My first meeting at Dorset Humanists

Sharon and I went to our first meeting of Dorset Humanists. The speaker was Stewart Lee, stand up comedian & lyricist of of Jerry Springer, The Opera - the DVD is available from HMV.

Fundamentalist Christians campaigned to prevent the Opera being shown at provincial theatres during 2006. They succeeded in preventing it being performed at a third of the theatres that had originally booked the show. Stewart said his severest tests were sharing debating platforms with Christian Voice (wiki) (who threatened the BBC with blasphemy) and other fundamentalist religious believers (both Christian and Muslim). The majority of the 60,000 protests (58,000 more than had been received before) to the BBC prior to the transmission of the Opera in January 2005 were from Texas - the server of Christian Voice.

A lot of discussion after the talk, led by Jane Bannister, about the use of swear words, freedom of speech and the Fundamentalist Religious.

We met my fathers great friends Hyme Lionel Blackman and his wife Rene who have been members of Dorset Humanists for 8 years. His business has tried to compete with Ebay. He still has his shop in Barrack Road, Bournemouth.