More Catholic News Agency misrepresentation and obfuscation

Those of you that are familiar with me both here on my blog and Google+ will be all too aware of my past run ins with the Catholic News Agency. 

If I blog more frequently on their stories than others, this is explained by virtue of their obvious and blatant disregard for journalistic rigour, and their apparent obsession with 'moderating' my comments into forms that I do not recognise (i.e. they are deliberately editing my comments to better reflect their own agenda).

Today, Catholic hacks have reported on a recent survey conducted by ComRes on behalf of Catholic Voices that apparently suggest that there is "low support for 'gay marriage' legalization".


They cite a number of statistics from the source, but fail to provide a link to that source, so that interested parties could appraise themselves of the true nature of the study.

A recent poll in the United Kingdom found that most gay, lesbian and transgendered people in the country do not support homosexual “marriage,” despite Prime Minister David Cameron’s intent to legalize it.

The study did not ask if there was support for homosexual "marriage".

The poll showed that only 27 percent of those surveyed would get married if British law allowed it, while only 39 percent believe the redefining of marriage is a priority for the community.

The study asked neither if they wanted the right to marry someone other than their current partner, nor what other priorities should be considered.

Colin Hart, director of the Coalition for Marriage campaign said;

“skepticism of the gay community about the Prime Minister’s reasons echoes the opinions of the wider populace.”

But this is nothing more than a red herring. Scepticism of the Prime Minister's motives has nothing to do with whether or not same-sex couples should have equal rights to marriage.

As is always the case, my comment is awaiting 'moderation' (or should I say editing?), so in the interests of openness, I offer my comment in its unadulterated form.

Of course, the study also showed that 77% of all respondents who are gay/ Lesbian/ Bisexual or Other said that the statement "I support marriage as an institution but only between a man and a woman" does not apply to them.

Also, whilst 27% of all respondents who are gay/ Lesbian/ Bisexual or Other disagreed with the statement "I think redefining marriage is a priority for gay people", the survey did not probe these respondents on what their priority was. I think we would all say that world peace would be a greater priority regardless of our sexual proclivities, so to use this statistic as a barometer of support for same-sex marriage is misleading.

I think an honest question to have asked would have been do you support legislation that would allow for same-sex marriage. This would likely have returned a significantly higher degree of agreement, but Catholic Voices did not apparently deem it relevant.

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What are your experiences of the Catholic News Agency? Are there other sites that have edited your comments beyond recognition? Should I stop posting comments if there is no way to delete them after they have been edited?