Pope Benedict XVI and UK equality law
Posted on Tuesday 2 February, 2010
Filed Under Religion
THERE’S an old joke about the Pope’s attitude to contraception, attributed variously to Irish comedian Dave Allen or the Italian-American community at large. The punchline runs: ‘If he doesn’t play the game, he shouldn’t try to make the rules.’
I am inescapably reminded of the quip after reading about the intervention of the world’s most prominent former Hitler Youth into current UK debates about equality.
Benedict XVI believes that British legislation runs contrary to natural law, placing ‘limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs’. This is widely taken as a reference to the ban on adoption agencies, including Catholic adoption agencies, discriminating against gay adoptive parents.
It may also be a sideswipe the current equality bill, which narrows the existing exemptions enjoyed by religious groups, permitting them to insist that employees abide by their doctrines.
Well, New Labour in office has been adamant about its wish for ‘dialogue’ with ‘faith communities’, so it can hardly feign surprise when a religion with over 4m adherents takes it up on the idea.
It’s worth noting here that well into the 1970s, many inner city Catholic priests in England wielded a de facto block vote, and this remains the case today in parts of Scotland. The faithful have traditionally been advised to ‘vote Labour with no illusions’, to borrow a catchphrase.
Benedict XVI’s appeal to Lex Naturalis instantly makes me uneasy. It’s an elastic concept that indisputably forms part of the western liberal tradition, but does have a certain protean quality.
Catholicism endows the term with a very specific Thomist understanding. As I understand it, natural law is the philosophical basis of the Romanist job lot rejection of rubber johnnies, birth control pills, inappropriate self-stimulation of one’s pudenda and homosexuality.
Conception is the natural end of sex, and therefore procreation must be open to the possibility, even if that means large numbers of Africans coming down with HIV.
What of the issues at hand? I’ve heard it said that Catholic adoption agencies do good work, frequently finding homes for severely handicapped kids that are the hardest to place. Religious believers are seemingly more motivated to take on this difficult task, and the rest of us should be thankful for that.
But why have specifically Catholic adoption agencies in the first place? Aren’t they a throwback to the days when knocked-up Catholic schoolgirls needed somewhere to dump the unfortunate sprog before getting carted off to the nearest Magdalene Laundry?
Given the change in social mores, adoption nowadays is more properly the job of local government. The interests of the children involved are the only real priority, and to deny them loving care on the grounds of an adopter’s sexuality is not the best way to advance them. Catholicism needs either to get with the programme. If it feels it cannot do so, it should butt out of the field.
But on the matter of employment, the Pope has a rather stronger case, albeit on strictly secular grounds. It is not the province of government to rule on whom any voluntary association may or may not accept into membership or put on its payroll. For the sake of a healthy relationship between state and civil society, this point really has to prevail.
Perhaps the first significant erosion of this principle came with the Tory anti-union laws of the 1980s, which withdrew from trade unions the ability to exclude strike-breakers, and forced them to accept applications from active fascists.
We will see if the rightwing commentators who will no doubt speak up in favour of Benedict XVI in the days ahead possess sufficient logical consistency to accept this elementary point.
And writing as a leftwing commentator, yes, precisely the same consideration applies to the nonsensical decision that the British National Party should be forced to accept black members. Isn’t hating black people the very point of being in the BNP?
If the same yardstick was applied universally, Hizb ut Tahrir would be debarred from turning down evangelical Christians, for instance. I’m looking forward to the test case already.
Common sense alone dictates that the League Against Cruel Sports has no duty to be an equal opportunities employer in respect of illegal cock fighting aficionados. If you apply to be a Conservative parliamentary candidate and then inform the selection meeting that you are an anarcho-syndicalist, you do not have grounds subsequently to bring a discrimination case.
Peter Tatchell – a man with whom I usually agree on much – has been widely quoted taking the Pope to task on this one. But my guess is that he wouldn’t hire an overt homophobe for an admin job at OutRage!
By the same token, if you want to work for the Catholic Church, your potential bosses might reasonably expect you to uphold the teachings of Catholicism. If you are gay, it will presumably not have escaped your notice that the Vatican has a longstanding downer on hot man-on-man legover action.
And why would a self-respecting gay man or woman want to be a member of an organisation that teaches them that same-sex personal relationships are sinful, anyway? There are plenty of wussy denominations that take a more inclusive line, not least the Church of England.
