Him wrote:
That example of a street preacher being arrested is plainly wrong, as long as they're not harassing people then they should be allowed to say what they want...
Indeed.
The 'harassment' aspect is interesting. What actually counts as harassment?
For instance, if a doctor tells a patient that he'll pray with them – is that harassment or on a par with someone knocking on your door to preach at you?
I don't think either is 'harassment', as such, but one does mean that someone is taking advantage of a position over someone who is in a more vulnerable one.
I tend toward the argument that there is – and should not be – any law against not being 'offended'. That has to work both ways.
Him wrote:
However there was a bit on the page Kirkstaller linked to that mentioned a registrar not wanting to do certain marriages, that's just tough sh|t. You can't pick and choose which laws you want to obey, if you feel you can't carry out the job then you need to resign...
The Lilian Ladele case was (is) deeply annoying. What it amounts to – and this was stated at tribunal – is that she wanted to be favoured over her colleagues, in terms of being able to dictate what parts of her job she carried out and what parts she did not.
The last I heard, she was still campaigning (sending letters to each member of the House of Lords) – and funded by a fundamentalist Christian organisation.
There's been at least one subsequent similar case that I am aware of – which does seem to suggest a situation of councils having a poor recruitment policy or people deliberately getting into such jobs disingenuously in order to provoke a situation over the issue of civil partnerships.
Him wrote:
Also, this made me giggle just a little -
"Earlier this year Lord Carey warned that Christians in Britain are being treated as “bigots” and sacked for expressing their beliefs.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury also warned of a “drive to remove Judaeo-Christian values from the public square”.
He accused Britain’s courts of consistently applying “equality law to discriminate against Christians”."
Is it their faith that leads to such fecked-up reasoning? Or were they born this thick?
Carey is a particular prat. He also claimed, some time ago, that the court judgement in favour of Max Mosely over the
News of the Screws 'story' was bad, since such dreadful behaviour as Mosely's should be revealed to the public for all to judge.
It seems to have passed the old cretin by that:
• most people will have bought the paper and read the story for reasons of titilation. Any subsequent moralising will merely be to clear their own consciences of the initial titilation;
• even if they read the story in order to cast a moral judgement, it rather forgets all that stuff about "he who is without sin".
There's been masses of other stuff: wearing a cross, for instance. It has never been a necessary, mandated part of being a Christian.
Not that this is limited to Christianity. There are stories about Muslim shop workers not wanting to touch alcohol or pork at work. While this is not an indicator of any mass situation, it does appear to have occurred.
Similarly, there are reports of increasing numbers of religious pharmacists refusing to provide the morning-after pill to women – on the grounds of their religious beliefs. We've had nurses going to tribunal because they get upset at being near women who have had or are waiting for an abortion (the employer in this case had already put them onto work patterns that didn't mean they were directly involved in any abortion).
There was a whole fuss about whether Muslims in an operating room could actually wear short sleeves.
A few years ago, I was asked to help with a bit of advice when a new ageish cafe in the north of England was feeling its collar was being metaphorically felt by the local evangelical church (with big local business backer).
Let's be clear that all these cases still only represent a minority of religious people in the UK. But it seems that such incidents are either themselves increasing or are being increasingly reported. Yet this is at a time when it is probably fair to say that religious observance has decreased in the country at large.
So what's actually going on?
Did no religious person ever actually complain about such things in the past – or have employers started making staff do things that go against their particular religion only recently?
Is there a heightened religious sensibility developing – and if so, why and why now?
And this is without mentioning the rise of religious protests against, say,
Jerry Springer: The Opera or books of poetry or plays – acts not limited to adherents of any one religion.
