Polly Toynbee
Tuesday January 9, 2007
The Guardian
The
religious are rallying by torchlight outside parliament this evening.
In the Lords they are trying to strike out regulations in the new
equality act that outlaw discrimination and harassment of gays, making
it illegal to discriminate in providing any goods and services to
anyone, from healthcare to hotel rooms. This is a mighty test of
strength between the religious and the secular. Any peers against
discrimination, get on down the Lords: the vote is at 7.30pm. Will the
Tories prove to be gay-friendly?
Christians, Muslims and Jews are
all fighting against the sexual orientation regulations with a wrecking
clause that would render them meaningless: "Nothing in these
regulations shall force an individual to act against their conscience
or strongly held religious beliefs." Anyone could use their
"conscience" to discriminate against gays.
Get one thing clear:
this law does not stop religions from banning gays joining their
congregations or becoming priests. (Though they don't seem to be very
good at it.) But it does oblige any organisation or business offering
services to the public to offer them equally to all comers. Bizarre and
repugnant ads in newspapers from Christian organisers have spread
outright lies about what this law does. Their campaign, strongly
supported by the Daily Mail, has whipped up a degree of homophobia
still lurking under an apparently tolerant surface. The gay rights
group Stonewall has been horrified at the resurgence of threats and
obscene abuse.
To make their case, the religious have struggled
to think up extreme scenarios where the law might affect them, but each
has proved to be wrong, as ministers have refuted them all.
They
claim the law will "force all schools to actively promote homosexual
civil partnerships to children (from primary-school age) to the same
degree that they teach the importance of marriage". No it won't: the
curriculum does not "actively promote" homosexuality, nor even make sex
education compulsory. They claim the law will "force a printing shop
run by a Christian to print fliers promoting gay sex". No it won't,
unless the same printers promote heterosexual porn too. Or how about
this one? "Force a family-run B&B to let out a double room to a
transsexual couple, even if the family think it in the best interests
of their children to refuse to allow such a situation in their home."
Oh no it won't: it doesn't even cover transsexuals - and what a daft
scenario anyway. The National Secular Society has complained to the
Advertising Standards Authority. But on and on go the prurient
situations the religious homophobes dream up. The Christian Concern for
Our Nation, petitioning the Queen, claims they "love their neighbours",
but "Christians, of course, earnestly desire the repentance and
salvation of homosexuals".
None of this might matter much if it
were just about the strange practices in private of religious bigots.
But faith groups already run and are bidding to take over many more
social services. If they win this debate, free to discriminate as they
please, they will prove themselves utterly unfit to provide state
services or receive state funding.
Lord Ferrers in the last
debate said hospitals should be allowed to discriminate if they had a
Christian ethos. Does that mean they do now? Are they turning away gay
Aids patients? He said a pro-life Catholic hospital should be allowed
to turn away a lesbian for fertility treatment. (Though any
non-Catholic turning to Catholics for fertility treatment needs their
head examined.) The Catholic adoption society said it will shut up shop
if it has to allow gay couples to apply.
Churches say they will never
let out a hall to a gay organisation. Christians running soup kitchens
say they want to refuse gays shelter and soup. (Soup!) The Catholic
Archbishop of Liverpool threatens to withdraw all cooperation over
schools and charity programmes if the law goes through. The Bishop of
Rochester says it will damage church work in inner cities. (Only if his
church shuts down services.) The C of E pretends that the law would
force it to bless civil unions (it won't).
Listen to all these
good reasons why the state should step back from its current
infatuation with faith provision of social services. In a democracy,
public services paid for out of general taxes can't be held to ransom
by the weird sexual fantasies of unelected service providers. These
faith groups are now showing exactly why they should not be running an
ever growing number of schools and academies. Homophobic bullying is
rife in schools: 15-25 children a year kill themselves due to bullying,
many, if not most, tormented because they are perceived to be gay. So
why are we putting state schools into the hands of organisations that
openly preach homophobia as a creed so holy it trumps all their other
good works?
Recently there has been an organised upsurge of
religions protesting at secularism. Nothing surprising about a
fightback from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the rest against what
they claim is militant secularism. That's their job. The recent
Guardian ICM poll showed 63% are non-believers, with 82% regarding
religion as the cause of division. Fighting back on these pages, Tobias
Jones intemperately called secularists totalitarian dictators
pretending to be tolerant. However, secularists are not threatening to
deny services to the religious: it is they who want to discriminate.
Keeping the public sphere free of dogmas is not a denial of the right
of anyone to act as they please - so long as they don't harm others.
More
alarming is the backsliding of liberal and left thinkers on religion.
Neal Lawson, an atheist from leftist pressure group Compass, laid into
secularism on these pages. He is right that many religious groups do
good work in the toughest inner-city areas. But how depressing to
suggest that moral leadership now only resides among the faiths.
Indignation about social injustice may be lacking in politics, but
today the faiths use their greatest firepower not to challenge gross
inequality. No, what ignites their torchlit excitement is, yet again,
other people's sexuality. Given an ounce of power they abuse it to deny
basic liberties. Last year, they rallied to refuse the right to die
with dignity. Now they are back harassing gays. Religion may appeal to
some on the left yearning for moral certainty in a complicated world.
But today's debate will be a sharp reminder of the intolerance and
illiberalism that comes with it. Get on down the Lords for 7.30, you
peers!
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The original article and comments on the same can be found at -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1985899,00.html
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