Blair gives religious employers the right to sack gay workers

Equal rights campaigners were furious when they discovered that regulations intended to combat discrimin- ation in the workplace contain wide-ranging exemptions for any employer "with an ethos based on religion or belief".

The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement said that the move would institutionalise homophobia in a way that "makes Section 28 look like a tea party". Others claimed that the exemptions exposed the "dangerous" influence church groups have over the Prime Minister.

The 2003 Employment Equality Regulations were originally drafted by ministers with the aim of achieving a historic breakthrough in combating harassment and bias in the workplace on grounds of sexuality or religion.

Drawn up to comply with an EU directive on workers' rights, they were meant for the first time to give protection to Muslims and to gays. An employer found to discriminate when hiring, promoting, demoting or training staff would be in breach of the law.

But The Independent on Sunday has learned that the statutory instruments slipped out to Parliament last week were watered down following direct intervention by Downing Street. A Whitehall source said the decision was made "at the highest level" and that Barbara Roche, the equalities minister, had been overruled.

One key clause inserted into the regulations states that an exemption applies when an employer acts "so as to comply with the doctrines of the religion – or so as to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion's followers".

The wording of the clause is almost identical to that submitted by the Church of England. The Archbishops' Council's submission, which was leaked to the IoS, states that an exemption should apply "to comply with the doctrines of the religion or avoid offending the religious susceptibilities of a significant number of its followers".

Other major changes to the original draft, allowing discrimination against atheists or others who do not share the religious beliefs of their employer, were made following strong lobbying from evangelical groups. One of the biggest loopholes allows an employer to dismiss or fail to hire an individual if he is "not satisfied" that they fit his own "ethos based on religion or belief".

Critics claim that this would allow firms such as Stagecoach, run by Scottish evangelist Brian Souter, or Vardy, the North-east car dealership owned by millionaire Christian Peter Vardy, to discriminate freely.

Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrats' equality spokesman, condemned the new regulations, pointing out that they would actually weaken current employment rights of gay men and lesbians by institutionalising in law justifications for discrimination.

"When faced with pressure from those who wish to continue to harass and discriminate against people on the basis of lawful private behaviour or their sexuality in circumstances where sexuality is patently irrelevant to their ability to do the job, the Government has simply caved in," he said.

Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society said the regulations were a "witch-hunter's dream come true". "Organisations with a 'religious ethos' employ around 200,000 people, most of them in jobs paid for out of the public purse. This includes over 100,000 teaching posts in faith schools," he said. "The Government has given in to religious pressure at every stage of this process."

The Deputy Prime Minister's Office said that religious employers were a special case "as they bring diversity to public life and delivery of services".

"We listened very carefully to responses in the last consultation and on reflection we decided it was right in very limited circumstances that the Government wouldn't interfere in matters of religious doctrine or strongly held religious convictions," said a spokeswoman.

Tony Blair was accused of caving in to evangelical Christians last night after it emerged that new government legislation will allow faith schools, churches, hospices and other religious employers to sack lesbian and gay staff.
Everyone has the right to fire gay employees. Especially if they are incompetent or unqualified etc. So what? Even a gay person would fire another gay person if he or she or s/he were incompetent. What would really be interesting is if Blair gave quasi-holy religioniods the right to sack ugly people, or short people, or people who can't parallel park, or people who stand to close to you when they talk etc.

Now that would require political courage. And Christians would love him for it, because they like to pick and choose who gets to participate in the Kingdom etc. Church for them is like an exclusive country club or something. Where are sinners supposed to go anymore? It's really sort of depressing.

"if Blair gave quasi-holy religioniods the right to sack ugly people, or short people, or people who can't parallel park, or people who stand to close to you when they talk etc. Now that would require political courage. And Christians would love him for it, because they like to pick and choose who gets to participate in the Kingdom etc".

I recently was struck by a few paragraphs from Dean Koontz's novel, Fear Nothing.

I become so frustrated in trying to state and to condemn what is accepted as "normal" in societal mores, and which strangles our own good conscience by LAW and can be portrayed by a flat horizontal line of black which now has become a misshapen jagged line penetrated by shades of gray and becoming less clear every day because of todays' "degraded standards" so far into the gray in definition that the clarity of that straight black line being blurred has made all modalities of life acceptable no matter that they are various stages of depravity or commonplace sinfulness, and are now protected in the concept of Liberty, as opposed to our once having laws which kept us in cotton batting and lack of worry about such drastic shifts in the public conscience. I resent being called an extremist or fanatical about my beliefs in the correctness of Natural Law, even though that is the Foundation of Catholicism and many other religions and IS UNDENIABLY the law of Our Maker.

