Not quite as bold as ‘The man who sued God’, but it is manifestly a David and Goliath battle which is to be admired, for the outcome has considerable implications for Christians in the areas of equality and freedom of expression.
The Christian Institute simply wanted to pay Google so that when the word ‘abortion’ was typed into the search engine, a link to a web page on its views popped up on the right hand side of the screen. It is a perfectly legal transaction, concerned simply with matters of trade in services.
But it transpires that Google does not allow adverts for websites which contain ‘abortion and religious-related content’, and so it has blocked this pro-life advertisement for the Institute’s website – christian.org.uk – because it is a ‘religious’ site. Apparently ‘religion is not “factual” on abortion’.
Setting aside that Google now presumes to judge on epistemological matters (are all its links filtered and censored for ‘factual’ accuracy?), it is curious indeed that it is only when abortion is presented via a religious site that the material is banned: Google permits abortion-related advertisements from the secularists, atheists, irreligious, non-religious and the mentally depraved (if some of these terms are not mutually inclusive). Needless to say, the perspectives of these are overwhelmingly ‘pro-choice’, and all must be considered by Google to be ‘factual’.
Cranmer Christians who sued Google
