Christian Voice (sic) spokeperson Stephen Green is accused by the Daily Mail of being a wife beater:
Caroline Green was often punished by her husband Stephen for failing to be a dutiful, compliant wife, but his final act of violence against her — the one that prompted her long-overdue decision to divorce him — was all the more chilling because it was coldly premeditated.
Stephen Green wrote a list of his wife’s failings then described the weapon he would make to beat her with.
‘He told me he’d make a piece of wood into a sort of witch’s broom and hit me with it, which he did,’ she recalls, her voice tentative and quiet. ‘He hit me until I bled. I was terrified. I can still remember the pain.
‘Stephen listed my misdemeanours: I was disrespectful and disobedient; I wasn’t loving or submissive enough and I was undermining him. He also said I wasn’t giving him his conjugal rights.
‘He even framed our marriage vows — he always put particular emphasis on my promise to obey him — and hung them over our bed. He believed there was no such thing as marital rape and for years I’d been reluctant to have sex with him, but he said it was my duty and was angry if I refused him.
‘But the beating was the last straw. It convinced me I had to divorce him.’
Good on the Daily Mail, but hang on, which newspaper was it who kept promoting this dangerous lunatic? Take it away John Walker:
But most interesting is the Mail’s relationship with the man. Their latest story describes Green as a “monster”, a “fundamentalist.” The article goes on to note,
“Stephen was immersed in Christian Voice, which allowed him the autonomy and freedom to express his increasingly bizarre views unchallenged. As its founder and director, he was answerable to no one.”
And just who was it who was letting Green’s views go unchallenged?
Well, take for example this article about student stunt marriages that appeared in a newspaper just fifteen days ago:
“The students’ wedding was condemned by Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, an organisation that represents Christians.”
The story then goes on to quote Green at length, without editorial comment. And which paper is it who let this extremist monster go unchallenged? That would be the Daily Mail.
And that’s only the tip of the iceberg regarding the Daily Mail‘s relationship with Stephen Green, as Walker shows with quote after quote from just the last two years. As long as Green fit with the Mail‘s prejudices and could be counted upon to spout the reactionary, bigoted hateful nonsense the paper liked to quote he was a welcome guest; now that he turned out to be more nuts than they wanted the Mail puts the knife in.
The temptation here is to call Green a hypocrite, posing as somebody with high morals yet according to the Mail beating and raping his wife. This would be wrong however. It doesn’t matter whether these accusations are true or not as even without them Stephen Green has shown himself to be a nasty bigoted man who despises anybody who doesn’t think like him, who if he had the power would want to force everybody to live like he wanted them to live, no matter their own preferences. He believes homosexuality is sinful, divorce is sinful, anything not out of a 1950ties children’s picture book is sinful. In short, he’s a bully with no morals, just hate.
