People are free to say what they like but
A Cardiff councillor
is being investigated for allegedly breaching the code of conduct for local authority members which demands they “show respect and consideration for others”.
How? By calling Scientology stupid on Twitter. So showing respect and consideration for others means one is forbidden to call Scientology stupid? Why?
Are we allowed to call astrology stupid? Is it ok to call homeopathy stupid? Can we say belief in alien abductions is stupid?
In other words, does respect and consideration for others cash out to not calling any ideas or ideologies or religions or pseudo-sciences whatsoever “stupid” on the grounds that some people believe in them?
Mr Dixon said: “I don’t see why the Scientologists should have any greater protection from ridicule than I should have as a member of the Liberal Democrats. I can’t believe it has got this far.”
That’s just it. Why, indeed, should they? Just because they call themselves the Church of Scientology?
The Church of Scientology, whose followers include Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley, is not recognised as a religion in Britain although it is in the United States.
However, in March last year the Crown Prosecution Service decided that anyone who attacks Scientology can be prosecuted under faith hate laws.
And “attack” of course is defined as “calls stupid” for the purposes of accusing someone of a crime under “faith hate laws.”
Hey, I’ll oblige. I hate “faith” – I hate the word and I hate the thing it nominates. I also hate “faiths”; I also think they’re mostly stupid.
I don’t work for Cardiff council though, so they probably won’t get around to me any time soon. But not for want of ignorant illiberal bedwetters who think people should be forbidden to call unreasonable beliefs stupid.
The complaint was made by John Wood, a member of the Church of Scientology, who lives near the Head Quarters in East Grinstead. He said: “People are free to say what they like but I felt that as a person in a position of public office that he had to be violating some kind of code of conduct.”
People are free to say what they like except they’re not if I can find some pretext to get them into trouble for saying what they like, and fortunately in this case I succeeded in finding one: the guy was violating some kind of code of conduct. So yaboosucks.
So, who will actually defend the assertion that showing respect and consideration for others means never challenging their positions. Because that’s what an expression of faith is: a position regarding a particular collection of truth claims. If I call my neighbor’s position of anthropomorphic climate change stupid, nobody will accuse me of violating some kind of ethical standard.
Actually, I assume that most people would agree that you can attack Scientology, because it’s so young. LDS? Ah…you know, it’s been 180 years since Joseph Smith made all that shit up, so maybe we gotta respect that.
Actually I think Mormonism is seen as pretty laughable by most people apart from Mormons.
It’s a kind of defensive mechanism religion has. Adherents are encouraged to identify themselves by their religion and therefore interpret criticisms of it as personal attacks. Most people have become convinced that this is a perfectly reasonable way to go about the business of discussing beliefs. It’s not. It’s a trick that capitalizes on the hesitance of many to say something which could potentially be seen as “offensive.” A religion which behaves in this way will survive.
Whenever someone chides me for criticizing beliefs they hold dearly, my response is “perhaps you should rethink the wisdom of investing so much of yourself in your beliefs. It compromises your objectivity. You really only have four options: 1) divest your emotions from your beliefs, 2) abandon your beliefs or 3) deal with it, 4) play the hurt feelings card.”
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Thetis, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: People are free to say what they like but http://dlvr.it/2tB65 […]
I do not understand why I or anyone else is automatically supposed to respect something just because it has the label “religious”. If I think it needs to be ridiculed then I will ridicule it. If I think it needs to be questioned then I will question it. If I think it needs to be criticised then I will criticise it. If the person holding these beliefs cannot handle that, then that is their problem and not mine.
I personally do not see that scientology is any more daft than any of the so called mainstream religions. They all have some pretty wacky and far out beliefs, scientology fits in just right.
I’m confused about one thing. My memory is that the “faith hate” laws in the UK were amended during passage of the Bill so that they applied only to threatening speech intended to provoke religious hate. What is threatening about a message on Twitter? And in any event, you can “attack” all sorts of ideas without doing so in a threatening way. If I say, “You Scientologists are cockroaches, and we’re going to exterminate you!” that is threatening. If I merely say, “Scientology is a stupid belief system,” that’s not threatening at all.
Now it may be that a council’s internal code of conduct is much more stringent than the actual “faith hate” law and that the latter is irrelevant to this case. But if so why does the journalist talk about the latter at all? It’s mixing up two completely different things.
Well the journalist may be right about the CPS and Scientology though. The CPS seems to have a pattern of extreme eagerness to prosecute putative “faith hate.”
Now I’ll have to look that case up again and refresh my memory…
Yup.
