Top class rant, I feel much refreshed. I was educated at a Catholic Faith School, and the amount of lying, by teachers and priests, that went on to terrify children into conformity was appaling.

Minor typo – ‘helped to exclude’ maybe?

Have you considered a potential adverse selection problem with this sort of legislation?

An employer knows (once this legislation has been brought in) that:

1. They can’t be held responsible for one of their employees committing an act of abuse with a vulnerable individual SO LONG as the employer had a clean CRB check when they were hired.

2. They can be sued for discrimination if they refuse to hire someone from an ethnic or sexual minority, and a potential employee is likely to be immune from court costs if they sue: http://blog.iea.org.uk/?p=1535

Result: potential sexual predators will simply signal that they are part of a protected minority (regardless of whether they are or not) in order to gain access to vulernable individuals, knowing that many employers will likely to take the safest option and not exercise their own judgement on hiring practices.

Sorry, that should have been ‘employee’ in point 1.

Love the irony of Jenkins referencing the same Voltaire who described the Catholic Church as a ‘consistently implacable enemy of progress, decency, humanity and rationality’

‘Result: potential sexual predators will simply signal that they are part of a protected minority (regardless of whether they are or not) in order to gain access to vulernable individuals, knowing that many employers will likely to take the safest option and not exercise their own judgement on hiring practices.’

Eh? Apart from your attempt to link homosexualty with sexual predators’ I don’t get your argument at all.

In what way are 1) and 2) even *remotely* related?

@Shatterface:

Obviously, all gays are (potential) paedos…

Ironic that Nick’s <a href="http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/&quot; website is defending extreme torture porn, when he belies a very homophobic, anti-liberal, attitude.

oops, html fail – any admins wanna fix, much appreciated

“Eh? Apart from your attempt to link homosexualty with sexual predators’ I don’t get your argument at all.”

That is not my argument at all. I am saying that if you give specific protections to particular groups which can be relatively fluidly defined or even self-defined, then you will see people signal an identification with those groups in order to gain the upper hand in a hiring process.

“Ironic that Nick’s <a href="http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/&quot; website is defending extreme torture porn, when he belies a very homophobic, anti-liberal, attitude."

Not ironic at all. A problem within the SM community is always to work out how to successfully exclude all potential and actual abusers from the safe spaces in which it operates. It is this issue which leads me to suspect ANY attempt whatsoever to infringe on the rights of freedom of association and disassociation. This is because, in the end, the person best placed to judge whether someone is a potential threat is the individual who is likely to be directly effected.

When are you lot gonna have a go at the Muslims or are you all cowards? Who really gives a shit about gay rights in the church? None of you lot give a toss about religion at all but you can’t even form a coherent argument about your obsession with people who do – it’s just self obsessed, hypocritical, socialist claptrap as per usual. Whinge whinge whinge ad infinitum. Get back to your (soon to be axed) stratgic diversity fake public sector none job and continue being supercillious, irrelevant, soon to be out of government drivel.

Go on – change Catholic to Muzzie – I double dare you! Oh no – but then that would make you all Rod Liddle and how dare anyone speak the truth in bullshit land?

I think Dick @10 has set the bar, ladies and gentlemen. Any one fancy trying to match him for self-righteous, “supercilious”, ignorant belligerance?

@10

There are around 4.5 millions Catholics in this country. There are around 1.6 million Muslims. Ergo, it’s not unreasonable to put more stress on the threat to equality from Catholicism (not to mention the intervention of a Catholic Head of State on British, secular, policy).

For what it’s worth I’m as pissed off about discrimination by Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists, Rastas, Protestants, Hindus etc towards peoples’ sexuality as I am by Catholics, but so far none of them have been as vocal about the new laws.

Fuck em all.

Yowch! That’ll have singed poor Mr Jenkin’s eternally half-raised eyebrows.

A nitpick…

Last I heard, it was beneath our ambition as a country to tolerate recalcitrant, ugly prejudice in any part of our infrastructure – and the Catholic church is a huge part of our national infrastructure, operating as it does as a sanctioned educational provider.

It might be beneath your ambition – and, indeed, that of the government – but it’s pretty broad to apply that across the entirety of the nation. I’d guess a sizeable proportion of Brits think it should remain the choice of private institutions to determine who benefits from their services (well – in certain cases, anyway). If the government wants to ignore the view that’s essentially its perogative, but I get a slight feeling of Catholics vs. The Rest from this paragraph that I suspect isn’t merited.