A substantial wing of the CoE even lays theological claim to a brand of camper than a row of tents Catholicity, and will happily do you all the smells and bells you can handle. What’s not to like?
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52 Responses to “Pope Benedict XVI and UK equality law”
WONDERFUL NEWS
The truly heartening recent news from Ireland is that a dissident sort-of-RC bishop is poised to marry his Filipino boyfriend [a partner of 3 years' standing, not a beach gigolo brought home as a holiday souvenir, so there!]
I tried to give a link to the story in the ‘Irish Independent,’ but it proved unavailing. You can find it in 2 ticks for yourselves.
As for me, I was born and baptised Taig but I’m 98% a Victorian-rationalist-logical-positivist but still a 2% primitive Celt terrified of ending up with the gugs and ghasts in the Vaults of Zin or somewhere equally horrid [to reference a recent contributor to Harry's Place.]
And as for BNP members actively hating black people, that’s not really the point at all. One can be quite relaxed about black people [or Muslims, or Mormons, or Scientologists, or UFO fanatics] without wanting more than just a few living in one’s neighbourhood.
One can be quite relaxed about black people [or Muslims, or Mormons, or Scientologists, or UFO fanatics] without wanting more than just a few living in one’s neighbourhood.
If you worry about how many black people there are in your neighbourhood and whether it’s too many or not, I’d suggest that you are not “quite relaxed about black people”.
Rory is wrong; one can be – or force oneself to be – “quite relaxed” about the existance of yapping, nagging post-menopausal women or evangelically-minded born-again Christians on the same planet or even in the same town or maybe even in the same street, but this is not to say that one would want even one of them in the same workplace as oneself except as a penance, the sort of thing Gurdjieff called “voluntary suffering.”
Talking of proximities, David mentioned the urban Catholic block vote existing until well into the 1970s and this reference sparked a memory.
If my memory’s right, George Orwell, who had very little time for Ireland or the Irish, referred to “large numbers of desperately poor Irish labourers” who acted as a silent drag on the more progressive aspects of Labour Party policy.
After a minor local upheaval, one ex-MP of the Hiberno-Labourite fraternity stood as an anti-abortion candidate somewhere on Merseyside against the official transport House candidate but received very few votes.
Pretty much agree with Dave here on both Adoption and Employment.
However, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If Catholics want to ban gay people from working in their churches, then they should have no objection to Catholics occasionally being excluded from inappropriate positions of employment (Ruth Kelly as Equalities Minister springs to mind).
The problem is that churches never approach these issues on a consistent, universalist basis. They are only interested in securing concessions for their own individual tribes – whose rights they regard as so much more important than anybody else’s. Hence, we just see a familiar pattern of rules being established, followed by the granting of exemptions for which ever religious interest group whines the most.
“George Orwell, who had very little time for Ireland or the Irish, referred to “large numbers of desperately poor Irish labourers” who acted as a silent drag on the more progressive aspects of Labour Party policy.”
“progressive” (sic)
That amazng “internationaist” Orwell eh? “Irish low-lifes hold back the forward march of BRITISH socialism?”. What a guy. No wonder Nick C. worships at the shrine
I think there are far too many Bill Corrs in this neighbourhood.
Rory is wrong; one can be – or force oneself to be – “quite relaxed” about the existance of yapping, nagging post-menopausal women or evangelically-minded born-again Christians on the same planet or even in the same town or maybe even in the same street, but this is not to say that one would want even one of them in the same workplace as oneself except as a penance, the sort of thing Gurdjieff called “voluntary suffering.”
Again, if you are relaxed about some group of people’s existence somewhere in the world but don’t want them near you, I would suggest that you are actually not “quite relaxed” about that group of people.
to be fair, Hitler Youth membership was compulsory from 1936/1939 and it was very difficult for somebody of “German blood” to avoid it; far more influential for pope Ratzinger was his non-nazi but reactionary-catholic and bavarian-particularist family background
Bill Corr says he lives in Saudi Arabia for christs sake!
And why does anything Orwell say get treated like it is a pronoucement from God?
Intelligent article overall.
I do have one slight problem and this is your questioning of gay men joining the Catholic Church. It would seem a good idea to me as it may force the church to think about some of its values and may lead to change. I think the church should be seen as a part of the state and it is nice to see it challenged.
After all they have no problem with ditching the stuff about rich men and camels do they. And there is far more in the bible about the ‘evils’ of wealth than the ‘evils’ of sodomy.
