Discrimination

Blijburg - hands, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

A change of season here, back to the hot hot days of summer on Blijburg beach for us to consider what the new government wants to do. Namely, it wants to allow civil servants the right to refuse to officiate at weddings where both partners are of the same sex. I will not call this a gay wedding, because here in Holland, we do not have a separate concept of a wedding for gay people and adifferent wedding for straight people. There is one type of wedding and it is open to any two people, albeit they are over a certain age.

So, to repeat. thanks to the religious Christian influence in the government, they want to allow civil servants to REFUSE to officiate at certain weddings, even though this is their job.

To put this into perspective, we heard that last week in Belgium a (straight) couple refused to be married by a BLACK civil servant, because they did not like black people. This was, rightly, condemned as unacceptable racism.... how could people DARE to think like this in this day and age?

Is it really any different to discriminate against gay people in the same way? And to allow professional people to discriminate? I don't think so and I know that the only reason why they are allowed to do so is because they cling to some outdated ideas which go under the name of religion.

A little bit Christian and a tiny bit green

Light throwing shadows, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

This is a photo of a window, showing both shadows and reflections, one such reflection, on the left, showing what looks to be, but isn't, a cross. A good time to reflect, then, on the perceived Christian influence on the plans of the new government. Het Parool made a list as follows:

- better off pensioners have to pay contributions to their own pensions
- general pardon for asylum seekers from before 2001
- continued moratorium on stem cell research
- development of alternatives to abortion
- no new experiments with further extension of euthanesia rules
- no 'coffeeshops' near school
- civil servants can refuse to officiate at marriages where both are of same-sex
- prosecute people who use under-age prositutes
- increase taxes on cigarettes and alcohol
- attention to be given to the consequences of divorce


Altogether not so drastic, even though one continues to ask oneself, why did it have to be a small Christian party called to make up the numbers, when there were other alternatives? Just as in the UK, they are making great strides in stopping religious groups from discriminating, why here in Holland so we have a government which is allowing discrimination?

Just as Europe was never mentioned during the campaigns, despite it being a major issue, the environment was also relatively ignored while people discussed whether or not kindergartens should be made free and whether or not the pill should be included in the basic health insurance policy. Again, when everyone knows that the environment is a big issue, one might have thought there would be more discussion. As it happens, the new government seems to think that spending an extra € 800 million on the environment (€ 50 each) will be enough to ensure that Holland will be the cleanest country in Europe by 2020. A mis-match between goals and resources. About half of the money to be spent will come from taxes on flights. Oh dear...

Tags: regeerakkord, roomsrood, regering, christen unie, politiek, politics, Dutch+politics homo+rechten homohuwelijk green+politics

Onto the Last Battle

Hanoi - Christian church, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

The last battle between the forces of modernity, morality and mutual respect against the dark forces of superstition, hate and bigotry.

It is up to the UK Government to decide and a decision will have to come soon. It is in respect of the Equality Bill which is due to pass into law for England and Scotland in April. The Bill quite simply makes it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services. I wrote about this in the blog of 10th January.

The point is that public morality has moved on and just as it used to support slavery or race discrimination or sex and changed its mind, the same is happening with sexual orientation, whereby the majority of people do not think it is right to discriminate on the basis of whether or not they may be gay, straight or lesbian.

The problem we are facing now is that the Catholic Church, now vociferously supported by the Anglican Church in the UK, are claiming the right to continue to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and are presuring the Government to be exempted from the new law. Basing their morality on the discredited readings and interpretations of their sacred books, written for the best part over 2,00 years ago, they have been unable to keep up with the general development of morality within society. It is the same with rights for women, where especially the Catholic Church continues to discriminate shamelessly, mainly only within their internal organisation.

What they seem to be wanting to do here is not just discriminate internally, but also discriminate within the public domain, a public domain guided by democratic values, where questions of morality are viewed very differently. The Government wants to outlaw discrimination within the public domain

So we have a clash of values and it is going to be very interesting to see how it goes this time.

Lined up with the Catholics, we have the minister in charge of the Bill, Ruth Kelly who is a hard-line Catholic herself, allied with the Catholic-sympathiser Tony Blair (his wife is Catholic and his children went to a catholic school). Against, I think we have the rest of the Cabinet, a Labour cabinet, which if it stands for anything should stand for equality.

The Catholics had their way last year when they managed to stop new legislation which would affect the way they run their schools. I don't think the Governement will want to be seen to be changing their mind again. We will be back to the 1970's when the question was often asked 'Who Runs Britain?' - the Government or the unions - to be replaced by The Government or the Catholic Church.

I am confident that the Government will win this one and that Britain will take a major step along the road towards modernity. It will be hard for the Catholic Church to win many more battles after this.

Good news!

Bangkok - young love, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

The dark forces of outdated hate-inducing religion received a big setback when an attempt by an Irish peer to rescind the Sexual Orientation Regulations in Northern Ireland failed last night. The House of Lords voted three-to-one against the motion put forward by Lord Morrow despite a protest of a thousand religious bigots, of the Christian, Muslim and Jewish persuasion, outside the Houses of Parliament.

The SOR simply makes it illegal to discriminate against gay people in the provision of goods and services (such as a hotel room or the hire of a village hall for a party). Apparently, the bigots felt that their religious beliefs should take precedence over a law requiring all people to be treated the same. In other words they wanted to retain the right to discriminate in modern day Britain, claiming that their right to hold and act upon their hateful beliefs should take precedence. The campaign they waged was described as a highly inflammatory and well-funded campaign to oppose these much-needed protections reached depths of unpleasantness which we haven’t seen for some years, by Ben Summerskill of Stonewall.

In the debate, Lord Chris Smith, the first openly gay MP and a former cabinet minister, told his fellow peers that, "It seems to me, in my simplistic way, that what they are arguing for is quite simply the right to discriminate and the right to harass. And those arguments are being made in the name of Christianity" (also Islam and Judaism).

Well, the Lords knew what to do and they gave these forces of darkness short shrift, giving a gay-related measure its biggest ever majority in either House.

It is now expected that Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly (albeit a member of Opus Dei) will announce the detail of similar robust protections for the rest of Great Britain very swiftly, there being clear evidence that they will not meet parliamentary opposition.

In the meantime, not such good news from the Netherlands where a Christian school in Amsterdam has said it will not recruit openly gay teachers as they regard being gay as a sin. Also, in another article, we read that three Christian schools in the area of Ede have refused to admit three Burmese children ot their schools. It turns out that the Christian schools in that area are cherry picking white (ie native Dutch) people, leaving the state schools to educate more-than-their-fair-share of non-native Dutch people. Of course, it goes without saying that the Christian schools obtain the vast majority of funding from the State, from taxpayers like myself.