible man.

And speaking of not having the right to have rights –

“According to African culture, the man is the overlord,” said Peace Atwongyeire, 42, a handsome counselor whose face adorns local billboards saying she is not ashamed to be H.I.V.-positive. “You have to say yes.”

Because a man buys a wife from her father for cows or cash, he “owns” her. If she refuses sex or insists on a condom, he may beat her or throw her out of the house.

Also, condoms thwart pregnancy, and “I prove my manhood by having children,” said Mr. Bitti, a father of 14. “That is how a girl proves she is a woman. In Africa, you cannot tell anyone to stop having children. They will even think, ‘I would rather have AIDS and leave my children when I die. At least I will have produced my three.’ ”

And then abandoned them to misery; terrific.