I have thought to make a separate post on this matter, starting with the ORIGINAL Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors:

"The Hippocratic Oath"

I SWEAR by Apollo the physician and Aesculapius, and Hygiea, and Panacea, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation.
To consider him who taught me this Art as dear to me as my parent, to share my substance with him, and to relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring as equivalent to my own brothers, and to teach them this Art, if they wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation.
And that by precept, lecture, and every other form of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others.
I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients and abstain from whatever is harmful and mischievous.
I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such advice; likewise, I will not give a pessary to a woman to induce abortion.
I will live my life and practice my art with purity and holiness.
I will not cut persons suffering from 'the stone', but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this skill.
Whatever houses I enter, I will enter for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption, and especially from the seduction of females or males, of free persons or slaves.
Whatever I see or hear in connection with my professional practice or not in the life of men, which should not be made public, I will not divulge, considering that all such knowledge should remain secret.
As long as I continue to keep this Oath inviolate, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the Art, respected by all men, at all times. But if I should trespass and violate this Oath, may the opposite be my lot.

This is an astounding look into common correctness in centuries before Christianity and in days of beliefs in gods and godesses (sheer paganism).

To get back to the words from the Dean Koontz book, these paragraphs say a great deal, while only being one small portion of one chapter within the book, and struck me as a word for today:

Prior to the erection of this monument, a simple bronze statue of Junipero Serra stood on the plinth at the center of the fountain for over a hunderd years. He was a Spanish missionary to the Indians of California, two and a half centuries ago: the man who established the network of missions that are now landmark buildings, public treasures, and magnets for history minded tourists.

Bobby's parents and a group of like-minded citizens had formed a committee to press for the banishment of the Junipero Serra statue on the grounds that a monument to a religious figure did not belong in a park created and maintained with public funds. Separation of Church and State. The United States Constitution, they said, was clear on this issue.

Wisteria Jane (Milbury) Snow -- "Wissy" to her friends, "Mom" to me -- in spite of being a scientist and rationalist, led the opposing committee that wished to preserve the statue of Serra. "When a society erases its past, for whatever reason," she said, "it cannot have a future."

This simple quotation from the book is that which I think upon in a dozen or more forms every day and ponder and am stumped as how to step back out of the quicksand.

The bitterness of the homosexual. My, how angry these people are underneath the facade of their carefully crafted description of "gay". But then, any group of people who commit suicide at the highest rate, and suffer the greatest degree of alcoholism, and who have the highest rate of "partner abuse", must be a wee bit angry under the surface. Perhaps the perverts of the world should take a look at the perversions they practice as the reason for their self hatred, and stop blaming the disgust they receive from the normal people who use their bodies according to their design.
This must be that Christian love you hear Christians talk about. How it inspires me--nay, how it drives me into the indissoluable embrace of my Lord and savior. /sarcasm

The Nazerene did not rebuke Thomas, oh you who know so little about your own faith. Rather, he simply, and lovingly, showed him His wounds. Yet you would chastise the admittedly faithless for their lack of faith! Learn to discern, angry one. Learn to discern.

"The Nazerene did not rebuke Thomas, oh you who know so little about your own faith. Rather, he simply, and lovingly, showed him His wounds. Yet you would chastise the admittedly faithless for their lack of faith! Learn to discern, angry one. Learn to discern".

I chastise nobody for their faithlessness, I simply am repulsed by those who pervert their nature in filthy, disgusting acts of sexual debauchery, and then try to turn the issue around into one of faith rather than immorality and debauchery. But turn the issue around you must, lest you lose all credibility in the obvious filth that you wallow in. If you want to know what Jesus said about sinners, and not about Thomas' faith, He said: "But I tell you NO! Unless you repent you will all likewise perish". (Luke 13:5). Jesus affirmed the eternal damnation of Sodom & Gomorah: "Likewise as it was in the days of Lot--they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom fire and sulphur rained from heaven and destroyed them all-- " (Luke 17:29). What was the sin of Sodom that brought about eternal damnation? Homosexual perversion: "Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire". (Jude 7).

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