I read somewhere recently that Great Britain is rapidly slipping into something called “soft totalitarianism.” It’s a form of the state in which various legal sanctions short of the brutality that characterizes “hard totalitarianism” such as Communism or Nazism are used to enforce an orthodoxy from which no dissent is permitted. LifeSite News (quoting the Daily Telegraph) offers an example of the phenomenon at work:
British churches will be forced to accept practicing homosexuals or “transsexuals” in positions as youth workers and similar roles, under upcoming equality legislation, the government has said. The Labour government’s Equality Bill will prohibit churches from refusing to hire active homosexuals even if their religion holds such behavior to be sinful, said deputy equalities minister Maria Eagle.
The legislation is due to come into force next year, and churches fear that it will force them to act against their religious convictions in a broad range of areas. Eagle indicated at a conference called “Faith, Homophobia, Transphobia, & Human Rights” in London, that the legislation “will cover almost all church employees.”
“The circumstances in which religious institutions can practice anything less than full equality are few and far between,” she told delegates. “While the state would not intervene in narrowly ritual or doctrinal matters within faith groups, these communities cannot claim that everything they run is outside the scope of anti-discrimination law.
“Members of faith groups have a role in making the argument in their own communities for greater LGBT acceptance, but in the meantime the state has a duty to protect people from unfair treatment.”
The bill allows a religious exemption for roles deemed to be “for the purposes of an organised religion” but restricts this definition to those who conduct liturgical celebrations or spend their time teaching doctrine.
The Daily Telegraph quoted Neil Addison, a Roman Catholic barrister and expert on religious discrimination law, who said that the bill will leave churches powerless to defend the fabric of their organization. “This is a threat to religious identity. What we are losing is the right for organizations to make free choices,” he said
Equality commissioners include the homosexual lobbyist, Ben Summerskill, the head of the leading British homosexualist activist group Stonewall. Summerskill has called for churches to be forced to employ homosexuals and for the police to stop Christians who were peacefully protesting against ‘gay rights’ laws outside Parliament.
I don’t imagine that churches that balk at these regulations will see their vestry sent to concentration or labor camps, but “re-education” camps, featuring third degree sensitivity training, might be on the horizon.
May 23, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Just realize that this is a vision of our future here in the USA also. The UK is a bit ahead of us in many of these “progressive” areas, but they are showing us what we have to expect if we do not take steps to prevent this from happening. The British never expected this either.
May 24, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Why do the officials in the UK not make similar demands on the large Muslim population? A transsexual Imam would have a short life expectancy.
May 25, 2009 at 7:36 am
The Muslims will be subject to the law the same as everybody else. Whether or not it will be enforced equally is another question.
May 26, 2009 at 9:41 am
Fortunately, in spite of the doomsday scenarios folks like DrD try to paint, such laws can’t happen here because we have a little thing call the First Amendment.
However, just because irrational sky-is-falling rhetoric isn’t needed doesn’t mean vigilance isn’t needed.
May 26, 2009 at 1:59 pm
With our current Gansta-in-Chief, who, during his campaign, spoke of our “flawed” Constitution and since his fraudulent election with massive ACORN assistance has shown every willingness to set aside the law, I don’t feel very secure in the Constitution any longer. The second amendment has served us very well up to this point, but we have never previously put in office one who so blatantly runs over every bit of established law and shows such openness to Chicago style strong arm politics. His dealings with Wall Street and the auto industry should make us all shudder! He could decide to “lean” on you next.
May 26, 2009 at 2:13 pm
ROFL.
Um. OK. LOL
June 24, 2009 at 6:42 pm
It’s okay, really. Here in the UK we aren’t anywhere near as terrified of gay people as you guys are. It took us a while, but eventually we realised that they’re exactly the same as straight people, except they’re attracted to people of the same gender.
Were you guys aware of that? Because the way you people talk about homosexuality, it sounds like you think they’re some sort of awful threat. They’re really not, they’re just nice people.
June 25, 2009 at 6:59 am
Exactly the same? You do know where babies come from, right?
I also wonder why you avoid the subject of the post. Can I presume that you are in favor of forcing people and organizations to violate their religious convictions whenever society decides that those convictions are unacceptable?
June 25, 2009 at 7:31 am
David wrote, “Can I presume that you are in favor of forcing people and organizations to violate their religious convictions whenever society decides that those convictions are unacceptable?”
Um, David…. I’m not sure that’s the argument I’d make if I were you. Society currently forces *me* to violate my religious convictions (on marriage, for example) simply because society has decided that particular religious conviction is unacceptable. If you don’t like gay marriage based on your religious convictions, that’s fine, don’t get married to a guy. Simple. However, if I want to get married to my husband based on my religious convictions about the importance of marriage, I’m outta luck because you and the rest of the majority have decided that your religious convictions trump mine.
So if I were you, I wouldn’t try to make an argument that tries to set yourself up as the great defender of people’s religious convictions when it seems apparent that you really only value some people’s religious convictions (ie. those who agree with you.)
I believe the argument you should be making instead is, “Hey, we live in a democracy and you’re in the minority. So, tough luck, chump.” (Though as we see from these stories from other countries, that also cuts both ways.)
