Christians: Stop Trying to Discriminate Against Gay People!

Posted: August 19th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: gay rights, human rights, religion | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Catholic Care has sure been told:

A Roman Catholic adoption charity’s appeal to be allowed to discriminate against gay people wanting it to place children with them has been rejected.

Catholic Care wanted exemption from new anti-discrimination laws so it could limit services provided to homosexual couples on religious grounds.

The Charity Commission said gay people were suitable parents and religious views did not justify discrimination.

The Leeds-based charity said it was “very disappointed”.

Catholic Care – which had been placing children with adoptive parents for more than 100 years – was among a dozen Catholic agencies in England and Wales forced to change their policy towards homosexual people by the equality laws passed in 2007.

I’m sure it was very disappointed – it believed, as the article goes on to say, that the Equality Act went against the Catholic Church’s teachings on marriage and family life. Too bad. Gay people are suitable parents, and belief in the supernatural cannot in this day and age be allowed to justify discrimination against us. No doubt the agency and the church will complain that there are all sorts of disorders we are guilty of, that ‘forcing’ children to be parented by gay people goes against their ‘rights’ to have heterosexual parenting. My argument is that children have the right to good parenting – if the best available happen to be gay in this instance then so be it. The Pope however disagrees:

In a strongly worded letter to the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, the pope criticised the then-Labour government for creating “limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs”.

He wrote: “The effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”

Suggesting that discriminating against gay people on the grounds of belief is somehow justifiable under ‘natural law’ is wrong-minded and a misrepresentation of what equality law is supposed to be about, and Ratzinger was quite rightly roundly condemned for his intervention. It’s a relief that the Charity Commission has decided to rest its decision on the rule of civil, rather than ‘God”s law.

  • Share/Bookmark

The Pope is Wrong About the Threat to Freedom

Posted: February 5th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Politics, Uncategorized, freedom of speech, gay rights, religion | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

And so is Jonathan Sacks:

When Christians, Jews and others feel that the ideology of human rights is threatening their freedoms of association and religious practice, a tension is set in motion that is not healthy for society, freedom or Britain. Rather than regard the Pope’s remarks as an inappropriate intervention, we should use them to launch an honest debate on where to draw the line between our freedom as individuals and our freedom as members of communities of faith. One should not be purchased at the cost of the other.

It’s the same logic which Lillian Ladele and others have tried to justify, but he masks it in the language of human rights. But look how he misuses it:

We all have an interest in freedom, the freedom to act differently from others. Indeed, at the core of human rights is a religious proposition: that we are all, regardless of colour, creed or culture, in the image of God.

No. At the core of human rights is a proposition that we’re all equally deserving of fundamental dignity and rights. It’s a secular argument, which presumes that we’re all entitled to the same treatment before civil law, which in turn should protect those things equally for everyone, and under all circumstances. So when he suggests that human rights threaten freedom of religion he’s operating under an entirely false premise. Human rights don’t threaten the right to religious association, but they do presume that no organisation or association has the right to discriminate against people for being gay. And religion is far from fundamentally predicated on the right to discriminate, which Ratzinger clearly believes to be the case. The government ultimately remains short sighted in having allowed this clash to happen, and to continue. Having equality legislation which equates inherent characteristics such as age  or gender with the imagined quality of belief makes a mockery of equality. Human rights are not about justifying discrimination or legitimising bigotry.

  • Share/Bookmark