Paul Shinners Action

We were contacted the other day by a fellow activist who wanted to draw our attention to the ongoing action against Paul Shinners.

This time last year, British preacher Shinners was spewing spurious scripture at a rally in Uganda organised by lead gay-hate campaigner Bishop David Kiganda.

This led us to highlight the fact that Shinners is a Trustee of a UK charity (registration number 1131321), Passion For Souls Ministries. It turns over more than £30,000 a year, although it can't seem to get its returns filed on time.

We launched a campaign to complain to the Charity Commission of England & Wales that preaching gay hate was not an appropriate charitable activity.

The Charity Commission responded by ignoring these concerns completely, and instead denied registration to the global gay rights organisation Human Dignity Trust, who are lawyered up and awaiting a date for the appeal hearing some time next month.

What our contact wrote to tell us, is that despite the Charity Commission's disinterest in Shinners, he is by no means off the hook for his hatemongering:

Further calls for answers from Anti-Gay Paul Shinners

The article, by rights campaigner Melanie Nathan, follows on from An Open Letter to Paul Shinners, who has persistently refused to respond to questions about his role in stirring up anti-gay sentiment.

It ends with the following ultimatum:

After 72 hours,  I plan to evaluate the following:- 

1. Pursue the investigation of crimes against humanity under International, UK, USA, EU laws in similar fashion to what we did here in the USA with Scott Lively, in SMUG vs. Lively, as undertaken by the Center for Constitutional Rights (http://ccrjustice.org/LGBTUganda/); 

2. Pursue including you on the developing Magnitsky-type list of LGBT persecutors denied entry into the USA; 

3. Pursue civil lawsuits as are available to the people directly impacted by your persecutory actions.

In addition to this, we would urge all campaigners once again to contact the Charity Commission to voice concern over his position as head of a UK Charity. Simply e-mail RSI@charitycommission.gsi.gov.uk and tweet @ChtyCommission

[UPDATE, FEB 2014: You can also join the Paul Shinners protest page here.]