Dr Rowan Williams has endorsed the warning
Posted on 09/07/2007 11:16:06 AM PDT by Stoat
Dr Rowan Williams has endorsed the warning
Labour's latest equality law will deprive Christians of the right of free speech, the Church of England has warned.
The Single Equality Bill could force vicars to conduct weddings for sex-change brides, deprive Christians of the right to oppose homosexuality and make church schools promote gay lifestyles in lessons, said the Archbishops' Council.
Church charities may also be barred from saying grace before meals or displaying crucifixes, it claimed.
The CofE document - endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams - warned that the Bill attempts to suppress freedom of speech and "amounts to an enforced secularism that fails to respect religious belief at all".
The fierce response is the latest in a series of clashes between religious leaders and the Government over equality rules applying to minority groups whose behaviour Christians have always held as morally wrong.
Churches are already lined up in opposition to the Sexual Orientation Regulations, which came into force earlier this year.
These give homosexuals the right, among others, to sue Christians who refuse to rent church halls to gay organisations.
The Single Equality Bill - which is going through a consultation stage that ends this month - has been advertised as an attempt to simplify 40 years of legislation on race, sex and disability prejudice and gather hugely complex existing law under a single piece of legislation.
Publicity surrounding it has centred on the way it will allow nursing mothers to breastfeed in public.
Other clauses will prevent golf clubs or working men's clubs from giving women second class status.
But the Archbishops' Council, the CofE's ruling Cabinet, said the new law will go much further and have far-reaching effects for large sections of society.
Freedom of speech for Christians could be harmed by clauses strengthening the criminal law of harassment, it warned.
Christian charities and organisations face "a real risk of challenges to the use of religious practices such as grace before meals or religious symbols such as crucifixes".
Rules on harassment also mean that religious followers may not "be able to express the views of their faith about homosexual conduct, including challenging people to live lives consistent with the teaching of the Church".
The document adds: "To deny Christians such a right would amount to unjustified interference with the right to manifest religious belief."
Labour’s latest equality law will deprive Christians of the right of free speech, the Church of England has warned.
Yes, let them try that with the Islamists. Hee hee.
Yes, let them try that with the Islamists. Hee hee.
Become Homo and save the Planet from Human Procreation.
Let’s see if the Church of England has the resolve of Sir Thomas More.
Ping
Ping
Here’s where I get confused..
Okay, they’re saying it could be a hate crime to criticize homosexuality. But, clergy of almost all religions speak out against bad heterosexual behavior, adultery, promiscuous behavior, sex before marriage, etc. So if they freely preach against bad heterosexual activity, why can’t they preach against bad homosexual activity?
Or is the law not really “gender neutral”? Or is it just poltical correctness carried too far?
The gay activists ask us to ‘stay out of their bedrooms’. I only wish they would just KEEP it in the bedroom!!
There you go.
That was my first thought after I read the headline...the MOOSLIMS will take care of the homos!
If they were to do that, then they would only have as much political power as.........the rest of us.
The preservation of religious freedom, including the right to manifest religious belief in all its diversity, remains a cornerstone of an open, liberal and tolerant society, the Archbishops’ Council has stated in its response to proposals for a Single Equality Bill.
“We have been concerned at what has seemed in some recent debates to be a trend towards regarding religion and belief as deserving of a lesser priority in discrimination legislation than the other strands where the law seeks to bring protection,” the Council says in its response to Department for Communities and Local Government’s discrimination law review.
A Framework for Fairness, the DCLG’s consultation paper, says relatively little about the difficult and crucial area of conflicting rights and how a proper balance should be struck, the response notes. “The argument appears to be that, because religion and belief is susceptible of personal choice in a way that is not the same in relation to other strands, that means that religion and belief should be subordinate to those other strands when they come into conflict. We think that this is a false analysis,” the Council says.
“Nor,” says the Council, “is religious equality achieved by the elimination of expressions of religious belief in public institutions such as schools or local authorities. This does not amount to, or achieve, equal respect for different religious groups and those of no religion; rather it amounts to an enforced secularism that fails to respect religious belief at all.”
The response notes that the Church of England has been consistent in its support for the use of the law to combat the manifestations of prejudice and to promote equality and fairness since the introduction of the first anti-discrimination legislation more than forty years ago. It includes a detailed commentary on the consultation document and can be read in full via the link above.
Gonna be interesting to see how many Episcopals breakaway and align with the Anglicans over these issues.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Don't think that can't happen, it already has in our Mainstream Protestant Churches who have embrassed homosexuality so completely that they ordain open homosexuals who will never condemn their own lifestyle.
The rest believe that "Christ loves us all" and an alternative lifestyle is NOT SIN (they were already performing marriages for couples who have been shacking up and never condemned that lifestyle).
Centuries ago the British government outlawed the practice of Catholicism. Now, they’re essentially outlawing Christianity one cut at a time.
Larry Craig comes to mind ~
Color me unsurprised by this development.
Please note that this same Labour government won’t apply this same speech code law to the Islamic Imams preaching death to homosexuals.
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