Wednesday 10 February 2010

Freedom that is Forced Freedom is not Freedom at all

Well done to the House of Lords for overturning a forced measure in the Equalities Bill that would have meant a lack of freedom, not increased freedom. To force religious organisations to ignore their beliefs when hiring staff would have been plain wrong.

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks put it well in the Times:

“There are times when human rights become human wrongs. This happens when rights become more than a defence of human dignity, which is their proper sphere, and become instead a political ideology, relentlessly trampling down everything in their path. This is happening increasingly in Britain.

“When a Christian airport worker is banned from wearing a cross, when a nurse is sacked after a role-play exercise in which he suggests that patients pray, when Roman Catholic adoption agencies are forced to close because they do not place children for adoption with same sex couples and when a Jewish school is told that its religious admissions policy is…. racist, we are in dangerous territory indeed.”


‘Freedom’ that is forced freedom is not freedom at all.