Quality | 2010.02.04
More Catholic than the pope | Riazat Butt
The real fighting over the equality bill was done by the C of E, with Anglican bishops at the forefront
There is still much anger over the pope \'s comments about UK equality laws . Part of me wonders why people are surprised by the nature of his observations – they are exactly what one would expect – and part of me also wonders why people are focusing on the equality bill, which was more about Anglicans than Catholics. The Catholic bishops did not turn a blind eye to the proposed legislation, but it was the Lords Spiritual who went to war over it. They won. Well done them. That the established church is trying to shut out people whose lifestyle is at odds with Christian ethos brings the words "stable", "door" and "bolted" to mind. Their attempts to legitimise "sexual cleansing" also reminds me of the time that Katharine Jefferts Schori accused the C of E of double standards .
Anyway. What got the goat of Catholic bishops were changes to the sexual orientation regulations, which barred adoption agencies from discriminating against gay applicants. Of the hundreds of adoption agencies in England and Wales, a fraction were Catholic and the bishops spent years trying to persuade the government that it was using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. They failed. Leaving aside the likelihood of gay couples approaching faith-based agencies in the first place, the bishops also failed to reach a consensus on how they should help agencies to deal with the amended legislation. One bishop threatened to evict an agency from its premises because it was complying with the law, others were more supportive.
The bishops\' recent visit to Rome was to update the pope about diocesan matters, with such meetings taking place every five years. One of the bigger battles between Catholic bishops and the government were over changes to the sexual orientation regulations. When the pope says that UK equality legislation threatens religious freedom and runs contrary to "natural law" he wants to say it is unnatural for gay couples to be parents and that the right to exercise one\'s religious beliefs trumps all other rights. Churchmen of all sorts have long complained that this government is secular and religiously illiterate so the equality bill would have served as another example of the state curbing freedom of religious belief. I would have thought that the pope, who only recently stressed the importance of being 2.0 , would have done his homework before sticking the boot into our laws and realised that the Anglican bishops had won.
But why let the facts get in the way of a good fight? If the papers are to be believed, the latest "consequence" of Monday\'s papal broadside is that Harriet Harman has backed down on re-introducing an amendment clarifying the difference between religious and non-religious jobs.
As much as one would like to barrack Harman for caving into Benedict and barrack Benedict for bullying the state, a closer reading of Hansard tells us what actually went down. Last week, when the equality bill was debated in the upper chamber, the Lords Spiritual were claiming that the government\'s amendment would lead to all sorts of nightmare scenarios, such as Muslim transsexuals applying to be parish priests. The government said it was intended to show the difference between religious posts and non-religious ones – you need to be a Christian to be a vicar but you don\'t need to be a Christian to clean the church – but the Lords disagreed. They were successful. She did not intend to re-introduce the amendment , however, telling politicians last Thursday that she "would not want to lead them to anticipate that it will be brought forward again in this House." She also said "when it comes to non-religious jobs, those organisations must comply with the law, and that is how the law remains". So things are as they were, nothing has changed, and Harman is considering her next move, which will involve "Cabinet machinery", meaning she has a plan B.
While I accept the pope was out of order for passing judgment on equality legislation and UK attitudes towards homosexuality, the same level of anger and outrage must be directed at those Church of England bishops who fought tooth and nail to keep the status quo, to preserve their right to discriminate against gays and lesbians and to institutionalise and legitimise prejudice against anyone they deemed to be unfit for purpose because of their lifestyle.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]ity-bill-discrimination-church