I think we have discovered why Bill Corr praises Saudi Arabia (in an earlier thread). It’s because, like the Saudi regime, he’s a sexist too.
Main point though: I think it is important to register that the Catholic church’s opposition to gay adoption is not just homophobic, but also an attack on the rights of children – specifically, on their right to be cared for by the best possible parents, regardless of sexuality.
Was this old fascist the one that was pulling the strings of the last fascist pope. Was he not the one that ordered the condoms to be destroyed in funeral fires to save the souls of Africans that eventually died in their tens of thousands from aids. Perhaps he should be in the dock with his new found convert Tony.
blimey Dave,
i didn’t expect we were going to agree on this one!
good article.
Dave, a good post on a difficult subject. The left mustn’t always side with what is PC. It’s a shame that this pope and the previous one he was the enforcer for is/was so far to the right.
And why would a self-respecting gay man or woman want to be a member of an organisation that teaches them that same-sex personal relationships are sinful, anyway?
Or as my old man would say.. ‘why join a cricket club and moan when they don’t play tennis?’
Strange reading the last few above that the left are quite! about their opinion of this fascist organisation. Well why rock the boat. Socialists do not do such things nowadays.
I like this, Dave. I wasn’t expecting to agree with you, but it’s good to see a recognition that doing the properly liberal thing is not always the same as doing the PC thing. Nor do I have much patience for non-Catholic lefties complaining that the Pope is oppressing them – it’s his job to teach the faith, it’s your right to ignore him. Simple as that.
Dean & Janine!
Even here, among people who consider themselves enlightened smarties capable of understanding subtleties and nuances and fine shades of meaning, the distortion of one’s words is a fact of life.
“Praise Him! Praise Him!”
Praising Saudi Arabia is a rather different thing from saying that in practice this one-party dictatorship does have some good points. That’s all I ever said, all I’m saying now and probably all I will ever say about the realities of life in K.S.A.
GOOD NEWS FROM IRELAND:
Here’s the ‘self-styled” bishop in Ireland about to marry his Filipino partner:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/outspoken-bishop-tells-of-lsquodeep-loversquo-for-boyfriend-1885595.html
After all the nasty stuff about militant Fenians and intransigent Loyalists, this is the sort of news we like!
THIS NEWS JUST IN
One might hope for a Papal pronouncement on the subject of lesbianism among albatrosses …
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/lesbian-albatrosses-to-raise-their-chick-1887658.html
It will be recalled that Christo-Fundies in the USA were so excited by the apparant pro-family message of the movie ‘March of the Penguins’ that they were scheduling special screenings.
Then everyone who knew anything at all about penguins weighed in with dismaying true tales about the serial polygamy widespread among penguins, not to mention the willingness of female penguins on Antarctic islands to exchange a brief sexual encounter for a stone which she used to demarcate her nest. And, predictably, there were reports of gay penguins units in – appropriately – Berlin.
erm Bill,
The reason I pointed out that you lived in Saudi Arabia was because of the following comment YOU made,
“One can be quite relaxed about black people [or Muslims, or Mormons, or Scientologists, or UFO fanatics] without wanting more than just a few living in one’s neighbourhood.”
Nothing to do with praising Saudi Arabia.
Your last point about the C of E was overly simplistic.
Yes the Anglo-Catholic wing had and still has a great many gay clergy – back in the 70s when he still had pretensions to be the new Evelyn Waugh A.N. Wilson wrote several very funny comic novels about them.
However its also long been divided between its own traditionalist and liberal wings – with the former including a number of priests who were both clearly gay and misogynistic – and these have to use a rather appropriate term mostly decamped to join the Roman church itself over the issue of women priests.
You also get a fair number of traditionalist Anglo-Catholics who have effectively (but not always legally) seceded from the Church over women priests and sought the supervision of like-minded Bishops from other Anglican churches.
Amongst the Anglo-Catholics that remain in the C of E the status of gay priests varies a lot from diocese to diocese – most bishops seem to effectively follow a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, a few are seriously averse to employing gays at all and others – most notably in London where you find many of the campest churches – tolerate openly gay clergy.
However even in the most liberal dioceses you will generally find homophobic parishioners who can make life awkward and unpleasant for openly gay clergy.
As regards the C of E’s ‘inclusivity’ the leadership’s attempts to avoid a massive international schism (most African and other third world Anglicans tending to vicious homophobia) has kept this a long way short of admitting gays to full equality.
