Colin Coward – Please stop this before it’s too late
Let me get something clear right before I begin this post. I like Colin Coward. I’ve met him on a number of occasions, formally and informally and I genuinely like him. Unlike some of the GLBT lobby in the Anglican Church he is kind and gentle and rarely a harsh word ever comes out from his lips. if there were more people like him on both sides of the debate we’d get on far better.
So it pains me to have to say it, but the latest press release from Changing Attitude, (a reissue of a 24th March news item, which was until today withdrawn for safety reasons) whether authorised by Colin or not, demonstrates a disturbing lack of judgement. Here is the opening paragraph (emphasis added):
The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) has stepped up its campaign against Changing Attitude Nigeria (CAN) and England. Davis Mac-Iyalla, Director of CAN, received a text message threatening his life on Holy Saturday, 22 March. The Reverend Colin Coward, Director of Changing Attitude England, received an intimidating text on Easter Monday, 24 March.
Now stop and think for a moment. The first sentence claims that the Church of Nigeria is engaged in an active campaign against Changing Attitude Nigeria. The second and third sentences say that there were threatening text messages sent to the leaders of CA in Nigeria and the UK. There can be no other interpretation of the opening paragraph then that the Chuch of Nigeria was behind these threats. If not, then why have the opening sentence?
But where’s the proof? Where’s the demonstration of evidence that the Church of Nigeria was involved? It doesn’t exist. That’s why, responding to the recent open letter to the GAFCON leaders Chris Sugden had this to say in response:
A letter from the Bishop of Portsmouth and others to some of the GAFCON Leadership has been posted on Thinking Anglicans. This was received earlier this week and draws attention to alleged incidents in Nigeria. It is not made clear on what basis the work of GAFCON is connected with whatever may have happened in Nigeria. No details are given in the letter whether these regrettable events were in any way connected with Anglican or any other church or religious group. The basis of these claims is currently being investigated by GAFCON leadership in Nigeria
But wait, there’s more. The people who made the threats weren’t very clever because both Coward and Mac-Iyalla have the Nigerian mobile phone numbers of the people who sent the threats. So it should be an easy issue to go to the police, for them to find out who sent the text messages and to prosecute on that basis.
Yet here we are two and a half weeks later and nothing. Not a sausage. Still, Changing Attitude continues to make the allegation that the Church of Nigeria is behind this, an allegation for which Changing Attitude has produced absolutely no evidence. Proof would entail something like, "these were the mobile phones used and we can show that this one was owned by Archdeacon XYZ". That would be proof, but instead all we have is a smear and little else.
And it’s a shame, because by all acounts Mac-Iyalla has had a narrow escape recently in quite a vicious attack:
Davis Mac-Iyalla was attacked on Sunday morning, 30 March 2008, near the post office in Lome. He had travelled there on the back of a motorbike, and doesn’t know if he had been followed from his flat. There were many witnesses to what happened. Two men and a woman in a car drove up. One of the men got out, approached Davis and called him brother in English. He asked Davis for his passport and Davis said he didn’t have one. He then asked Davis who is his contact in Abuja and Davis said he didn’t have a contact. He then asked if Davis could give them the documents and Davis said What documents?
At that moment the man produced a knife and slashed Davis’s hand, and then a syringe with which the man tried to inject Davis. Davis managed to defend himself and knock the syringe away. The man ran back to the car and the three drove off. Davis retrieved the syringe, took it to the police station and reported the attack. The police analysis of the contents of the syringe is awaited. Davis then went to the hospital where his hand was dressed. He was given a strong sedative and went the house of lesbian friends to recover in safety.
This is the kind of homophobic assault that needs to be dealt with properly and deserves to be condemned by all Anglicans, of whatever theological persuasion. But how is Changing Attitude going to convince conservatives to take this violence seriously when in the same press release vapid allegations are made about the Church of Nigeria’s involvement without any evidence provided? As Greg Griffith points out in a new post on Stand Firm, the lack of any evidence, photos, police reports or medical records connected to the alleged funeral attack is a major major problem:
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.
