The rights of Christians
Christians continue to struggle to defend their rights.
Allies of Ms Kelly have accused Mr Hain of pandering to Labour activists…His liberal approach may derail sensitive negotiations between the Government and church leaders, who are urging ministers not to put the rights of gays above the rights of Christians.
Church leaders, who are urging ministers not to put the rights of gays above the rights of Christians to exclude and refuse to serve gays in public accomodations – those rights. You know, those ‘rights’ that don’t exist, that no one recognizes, the ones that are just asserted. Those rights.
Hey look, my first comment at Butterflies and Wheels.
And you can bet that if Mr. Hain even claims equal rights for gays and Christians they’ll still call that ‘liberal’ and ‘special rights for gays.’
And here we can see just how ‘good’ and ‘fair’ these Christian ‘rights’ are, where in ‘Christian territory,’ they want to control every aspect of gayness – forbidding reading about gays, forbidding gays to eat with them, forbidding gays to adopt children, and even literally forbidding gays from sharing a room. And worse of all, the adoption angle. I think inside we all know that Bertrand Russel, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the like are all correct when it is strictly a form of child abuse to refer to children according to the religion of their parents. Christian children do not exist, only children of Christian parents. And so forth. These people make me sick.
‘ who claim that tough anti-discrimination laws could force their adoption agencies, youth and breakfast clubs to close,…’
Breakfast clubs? How..? I do a breakfast club at school;eight-thirty in the morning, dishing out toast and cornflakes, where does sexual orientation come into it?
Do church youth clubs have a ‘No Sissies’ rule? Or do they assume that all homosexuals are necessarily paedophiles? An area in which the catholic church in particular would be well advised to keep a very low profile.
Pathetic blackmail.
Hey, congratulations on first comment, Aerik! Let’s hope it’s the first of many.
Don, if you don’t know where sexual orientation comes into it, you have no business doing a breakfast club. At school of all places! Does the archbishop know about this?
Strictly, if bleakly, speaking, Christmas is not for kids. Christmas is for Christians. And that may be why it’s time to put the Sol back into Solstice.
And a happy holiday of your choice to you all.
Thanks alot, OB! Like a few other sites, I remember that Butterflies and Wheels (I even keep typing butterflyes accidentally) even exists pretty rarely. I’m going to track this and other threads with CoComment so I remember more often.
You just almost made me vomit. At least, the secular version of Christmas is for kids, Santa and all. But any coherent look at the scriptures and the story of Joseph and Mary should let you realize the newborn sheep and first fresh grass points to a late-April/early-March birth of Jesus, and Christmas in December is just made up to eclipse the pagan celebrations of the winter solstice.
Please, please stop enabling them. If you’re in a public setting, sing secular songs.
Christmas is for Christians but solstice is for everyone. So happy solstice already. I’ll give them war on Christmas.
Aerik,
Sorry to have disturbed your digestive system. I can’t even claim to nave been ironic; I was going for low sarcasm.
Aerik writes:
And here we can see just how ‘good’ and ‘fair’ these Christian ‘rights’ are, where in ‘Christian territory,’ they want to control every aspect of gayness – forbidding reading about gays, forbidding gays to eat with them, forbidding gays to adopt children, and even literally forbidding gays from sharing a room.
Aerik,
I think you may be confusing coercion and liberty, positive rights and negative rights. The only people who are being forbidden to do anything are Christians themselves, who are to be criminalised for refusing to deal with people of whose lifestyle or morality they disapprove or whose company they do not wish to keep. Christians are not forbidding homosexuals to do whatever they please; they are simply refusing to associate with them or to promulgate their values.
Let us reverse your argument. Do you believe that gay bookshop owners should be criminalised for refusing to stock Christian books? Or that gays should be forced to allow visible (e.g. crucifix-carrying) Christians to eat at gay restaurants, or that gay nightclubs should be forced to allow visible (e.g. rosary-bead carrying) Christian couples to avail of their facilities?
For example, let us say that a committed Christian takes it upon himself to inspect gay bookshops and discovers that they do not stock the Bible or other Christian literature. Would you say that that Christian is being forbidden to read about Christians? Should that Christian be entitled to file charges against gay bookshops for ‘infringing’ his rights?
Or do you simply apply different principles to Christians than you do to gays?
“The only people who are being forbidden to do anything are Christians themselves, who are to be criminalised for refusing to deal with people of whose lifestyle or morality they disapprove or whose company they do not wish to keep.”
See, this is where the problem with ignoring previous replies comes in. That’s a ridiculous claim; I’ve disputed it in detail before; and here you are just repeating it again, as if it were unproblematic. That’s tedious and time-wasting, especially when you’re making ridiculous tendentious claims. I’m strongly tempted just to delete the whole thing on the grounds of futile repetition.
But I can’t remember where we wrangled about this before! Can’t find it either. Thought it was just last month but can’t find it. Where was that argument about what ‘private’ means? So meanwhile I’ll have to do it all again; so irritating. (I know, don’t actually have to, but this kind of thing is so annoying I can’t just let it pass.)