To try and explain it in Leftist terms its all rather as Trotsky had left some vast sum of money to the Fourth International under legal conditions that made it virtually impossible for any faction to ever gain complete control of the apparatus and expel the others – imagine the Shachtmanites, Cannonites, Pabloites, Lambertistes, Posadists, Healeyites, SWPers and all the others having to peacefully co-exist in the same international organisation for decades and you get a vague idea of what how theologically divided the Anglican Communion is.
“The Church’s One Foundation is …”
Explaining Anglicanism in Trotskyite terms is too delicious for words!
It is all too seldom that a contribution here is so exquisitely amusing that a reader is reduced, quite literally, to tears of helpless merriment.
Thank you, Roger.
The Hitler Youth slur is indeed somewhat unfair to Ratzinger.
Membership was compulsory for all Aryan teenagers from 1936 and it is quite clear that families like the Ratzingers did do everything they could to resist conscription of their children into what they rightly saw as a anti-Christian death cult.
However the radicalisation allowed by the war removed the last remaining loopholes that allowed children to evade active membership.
For example Hans and Sophie Scholl who were executed for resistance activities in 1943 were both full members of the Hitler Youth and its female equivalent the BDM despite coming from a far more politically suspect (their anti-Nazi father had actually been in a concentration camp) family than the Ratzingers.
Other young people in Catholic areas like Cologne combined formal membership of the Hitler Youth and BDM with membership of subversive – or effectively the same thing in Nazi Germany – criminal youth gangs that were regarded as a serious political threat by the Gestapo.
So mere membership of the HJ or BDM no more signified active consent to Nazism than workers’ compulsory membership of the Deutsche Arbeiter Fronte and other Nazi satellite organisations did.
The complete failure of the Werwolf resistance network planned by the Nazis also indicates that German teenagers in 1945 were by no means as fanaticised by their youth organisations as their leaders imagined – and in fact modern scholarship tends to see service in the Wehrmacht as a far more powerful force for Nazi indoctrination.
BTW I very highly recommend Hans Fallada’s 1947 novel Alone in Berlin (the US edition has the more accurate title ‘Everyone Dies Alone”) for a powerful view of just how utterly constrained the possibilities of real resistance were for ordinary working class Germans and how heroic (and for the most part utterly ineffective) the simplest acts of propaganda and sabotage were.
Bill – I hope you are being heavily ironic as praise from you is something that even a neocon-loving liberal imperialist like myself would prefer to avoid.
While my analogy was admittedly a silly one, in my experience Trots do have psychologically a lot in common with the more sectarian christians – there is the same nitpicking exegesis of ancient scriptures that magically explain everything about a world that is vastly different to the one in which they were written, the same tendancy to form schools and sects, the same distinction between esoteric and exoteric truths and inner and outer circles, the same suicidal pursuit of ancient feuds even when unity is vital to simple survival – and in recent decades the same fatal willingness to see salvation in what we used to call the third world and the same deliberate refusal to see the unpleasant realities behind those burgeoning African churches or national revolutions.
In fact I am rather surprised there weren’t more direct crossovers – IIRC Eric Heffer moved from membership of the RCP to High Anglicanism but I can’t think of any others.
And while I can name multiple Stalinist clerics I’ve never encountered a single Trotskyist one – although admittedly I did leave the orbit of the SWP well before its turn to the mosque.
Everyone stop nicking Dave’s ideas
http://www.davidosler.com/2009/03/protestantism_and_trotskyism_r.html
Roger wrote: “And while I can name multiple Stalinist clerics I’ve never encountered a single Trotskyist one – although admittedly I did leave the orbit of the SWP well before its turn to the mosque.”
there are a number of clerics in today’s Brazilian trotskyist organisations and at least one (excommunicated) jesuit pater and 2 or 3 buddhist monks in the Lankan NSSP
for those who can read German: http://entdinglichung.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/kirchenkommission-des-kommunistischen-bundes-kb-kirche-klerus-und-christen-anpassung-oder-widerstand/ … a piece by the non-dogmatic ML group “Kommunistischer Bund” from 1979 about their “church policy”, regarding churches in an implicitely gramscian way as “battleground”
Roger understands that the difference between belonging to a nutcase religious sect and a nutcase political group is that the people in the former are bound to be far happier and more content, being enlisted among the saved, no matter how few converts join them.
On the other hand, adherents of the SLL, SWP, and so on can have only the faintest of hopes that their desires will be realised in this Vale of Tears.
