Whenever the winner of a vote says it was a “victory for common sense” you can be sure we have been debating something profoundly unimportant. Baroness Warsi, the Conservative shadow minister for Community Cohesion, (great title isn’t it?) hailed the Government defeat in the Lords last night as a “victory for common sense”. She went on.. “We delivered a blow against the Government’s attempt to narrow the definition of ‘employment’ for the purposes of religion. The Church of England, the Catholic Church and leaders of other faiths have all campaigned together in a true spirit of Community Cohesion to protect an important religious freedom.” Well, you could have fooled me. I listened to an hour and three quarters of debate about whether the Government should amend their current provisions to protect religious organisations’ right to employ people with specific criteria of their own choosing where those individuals had a key role in priestly or teaching roles. It is one small clause in the Equality Bill. The Government wishes to add one word ‘proportionate’ to enable the legislation to comply with EU legislation. The meaning of the provision would remain unchanged. The amendments by Baroness O’ Cathain and others from the Bishops’ Bench sought to maintain the status quo too but not to add the word proportionate. We had three votes, all won against the Government. I was fascinated to see the coverage in the Daily Telegraph and Independent this morning implying a great victory for the Churches. But clearly there were a lot of peers who were voting for something else completely. I am still scratching my heads as to what has been achieved. The level of debate was embarrassingly bad; mostly posturing about matters not included in the clause, a restating of deeply held notions but irrelevant. Whenever noble Lords’ tendency to self congratulation about the quality of our debate surfaces again I shall remember last night. Not our finest hour.
The effigy, instead of .jpg above looks like Noble Baroness Deech with a Burkha on, but I shan’t enquire further!
Other than that what can one say about a 31 year old joining in with 75 year olds in debate?!
Argghh! Daft!
“The Government wishes to add one word ‘proportionate’ to enable the legislation to comply with EU legislation. The meaning of the provision would remain unchanged.”
There is I understand nothing magic in European law about the the word ‘proportionate’ rather it is the requirement in the EU directive that the law is applied ‘proportionately’. If there is as you suggest no difference in the ‘meaning of the provision’ with or without the word then the legislation is either presently proportionate and would continue to be or presently disproportionate and continues to be. Unless the word change does have a real meaning then I can’t see how it makes any difference either way.
What a great result for the Jedi, whose teachings are that bar people must be women. Now all we have to do is get the Government to acknowledge that “The Queen Vic” is in actual fact a temple where smoking is a religious practice along with the Holy pint of Lager.
I love this equality law where we pick and choose, it`s great. It`s a bit like politics, where we`re all equal under the law except for the Politicians. Oooh and free speech too…now there`s a misnomer.
Was there a specific point you were making there or was it just a bit of a grumble, Carl?
Grumble ? No, sarcasm yes.
I find this mess which clearly will never be equality amusing. Legislating it doesn`t make it happen and being as it is against nature itself, I know for sure it won`t. I know you , McDuff are all up for it, why that is I know not but I can guess. Though I fail to see why you think everyone that isn`t a feminist automatically becomes a member of wifebeaters. Your logic or is it your trolling amazes me.
In case you really didn`t understand my sarcastic post, which I think you did, but the fact I posted gave you another chance to wind me up from a distance, I`ll illuminate.
Since Jedi was officially recognised as a religion from the census of 2001, why not give it concessions in equality law or any other for that matter. Why should Religion or even Politicians be made a special case of in any law regards equality.
Equality is preposterous, there is a natural pecking order in everything, you cannot stop an alpha male being so just by legislation. Nor will you stop the nature of women being NATURAL homebuilders and men being more aggressive and naturally the hunter/gatherer. Please legislate at will, you cannot change physiology or psychology.
The fact that some religions may be forced to alter the fact they treat women as second class citizens, yet others will be allowed to deny them employment merely because of their genitalia is ludicrous.
Please if you intend to implement equality do it properly with no special cases right across the board. The whole thing is ludicrous, a patchwork of legislation that will achieve very little. At the end of the day I will employ who I wish, I will treat my wife how I wish. Employees and wives are free to go at will, I don`t beat them and I`m pretty even and fair with them.
So when is the Government going to equal the units of alcohol allowed ? And when, I might add are they going to sto pthis nonsense of women living on average 10 years longer than men.
Baroness Murphy, It is so good to have you back on the blog !! I’ve missed you since you’ve been away. Where do I get my fix of trenchant opinion and debate when you are not here ?? Not ‘Comment is Free’ or those old wazzocks on Conservative Home, that’s for sure..
Please tell us more about this topic [I did catch some of the ‘highlights’ last night on Radio 4, but listening to Ed Balls getting a bit stroppy was far more interesting]. Not least because Lord Mackay of Clashfern has talked about this religion and conscience topic, and there is a discussion document he refers to.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2010/01/lord-mackay-of-clashfern-religion-and-sexual-orientation-are-characteristics-which-should-be-afforde.html
To some extent, I’ve never seen the point of trying to press equality legislation on the churches, and it makes me a bit cross when they try. I’m a non-believer myself, but what if we tried to force church leaders to give all their sermons from a scientific rather than a moral or philosophical view ?
