The account @paulawyd belongs to Paula Thompson, a member of the group Catholic Voices. Now, lest the hearts of the over-excitable elements of the liberal-left get pounding, this organisation is an organ of the Roman Catholic Church in much the same way that Progress is an organ of the Labour party.
With no official ecclesiastical recognition, and obsessed with abortion and same-sex marriage, Catholic Voices is making waves in the media. This in spite of the fact that the capacity of its collection of wannabe theocrats to be a 'voice' for a predominantly Labour-voting and socially tolerant religious constituency might be doubted.
Founded by a member of Opus Dei along with a man whose qualifications to defend the intrinsically marital and reproductive nature of sex could be questioned, CV has been making waves as a kind of religious Right equivalent of the Living Marxism/ Sp!ked group. They are incredibly good at getting into the media. They're even incredibly good at getting into the media when not invited. Here's a Voice on Question Time (7:37 onwards):
CV epitomise a worrying trend towards the growth of a religious Right in Britain. Thompson's tweet echoes an American tradition of making abortion clinics sites of conflict. Another bunch of righteous warriors, capable of doing far more damage than the odd lunatic tweet, follow this through to its geographical conclusion. I give you Forty Days for Life.
All of this is really quite irritating in all sorts of ways to me as a socialist, a Christian, and someone who just thinks folk should broadly be able to get on with their lives without people being arseholes to them. It deserves more thought and engagement than I can give it this morning. I leave you, though, with a question. If you were a Labour Party member in Oxford, would you be very about one of your councillors being a member of CV?
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