Strolling through HP, I came across a reference to a person of whose very existence I had been hitherto, quite shamefully, unaware:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francois_Genoud
Did someone like this believe in an afterlife?
I congratulate you, David, on having written an elegant defence of conscience rights from a left secularist perspective.
Let’s be clear about what the consequences of the Equality Bill would be:
But if the Bill became law and the bishops defied the Government and stepped in to discipline errant clergy they could not only be sued for sexual discrimination but, in the worst-case scenario, they could also face imprisonment, unlimited fines and have Church assets sequestrated.
Those who defend this madly authoritarian bill are defending the most massive transfer of powers from citizens to the state.
Elsewhere I’ve compared religious rights to the proverbial canary in the mine. The state’s attitude to religious rights flag up its attitude to civil liberties in general. Once religious rights disappear all our rights are imperilled.
In her classic account of her incarceration in the gulags, Journey into the Whirlwind, Evgenia Ginzburg writes of an occasion when some of her fellow prisoners, a group of devout Russian Orthodox women refused to work on Easter Day and were punished for their actions.
She recounted how she looked on at these women being punished and felt a sense of admiration for them and their insanely principled refusal to work on a holy day. The tyranny which refused to allow these women to rest on their holy day was the same tyranny which had no respect for the rights of all its citizens.
Bleed, bleed, poor country!
Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,
For goodness dare not check thee.
Bill Corr: ‘Explaining Anglicanism in Trotskyite terms is too delicious for words!’
But entirely fitting. Two of the founding fathers of British Trotskyism were lifelong Anglo-Catholics.
You clearly know little about either the psychology of religious belief or the gullibility/idealism of your average Trot.
You can’t have met that many religious believers if you think they are all happy or content (being set inflexible standards that have eternal damnation as the punishment for failure isn’t a great recipe for happiness in this world)- and historically they are far more successful in converting others than any political group (just look at the numbers).
Again at least in my experience, most if not all Trots really do believe that they will see the revolution in the foreseeable future – but are clearly hopeless at convincing other people that this revolution is either attainable or desirable (again look at the numbers).
When you finally realise that a re-run of Petrograd in 1917 is not really plausible anymore – and that it might not turn out at all well for you or anyone else even if it was – then you pretty much cease by definition to be a Trotskyist.
At least in one case (the RCT) an entire sect appears to have made this realisation simultaneously and simply changed sides in the class war.
The dynamic was somewhat different for the Stalinists as they had a viable ideological half-way house in Eurocommunism they could move into without losing their membership of the party – until it obligingly liquidated itself and finally freed them to become Blairites or whatever.
But for Trots there is no real ‘lite’ option – being a revolutionary socialist is an either/or proposition.
And re Genoud real neo-Nazis tend to be firm atheists (the Nazi pagan/occult meme is hugely exaggerated).
It’s jolly interesting to have these seventeenth-century issues stumble out of their sepulcres into the light of day.
Red Maria is, of course, right about the State and the religious rights of subject and citizens.
Right up to a point, of course; if Red Maria were a judge deciding whether or not to make a court order overruling Jehovah’s Witness parents and thus enabling a child to receive a blood transfusion, what would be her decision?
How about parents who believe that it is God’s will that they chastise their children with more than a trip to the naughty step?
There are scores of other examples one could give and, yes, we all know that hard cases make very bad law.
On the other hand, over at Harry’s Place there a fine exchange of views about a BNP nutter called the Green Arrow, the monarchy, Liz herself, David Blunkett and a cast too numerous to mention …
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2010/02/02/blunkett-calls-on-bnp-to-disown-party-supporter%e2%80%99s-attack-on-queen/
Dr Paul,
One of the two Anglo-Catholic founding fathers must be Reg Groves due to his connection with Conrad Noel the Red Vicar of Thaxted (but we could probably argue about how deep his Trotskyism was as he seems to have left the movement by the point it constituted itself as a separate party and was AFAIK never a member of the RCP).
Who was the other?
“I was born taig…”
Prick
Red Maria,
Evgenia Ginzburg should to my mind be as well or better known as Solzhenitsyn or Levi.
The episode with the Orthodox women would also have a deeper resonance with a Russian reader as it closely parallels the fate of the Old Believers under Tsarism – this C17 sect refused to accept a series of reforms to practices like the dating of Easter or the number of fingers one used when making the sign of the cross – and were in thousands of cases burned and tortured to death precisely for refusing to celebrate religious holidays on the correct days.
