BBC disinvited us after we stood by Kate Forbes’s freedom of speech, claims LGB group

[IwantToRetire]

The BBC has been accused of disinviting a gay group from a programme because it refused to attack Kate Forbes, the under-fire Scottish National Party (SNP) leadership hopeful.

The LGB Alliance (LGBA) was approached on Friday by BBC One’s Sunday Morning Live to debate whether “traditional Christian views are incompatible with modern politics” on a studio panel, in the context of Ms Forbes’s views on same-sex marriage.

When a producer canvassed its opinion, the group of lesbian, gay and bisexual people said it “completely reject[ed] her views” but insisted “we have freedom of religion” and that religious beliefs are protected under the 2010 Equality Act.

Shortly after that phone call, the BBC producer sent an email, seen by The Telegraph, saying the programme had “decided to go in a different direction with the debate, and we’ll no longer be requiring Kate [Harris, co-founder of LGBA] on Sunday”.

Instead, the BBC invited Natasha Devon, a bisexual campaigner, who argued Miss Forbes’s views should rule her out from replacing Nicola Sturgeon as Scotland’s next first minister.

More uk.news.yahoo.com/bbc-disinvited-us-stood-kate-194201144.html

(Article is from the Telegraph but reproduced by yahoo)

Women sorry!

@DemiColon

An org representing 3 different groups is just going to be broader than one person's opinion. Within those three groups there will be a range of views on abortion, same sex marriage etc and they could gather this via a survey of their subscribers if they wanted to - but that's not their interest and the BBC wasn't interested in that either, they wanted click bait so went for Natasha Devon instead.

I know gay men who aren't against, but aren't pro, same-sex marriage. To be fully representative the BBC should have done some kind of poll or had a fully balanced vox pop on it perhaps? No one group represents all views of all members or supporters as naturally there would be differences of opinion across a range of subjects.

Well yes, their point here is free speech. But the question of whether lobby groups can really be said to represent a community in any meaningful way is pretty important in this kind of discussion.

Stonewall for a long time didn't have a viewpoint on same sex marriage because the gay community didn't have a unified viewpoint. It's more unified now, but certainly not completely. For many people it's not a matter of just all groups should be treated the same for all things. You could probably now make a case that an organization like that could represent the community's most common view on that issue, and it would be common enough to be meaningful.

I don't think you could make the case they do on things like abortion though which are very tangential to sexuality. If they do have an organizational opinion on that, what it means is that they do not, in fact, represent that whole community meaningfully. They represent certain members.

So they, and other bodies that do this, become a party type organization, rather than representing a whole group of people with some common identity or something like that which ties them together.

Yes, for sure. I just think it's a very interesting question how we, or the media, or political interests, use organizations like this to justify policy. I think interest groups need to be very careful not to say too much if they really want to be taken seriously as the public voice of a group.

I think interest groups need to be very careful not to say too much if they really want to be taken seriously as the public voice of a group.

Yes, but they need to be able to speak publicly first.

So you’re only invited to a BBC debate if you say what they want you to say.

What a depressing approach to publicly funded political debate.

Of course not. But there would be no debate if everyone they invited agreed with each other.

When you say you know gay people who have different views on marriage, does this mean they think gay marriage is wrong and civil partnerships were enough? Or they disagree with marriage in general?