If it can be proven that members of the Church of Nigeria were involved, or even that they were given a green light by those in authority, then I will be the first to stand up and demand that Peter Akinola gives an account. But so far we have just groundless assertions of complicity with no evidence provided whatsoever at all.
So hence the title of this blog post. Colin, please stop this at once. Most of us conservatives are as interested as you are in stopping this kind of violence, but why would we want to work with you in stamping it out when with every second breath you practically accuse us of orchestrating it? I mean, it’s not that hard to approach someone close to Akinola and to say "Look, we have these mobile phone numbers. Can you find out if anybody you know has those phones? I’m sure you would want to call those to account who have made such threats?" Frankly, such an inquiry would probably meet a positive response (though don’t take my word for it) but I’m betting such an inquiry hasn’t been made. Instead, a press release has been reissued which makes unsubstantiated allegations of complicity, which with every passing day where such complicity is not even vaguely demonstrated makes the allegations look more fantastical.
And that unfortunately reflects badly on those who are responsible for the allegation.
Colin Coward – Please stop this before it’s too late
Sad — but at least we know that they are truly desperate.
I’m curious about something, though, Peter. Why on earth would an attack on a guy on a motorcycle and an attempt to steal his passports and papers, in a country where grandmothers and babies and young women and young men are being kidnapped, killed and robbed in quite large numbers have anything to do with “homophobia”?
I mean unless we’re going to call attacks on old people “ageist violence” and attacks on young people as, well . . . “ageist violence” isn’t it a bit of a stretch to decide this is “homophobia”?
Ah well — I personally think there’s no need for Colin Coward to stop — I couldn’t care less if he issues a press release every week, and he most likely will. No way to stop some guy from writing up a press release about the latest violence in Nigeria, and attributing it to Akinola, and copying and pasting it into 54 blogs. I’d just think of it as comment spam and move on.
I really don’t think the point of these press releases is truth. It’s a “Shock & Shame Campaign” and it’s meant to be a form of assertive political activism. The fact that Colin is a nice person is an important part of the campaign, if this rather intriguing book called “After the Ball” is correct. In that book the authors argued that the type of activities engaged by such American activist groups such as “Act Up” or others that disrupted sessions of the U.S. Congress and did outlandish things was to be replaced by model citizens who do not fit the bigoted stereotypes of homosexuals. Colin Coward is in the position he is in as a spokesman because he fits that description. It doesn’t even have to be put on. It’s important that he is genuinely a nice guy. He needs to be in a place of credibility. Louie Crew is a very nice person and it’s always fun to talk to him.
That is why it’s so hard to understand why such activities as this engagement in political activism could be undertaken by people who are so nice. The leaders of Integrity in America are some of the nicest people you meet at General Convention – I mean, they are genuinely nice. They really are. That they would turn around and engage in the type of activities as this to shake-down of Peter Akinola is troubling. It comes across as very personal and it’s very familiar on the American political landscape.
It is a particularly American brand of political action. One of the chief architects of this type of political action was actually a Republican. I’m a Republican so I will say it. His name was Lee Atwater and he was the father of this type of drive-by political smears. Ronald Reagan – my hero by the way – was the nice kind man who would never engage in such activities himself, but Lee would. You can read more about Lee here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater
Perhaps not everyone in the pew wants to see how sausage is made, as Mark Harris put it today at his blog. For many – if not most – politics is sausage-making and church politics of this level of sophistication is big-time sausage-making. In fact, it is sausage-making of the first order.
That the progressive activists woke up and started using Atwater’s tactics, as the writers of the book “After the Ball” did should not be surprising. That Episcopal – and now Anglican – progressives also put it to great use may be surprising. But it is one of the worst legacies of the American political system at the end of the 20th Century. It can leave naive patriots (or perhaps in your case, subjects!) in its cynical wake.
And now it has found it’s way into the Anglican Communion.
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