You forgot the Mormons. Personally, I think we should ban Stephanie Meyer from ever writing about vampires again. She’s an insult to the undead community.

‘That is not my argument at all. I am saying that if you give specific protections to particular groups which can be relatively fluidly defined or even self-defined, then you will see people signal an identification with those groups in order to gain the upper hand in a hiring process.’

I hardly think somebody defining themselves as a sexual predator is going to get an upper hand.

Do vampires accept polygamists into their community?

I think we should be told.

“I hardly think somebody defining themselves as a sexual predator is going to get an upper hand.”

No, sexual predators might ‘define’ themselves as homosexual. If homosexual is a protected category.

@10 Best laugh of the day

Laurie – spot on, both on the post and @14

She’s an insult to the undead community.

Amen (or whatever the Mormon equivalent is). I’m sure the dead would write better books, too; at the very least, they’d be shorter.

Nick, your problem seems to be that you’re confusing “you’re not allowed to actively discriminate against homosexuals” (the actual situation) with “you must positively discriminate in favour of homosexuals” (obvious arse gravy). Calling yourself a homosexual does not increase your chances of securing employment in and of itself.

‘Calling yourself a homosexual does not increase your chances of securing employment in and of itself.’

That is true, but it could be used to silence potential concerns, espeically if those concerns are regarding their sexuality. Imagine the outcry on here if an employer gets sued for discrimination, with their justification being: “He said he was gay, but we just thought he was creepy and didn’t hire him”. It would be a nightmare proving it was a legitimate concern rather than discrimination EVEN if it was a legitimate concern.

The key problem, of course, is that anti-discrimination law ends up second guessing the intentions of employers. If the catholic church did not formally discriminate against homosexuals, but simply ‘happened’ rarely to appoint them, then they would be exposed to being sued anyway, on the grounds that they were continuing to discriminate on the sly.

“‘freedom of speech’ is no defence against bigotry and intolerance.”

Well, actually, you know, it is. I’m not only allowed to be but it is my right to be as bigoted and intolerant as I wish in my exercise of my freedom of speech.

I may not libel people (umm, slander with speech isn’t it?), true, and I may not incite to violence.

It is absolutely my right to say such things as “Pakis go home”, “I hate homos” and even such disgusting and immoral things as “That Gordon Brown, bit of alright, in’e” and “David Cameron, astute political moralist”.

I do have to take the consequences of saying such things of course: bad curries, worse interior design and the total and utter shunning by all sensible people for the last two.

But I am absolutely free to say them: that’s what freedom of speech actually means. And you have to tolerate (although most certainly not ignore nor not react to) my saying them because that is also what freedom of speech means.

The key problem, of course, is that anti-discrimination law ends up second guessing the intentions of employers. If the catholic church did not formally discriminate against homosexuals, but simply ‘happened’ rarely to appoint them, then they would be exposed to being sued anyway, on the grounds that they were continuing to discriminate on the sly.

I believe the courts are generally quite keen on this thing called “evidence”.

It would be a nightmare proving it was a legitimate concern rather than discrimination EVEN if it was a legitimate concern.

I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure you’ve reversed the burden of proof there. It is not up to the defendant to prove their innocence, even in a civil matter.

As a white middle classed (and I have suddenly had a horrible thought possibly middle aged) man am I allowed to point out that some of us do have redeeming features?

Like the occasional sense of humour.

‘I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure you’ve reversed the burden of proof there. It is not up to the defendant to prove their innocence, even in a civil matter.’

It looks like it is rather more complicated than that:

http://www.shepwedd.co.uk/knowledge/article/859-1970/burden-of-proof-and-race-discrimination/

Keeping the burden of proof consistently on the side of the defendant would certainly do a lot to solve the problem I have brought up here. But I don’t think many on the left would be happy with discrimination law framed that way. It is not aggressive enough for their liking.

Harman does not believe in equality for white hetro males. I am going to practice my form of diversity at the coming election. By voting for someone who is not represented equally at present. Nick Nick.