“who are to be criminalised for refusing to deal with people of whose lifestyle or morality they disapprove or whose company they do not wish to keep.”
That’s wrong and deceptive. No one is criminalized for “refusing to deal with people” tout court; people who offer public accomodations will be forbidden to deny such accomodations to people on the basis of their sexual orientation. If you have a good argument, make it; don’t rely on cheap tricks like pretending the issue is a blanket mandate to “deal with people” in general.
“Christians are not forbidding homosexuals to do whatever they please; they are simply refusing to associate with them or to promulgate their values.”
No; the issue the regulations in question address, that the archbishops are noisily resisting, are regulations against refusing service in public accomodations. They are not mandates to associate with anyone or to promulgate their values. Cheap trick thing again.
That really is tawdry stuff, Cathal. You can do better, so why do you stoop to this kind of crap? Surely you know better. (Yeah, I know that sounds condescending, but really, those claims are so distorted, they ask for it.)
Oh and what Don said. The bookstore thing. I haven’t seen any proposed bookstore regulations. Are you just making that up, or are there plans for such regulations?
(Found it. Database search v. useful. Comments on The word is out. It was last month. Ignore ‘where’ question above.)
Re bookshops, Ophelia, very briefly, it’s bedtime here:
The report in ‘The Indpendent’ includes the following paragraph:
“Ms Kelly, a devout Catholic, is sympathetic to pleas by the Anglican and Catholic churches, who claim that tough anti-discrimination laws could force their adoption agencies, youth and breakfast clubs to close, their bookshops could be sued if they refuse to stock gay literature and hotel owners with strong religious beliefs could be fined if they do not allow gay couples to share a room.” [my italics]
Perhaps the churches are mistaken in their interpretation of the envisaged law, but then so is Airik, since he refers to “forbidding reading about gays”.
Clearly, your interpretation of ‘public’ and ‘private’ is very different to mine. Perhaps I should reformulate the issue as one concerning the distinction between positive and negative rights (positive rights always involve coercion, negative rights don’t).
More tomorrow, if I get round to it. But I really think you just haven’t understood my argument.
At any rate I’m happy to learn that you DON’T approve of any law that would make it illegal for bookshop owners NOT to store gay literature.
Airik seems to be of a different opinion, though.
Night, Cathal. (It’s midafternoon here, and I don’t have to rush off for, oh, almost an hour.)
Right, I found the bookshop thing in the Indy after I asked the question. But the churches are making absurd and self-pitying claims, which shouldn’t be taken at face value. They’re much like US Southern segragationists or SA fans of apartheid claiming anti-discrimination laws will mean they’ll be required to marry black people. It’s just bullying silliness, and shouldn’t be treated as part of a serious argument.
“Clearly, your interpretation of ‘public’ and ‘private’ is very different to mine.”
Well, I think there’s a limit to what interpretation can do. The sale of goods and services just isn’t considered a private matter within the normal meaning of the word. Private enterprise, yes, but just plain private, no.
If I haven’t understood your argument, maybe you haven’t formulated it altogether clearly?
“At any rate I’m happy to learn that you DON’T approve of any law that would make it illegal for bookshop owners NOT to store gay literature.”
As Hitchens said to Amis, Don’t. be. silly. What the hell have I ever said that would justify attributing anything so ludicrous to me? That’s a stupid whine of the clerics, it’s not anything I’ve ever said.
It would be just as reasonable for me to read a column in ‘Counterpunch’ saying ‘libertarians want to force toddlers to work for five p a day’ and then say I’m happy to learn that you DON’T approve of any law that would require toddlers to work for five p a day.
I think I’ll say a secular prayer that you will wake up tomorrow less inclined to patronize. That would be nice.
The ‘bookshops’ issue apparently relates to the anti-harassment provisions contained in the NI Sexual Orientation Pegulations. It has nothing to do with the refusal of bookstores to stock pro-gay literature, so it could be that ‘The Independent’ misinterpreted the Christian churches’ argument, or that the Christian churches themselves misinterpreted the envisaged provisions (or both).
Here’s what the Anglican Mainstream Website has to say on the matter in a very lucid and cogently argued commentary (long quote, sorry):
“As the NI consultation openly acknowledged “During the passage of the Equality Act 2006, members of the House of Lords argued strongly that, while the concept – of a harassment law- sat more easily in the employment sphere, it was extremely difficult to define what constitutes violation of dignity in terms of goods or service provision”. The scope of the harassment provisions is extremely broad and relies heavily on the perception of the person who feels harassed: if someone, of any sexual orientation, feels their ‘dignity has been violated’ or that they have been subjected to a ‘humiliating or offensive environment’ then they will be able to sue the person involved for injury to feelings. We are concerned that the courts may be burdened with unmeritorious claims by those who are sensitive about their sexual orientation and who dislike and seek to silence the legitimate opinions of others.
