No opinions, please. We’re British.
Bookworm on Apr 12 2009 at 11:19 am | Filed under: Britain, England, Religion
Picture this: You’re a believing Christian, and you work for a Christian charity that is under the patronage of your country’s major Christian organization. One of your colleagues, in a private conversation, asks for yours views about your faith. You say that you’re opposed as a doctrinal matter, but that you don’t personally have a problem with gays. That should be the end of it, but it’s not.
In a reminder, yet again, that Britain, and especially the Anglican church, espouses only PC group think, the next thing that happens is that you’re fired:
A charity worker has been suspended after telling a colleague that as a Christian he was opposed to equal rights for homosexuals.
David Booker, 44, who works at a Christian hostel in Southampton, was asked about his faith by a colleague, Fiona Vardy, at work last month.
He told her that he was opposed to same-sex marriages and to homosexual clergy but denied being homophobic and said that he had homosexual friends.
The next evening, Mr Booker was suspended from his £19,000-a-year post as a hostel support worker with the Society of St James, whose patron is the Archbishop of Canterbury. The hostel, where he has worked for the past four years, told him the action was taken for “events that happened last night”.
A few days later he was told he had seriously breached the charity’s code of conduct “by promoting your religious views which contained discriminatory comments regarding a person’s sexual orientation”. The action had been taken to safeguard residents and staff, he was advised.
Mr Booker, an evangelical Christian from Southampton, who is being advised by the Christian Legal Centre, now faces an inquiry and a disciplinary hearing.
It comes a few weeks after a Christian nurse who was suspended for offering to pray for the recovery of a patient was reinstated. North Somerset NHS Trust suspended Caroline Petrie for failing to show a commitment to equality and diversity after she offered to pray for the recovery of an elderly patient. The patient did not complain.
Andrea Minichiello Williams, a barrister and the director of the Christian Legal Centre, said: “This case shows that in today’s politically correct, increasingly secularised society, even consenting reasonable discussion on religion between two employees is being twisted by employers to discriminate and silence the Christian voice and freedom of expression.”
In addition to reminding Brits of the fired nurse, it should remind all of you of the suspended students. Once again, we see the secular state mandate, not just that the state cannot impose religion (which is fine), but that people are not allowed to have religious views (which is totally un-fine). The only exception, of course, is for Islam, because those people, you know, might kill you if you tried to treat them as you treat the Christians and Jews under your political aegis. Thinking about it, at least the Muslims are willing to stand up for their faith.
Related posts:
- British think tank lambasts soggy British multiculturalism as petri dish for terrorism
- News (or, really, opinions) from all over
- The voracious British government marches on
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6 Responses to “No opinions, please. We’re British.”
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The pastor of the church my family goes to commented a couple of years ago that there would come a time when pastors would be jailed for preaching that homosexuality is a sin. I pooh-poohed it.
I’m not so sure he wasn’t right.
In Canada, a pastor was fined for “disparaging” remarks about gays and forbidden from expressing such opinions “for life”. Similar “hate speech” issues have arisen in Scandinavia.
I am a gay man and disagree with the pastor’s opinions, but I really hate the “hate speech” laws. He should be free to preach his church’s doctrines and not have the state control that. It is abominable. If the state can shut him up today, they can shut me up tomorrow. In the end we all become slaves.
Chilling.
And the usual cowardly followup comment:
>> The action had been taken to safeguard residents and staff
(Safeguard them from whom or from what, by the way? I’d like to know!)
So, it’s not about “speech”, it’s about safety! Safety… the usual refuge of cowards, who will give up their rights and their freedoms at the drop of a hat. Was it Adams who said, “Those who give up their freedom for security deserve neither”?
We’ve seen the same sorry “safety” excuse used quite a few times here in the USA recently as well, but only for the canceling of speeches and the refusal to allow public demonstrations. And, of course, as an explanation for not printing cartoons of Mohammed.
I think both of you have nailed the issue. I believe in the marketplace of ideas (as you know). It’s quite clear from this report that the guy was not inciting hate and was not threatening anybody, both of which are dangerous forms of speech that have long been illegal (depending, of course, on their severity). Having an opinion, however, is something that should be allowed. If ideas, especially bad ideas, are suppressed, they fester. If they’re aired, rationally, in polite discourse, good ideas tend to grow and bad ideas tend to die. Who was it who said “sunlight is the best disinfectant?”
Also, as you know from past posts I’ve written, I believe in the marketplace of faith, one that allows religions to stake out their own doctrinal stands. Of course, there are lines that must be drawn. No society can or should countenance a doctrinal stand that says, “Kill/beat/dismember/destroy all the Jews/gays/women/Hindus/Christians/etc..” However, a religion should be allowed to decide who it wants to fill its ministerial position, its parishioners should be allowed to disagree (politely), and the marketplace should decide whether that church (or mosque or temple) can still fill its pews.
You know how people talk about pro-choice, Book? They aren’t talking about having a choice. They are talking about taking only one choice and limiting the possibilities down to a single choice.
They do not want you to have an actual contest between ideas, for that would provide liberty. And liberty is the death knell to all tyrannies.
Tyrannies of the body, of the spirit, and of the mind.