THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE MY ARSE
"The government's difficulties over granting equal adoption rights for gay couples deepened last night as the two archbishops of the Church of England gave their support to the Catholic church's opposition to the plans."
"The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation," say Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York "however well meaning."
And yet this very same "conscience" is prepared to close down these adoption agencies that do good works if it cannot have its own way.
Here's an idea. As these religions make up the rules as they go along, perhaps someone at Head Office can make up some new rule that it is better to do good works that obey the laws of the land than to stop doing these good works on point of a groundless, offensive and harmful principle.
I'm sure that would get them off the hook with their invisible friend. And I think that is what Jesus would do.
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Andrew at Wongablog tells it like it is.
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4 comments:
I don't think it is as easy as that. It would be absurd to argue that the state should not intervene in religous belief at all. That would, in essence mean, the state was abrogating its sovereignty to a point where it would make its own existence meaningless. However, the total subjugation of religion to the secular state is also not ideal. The freedom of belief/religion is a widely held liberal value, which should only be countermanded in the event that there is a reasonable social imperative to compel. Of course, this all hangs on what is "reasonable", but I think that is the only way of constructing it. The alternative is to give an absolute definition of when the state will intervene, which seems to me to be a bit of a false grail.
In this particular case, I am not convinced that the need of the state in forcing religions to consider homosexual couples as adoptees fits in to my relative definition for intervention. Is there a reasonable imperative to compel organisations to go against their core beliefs in this manner, particularly as there are state alternatives?
"Equality" laws should be about making sure that the weak have redress against the powerful; that all individuals should have an expectation that they will not be discriminated against according to their values or their grouping. But this only ever holds to a point - we routinely jail people whose sexual values fall outside societal norms; we don't really give a toss that the poor are routinely discriminated against far more than any other group. There are ever changing beliefs about what is right and proper. I also feel the arena of this expectation of equality is limited: for me, it falls to the realm of commerce and government. I don't think anyone would argue that you should not be allowed to treat someone differently because they're gay on a personal basis (i.e. we wouldn't legislate for everyone having to treat each other equally in the pub). Otherwise we may as well stop having any beliefs at all. For me, this issue is far closer to the personal that it is to the state. Why can't we allow people to live their lives according to their beliefs?
There is no overwhelming imperative here.
Thanks for your very thoughtful comment.
I of course disagree that there is no overwhelming imperitive here. I think there is. You state there are ever changing beliefs about what is right and proper. Absolutely. It used to be right and proper for black people in this country to be denied services and products.
The laws that have been introduced over the last fifty odd years have not only made discrimination against black people illegal they have raised the nation's conscience on race and discrimination. The laws haven't banished racism, but we do now have a different idea of what is right and proper.
It is not acceptable to deny gay people the products and services that everyone else has a lawful right to. The law simply seeks to give gay people the protection against dicrimination that it gives to everyone else.
And I cannot agree that this law would compel anyone to go against their core beliefs. It is not a "core belief" of any religion not to offer services and products to gay people.
They might believe that homosexuality is a sin but that actually offers no reason for them to be allowed to discriminate against gay people.
There is nothing special about religion or religious belief that allows for it to be able to pleed for special treatment in this case.
Google 'Catholic Child Abuse' and you get 1,370,000 hits....
Slightly of topic: that support of Catholic church by the Anglicans - isn't it a kind of proof that there is a deity of some, albeit limited, kind? Let's call it "inter-church-communication-deity" for now.
[ducks]
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