We also believe that the breadth of the harassment provisions will lead to an unacceptable chilling of freedom of speech and expression in a similar way to that threatened by the original version of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill which was defeated in Parliament earlier this year. The high level of the standard penalties for an injury to feelings claim for someone who feels harassed, £500 – £5000 for a one-off offence rising to £5000 – £15,000 if the offensive action has occurred on a few occasions, further increases the likelihood that the NI SORs will damage free speech.
The following example illustrates these points: A homosexual man goes to a Christian bookshop in his home town in Northern Ireland. The bookshop contains many books, some of which refer to homosexual practice as a sin. There are posters on the walls of the shop promoting marriage as the only right sexual relationship and the only right context for bringing up children. Even if the homosexual man had no interest in receiving goods or services from the bookshop, if he felt the presence of this material ‘violated his dignity’ or created a ‘hostile environment’ he would have a strong case under the Regulations that he had been unlawfully harassed. If he won, even if the alleged harassment occurred on one single occasion, the bookshop could be ordered to pay him up to £5000.”
What’s B&W’s stand on this?
Cathal, we already had that text; the ‘could lead to’ and the ‘might’. I asked for specifics. Church spokespersons claiming it might lead to, maybe, could be a problem, is not persuasive. If this act is a threat to any human right, please be specific. (Aerik is immaterial. No offence.)
Sorry, postings crossed. Thanks for you comments. But I hope the above extract clarifies matters a bit.
I reckon we agree on the liberticide nature of anti-harassment laws when applied to the expression of opinion.
Don writes:
If this act is a threat to any human right, please be specific.
Did postings cross again? The NI SORS (see, I’m a ten-minute expert now, I know that NI SORS = Sexual Orientation Regulations (Northern Ireland)) include anti-harassment provisions which look pretty fishy to me….
Hope I don’t lose too much sleep over this.
Ah, that’s interesting. You’re right: that does sound…worrying. (You and Don did cross there: you can tell by the times: a minute and a half wouldn’t have been enough for him to read and digest that whole post and then reply to it.)
Yes, the harassment thing does sound alarmingly like that bizarre clause in the Public Order Act which I was so astonished at (in my ignorance) a few months ago. Something like ‘if someone feels offended then a breach of public order has occurred and the offender is guilty.’ So my provisional interim stance until I have learned more is that that sounds like the Public Order Act and the Religious Hatred law and that it’s just…a mess. Clearly I’ll have to learn more. [sigh]
Hope sleep wasn’t disturbed!
Yes, lots of cross posting.
For convenience;
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/sr/sr2006/20060439.htm#5
was this the part you found ‘fishy’?
(3) A person (“A”) subjects another person (“B”) to harassment in any circumstances relevant for the purposes of any provision referred to in these Regulations where, on the ground of sexual orientation, A engages in unwanted conduct which has the purpose or effect of —
(a) violating B’s dignity; or
(b) creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for B.
(4) Conduct shall be regarded as having the effect specified in sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) or paragraph (1) only if, having regard to all the circumstances, including, in particular, the perception of B, it should reasonably be considered as having that effect.
Or more specifically;
‘including, in particular, the perception of B,’
Yeah, I’ve just been reading a different but similar page
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldbills/002/06002.24-28.html#j342
It does include the exemption for resident landlords and near relatives of same – so the small b&b thing is definitely a red herring.
But it also does include the ‘including, in particular, the perception of B,’
…which is not totally insane. It’s not uncommon to have workplaces where a macho atmosphere or ‘culture’ is entrenched and where the few women who work there can feel more or less harassed while the men think everything is just fine. I’ve even worked in such places myself. But at the same time there is obvious potential for abuse, silencing, etc etc.
But the breakfast clubs… I’m still bewildered as to why the church should feel the need to stop them, unless church breakfast clubs have an entrenched macho culture.
Oh, and when it comes to harrassment, try being a seventeen year old lad doing holiday work which involves venturing into an all-female production line. Seriously raw.
Off topic, but I hope we are all voting daily for Pharyngula as top science blog. I just took the ‘Are you Evil’ test PZ linked to; I’m Angelic. The troubling thing is I was (more or less) honest.
Well how come nobody ever nominates N&C for best any kind of blog? Eh? Eh? I’m always supposed to vote for Norm and PZ and Michael, and very fragrant they all are, but what am I, chopped liver? I ask you.
Because you are the Fritz Lang of bloggers;
http://www.filmsite.org/noawards3.html
Heh! I can live with that.
Heh! Indeed.
I think the breakfast club comment assumes that the pattern for such events is what we have going in our church: a women’s breakfast or men’s breakfast event will have a lot of social connecting and a ‘thought-provoking’ or inspirational guest speaker who will attempt to discuss some of our life challenges in a scriptural way. This could conceivably involve a discussion of sexual sin and recommendations against it, which a gay participant could well feel discriminated about.