Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

The freedom to be a bigot

It's often the people who dislike freedom the most who fight the hardest to gain ownership of the word. So it is with Pope Benedict. Here's an elderly virgin who believes in magic, who oversees an organisation which concealed systematic child abuse for decades, whose views we're supposed to take seriously.

But then it dovetails in nicely with certain agendas. This isn't an attack on any kind of equality, you understand: it's an attack on the Labour party.

Labour equality, not equality. Are the Tories likely to be voting against, then, out of interest? Ah, but that doesn't matter: this is all about the PC evils of Labour being forced onto poor unsuspecting clergy, who only want to make sure the 'natural law' of being able to discriminate against people based on their sexual proclivities is carried out. How on earth can we possibly see anything wrong in that?

The Telegraph's story puts it like this:

Harriet Harman’s Equality Bill, currently going through Parliament, contains a new, narrow definition of religious workers. It means clergy will not be allowed to opt out of the rules and so will either have to go against their teachings by employing homosexuals, or face prosecution.

Let's suppose a highly respected Muslim cleric had told his fellow believers that the law in Britain should not apply to them in certain aspects of their lives. Do you think the coverage would be the same? Would it be discussed in terms of religious freedom, or the freedom to be a bigot?

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Related posts:

1. When freedom of speech just isn’t enough
2. Hooray for freedom!