The fine (and rapidly disappearing) line between "clarification" and coercion

Damian Thompson of The Telegraph reports on an amendment to the so-called "Equity Bill" that threatens to further the seemingly inexorable steamrolling of religious freedom in the UK:

On Tuesday night, the House of Lords passed an amendment to the Equality Bill tabled by the gay Labour peer Lord Alli. As a result, the Bill now removes the ban on civil partnership ceremonies being held in places of worship. If passed in its current form, the doors of churches will be thrown open to what are effectively gay weddings – not as a result of a narrow and bitter vote in a Church Synod, but by political fiat.

And if they refuse to comply? The front page of Thursday's Daily Telegraph spelled it out: "Vicars to be sued over gay weddings". And not just vicars, but Catholic priests, rabbis, imams, ministers of the (gay-unfriendly) Church of Scientology – to say nothing of soft-voiced ministers of the Kirk.

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The problem for the Government is that this Equality Bill was not supposed to provoke a showdown with the Churches or other religions. The legislation was presented as a "clarification" of the law, consolidating existing anti-discrimination regulations into a single Act. That should have been easy enough to slip past Church leaders, for whom discrimination is a mortal sin.

But not so fast. The Church of England is caught up in a worldwide Anglican civil war over homosexuality. Britain's fastest-growing congregations, both inside and outside the C of E, are evangelical: they regard the whole concept of gay weddings as gravely sinful. Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is privately sympathetic to homosexuals who want to get marred, but dare not say so in public. His fellow bishops are all over the place on the subject – but they agree on one thing: they don't want to be pushed by the Government into gay church blessings.

Until last month, they were in a similar stew about an amendment to the Equality Bill which was tabled by Harriet Harman. It reminded Churches that, since 2003, they have no longer had the right to refuse employment to atheists or homosexuals applying for lay positions. Anglican bishops managed to defeat this amendment in the Lords, but there was little doubt that Harman would reintroduce it – that is, until Pope Benedict XVI, no less, intervened. Speaking to English and Welsh bishops in Rome, he described the bits of the Equality Bill as "as assault on natural law", which imposed "unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs."

On February 2, when the Pope's address was made public, Harriet Harman stood her ground. The next day, however, she dropped her plan to reintroduce the amendment forcing Churches to comply with secular employment law. The Government had been ready to ignore the hand-wringing of bishops in the Lords, but had lost its nerve after a savage ticking-off from "a bloke in a dress", as one Labour MP described the Pope.

So now we have two climbdowns in a row: one over employing gays and atheists, and – if Harman's disavowal of Alli's amendment is taken seriously – the other over homosexual "weddings" in churches. On the face of it, then, the Churches and their conservative religious allies, such as Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, are winning their fight with Downing Street.

But the reality is quite different. These small victories obscure the bigger picture. The unique feature of Gordon Brown's government is not its economic incompetence. Rather, it is doctrinaire secularism. For the first time in British history, no one sitting around the Cabinet table holds traditional Christian views that defy the liberal consensus on social issues or sexual morality. In May 2008, the Catholic Cabinet members Ruth Kelly, Des Browne and Paul Murphy voted for a sharp cut in the upper abortion limit to 12 weeks. All three have since left or been pushed out of government.

The piece goes into much more detail; read it in full on The Telegraph site. The remark about the "doctrinaire secularism" of the Brown government is more than a little interesting, of course, because a very similar doctrinaire secularism is apparent in the Obama administration, as highlighted (but hardly limited to) the refusal of PRO (Pelosi-Reid-Obama) to remove abortion funding from the various "health care" bills being floated around (or, better, carted around on trailer trucks). What we are seeing is the logical advancement of illogical beliefs, which flow not from a healthy form of the secular—which traditionally referred to those matters outside of the ecclesiastical realm—but from its brutish, bullying grandchild, Secularism. Benedict XVI, speaking about the difference between the two in December 2006, remarked:

Moreover, "healthy secularism" implies that the State does not consider religion merely as an individual sentiment that may be confined to the private sphere alone.

On the contrary, since religion is also organized in visible structures, as is the case with the Church, it should be recognized as a form of public community presence. This also implies that every religious denomination (provided it is neither in opposition to the moral order nor a threat to public order) be guaranteed the free exercise of the activities of worship - spiritual, cultural, educational and charitable - of the believing community.

In the light of these considerations, this is certainly not an expression of secularity, but its degeneration into secularism, hostility to every important political and cultural form of religion; and especially to the presence of any religious symbol in public institutions.

Likewise, to refuse the Christian community and its legitimate representatives the right to speak on the moral problems that challenge all human consciences today, and especially those of legislators and jurists, is not a sign of a healthy secularity.

Thus, it is not a question of undue meddling by the Church in legislative activity that is proper and exclusive to the State but, rather, of the affirmation and defence of the important values that give meaning to the person's life and safeguard his or her dignity. These values are human before being Christian, such that they cannot leave the Church silent and indifferent. It is her duty to firmly proclaim the truth about man and his destiny.

Read the entire speech, given to Italian Catholic jurists.

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Comments

[Dr John James]

I know this may seem a little Machiavellian, but there is an inevitable confrontation looming between Church and State, and I'm looking forward to it.
In one state here in Australia, the government has passed legislation compelling Catholic hospitals and doctors to provide at least material co-operation, and quite possibly formal co-operation, in the killing of the unborn.
Why am I looking forward to it? I guess because it will, to borrow a biblical metaphor, sift the grain from the chaff, and will stengthen the Church. She will become 'leaven' even more.
The laity will be compelled to up a position. There will be no way you can do a 'Cuomo' and fence sit! "I'm personally opposed, but..."
So lets rumble!

[Brian]

Dovid Katz of the Guardian reports on actions that threaten to further the seemingly inexorable steamrolling of historical memory in the Baltic states:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/08/holocaust-baltic-lithuania-latvia

I know that this isn't strictly relevant, but I really wanted to show this and sound the alarm. I honestly don't know how else I can raise the alarm. If there is a more appropriate place to post that link, I'd like to be pointed in that direction.