Britannia Radio

The BBC smears a devout Roman Catholic European...no surprise

The EU's new foreign secretary, Baroness Ashton, was at the European Parliament today, being questioned by MEPs. Since she will also be a new vice-president of the Commission as well as 'High Representative for Foreign Affairs,' (no, I still can't believe it either) she had to submit to questioning like all the other members of the new Commission.

The BBC on-line news service reported on her appearance at the parliament. They had absolutely nothing bad to say about this unelected New Labour Nobody.

But the BBC couldn't resist the chance to use the story to fire off a drive-by smear at Rocco Buttiglione, a Roman Catholic professor of political science, a former professor of philosophy and a former Christian Democrat Minister for EU Affairs in the Italian government.

Buttiglione was no where near Brussels today, and has nothing to do with any of the EU institutions. But in 2004 he was appointed by the Italian prime minister to be Italy's European Commissioner, and was in line for the justice portfolio. Then after parliamentary hearings he was forced to withdraw from his nomination because of an attack by the parliament's left-wingers and Greens. The BBC couldn't resist going over this defeat of a conservative European, saying he was forced to withdraw because 'MEPs objected to Mr Buttiglione's opposition to gay rights.'

That is a smear by the BBC. Buttiglione never opposed anyone's rights.

He was questioned at the parliament about his ideas on homosexuality because the MEPs had been briefed he was a devout Catholic, father of four and a close friend of the Pope. Or as the BBC patronisingly described him at the time,he is 'God-fearing.' That was enough to set the parliamentary mob running.

Here is what he actually said to the MEPs (as opposed to what the BBC wants you to believe he said): 'I may think of homosexuality as a sin, but it has no effect unless I say it is a crime. The state has no right to stick its nose in this area...The rights of homosexuals should be defended on the same basis as the rights of all other European citizens. But I don't accept that homosexuals are a category deserving of special protection.'

In other words Buttiglione was saying that he believes all men are created equal, and so all men should have equal protection of the laws of the land. Sounds perfectly right to me. Indeed, sounds like an expression of classical liberal thinking.

Actually, it wouldn't have mattered what Buttiglione said at the parliamentary hearing. The left-wingers and the Greens -- who by the way continue to be happy to have among their number the French Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a man with an open history of engaging with very young children in mutual zips-down genital touching, and who maintains this was perfectly-okay behaviour while he was a teacher -- were out to block any devout Christian from any senior post in any EU institution.

What the MEPs were doing was demonstrating their intolerance of anyone who does not share their anti-Christian views. Buttiglione is an academic, a man who has studied the ancient philosophy and moral laws of his Church, and who chooses to live his own private life by those moral laws. That he also chooses to protect the right of other men to live their own private lives by their own moral laws was irrelevant to the intolerant mob at the parliament: no devout Christians are to be allowed in the Commission -- or anywhere else, if the Jacobins of the Strasbourg Gravy Train can help it.

And right along side the intolerant mob runs the BBC, twisting the truth.