In the pre-revolutionary milieu Ginzburg grew up in the Old Believers had huge iconic significance as heroic opponents of despotism (much as our own puritans might have done if they hadn’t made teh mistake of winning our own civil war) and this feeds through into much of the literature of the Stalin period (Akhmatova for instance refers to them in her Requiem for the victims of the Terror)
David does seem to rather ignorant of the facts, or on how anti-discrimination legislation works.
Current employment equalities legalisation concerning sexuality has already an opt out on the ground of religious belief. The thinking being that conservative religious organisations such as the Catholic Church should have the right to discriminate against gay men when it come to recruiting an important positions with their church such as a priest. Fair enough, there is nothing to be gained by forcing the issue here.
However the original clause was so woolly that virtually any position with any organisation run, however nominally by a religious group could legally discriminated against lesbian, gay and bisexual people – even a cleaner in a Catholic nursery. All the government is trying to do is clarify this clause so that only significant positions that effects people religious observance are covered. This does not include being a cleaner, cook, janitor or even a teacher or a social worker – why should it?
Such restrictions effect LGBT organisations. To use the example David suggests – if Outrage was to employ administer. Indeed here David is being a complete dick. A Catholic School employing a gay teacher is not the equivalent of Tatchell employing a homophobe. All employers are allowed to select people with commitment to the values of the organisation, and where it a faith organisation they are allowed to discriminate on the basis of faith, just not on the grounds of race, sex, age, disability or sexuality. Likewise Outrage would not be allowed discriminate for a basic admin post on the basis of sexuality because sexuality would not be instrumental to abilities of the person to do the job. .
You would have thought that as a supposed lefty that David would favour a shift in power to rights of workers!
In reference to the above discussion Eric Heffer was never a member of the RCP. He was a member of the Stalinist CPGB. That said he was briefly a member of the SRG.
Nor was Reg Groves a member of the RCP. But he was a founder of the Balham group and a lifelong Catholic.
More to the point I agree with this post from Dave concerning this rather stupid Bill. Unless significant amendments change the Bill substantially I suspect that major problems will develop concerning the precise nature of various bodies. And therefore the nature of the relationship of an employee and an employer. For example a priest is certainly an employee but is also a person who has voluntarily accepted a role that is characterised by its vocation that might not involve being employed by the church.
Roger,
You’re absolutely correct. Was it the Old Believers who Vera Broido also referred to in her memoirs, Daughter of the Revolution?
Evgenia Semyonova Ginzburg, what an extraordinary woman and yes, absolutely up there with Solzhenitsyn and Levi. Her book Journey into the whirlwind should be an A level set text.
Semonyova was a committed member of the CPSU and an academic in Kazan when she was arrested and accused of – wait for it – involvement in a counter-revolutionary Trotskyite group.
In prison she used the wall-knocking alphabet to communicate with her fellow prisoners in adjoining cells. The first person she communicated with asked “Which party are you a member of?”. Semyonova replied: “Communist Party”.
“I am a left SR and you are an enemy of the people, I will not talk to you ever again,” came the reply. And sure enough she never heard from that woman during all the period she was there.
Remember what the prophet said: There is nothing new under the sun.
It’s rather simple, isn’t it…? The King of the Kiddie Fiddlers and his merry minions will continue to enjoy their freedom to insist that Priests have a penis and women can’t be Bishops, or whatever other nonsense they insist on.
But if the National Secular Society are sucessful at the European Court they will not be able to enforce their obnoxious little God’s ‘criminal ‘standards’ on other employees – teachers, etc.
Hardly controversial. The reign of Christian Terror is over. Get over it!
Ministers of religion are legally classed as office holders rather than employees and as such are currently exempt, although some of the wackier secularists want to change that. I suppose it comes from being in a country where Parliament can determine the doctrines of the Established Church.
The point about teachers in Catholic schools, which is the big one here, is that there are already plenty of gay people, remarried divorcees, and unmarried cohabitants teaching in Catholic schools. Gay teachers’ sexuality per se is not the issue; it’s whether school authorities could discipline a teacher who publicly flouts the ethos of the institution. Or, applied to clergy, whether a bishop could legally discipline a babyfathering priest.
