It's at times like this, isn't it, that you realise just how much we need the United Nations - about as much as we need an ear infection. You probably know by now that a cartel of Islamic dictatorships has taken time out from abusing human rights to hijack the UN Human Rights Council, which is now dominated by the kind of countries that everybody wants to get out of, but nobody wants to get into. And they intend to use an upcoming conference in Geneva to force through a resolution that will criminalise the "defamation of religion". That's quite a specific charge, isn't it, although I'm sure it was intended to be anything but. To defame something, first of all you have to say something untrue about it. So, for example, if I say that religion is the art of sugar-coating a turd and selling it as a doughnut, that's not defamation, because of course it is absolutely true. Also, defamation means to damage someone's reputation with falsehood, but since religion's reputation couldn't really be any lower than it is right now - it really stinks, doesn't it, I mean really stinks. For example, if you're a Catholic you found out last week that you can be excommunicated for helping a child have an abortion, but not for impregnating her in the first place. Doesn't that stink? Isn't that like somebody just ran over a skunk outside your house? The only actual defamation I can detect here is defamation of humanity by religion. Religion is bearing false witness against us, to our detriment, and that is defamation. Religion is telling us a poison story about ourselves because it doesn't want us to like ourselves one little bit. So it denigrates us from the moment we're born as unworthy, unclean, and stained with sin, persuading us that there's something we need to be saved from, and indeed there is - the curse of religion, which for its very survival depends on keeping us in thrall to a view of reality so childish, so stunted, so utterly and transparently false it amounts to nothing less than a malicious assault on our very identity as human beings, which I believe makes religion a crime against humanity. I'd like to be charitable and to attribute this cynical stunt to a lack of understanding by the Islamic dictatorships. A lack of sensitivity, if you like; an ignorance, if you prefer; a gross ignorance if you insist, about just how unforgivably offensive this resolution is to freedom worshippers like myself. You see, if religious values are to trump everything in this world, as they currently seem to be doing, then I claim free speech as my religion. Yes, I'll have a slice of that pie too, thank you, along with all the attendant rights and privileges, of course, because I can assure you that I venerate free speech as highly as anybody on this planet venerates their god, or their scripture, or their prophet, and any attempt to suppress free speech is deeply insulting and grossly offensive to me on a personal level. I feel violated to the very core of my being, which seriously hurts my feelings. Whenever I hear free speech being compromised or restricted, or even heavily criticised, I take that as a grave personal affront, and as a grotesquely insensitive attack on my most cherished values: Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of identity - this is my holy trinity; each one an intrinsic aspect of my god - freedom, the holiest of holies. Yes, it bloody well is. It is absolutely sacred and inviolable beyond any negotiation or compromise now and forever. Amen. Sorry to be so unreasonable about it, but you know how it is with religion. And in keeping with my sincerely held religious convictions, I even support free speech for those clowns who abused the soldiers in Luton last week. Some people seem to think I wanted them silenced. Not at all. I think everyone should be free to express who they really are, and be judged on that. So I fully support their right to make public dicks of themselves if that's what they want to do, and to unite the whole country, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, against them in condemnation. I also support their right to go and live somewhere more in tune with their noxious, barbaric, disgusting views. They want this country to be like Saudi Arabia, a theocratic hellhole where women and homosexuals are routinely abused and where new ideas are considered blasphemy. The kind of society, in fact, that recently sentenced an elderly woman to 40 lashes for having her bread delivered by an unrelated male. Doesn't that stink? And that's how these people want to live, so it follows that they're never going to be happy in a civilised country like Britain. Despite the generous state benefits they can scrounge here, and they do, they're always going to be miserable here, always going to be in a bad mood, walking around with their long old beardy faces, offended by everything, insulted by everything, jumping up and down at the roadside at every opportunity with their stupid little banners, shouting at people. What kind of a life is that? You'd have to be almost insane, wouldn't you, to want to live in a society that you despise so much, when your preferred alternative, a brutal medieval theocracy, is right there for you for the price of a plane ticket. But as long as they choose to stay here I support their right to speak their minds, such as they are. I also support the right of civilised people to tell them exactly what we think of them as bluntly and directly as we choose to. It's called free speech, and it's sacred. And it's what the UN Human Rights Council wants to take away from us. It wants to stop us from criticising people like this. It wants to stop us from telling the truth. And that's why every western government needs to boycott this wretched conference in Geneva and to treat this despicable resolution, and its authors, with the undisguised contempt they deserve. Also, the Human Rights Council itself might want to think about some urgent sensitivity training for some of its less enlightened members so that this kind of crass insult to civilised values is never ever repeated. Peace, and happy resolutions.