I remember the last time I watched Loose Women, the day was a rainy one, I was flicking through the channels and found myself viewing a bunch of middle aged women sat at a table pretending they knew things. Apart from thinking up imaginative ways I could end the pain caused by this horrendous - but brief - viewing experience, I remember thinking "That Coleen one seems like she might actually be normal". What can I say, I have a secret admiration for people who used to be in moderately popular groups in the 70s. After that experience, I kind of forgot she, and Loose Women, existed. I got on with my life pretending to be outraged by things to get attention just like everybody else, but then Loose Women and Coleen Nolan found their way back into my psyche by the enigmatic thing known as 'Trending'.
This piqued my curiosity as I asked myself; "What insane thing must this woman of looseness have done to take the attention away from Kim Kardashian's oral technique?" I was aghast at the sheer level of insanity she had emitted by expressing that gays were exactly the same as the popular Middle Eastern boyband, ISIS. She had belittled the homosexual race, a race of which I am a member, and such slanderous remarks could not be allowed to remain unchallenged, so I decided I must research, like my other fellow internet users. Of course, everyone who commented on things on the internet would never dare comment on something about which they knew little, or that they had had summarised to them by sensationalist tabloids. This is Britain, and the British are a dignified and educated people.
Okay, let's turn to serious comment, shall we? I can't keep the snarkyness up for too long, it's bad for my blood pressure.
Did you watch the video? No, I mean actually watch it? Like the whole thing? Look, I know it's a big ask, but watch the whole thing, take in the whole topic of discussion and use the thing in your head that was given to you by millennia of evolution (or the invisible magic man waving his magic wand, whatever). The story revolves around a family run bakers in Northern Ireland called "Ashers Baking Company". Last year they found themselves in a dispute over their refusal to provide a gay couple with a wedding cake. Of course, the law of the United Kingdom doesn't really like that sort of thing, so the bakers were taken to Court and, you guessed it, lost the fight.
The Loose Women, being the well-educated and well-informed women that they are, absolutely had to debate the issue. Janet Street Porter said something indecipherable, Jamelia also got involved, then it was Coleen's turn. She entered into discussion on the principle surrounding why the company would refuse service, posing the question of if, in effect, the bakery would be forced to bake for gays, then presumably, under the principle of anti-discrimination, they could also be forced to bake a pro-ISIS cake. The argument being that such laws that force a Christian run baking company to bake pro-gay cakes against their moral ideals are no better than laws which would force, say, the family of a victim of ISIS who also ran a bakery to bake a pro-ISIS cake. One may dislike the bigotry and vigorously oppose such discrimination, and quite rightly, but we must also understand that everyone has different views, principles, and ideals upon which they live their lives.
Coleen isn't in any way, which is obvious to anyone who has a mental capacity greater than that of an infant, attempting to compare gay rights to the religious terror promoted by the Islamic State. She has always been a heavy proponent of gay rights, and I doubt that will end, yet the bizarre, and reactionary, calls for her sacking are a more worrying sign of the decline of intelligent thought and reasoned debate. Rather than actually consider the points she made, or attempted to make, there was a latching on to a comparison or a comment that simply didn't exist.
You might ask why I care when I don't even watch Loose Women. I care because it's a worrying sign about popular discourse. Because these type of misquoting sensationalist stories are becoming much more regular, and these things need to be challenged in order to preserve any sort of hope that may remain about the future of humanity.