For Russell Blackford and anyone else outside Britain here’s how our ‘law’ works these days. First some half-wit in government decides to panic about something in the papers and introduces a bill banning something or making some previously harmless activity illegal, this gets watered down a bit in the House of Commons and completely neutered in the House of Lords however something still ends up on the statute books but no one is quite sure what. So next the police decide to use it as a good way to meet their conviction targets and the judges think it would be a good idea to re-write the law the way they would have done it. The result is that if someone in any position of authority dislikes the cut of your jib, you’re nicked mate ! That’s how we get nonsense like this and the case of the evil life threatening atheist cartoons in the airport prayer room, welcome to the new puritan England.
This isn’t an actionunder religious hate lawsbut under the code of conduct for local authority members. Mr Dixon is not liable to fines or imprisonment but he may be suspended from his position,requireddto take sensitivity training and such activities.
In fact, considering the things scientologists do for their beliefs, describing scientology as stupid is taking a charitable view.
That’s pretty much the way the law works – but professional codes of conduct are often stricter and have a lower threshold of proof.
I could be sacked for any number of comments I have made here without breaking any actual laws.
Just a few weeks back I opposed a proposed motion my union debated which concluded with some platitude about ‘respecting all faiths and beliefs equally’. The motion was about withdrawing union support for abortion rights. I mean, what the fuck?!? This is the UK in the 21st Century!!
Sorry, my first line is a response to Thornsvis and Roger beat me to it!
Thornavis, I need to look at Ophelia’s link but what you say doesn’t surprise me. I’ve seen similar things happen here – a law gets enacted and it seems quite restricted in what it does by the time all the objections are met during the parliamentary process. However, the authorities, including lower courts and tribunals, insist on interpreting it so it has teeth. What can then happen is that a sufficiently determined and cashed-up defendant can fight a case all the way through the court system – or as far as is necessary – to show it doesn’t have teeth after all. And then the people who wanted the laws in the first place complain that the law lacks teeth and needs to be amended, and the process goes on …
Meanwhile, most defendants are not determined and cashed up, so these laws still operate to chill free speech. That’s a good reason to try to avoid their enactment at all, rather than just getting them watered down.
Okay, I’ve looked at Ophelia’s links and I find them interesting. They’re mostly just about Scientology being accepted as a religion in the UK. I actually have no problem with that. Prima facie, I don’t see why it should get any more or less protection than Christianity or Islam or anything else.
But note the references in those links to it being unlawful to “abuse or threaten” – that seems to be just wrong. Here is the Act. As far as I can see all the offences relate solely to “threatening” speech and material. Then look at section 29J:
“Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism, or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse [my emphasis] of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.”
Wow, that’s pretty good stuff! Kudos to whoever managed to get that into the legislation, even if it was a church lobby.
All in all, it’s pretty clear that this tweet we’re discussing could not possibly be an offence under the Act. Of course, it could still be a disciplinary offence under the council’s internal code of conduct, but once again the journalist seems to be getting these things mixed up. How hard is it to make clear in the article that the internal code is, depending on how it’s interpreted, much more stringent than the legislation? It looks as if the journalist has only a very woolly understanding of how the law in this area works.
Yes but Russell law enforcement really has at least seemed to make a mockery of that very clause, several times recently. There was that case of the argument between a couple of hotel owners and a customer, and there was Harry Taylor, to name a couple. The clause exists but it doesn’t seem to work, at least not reliably.
We’ve had an expansion of the definition of ‘faith’ in the UK recently with a court elevating Tim Nicholson’s belief in climate change to the level of a religious faith.
Because most if us who would normally challenge religion also believe in anthropogenic climate change the court’s decision hasn’t been met with the hoots of derision it deserved.
The science of climate change is strong enough as it is: the last thing we need is belief in it used to extend the definition of religion still further.
Oh, I can see that Ophelia. As I say, judges and tribunals can read these laws expansively (and read the statutory defences narrowly) not everyone is determined and cashed up enough to fight through the court system to make their point. I’m criticising the journalist’s woolly analysis, not saying such laws are a good thing. On the contrary I’ve been very critical of the equivalent law in Victoria which was turned into a circus in the Catch The Fire Ministries litigation. The equivalent NSW law which covers race but not religion has also caused problems.
Admittedly, the Victorian law is much worse than the British law, but that doesn’t mean the British law is a Good Thing. I’m actually focused on a narrow point here: that the article as written is confusing. It’s my usual bugbear about sloppy journalism.
Ugh, my second sentence in that last comment has two principle clauses mashed together; it needs a conjunction or a semi-colon, or something. Sorry about that.
I supplied the conjunction automatically. :- )
I think in context the journalist was explaining how Scientology is seen, rather than making a claim or a prediction about prosecution. The way I excerpted it may have obscured that – probably did.
Dammit: “principal clauses”. Wake up, Russ!