This may not be a problem for you if you think the state should be able to dictate the moral teachings of religious associations. Indeed in China the Catholic Church can’t legally operate – instead there is a thing called the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which agrees with all the policies of the government and whose bishops are appointed by the Communist Party. Sometimes I think Lady Harman sees it as an example of best practice. But, like Red Maria says – the canary in the mine…
Bosch. Excellent post. Any other religion that behaved like those depraved perverts would be banned. It is hard to believe the RC Church had the audacity to campaign against the Scientologists. The pot calling the kettle black.
The hypocrisy of the Catholic Church knows no bounds, nor do its defenders.
The reframing of the debate to avoid the tricky questions is a bit tedious, but to be expected.
What is striking, however, is the inability to acknowledge the human condition in all its marvellous forms and diverse sexuality, instead were supposed to tiptoe around Catholic bigotry.
We are supposed to believe that the Catholic Church doesn’t have oodles and oodles of gays already in it, but the question is one of their behaviour.
What a acquaint conservative outlook.
So people can shag like rabbits, irrespective of sexuality, orientation or inclination, as long as it’s not seen in public.
Kept behind net curtains, kept out of the press, whispered about but not spoken openly, no speaking about different sexualities.
No matter how irrational that might seem, or how silly to socialists that the conservative outlook of the Church’s defenders might seem, no matter.
It is somewhat resemblant of a move to turn the clock back to the 1950s and will probably about as successful.
Re Roger’s question. The other Anglo-Catholic Trotskyist was Stewart Purkis, who like Groves was a member of the Balham Group. As far as I know, neither Groves or Purkis went on to join any Trotskyist group after the Balham Group dissolved, but they were lifelong militant left-wingers.
The next edition of Revolutionary History should contain a substantial article on Christians and the Marxist Left in Britain by an expert on the political esoteric, Ron Heisler. It deals with the Troskyist connection with Conrad Noel’s Catholic Crusade, the Communist Party’s links with radical Christians, and various even more odd aspects, such as the SPGB’s debate with spiritualists.
I support the equality bill and thank the lord that the state has ‘imposed’ health and safety legislation on us all.
I oppose the curtailments on civil liberties and stood firmly against 42 days detention.
I think we on the left should be capable of looking at these things case by case instead of setting up legal precedents, where general oppostion to the state must always mean opposing state decisions.
Basically the Pope can shut his cake hole.
Are all taigs by birth pricks by definition, skyhook, or only those persons who say that they were born taigs?
Let us pause and reflect what the Pope, formerly the Panzer Candinal, believes:
The world, every living and inanimate thing and the entire Universe was created by a single invisible Deity who later impregnated a human virgin, Mary, who bore a son, Jesus, who was simultaneously both his own father and an invisible spirit.
We have immortal souls and will live forever in Heaven if we are good and love Jesus and truly repent all our sins and especially Original Sin which came about because a talking reptile persuaded a gullible woman to eat enchanted fruit from a magic tree.
Not so hard to grasp, is it?
From a site many readers here may not know, here’s something of interest:
http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/100201_marines.htm
Splintered Sunrise, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin…?
It’s rather disingenous to state that “authorities could (only)discipline a teacher who publicly flouts the ethos of the institution”
Surely, this is merely a coded way of stating that only openly gay teachers, or other staff, will suffer institutional discrimination?
Sorry. No dice, me old China. Speaking of which, your comparison with the situation in the ‘peoples’ republic’ is equally disingenuous.
Equalities legislation allows British courts to defend minorities against concentrated systems of power, in contradistinction to the Chinese laws, which are designed to do the opposite: to protect a concentrated system of atate power against social minorities.
I’m afraid that defending the right of people to do a job without fear of arbitary dismissal is not the same as instituting pogroms against believers or insisting that a centralised state apparatus should determine religous doctrine for believers.
The News today is that Catholic acting-as-judge Judge Cherie Blair-Booth thinks that religious people have special legal privileges.
Because of their faith they need not go to gaol for acting violently.
Convert all ye unbelievers and ye shall get away with crime!
In all fairness, Coatsey, the point was that the villain in this instance had no criminal record, was a regular mosque-attender and [although decent people would forbear mentioning this] the incident was a w-g-on-w-g crime.
Would a tatooed Satanist have been accorded the same leniency, though?
Red Maria – As an addict of Russian political memoirs will certainly look out for Vera Broido.
An Old Believer martyr that keeps popping up was the Boyarina Morozova who was a powerful icon for pre-revolutionary feminists and radicals – see Surikov’s painting and Akhmatova’s poem: http://artrift.blog-city.com/akhmatova_surikov.htm.