June 25, 2009 at 9:10 am
Alan, I understand what you said and after reading it through a couple of times, I do have genuine sympathy for it. (I’ll have to work on the empathy, but I’ll give what I can.) But then my question is this — does your religious conviction require the state to acknowledge your marriage? And how is the same-sex blessing available to you in the PC(USA) differ from marriage in a way that violates your religious conscience? These aren’t meant to be attack questions; I’m sincerely curious on the subject.
June 25, 2009 at 10:06 am
Jason:
My religious conviction that we are all created in the image of God is violated by any law that treats people unequally. I am not alone in this belief. I believe folks on the right often argue that the notion of the imago Dei inherent in all of us is enshrined in the very documents that form the foundation of this country (well, for white land owners anyway, but we’ve done better since.) As another example, I think few would attempt to dispute that religious people were at the forefront of the abolition movement because of their religious convictions. Equality, fairness, justice … these are not just political convictions for Christians, but *religious convictions* based on our understanding of God’s divine justice and love for every human being.
My point is that I’m tired of people on the right pretending they’re the only ones with religious convictions. That’s, excuse me, B.S., and they know it, and yet some continue to try to pretend they’re the only religious people in the country. So, let’s not pretend this is about protecting religious convictions. I’ll admit that’s great rhetoric, but it is simply a lie. They are only interested in protecting the religious convictions of the (current) majority, not in protecting religious convictions in general.
As for some sort of religious blessing instead of marriage, if you can find an instance in Scripture where a couple has some sort of blessing ceremony instead of a marriage, let me know. Until then I plan on following Biblical model for marriage: one relationship, two people, blessed by God, till death do us part. Anything else is just as much of a violation of my religious conviction as my concept of marriage is a violation of yours, and for exactly the same reasons, I’d wager.
What do you think are the important differences between the blessings available to us in the PCUSA (whatever they are, it isn’t really clear)? If you do not think there are important differences between such blessings and real marriage, why not just allow real marriage since we already allow those blessings? If you do think there are important differences, then it’s entirely possible that I agree with you on what those differences are and those differences may be why I don’t believe a “blessing” of some sort is appropriate.
However, having said all that, I don’t require the state to do anything because of my religious convictions. (I don’t believe that the state has any requirement to recognize my religious convictions at all.) I think that’s your argument, not mine. I have to make my case to the majority. I can use the religious argument if people find it persuasive, but I don’t get special treatment just because I wear a cross around my neck. I don’t get to hide behind my “religious convictions” because if the majority doesn’t find that persuasive, then tough luck for me. And in a few years I think you’ll no longer have to go searching for sympathy or empathy, because I think you’ll be experiencing exactly what I mean, particularly on the issue of gay marriage. Unfortunately by then, by fighting to the bitter end, conservatives are much less likely to be given any reasonable concessions from those of us on the winning side. Your scorched earth approach is only going to backfire.
June 25, 2009 at 12:05 pm
“Can I presume that you are in favor of forcing people and organizations to violate their religious convictions whenever society decides that those convictions are unacceptable?”
As Alan says, the law is currently in violation of MY religious convictions.
My religious convictions say that it’s wrong to prevent gay people from doing anything that straight people are allowed to do, including marriage in whatever form they choose.
“Exactly the same? You do know where babies come from, right?”
And yeah, I know where babies come from. I also know that not all straight people who get married have kids. Me, for instance. I had chemotherapy and now I’m infertile. I can’t have kids. Should I be prevented from getting married?
June 26, 2009 at 9:10 am
Alan,
I had written a reply, but it was eaten by yesterday’s storms in Detroit that have left my home still without power. I’ll see what I can do in the midst of constructing my sermon. I did want to say that the whole “empathy/sympathy” thing was genuine. I think it would be insulting at this point for me to say that I can empathize with you. While I have had GLBT friends and acquaintances in the past, none of them had an interest in spirituality and few had an interest in monogamy. I daresay that I cannot put myself into your shoes at this point in a meaningful way and it would presumptive for me to say I could. When I said I would “work” on the empathy, it meant that I simply don’t as of yet have the personal resources to do it in a way that isn’t a characture.
June 26, 2009 at 10:03 am
“While I have had GLBT friends and acquaintances in the past, none of them had an interest in spirituality and few had an interest in monogamy.”
That’s weird because most of my gay friends have very profound interests in spirituality (some of them are even Christians) and all of them are interested in monogamy. In fact I have a transgendered friend who is right now planning her marriage to her girlfriend.
Surely you’re not basing your entire judgement on your own limited experiences. You should get out more and meet some gay people, see what they’re really like, see how normal they are. They’re not sinners or perverts, they’re just people whose sexual preference differs slightly from yours or mine.
June 26, 2009 at 1:36 pm
We are all sinners. If you don’t get that you’ve missed something pretty basic about being a Christian.
June 26, 2009 at 2:54 pm
SOT –
Who said my experiences were limited? It’s faulty to say that because I have met few people in the GLBT community who were interested in monogamy that I have known few people in the GLBT community.