I’m also pleased to see that the law on Assisted Dying / Euthanasia / Murder is [to my mind] working relatively well, even if the Guardian disagrees. Of course, it does rather confirm my view [prejudice ?] that it is ‘thus far and no further’ for the moment, lest we have a surge of cases of offspring trying to push their parents out the exit door, albeit from well-meaning motives.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/25/kay-gilderdale-case-expert-view
It’s funny how people don’t have much problem trying to press equality law on religious groups when the issues are, say, anti-semitism or racism or incitement to violence.
There are clearly areas where we feel the law of the land outweighs religious conviction, however strongly and sincerely held. And the areas are rarely immutable. Right now we’d hold it abominable if a church decided it had a right to deny entry to non-whites – this was not always the case, and many ministers could find plenty of scriptural justification for their beliefs. In a few decades the inexorable mortality-driven demographic shifts will sideline those who get weirded out by homosexuality just as those who are racist get marginalised into a minority now.
In the meantime, we’re in a transitionary period where we’re having an argument pretty much between generations. It’s not that there’s something terrible about the state telling churches what to do, it’s that a number of specific issues are not quite there yet, in the public consciousness. They’ll get over it.
“It’s funny how people don’t have much problem trying to press equality law on religious groups when the issues are, say, anti-semitism or racism or incitement to violence.”
But in a very real sense that IS a problem when, rather than using a twin-track of legislation and ‘winning hearts and minds’ the New Labour administration seems to only want to use legislation.
“In a few decades the inexorable mortality-driven demographic shifts will sideline those who get weirded out by homosexuality just as those who are racist get marginalised into a minority now.”
I think you are missing a couple of points here. People in the Sixties believed that all of society would eventually believe in ‘banning the bomb’ and ‘free love’ and that drugs should be legalised. Then those people grew up and many of their views changed. Just as many of the current Cabinet used to be Communist firebrands in their youth.
More to the point, the issue here is not about being ‘weirded out’ as you eloquently put it, but that their views may well change as and when their views on the ‘Seventh Commandment’ permit bigamy. It may well not happen in your lifetime, because some people have different views.
“It’s not that there’s something terrible about the state telling churches what to do..”
Well, actually, I guess those people who think Russia and China were not exactly models of democratic behaviour in their views on church attendance may have something to say on that. It certainly didn’t prevent people believing what they wanted to believe and I think you are being deluded if you imagine that, say, moslems are going to base their interpretation of the koran on what a mere earthly government minister tells them to believe. If you do, then ‘Good luck with that’…
equal under the law except
It depends upon wehter you have got the money to be equal Carl.
If a man does you wrong and you don’t have the capital to start proceedings agaainst him, you are not really his equal, are you…. all other things being….. equal.
Political principle is inspirational, whereas
the practice of it can be sadly disproprtionate.
Gar, are you telling me that law is “proportionate” to my wealth ? Oh my, I`m sunk then !
I guess my representation would be proportionate then ? That should keep the PR people happy !
😉
She probably said it was a victory for common sense because the government lost.
Labour aren’t overly imbued with it, are they? 😉
Victory or common sense?
I agree “a victory for common sense” is one of those phases that make me wince because you know that what follows will be nothing of the sort. The whole debate seemed to me to be a storm in a teacup. With both sides ultimately agreeing that the amendment made little difference and proceeding to debate matters that were hardly relevant. Fortunately this sort of debate is atypical of the House; on the whole I’ve been fairly impressed with how this monster of a bill has been dealt with.
By way it was lovely to meet you last week.
Rob, it was good to meet you too. Good tea cakes aren’t they? Bedd G I haven’t been away anywhere, just trying to juggle a lot of things coming up at once. I still read all the blog and comments. I’m preparing for 4 debates in the next week and squeezing in meetings and other work too
I agree it is not worth trying to impose equal opportunity employment law on religious groups in relation to the teachers of religion and those that act as priests for a particular religion. The point is whether, when public money is being paid out to religious organisatons to provide a service to the public (such as a personal and domestic care or residential care service) a religious organisation can discriminate in employment against those who do not belong to their faith and against people whose sexual orientation they do not approve of or against for example a woman cohabiting when the Church believes she is living in sin. The question arises whether it is necessary for the discharge of the duties of the post to adhere to the tenets of a faith. The answer according to the Government is that the decision must be made on whether it is necessary for the individual to hold certain beliefs or not for the specific post. The outcome of the Equality Bill seems quite sensible, and the subtle nuances of the legislation were examined in some detail in debate. For example for most care workers it would not be necessary; for a person leading a series of bible classes for a church mother and toddler group it might be justified.
No-one in the House except a few people who hadn’t read the legislation thought the Government was trying to sneak women bishops in by the back door or stop the Catholic Church from excluding women from the priesthood. I’m all in favour of allowing the churches to be as eccentric and disconnected from the mores of the current century as they want to be; let people judge the more punitive attitudes of some religious groups for themselves.