Universal declaration of bishops’ rights
You wouldn’t think people would be in a hurry to say stuff like this.
[Bishops] warned that Harriet Harman’s Equality Bill suggests some rights are considered “more important than others”. They backed calls for a “conscience clause” to be added to the law so that the rights of religious worshippers are not ignored by attempts to protect minorities.
You wouldn’t really think they would want to say quite so bluntly and clearly that they think ‘the rights of religious worshippers’ are in conflict with attempts to protect minorities. In fact, you would think, or at least I would think, they would want to shy right away from saying that. Haven’t they read their Karen Armstrong? Aren’t they aware of the lifeline she’s sending them by rushing around the world announcing that compassion is at the heart of every great religion? Don’t they realize they’re taking a machete to that lifeline by hopping up and down and squalling to the newspapers that their rights demand that they be able to pick on minorities?
Labour’s flagship equality legislation, currently in committee stage in the House of Lords, seeks to outlaw any form of discrimination against disadvantaged groups in the office or the market place. However, there are fears that it could undermine the ability of worshippers to express the traditional teachings of their religions, many of which believe that homosexuality is a sin; that only men and women can marry; and that sex outside marriage is wrong.
There’s that agentless ‘there are fears’ again – the same one we saw when ‘there were fears’ that Does God Hate Women? would anger Muslims. Could that be because the content is so nasty? Could the reporter feel more squeamish than the bishops do about linking bishops with dread of people being unable to shout in the office or market place that homosexuality is a sin? But why don’t the bishops feel more squeamish about that? Because they’re all 106 and were brought up to hate poofters and just can’t get over it?
The Bishop of Chichester, the Rt Rev John Hind, warned that the Government was wrong to make people separate their personal religious beliefs from their behaviour in the workplace. He said: “The attempt to privatise belief, whether philosophical or religious, is a profoundly dangerous tendency and one that we need to address as we consider not only this but later amendments.”
That depends, bub. It depends on what the belief is. If the belief is, for instance, that children can be possessed by devils or turned into witches, then that belief really does need to be kept out of the workplace.
Here’s my advice to these people.
If you believe homosexuality is a sin, then don’t engage in homosexual acts and don’t marry someone of the same sex. If you believe adultery and fornication are sins, then don’t engage in either of them. Don’t concern yourself in the sex lives of consenting adults. And yes, religion should be privatized – no one you work with need know what your religion is.
Alas, the bleating bishops and cardinals are wrong. Harriet Harman was not allowed to change their existing right to discriminate against women and homosexuals. See schedule 9 to the bill.
Note in particular the explanatory note that
• This exception would apply to a requirement that a Catholic priest be a man.
• This exception would not apply to a requirement that a church youth worker or accountant be heterosexual.
The cardinals say the first exception is not enough; they want to exclude homosexual youth workers and accountants as well.
There is other appalling stuff in the schedule allowing exceptions if they are needed to avoid offence to significant numbers of believers.
Ugh – how disgusting.
And you know what? It doesn’t even acknowledge the real issue.
In 747 (8) it says
Employment is for the purposes of an organised religion only if the employment wholly or mainly involves—
(a)leading or assisting in the observation of liturgical or ritualistic practices of the religion,
or
(b) promoting or explaining the doctrine of the religion (whether to
followers of the religion or to others).
Which simply ignores the fact that the people who do the liturgical stuff are the same people who make all the rules and so by making that the grounds for the exception, they are perpetuating this arrangement whereby men only get to make the rules that many believers take to be the most important peremptory binding rules in life. It’s a grotesque situation but most people just take it for granted.
What a strange, disturbing business this is! The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have sent a complaining letter to the Prime Minister, saying, amongst other things, the following:
Of course, the dictates of conscience. That makes it very serious indeed. Women may not be priests. The subject cannot even arise. Homosexual persons are inherently defective, and their acts are gravely sinful. The pope has said so. Must be true. And if it is true, then conscience must dicate this – I mean, dictate it. That’s different from having a socially condition aversion to something. It’s a matter of conscience.
They also say – butter wouldn’t melt, etc. – “The one thing on which all seem able to agree is that these are serious matters requiring the most careful consideration.” The last seven words are what religious people always say when they disagree with something. Very serious: must consider this carefully. It’s a way of keeping serious questions away from the point of decision. The Anglican Church has been doing this with the question of gay and lesbian people in ministry for the last twenty years. This serious question has been raised at the last two Lambeth Conferences, without any decision. Indeed, the Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC) is more afraid of the Nigerian and Ugandan bishops, and what they might do if he made a decision, than he is of the rest of the Anglican Communion put together. Needs very serious consideration. Well, is it? Is it really a matter of conscience? We will have to consider this very seriously!
The Prime Minister, I hope, knows the code, and will not back down. These ancient grotesqueries have lasted long enough.
An interesting (?) historical point. John Hind, bishop of Chichester, C of E – one of the loudest voices protesting the new equality regulations – is one of the signatories of a letter sent to the ABC when Richard Harries was going to make Jeffrey John (a gay priest) Bishop of Reading. All part of the same boys club.
I know it’s true that what Pat Robertson said about Haiti is the most abominable nonsense, but in what way is not this sort of thing, carried out in the name of the Anglican or Roman Catholic god, even worse? Arguably, what Pat Robertson said won’t make a lot of difference, and immediately after he said it he mentioned the importance of going to help the suffering, but what these apes in pointy hats are asking for will make a big difference, and it will continue to underwrite the most horrible abuses of human rights, not only in Britain, but around the world. We mustn’t legislate something that will be imposed upon people’s consciences, they argue. Would any rights have been recognised at all, if this kind of ‘argumentation’ had been taken seriously? Part of the point about rights, in case the ABC etc hadn’t noticed, is to make claims against people who don’t want to grant them, doubtless for serious reasons that must be given careful consideration. Dog, they are despicable!
Well said, Eric.
“serious matters requiring the most careful consideration.”
Yes – and we’ve given them the most careful consideration! Have the archies? Really?
Thoughtful comment thanks Eric.
I got all I want from the Arch, when he said it was OK to disobey the laws I objected to, back after ‘9/11’. Of course, he was talking fashionable nonsense about the War on Terror at the time. He didn’t realise that as an Anglican I am happy to now be allowed illegal guns and explosives in good conscience.
“In legislating to protect and promote the rights of particular groups the government is faced with the delicate but important challenge of not thereby creating the conditions within which others feel their rights to have been ignored or sacrificed”
Notice, he’s not comparing like with like. He’s not saying that in protecting and promoting the rights of a particular group, it is important that the Government don’t diminish or ignore the rights of others – but that Government should somehow go further and ensure that others don’t *feel* that their rights are ignored or satisfied. He’s not merely asking that Government doesn’t discriminate against his ‘group’ but that they don’t do anything that could lead to some of their members *feeling* as if they are being discriminated against. Which is a pretty extreme demand really – that his group’s subjective feelings are more important than the objective equality of all.