"rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well-meaning"
Personally I couldn't care less whether the Catholic Church closed down their adoption agency due to the new gay rights law. It disgusts me that people would prioritise religion over a child's welfare, but these people are so out of touch you can't argue nonsense with them.But somehow that statement seems to indicate their belief that 'we are the Christian Church, we are above the law' kind of attitude. My conscience tells me to go up to Mr. Williams and Mr. Sentamu and smack them right there and then, but the law says that that would amount to assault and I would go to jail. Instead I settled halfway - bitching about them on my insignificant blog.
To me, this isn't about the debate over political correctness anymore. It is about an organisation trying to opt themselves out of the law because they are part of 'so-and-so' religion. All this isn't new, remember those Muslim protestors in France? It is no wonder the majority of people I know has already renounced their previous faith.
Update (29/01): 21 months for Catholic based agencies to break the law. I wish someone would give the rest of us 21 months exemption to adapt new laws. But we are not religious, hence we must obey them from the get-go.
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Update (25/01): Despite appearing otherwise, I noticed that the pope isn't completely out of touch. Singling out animations and video games, particularly those that features violence (eh-hem) and sex (eh-hem), he signals his desire to align his church's policy against video games, probably to the delight of one Mr. Franco Frattini. Come on, you guys are already working hard criminalising gays, now you want to pick on video gamers and game developers too?
Via Wired GameLife
Technorati tags: Religion Bigotry Christianity Children Welfare
6 comments:
If you think about it, it's essentially just the Big Brother malarky but on a bigger stage.
As someone pointed out on Radio 2 today though, law being governed by religion certainly isn't the way to go, especially if you use the crisis(es) in Iraq as an example. Why should reliogion be the exception to any national law or regulation?
They shouldn't. But then religion has always picked the law they liked anyway. Cherry picking whichever part of the bible ("god's law") they agree with is what they do best.
Religion shouldn't be the exception, this is true; secularism's there because we've got so many people, so many creeds and beliefs, that having one belief system trump all the others isn't practical or desirable.
That said, some of the comments by humanists and people in favor of the law make me wonder, "Why are you surprised that 'the religious' are angry and defensive at progressives ideas in general?" I mean honestly, cause and effect; reactionary talk just breeds defensiveness and spite.
No one's mentioned the fact that now businesses can no longer hide behind 'conscience' to deny service to anyone. Gay people aren't the only ones who benefit from this. That's what sold me to the idea more than anything else.
Good point. Some people, like me, are probably more shocked than anything purely because when we read the news we noticed that the calendar says 2007. Then there is people like Mr. Sentamu who is in favour of banning Muslim hijabs but preferring to keep his religion above the law.
Such behaviour is no longer acceptable in 2007. It could be due to PC attitude, or perhaps not, but what is true is the UK isn't the religious country it was anymore - no church deserves to be above anything.
Whether being gay is right or wrong is another issue altogether. Personally as I mentioned already in the post, I am more disgusted that any religious organisation would put their religious belief over a child welfare.
The calendar still says 2007, and yet genocide is still in fashion. We have gone far, this is true — but not that far.
I mean, we are talking about human nature here; it's a hard thing to change or channel properly.
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