Nadine Dorries takes note of her Bad Faith nomination, calls us an extremist cult

I was out of the online loop over the weekend, so imagine my surprise when I plugged back in this morning to find that Conservative MP Nadine Dorries had blogged about her nomination for our 2011 Bad Faith Award, which she is currently on track for winning. (She was nominated by lots of our readers on account of her attempts to change the law on abortion counselling and introduce abstinence-based sex education for girls.)

It's a short blogpost, simply entitled "Humanists", so I'll reproduce it here:

Humanists

"Posted Friday, 21 October 2011 at 22:59

The Humanist [sic] magazine are running an online 'bad faith' poll and I am apparently in the lead.

I am not sure why anyone would admit to being a humanist and part of an organisation which has such extreme views. A humanist recently commented that, not only did he believe that abortion was acceptable right up to the moment of birth, but that termination of a child's life was acceptable up until the point where the child had the ability to reason, understand and justify life.

The worrying thing is that almost 400 people have voted in this poll, presumably mostly drummed up via Twitter. However, it's scary to think how many people out there hold such extreme views dressed up as acceptable in an online glossy magazine."

Just so we're all following Dorries' logic, I'll recap – someone who identified himself as a humanist apparently told her that he thinks it should be possible to terminate a child's life after birth [citation needed], therefore all humanists hold such extreme views and New Humanist is an extremist organisation. This from someone who has frequently complained of having her own views misrepresented.

And it gets better. The Bad Faith Award was also picked up by the Bedfordshire on Sunday newspaper (Dorries' constituency is Mid Bedfordshire), and they asked her to comment on her nomination. She described New Humanist as "an anti-faith, anti-religious cult" (it will no doubt come as a surprise to our subscribers that reading a 52-page bi-monthly magazine means they have joined a cult, but there it is), and said “You may be aware that more than 28,000 people voted for me during the general election and therefore I would query the relevance of your Twitter poll single numbers story”.

Dorries is currently leading the Bad Faith poll with 44 per cent of the vote, ahead of the US Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who has 20 per cent. Voting will remain open until 28 November. You can see the full list and vote via this link, or alternatively just place your vote at the bottom of this page.

In the meantime, if you're new to New Humanist and you're interested in finding out for yourself whether we're an extremist organisation, our November issue is out now.