On Saturday 23 February, Oluwole Ilesanmi, a Christian street preacher and former dentist, was arrested outside Southgate tube station in London for ‘breaching the peace’. The police have said that they were called by a member of the public who had complained that the preacher was being ‘Islamophobic’ as he shared the gospel with passers-by. The video of the preacher’s arrest has caused outrage, not just in the UK, but across the world and has gone viral.
This week, the High Court upheld the decision made by Bath Spa University to block psychotherapist James Caspian’s research into transgender regret. Carys Moseley looks at why the Court’s judgment matters and asks, what is the point of having departments of counselling and therapy in universities if you aren’t able to research the issues that clients are raising? For if you can’t research it in a university, then where can you?
The premiere of the film Once Gay: Matthew and Friends has generated a lot of press coverage, but not all of it has been favourable or honest. Carys Moseley looks at what the press coverage reveals about freedom of speech and expression in both the UK and Malta and concludes that the press itself is contributing to the erosion of freedom of speech.
