The Pope attacks UK Equality Laws

I was disappointed to see that the Pope has chosen to speak out about the Equality Bill which is passing through Parliament at the moment. UK Equality laws are there to give protection from unfair discrimination to religious people as well as to gays and other groups. The main objection is, of course regarding homosexuals being included in the legislation. The Pope is concerned that this is an attack on religious freedoms! It is no such thing.

There is always some difficulty when there arises a conflict of rights. In this case religious freedom and the rights of gays not to be unfairly discriminated against. The legislation seeks to compromise by exempting religious institutions and allowing them to discriminate when employing people in positions where they would be responsible for teaching religious principles or say those in pastoral roles. This means that no gay priests will be forced on churches. This is actually quite a big compromise. But the Pope is not happy with this. Churches and religious institutions would not be exempt from discriminating when it comes to administrative staff or those not in teaching or pastoral roles. That to me seems a fair compromise. After all what objection could anyone have?

Do the Churches want to ban all people from taking up any sort of employment if they are not living entirely according to the scriptural moral laws? If that was the case they would not be able to employ anybody, save a living saint. And there are not many of those about. For instance does the Church employ those who live as co-habiting couples in administrative roles? Why single out homosexuals? And what if a serving employee has an abortion. Does the church want to be exempt from the employment laws of unfair dismissal and be allowed to fire such an employee for gross misconduct?

The churches have nothing to fear from this legislation, and indeed much to gain. Apart from anything else do they think that gays are likely to even want to work for an employer that preaches homosexuality is a sin and can legally discriminate against promoting staff to more senior positions? Probably not.

Still, the Pope's protestation are likely to fall on deaf ears. Gordon Brown says it would be inappropriate to comment. So that's Ok then.