Comments | ontd_political: Government plans to stop Pope arrest

paulnolan in ontd_political

Government plans to stop Pope arrest

Jul 24, 2010 17:33

The government has proposed changes to the law which will prevent gay and atheist campaigners arresting the Pope when he visits the UK in September.

According to Sky News, Whitehall officials were said to be "seriously concerned" that figures such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Peter Tatchell could attempt to bring a private ( Read more... )

hiv/aids, catholic church, reproductive rights, pedobear, lgbtq / gender & sexual minorities, uk, law

Comments 18

saramiskismet July 24 2010, 16:52:14 UTC

Bullshit.

kyoko_godaikun July 24 2010, 17:10:07 UTC

If the Pope was arrested then there might be trouble. he's a head of state. Vatican City *is* a country. So he could claim diplomatic immunity and be released.

though someone needs to be charged for all the crimes.

paulnolan July 24 2010, 17:25:14 UTC

It depends - IIRC diplomatic immunity isn't a get out of jail free card against international law, just against the host country's laws. He'd be able to be arrested for crimes against humanity (see the whole thing with HIV, condoms and Africa).

sparkindarkness July 25 2010, 01:14:57 UTC

And even if it were invoked, diplomatic immunity doesn't usually mean "sure we let you go and ignore what you did" otherwise diplomats would be free to run around with large axes murdering people. Diplomatic immunity being invoked normally means that said diplomatic person needs to GTFO

rayiroth July 25 2010, 09:27:16 UTC

Speaking as a non-Catholic who is a little confused regard to the chronology of the entire saga.

I thought that the one who did the covering up was the previous Pope(s), not the current one. So why would the current one be in the possible situation of an arrest?

siobhanc92 July 24 2010, 17:21:16 UTC

I wish he would stay away from Birmingham, if only because I'm not far from there.

doe_witch July 24 2010, 17:29:18 UTC

Can't say this is anything different than what I expected. I'd love to see the Pope arrested but the campaign works only as a publicity stunt. I don't live in the UK, but as an outside observer, I'd say that even in a country that's no longer predominantly Catholic, the gubmint still will tend to think the Pope is an Important Person and therefore no more fallible than, cough, Roman Polanski. Granted, hooray for publicity stunts, even the ones that don't work.

mercurychaos July 24 2010, 18:11:31 UTC

Mr Dawkins, the atheist campaigner

Ummmmm, what. I mean I know the average reader probably doesn't know what the hell an "ethologist" is but they could at least have said that he's a scientist.

paulnolan July 24 2010, 18:15:40 UTC

His position as an atheist campaigner is more pertinent to the matter at hand though.