Mister Sharp explains:

United Kingdom: a little over three weeks ago, The Observer posted a story about a prominent Tory, Philippa Stroud, alleging that she was involved in attempts to "cure" LGBT people. She has disputed this allegation, and the paper has appended her complaint to the article. Part of the summary of this complaint jumped out, as it makes her look as if she's a believer in the Satanic abuse myth:

In addition, the reference to demonic activity in her book "God's help for the poor' does not relate to sexual orientation but to those who have been involved in occult practices, including violence and sexual abuse.

That last comma is in a particularly interesting place...

Rising Tory star Philippa Stroud ran prayer sessions to 'cure' gay people—The Observer, 2nd May 2010.

Northern Ireland: A government minister is calling for a Belfast museum to treat fairy stories as science, and claims their failure to do so is a human rights issue. Culture minister Nelson McCausland, wrote to the trustees of the Ulster Museum demanding their exhibitions reflect his belief that his imaginary friend made the universe in less than a week. And he claimed a substantial proportion of the Northern Irish population shared his insanity.

McCausland defended a letter he wrote to the trustees calling for anti-evolution exhibitions at the museum. He claimed that around one third of Northern Ireland's population believed either in intelligent design or the creationist view that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago.

I have had more letters from the public on this issue than any other issue, he said.

So clearly, the museum, as an educational establishment, needs to correct their misconceptions, not encourage them. McCausland has some other insane ideas: he believes that Ulster Protestants are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel! One suspects that deporting them there would only cause more trouble.

The Guardian does not indicate whether he was writing in his official capacity, but indicates there is an orchestrated campaign against Northern Irish museums who wish their exhibitions to reflect reality. He's also not the only lunatic in the Northern Irish Assembly. Fellow party- and Assembly- member Mervyn Storey insists that publicity for one of Northern Ireland's few tourist attractions, the Giant's Causeway, reflect his belief that it is only 6000 years old, rather than the millions indicated by the evidence. He did not indicate whether equal space should be given to the just as convincing belief that the Causeway was created by legendary warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill so he could get to Scotland for a fight.

Northern Ireland minister calls on Ulster Museum to promote creationism—The Guardian, 26th May 2010.

United States: Scientists have complained that anti-gay religious groups are pretending to be legitimate scientific organisations, and presenting deliberately distorted versions of their research as fact. This is nothing new—the Prattle dissected one example back in 1998. The most recent case involves Dr. Gary Remafedi of the University of Minnesota, whose work on adolescent sexuality has been appropriated and misrepresented by a bogus paediatrics organisation, the American College of Pediatricians, trying to deny any support whatsoever to LGBT kids in school.

The letter, and the Facts About Youth website it pointed school officials to, was dense with footnotes citing scientific studies. Remafedi's research was at the top of the list.

The ACP argues that schools shouldn't support gay teens because they're probably just confused. Most adolescents who experience same-sex attraction...no longer experience such attractions at age 25, the letter says, citing a 1992 study by Remafedi.

Except that's not what Remafedi's research suggested at all. His work showed that kids who are confused about their sexuality eventually sort it out—meaning many of them accept being gay.

That's not the only example of this organisation lying about Remafedi's research. They took his finding that people who come out earlier are more likely to experience stigma and isolation, leading to an increased suicide risk, and twisted it to claim that identifying as gay itself was the problem. As Remafedi noted, It's obvious that they didn't even read my research. I mean, they spelled my name wrong every time they cited it.

Alvin McEwan has summarised the problem in a posting at the Huffington Post, and also links to Respect My Research—a Truth Won Out site dedicated to highlighting such abuses.

Evangelists treat the distorted research as the truth when they need to justify hate speech against LGBT people. Bradlee Dean looks like a 1980s hair rocker, a particularly naff one. His You Can Run But You Cannot Hide ministry uses allegedly punk music (with hair that long?!) to corrupt young minds with his imaginary friend. He has recently praised Islam for its murderous intolerance of homosexuality, and urged Christians to kill LGBT people. And he uses falsified scientific research to justify his violence.

On average, they molest 117 people before they’re found out. How many kids have been destroyed, how many adults have been destroyed because of crimes against nature?

As The Freethinker points out, this claim is bollocks, based on misrepresentation of research. Perhaps he was confused and thinking about the child abuse scandals involving Christian clergy (of several denominations) which have recently come to light?

University of Minnesota professor's research hijacked—City Pages, 26th May 2010; 'Let's threaten gays with death as the Muslims do', says Christian wingnut—The Freethinker, 26th May 2010.

Over on Facebook, someone declared today to be Everyone Draw Mohammed Day as a protest against religious groups censoring, through violence and threats of violence, people not of that faith and who therefore do not abide by its rules. The best explanation I've seen comes from Greta Christina.

Many of the contributions are deliberately rude and offensive. I don't see the point of that when apparently a simple drawing is enough. The physical appearance of Mohammed in my drawing is based on a 14th century miniature of the Prophet receiving his first revelation from Gabriel. It is one of many illustrations of Mohammed, by a Muslim artist, in the book Jami' al-Tawarikh, which is now in Edinburgh University Library. It can be seen at the Mohammed Image Archive. I drew it in an Insular style, inspired by depictions of Jesus and other Biblical characters in the Book of Kells.

