The Member of Parliament for Mid-Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries has been nominated for the Bad Faith Awards 2011.
The poll, which opened and is run by the magazine, The New Humanist, strives to discredit people who have been the ‘most outspoken enemy of reason’.
Dorries is up for the award based on her views towards. In the past she has been very vocal about her views to lower the abortion time limit to as low as 20 week and more recently her views of the need for optional counselling for women considering the abortion process. She also believes that sexual abstinence should be taught in schools.
Dorries abortion bills have not been received well by Parliament, with the most recent bill about counselling for women being rejected by the House of Commons with MPs voting by 368 to 118.
Reacting badly to the nomination for the award, which she is currently winning with nearly 2,000 votes, Nadine Dorries posted two blog posts on her website expressing hers views.
‘I feel slightly disgusted that such an extreme group of people even print my name in their glossy (we are ever so innocent really) magazine.’
‘I am not sure why anyone would admit to being a humanist and part of an organisation which has such extreme views.’
The news editor of The New Humanist, Paul Sims, said of the nomination: “As soon as we opened the awards, given to this year’s outstanding contribution to irrationality, there was a flood of nominations for MP Nadine Dorries, who seems to have set up a one-woman campaign against reason with her attack on abortion rights and suggestion that abstinence be taught in schools.”
Comments on the New Humanist website have not been complimentary to Dorries, with one contributor saying: “quite frankly most of us are just embarrassed by Nadine Dorries’s conduct and her comments. She doesn’t speak for most of us and is certainly not representative of opinons in Bedford.”
The poll comes at a bad time for Nadine Dorries as the proposed changes to the electoral boundaries could mean that she will lose her seat in the House of Commons.
Dorries is up against Anjem Choudary, the leader of Muslims Against Crusades; Michele Bachmann, the American Republican; Tom MacMaster, an American who pretended to be a kidnapped girl in Syria whilst the Arab uprisings were occurring; Rick Perry, an American Republican who is sceptical of evolution and global warming; and Melanie Phillips, the Journalist for the Daily Mail.
Voting is open until the 28 November 2011.