Interesting that we’ve ended up with two threads: one talking about the historical intersections between religion and the left and the other a series of attacks directed against the catholic church and its Evil Nazi Pope – and that in this we are seeing almost complete unity between people who are normally unable to agree on anything.
FWIW I find the Catholic position bigoted and reprehensible but not inconsistent or hypocritical.
“So people can shag like rabbits, irrespective of sexuality, orientation or inclination, as long as it’s not seen in public” is just abuse and not a description of what the Catholic hierarchy believe – to their minds shagging outside of marriage is a mortal sin and damns you forever unless you genuinely and sincerely repent of it and never do it again (and even if you fool your priest into giving you absolution God knows if that repentance is sincere).
Neither for that matter is the literal truth of the the Adam and Eve story – modern Catholics are not for the most part fundamentalists and have understood this kind of stuff as allegorical and symbolic for a great many years.
And it may be bonkers superstition to you and me but vastly more people believe in it than in the class struggle or the labour theory of value.
The serious response is not to insult and abuse believers but to point out to them that their beliefs cannot be imposed on anyone else through the law and at the taxpayers expense.
If that means cutting loose faith schools from all public support and then letting them hire and fire and teach whoever and whatever they want that is probably what it takes.
And if their adoption agencies refuse to accept our standards of non-discrimination then they should indeed be closed.
But ranting about how stupid it is to believe in magic sky fairies (except of course for the one our anti-imperialist Muslim allies worship) is pointless and ineffective.
As our little sub-thread discussed, historically some of our best people had such beliefs – and if you go back to the glory days of socialist agitation a century ago even militant atheists on the left were generally ready to engage in serious and courteous debate with believers and strove to show them that they were in error and not that they were evil bigots and morons.
Firstly there doesn’t appear to be any actual religious element to this crime – its not as if he tried to kill a rabbi or burn down a church on his way home from the mosque.
Secondly if Cherie Booth-Blair (or whatever she calls herself now) had used any term other than ‘you are a religious man’ this would just be about a liberal judge’s inability to comprehend that breaking someone’s jaw in a dispute about your place in a bank queue is a serious assault and requires a custodial sentence.
But faced with guidelines discouraging custodial sentences she just cast around for reasons to justify leniency and his religiosity and the assumption of ‘good moral character’ that attaches to it was what she latched onto.
Foolish but not wicked.
Talking of the interface between religious belief and the real world, Mad Mel is on her soapbox again. Which is not to say that she’s anything other than 100% right!
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5741566/censorship-by-intimidation.thtml
So the EMRC at Exeter University is run and funded by dodgy people …
Andrew Brown springs to Cherie’s defence:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/feb/04/religion-cherieblair
“The real disagreement is whether being a devout Muslim (or Christian) is in itself a sign of good character. Cherie Booth seems to be arguing that it is, though less important than his previously spotless record. For Sanderson and those who think like him, being a devout believer is quite the opposite. It’s evidence of bad character.
In Sanderson’s world, judges should say things like “Although you have no previous convictions, you are none the less a follower of Pope Benedict XVI and so unable to tell right from wrong. I therefore find myself compelled to impose a custodial sentence”
I don’t myself think that “religion” or even being a Muslim, or a Christian is a distinction fine-grained enough to be useful in this context. Some sorts of religious belief make some crimes more likely; some positions of religious authority add to the gravity of offences committed by their holders. It is reasonable for a judge to say “You are a follower of Anwar al-Awlaki and therefore especially dangerous”; or even “You are the Archbishop of Canterbury, and so should set an example. Your sentence will therefore be heavier.”
But if some religious beliefs make crimes more likely or more serious, it follows that there are others which have the opposite effect. It would be absurd not to take those into account when sentencing. Someone who is part of a supportive congregation is knitted into society in a useful way. The beauty of the case of Shamso Miah is that we have no idea which he is. Nor is it clear whether first-time offenders of his sort are usually jailed, whatever their beliefs. So everyone can enjoy their opinions entirely from first principles, as we call our prejudices. ”
Whil grossly unfair to the NSS who are arguing that there should be no discrimination for or against religious believers the rest of his argument is quite strong – beliefs and social participation are an indication of character and judges are supposed to take character into account when sentencing.
Such discrimination may not be perfectly ‘just’ but if we remove character and personal history from the judgement you may not like the results.