United Kingdom: About a week ago, the Pagan Police Association received official recognition from the Home Office as a diversity staff support association. Whether this is the case is up in the air, but assuming it is, the main advantage that this confers is summed up most neatly by The Times: Endorsement would mean that chief constables could not refuse a pagan officer’s request to take feast days as part of his or her annual leave. (emphasis mine). There's certainly no funding involved, but that hasn't stopped the usual suspects from mouthing off before they got to the end of the sentence.

First up is Paul Nuttall, an MEP for the English xenophobic far-right party UKIP, who claimed:

It is politically correct madness of high order for the Home Office to give this approval. Everyone is entitled to their own religious belief and if they want to use their holiday entitlement to be off for their festivals that's fine but it should not be a legal right.

You see I added some emphasis there? He appears to be complaining about something while simultaneously declaring it to be fine. Unfortunately, Pat Regan of the Pagan Anti-Defamation Network felt the need to issue a rather bizarre statement, rather than a simple correction, and then failed to get a second pair of eyes to proofread it first. Here's an extract, copied and pasted:

Nuttall's disgraceful language belongs to a radical 1930s Germany and not a free and democratic UK 21st century society. I fully intend to expose and complain about Mr Nuttalls blatant ignorance and apparent bigotry, which may affect many ordinary Pagan families in society. After Pagans who will Mr Nuttall single out on next?

After that, I was terribly disappointed to discover that the Christian Concern for Our Nation press release was a simple re-telling of the story.

Pagan police get right to take festivals as holiday—The Times, 11th May 2010; Sefton and West Lancashire Pagans hit out at UKIP attack over holidays—Champion, 19th May 2010.

United Kingdom: Special diets foods retailer Goodness Direct is a front for the coercive cult, the Jesus Army.

I am privileged to have a reasonable (for the UK) whole foods shop close to where I live, but for more unusual animal-free products, I have good personal experience of shopping with Vegan Store, which appears to be a small, independent, vegan-owned company. Comments about alternative suppliers of gluten-free products in the UK would be welcomed by some of my friends.

Science fiction is apparently evil and to be avoided, but not because most of it is crap. No, it's because it's about science and written by atheists.

With it being a product of an evolutionary worldview that denies the Almighty Creator, you'd think the Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service would have no trouble coming up with more than the six dead men they did. They completely forgot about Douglas Adams, Iain Banks, Ben Bova, Angela Carter, Thomas M. Disch, Greg Egan, Harlan Ellison, Harry Harrison, Stanislaw Lem, H.P. Lovecraft, China Miéville, Terry Pratchett, Rober J. Sawyer, Bruce Sterling and Charles Stross.

They also chose to ignore this list and linked pages at adherents.com, which shows a wide variety of superstitious belief, or lack thereof, among SF writers. And clearly are unaware of that noted name William Charles Deich IV (via Pharyngula.)

Meanwhile, here is a useful summary of all knowledge.

If you are reading this, it's safe to say that none of last year's predictions of doom came true. So, how are we to meet our end in 2010? It seems many of the doom-merchants are obsessed with 2012, but the usual suspects are still coming up trumps. I'm going to try a new format this year, organised by date.

Matthew Sephton has mailed to point out an error in our piece about homophobe Richard Carvath:

Richard Carvath is NOT trying to become the Conservative PPC for Salford and Eccles. In fact, he has NOTHING to do with the Conservative Party. He has stated his intention to stand in the constituency as an Independent however.

The Lord's Witnesses have been using Bible codes to predict a terrorist nuke on New York for some time now, the most recent missed date having been December 15th or 16th. Sometime overnight, their site was changed and the prophecy now reads:

We now predict a terrorist attack using a form of fire from the heaven that we cannot conclusively determine, but we think may be nuclear. The US will be hit with a with a weapon producing a mushroom cloud rising from the sea (1Kings18), hitting midtown Westide Manhattan, near the Hudson river on 2009Chislev28 (December19/20).

We are warning you about this, so that when it happens you know that God has spoken of this event beforehand and in fact will save us from nuclear annihilation in the near future...

Still not convinced I can avoid going there in February.

Marilyn Agee has still not updated her site after her most recent failed prediction.

Are you still there? I promised to update the readers today, but there's nothing on the BBC News website about the terrorist nuke that was predicted. It couldn't be that the merchants of doom were wrong (again), could it? And like Marilyn Agee, the Lord's Witnesses have yet to update their site.

United States: Newspapers usually only prank their readers on April 1st, but the Arkansas Sunday Post (bringing you the biggest stories for the tiniest minds, every Sunday!) appears to be engaging in a bit of festive tomfoolery. I mean, there is no way on earth this story can be true, is there?

Arkansas church ban popular carol promoting homosexuality. Protests grow.

The church in question is Saint Catherine and Angelic Martyrs in Puftville, the very name of the town making the story suspicious, but what makes it really doubtful is the apt name given to the pastor: Randy Pillock!

Explaining his decision, he points out, The second verse is the problematic part. The first line ‘Don we now our gay apparel’ is clearly incongruent with our values. The outrage doesn’t stop there for Pastor Pillock who explains that the third verse is an homage to a ‘Blazing Yule.’

He is not alone in his views though. Church stalwart, Ted Trotter agrees, This carol has been part of the gay agenda for years and it really is time to put a stop to it. It’s unbelievable that we have been singing it unnoticed for all these years.

Nice try.

Gay carol ban: No more Deck the Halls—Arkansas Sunday Post, 16th December 2009 (not a Sunday!)