My Google news alerts this morning carry a piece by the BBC (which I won’t link - you can find it at Google News, but do not post it here) mentioning Rowan Williams’ denunciation of the farcical “attacks” I wrote about yesterday.
A player in this charade whom I linked to yesterday has posted this, and it’s a train wreck of broken logic and outright falsehoods:
Considering how aggressively homohating Nigeria is, goaded on by its politically ambitious Archbishop-Primate who has advocated jailing Gay people for 14 years for the horrific crime of having lunch together, it seems right to me to give Mac-Iyalla a web forum in which to speak.
He gets to be responsible for what he says.
And yes, I’ve known him to exaggerate a time or two—but far less than Peter Akinola, the bloodsucking Archbishop of Abuja.
When Davis says that a Gay leader got beaten up at his sister’s funeral, I think he’s probably right. Greggy doesn’t seem to realize this, but Gay people really don’t have a need to make up persecution stories; they happen quite enough in normal life. It’s hard for us to imagine more of them. We have no need to invent when the examples are all around us.
Do you see how this works? Since “everybody knows” Nigeria is a homophobic country, and “everybody knows” that attacks on gays happen all the time, the inescapable conclusion is that Davis Mac-Iyalla is telling the truth, and Peter Akinola orchestrated this “attack” last month.
Let that logic sink in while we look again at the problems with the story of this “attack,” which are getting more numerous and more problematic with each passing day:
1. If, as claimed in the link above, it wasn’t until last week that Davis Mac-Iyalla sent out his email describing this “attack,” then we’re left to wonder how it is that this attention-seeking activist waited two weeks before relaying news of this event to his pals in England and America. We’re told it arrived via email, and I know Nigeria is far away, but trust me: Email travels from Nigeria to America in moments. Why would Mac-Iyalla wait two weeks to report “news” of this magnitude - news so “hot” that the Archbishop of Canterbury felt compelled to condemn it?
2. Where is the physical or photographic evidence of this “attack”? The writer in the link above scoffs at the reliability of police reports from Nigeria. That seems like an easy way out of producing evidence, which is why in my post yesterday I asked about other evidence - easy to obtain, and entirely reliable:
3. Where are the photographs of this “victim” and his injuries? Are we seriously expected to believe that the “victim” of this “attack,” who was supposedly left near death, took no photographs of his injuries? Are we seriously expected to believe that Davis Mac-Iyalla and his gay activist friends - who are well aware of the tremendous p.r. value of such photographs - somehow forgot or neglected to take any photographs?
4. Where are the other eyewitness accounts of this “attack”? Are we seriously expected to believe that at a funeral, presumably attended by at least dozens of people, an attack that happened, by the “victim’s” own account, right outside the church door, and which was presumably accompanied by screams and cries (remember, this was a “life-threatening attack”), went unheard by every single person in the church? How can it be that at a public gathering of this size, no one else seems to have witnessed the attack, or even heard anything from the “victim”? If they did, then why did they not rush to his aid? And if there are witnesses, then where are their accounts?
5. What is going on with the description of the attacker(s)? We’re told it was a “mob,” but that the “attack” was carried out by a single “muscular” man. Where was the mob during the attack? Remember: We are being asked to believe that a mob of angry homophobes, come to a church to beat someone nearly to death, went completely unnoticed by a large gathering of funeral attendees inside the church.
6. Speaking of the attacker, are we seriously expected to believe that he delivered not one, but two flowery, Victorian-English soliloquies as he beat his “victim”? Let’s review what Mac-Iyalla’s report claims the attacker said. First:
“You notorious homosexual, you think can run away from us for your notorious group to cause more abomination in our land?’ Those who attacked me were well informed about us so I suspect an insider or one of the leaders of our Anglican church have hands in this attack.”
Second:
“We will not rest until we silence you and any who join you to pollute the land with the abominable act of homosexuality. You are perverts who go around corrupting and inducting young people into our evil society. We will kill you and it will be a favour to the country. Nigeria will not contain you or any other person that practices homosexuality.”
Let me be clear, if I haven’t been already: This is not even remotely plausible.
7. Are we also seriously expected to believe that there was no one within earshot, and no one who witnessed the “attack,” standing outside the church? That there were absolutely no bystanders at all?
