News from the New Party

The limits to tolerance

A report by Sir Keith Ajegbo proposes that English schoolchildren should be taught "Britishness". The reason that this proposal is restricted to the children of England is not that the English are particularly in need of such education, but merely because Scotland and Wales are now obliged to make their own arrangements about such things. The British values which need so urgently to be inculcated in English youth are regarded as being: "freedom of speech, the rule of law, mutual tolerance and respect for equal rights".

The row over the exemption, or not, of Catholic adoption agencies from the new regulations preventing discrimination against gays and lesbians in the provision of goods and services, presents a significant challenge to this concept of tolerance, no less than to the "respect of equal rights". There is the distinct possibility here of the effective coercion of members of faith communities to act directly against their own conscience. If Catholic adoption agencies are to be obliged to place children with gay couples, are Catholic priests (or Church of England priests, for that matter) to be obliged, at least in principle, to perform marriage services for gay couples? And if this is the case, then what are the consequences for religious practice in this country - or indeed for the freedom of anyone else? We already live in a country where it has seriously been suggested that a ballerina should not be allowed to work because of her political affiliation - a state of affairs more reminiscent of the Soviet Union in the 1970s than the United Kingdom of the 21st Century.

It is reasonably clear that the mood of the country at large is that gays and lesbians, and gay and lesbian couples, should not be discriminated against and that legislation to prevent discrimination can be justified on democratic grounds alone, regardless of whatever other political, moral or theological arguments may be brought to bear on the matter.

However, things are not that simple. We have had a government for the last ten years which has made a point of promoting protection and respect for minorities within society, and that includes respect for religious minorities. It was this government that introduced the ill-fated and ill-conceived Incitement to Religious Hatred legislation, which was designed to offer protection to Muslims in particular (Christians, Jews, Sikhs and Hindus theoretically being protected by other legislation). Nevertheless, this was not enough to spare the former head of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, from a police investigation for comments he made about the teaching of Islam with respect to homosexuals in an interview for BBC Radio 4.