The appropriately named Express reports:
A MOTHER was banned from breast-feeding her baby in public by civic centre bosses over claims it would cause “uproar” among Muslim visitors.
Emma Mitchell, 32, was preparing to feed her four-month-old son Aaron when a receptionist warned her it was a “multicultural building” and that she should use the nearby public toilets instead.
Furious Emma then had a stand-off with a manager at Oldham Civic Centre before being offered an empty room under supervision.
She said: “It was just awful. I felt humiliated, intimidated and guilty through the whole thing.
“We all live in Oldham and use this building and what I was doing was one of the most natural things a mum can do. I shouldn’t be made to feel it was wrong just because it’s not in someone’s culture.”
The incident occurred last Friday while Emma was visiting the town’s Citizens Advice Bureau.
When Aaron started crying, she asked if she could use an empty corner of the room to breast-feed him in, offering to face the wall.
But the receptionist told her it wasn’t allowed as “some gentlemen had complained in the past” and suggested she use the public toilets nearby. Emma said: “You wouldn’t eat your dinner in the toilets, so why should my son? She rang the manager who said ‘You absolutely can’t do that here’.”
A member of the complaints department then took her to a small room. Emma’s friend Michelle Booth, 38, who was with her, said: “They were implying breast-feeding was offensive to Muslim sensibilities. It’s political correctness gone mad.”
Oldham Council yesterday apologised “unreservedly”. Councillor Shoab Akhtar said: “We do not have dedicated breast-feeding facilities available. However, staff are now aware they should make every reasonable effort to assist a mother’s need to breast-feed, whether she requests a private room or not.”
I wonder if the gentleman who complained in the past did so because of so-called modesty reasons, or because it made him feel peckish.
Update: Still on topic, look at what the ultra-left mag 972 has to say about a proposed bill to encourage breastfeeding.
They see facism in everything.