8. Whether or not the Nigerian police are reliable, surely a “life-threatening attack” warrants taking the “victim” to a nearby hospital, or some kind of clinic. Pretty much by definition, life-threatening injuries require non-trivial medical treatment; a beating would imply bandages, sutures, splints, a cast… something. Are there no records at all of this treatment? Why is it that we haven’t been given the name of the hospital or clinic to which the “victim” was taken? Where is the statement of the attending physician who sewed up the cuts, bandaged the wounds, set the cast, or even prescribed some Tylenol?
9. Witnesses, police reports, and hospital reports aside, where are the rest of the details that normally accompany reports of vicious, life-threatening attacks? For one, what is the victim’s name? Why is it that the simplest, most fundamental item of information in this story hasn’t been provided? All we’re told was that it was a “Gay leader.” Can we not at least have a name?
10. For another, in exactly what town, and at exactly what church, did this “attack” take place?
I find it impossible to believe that if this “attack” did indeed happen, three weeks later none of these details have emerged: Not a police report, not a statement from a single eyewitness, or a doctor who treated the “victim’s” wounds, or a photo of his wounds, or the name of the town, or the name of church, or the time of day the “attack” allegedly happened, NOT EVEN THE NAME OF THE “VICTIM” HIMSELF.
There are reasons why in real attacks such as these, eyewitness statements are taken and available, photographs of injuries are taken, statements from attending physicians are taken, and details as to time and place are provided: To establish the plausibility of the report, and provide information that can be verified by independent sources.
What Colin Coward, Davis Mac-Iyalla, Susan Russell and Integrity, and the rest of CA’s English and American partners are doing is charging that the Anglican Church of Nigeria, and Archbishop Peter Akinola himself, aren’t just hostile to homosexuality in general, or to certain homosexuals in particular, but that they deliberately orchestrated this “attack.” If the “victim” really sustained life-threatening injuries, and if he really has any credible evidence whatsoever that the Anglican Church of Nigeria and Peter Akinola had anything to do with the planning and execution of the attack, then charges should be brought against Akinola and the church immediately. Furthermore, the scope of the charges should include at the very least conspiracy, assault and battery, and attempted murder.
If Rowan Williams believes that Archbishop Akinola had anything at all to do with this, then dis-inviting him to Lambeth is the first step he should take. Even Rowan Williams, big-tent advocate that he is, cannot possibly agree that there is any room at the table of the Anglican Communion for an archbishop who plots and executes the physical attack and beating of anyone, gay activist or not. The next thing he should do is call for a criminal investigation of +Akinola by Nigerian authorities.
But there are reasons, of course, we have not seen the first shred of evidence that this “attack” took place at all, and that is because it almost certainly did not happen. Almost certainly, this is yet another Davis Mac-Iyalla fraud, in which Colin Coward is yet again complicit, and by which Susan Russell, Integrity, and now Rowan Williams himself have been duped.
Coward, Russell, and the rest of their English and American allies who are helping peddle this farce would be apoplectic if charges of this kind were made by a conservative churchman against a liberal archbishop and his church, and rightly so. Violence against innocent people because of their sexual attractions is abhorrent, and we should do what we can to prevent it before it happens and to punish it when it does happen, but we are not to give legitimacy to clearly absurd charges, of this serious a nature, simply because it serves our cause. There is a difference between being opportunistic, and helping perpetrate lies. “Everybody knows it’s true” is not something our Worthy Opponents would ever accept from us as proof of an atrocity, and rightly so. Neither is a complete lack of photographic or documentary evidence, and rightly so.
For myself, I have dismissed Colin Coward and Davis Mac-Iyalla as frauds, and their claims as worthless. I am more concerned with Susan Russell, Terry Martin, and Rowan Williams. My charge to them is this:
You have rushed to judgement about an event the veracity of which is anything but established, and the details of which strain credulity, to say the least. You have given legitimacy to the claim that Peter Akinola and the Anglican Church of Nigeria are criminally complicit in conspiracy, assault and battery, and perhaps attempted murder. Will you call for a criminal investigation of Akinola’s involvement? Will you ask Colin Coward and Davis Mac-Iyalla to produce evidence of the “attack”?
If you do the former, then I for one will at least be satisfied that you sincerely believe +Akinola to be complicit, that you’re prepared to put your money where your mouths are. If you do the latter, and if we indeed see some credible evidence for the “attack,” then I for one will at least be satisfied that there is cause for further investigation of the incident.
Absent either, my only remaining question is: Is this the level to which you now wish to lower the standard for charges of this seriousness?
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I remember learning that lynchings in the South rarely had witnesses either, yet they continued…