You’re right, it is more complicated than I at first assumed. However, it is also more complicated than your link seems to suggest. Try: http://www.emplaw.co.uk/content/index?startpage=data/200033.htm

‘That is true, but it could be used to silence potential concerns, espeically if those concerns are regarding their sexuality. Imagine the outcry on here if an employer gets sued for discrimination, with their justification being: “He said he was gay, but we just thought he was creepy and didn’t hire him”. It would be a nightmare proving it was a legitimate concern rather than discrimination EVEN if it was a legitimate concern.’

You can’t tell the difference between homosexuality and looking creepy?

If someone looked a bit creepy but he said he was heterosexual would you hire him?

‘But I am absolutely free to say them: that’s what freedom of speech actually means. And you have to tolerate (although most certainly not ignore nor not react to) my saying them because that is also what freedom of speech means.’

I’ll happily defend someone’s right to bigotted opinions – and to expressing them in public.

That’s different from discriminating against someone by refusing them services or employment. Refusing adoption services because the would-be adopters are homosexual, fat or don’t recycle isn’t a free speech issue – unless the prospective adoptive parents are denied children for expressing an opinion.

‘If someone looked a bit creepy but he said he was heterosexual would you hire him?’

Absolutely not. He would have no possibly recourse to anti-discrimination law (so long as he was white and male too, of course), so I would refuse to hire him without hesitation.

See the potential difference yet?

Dunc – It is complicated. But it doesn’t look like innocent until proven guilty. We aren’t meant to find people guilty in criminal courts on the basis of ‘prime facie’ evidence (although I realise that too happens sometimes).

This isn’t really a “line-by-line takedown”. It’s a very difficult format to write in, because the author must find a problem with every line in the original article. That’s why the fisk is such a strong negative tool when it works, because it implies that the article is ridiculous, therefore wrong. In this case, it doesn’t work, because a lot of what Jenkins writes is sensible from his perspective but not from the author’s perspective. When there is purely a subjective disagreement, you can’t win by attacking the objective content.

The second half of the post in particular descends into childishness. I’d be embarrassed to publish the line “All liberals R Nazis!!*$!” in a rebuttal I wrote, especially when it misrepresents the subject.

Phew, I feel a little better having read that rant. Thought for a while I might be the only one who rather resented the Pope’s little contribution to our own bishops and their continuing fight against the great secularist conspiracy.

Laurie,

Why did you feel it necessary to adopt such a patronizing tone towards Simon Jenkins?

Please think about it, long and hard, before the next time you decide to tell us why we should no longer uphold the principle of ‘freedom of speach’.

@tintin

“Harman does not believe in equality for white hetro males”

Please do show me the copious evidence that white heterosexual males are discriminated against.

Surely a waste of money for Government to try and tackle a problem that just isn’t there.

Harman clearly does believe in equality for White heterosexual males

Simon Jenkins is an ass. Always has been always will be. He has a special take on “I’m only a white able bodies well educated elite member of a privileged group, so if I can pull myself up by my own bootsraps, so should you!” that makes me gag on a regular basis.

I’m still waiting to learn from the Pope how Intelligent Design of the universe led to the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, the San Fransisco earthquake in 1906, the tsunami in 2004 and the recent earthquake in Haiti, as well as virulent global pandemics.

Simon Jenkins is a polemicist rather than a traditional political commentator. The motivation may be to annoy readers to incidentally promote the paper for which he writes. SJ does not get paid his salary to write banal commentary; in the same newspaper edition, Simon Hoggart delivers an unflattering report of Clare Short’s interview by the Chilcot Inquiry. Perhaps you aren’t meant to believe every word, but to think.

SJ is constructing an argument over paragraphs, and sometimes the qualifier to an argument appears later down the page. SJ does not deliver a series of mathematical equations, where the input to one is determined by the output of its predecessor. Analysis by paragraph or line is thus silly.

And the argument itself is classical liberalism: the state should stand aside from religion. Read the argument, not the paragraphs.

Great work Laurie!

From what I can tell, either Jenkins thinks that it’s ok to discriminate against eg Black people so long as you’re a ‘private association’, in which case he’s a BNP-level racist.

Or he thinks there’s something special about gay people meaning it’s ok to discriminate against them specifically. In which case he’s a homophobe.

I think it’s the latter. Indeed, apart from a hatred of Hariet Harman so extreme it anhilates one’s ability to reason, what else but homophobia could motivate such a piece?

Which isn’t to even begin on Jenkins’ epic fail to understand the concepts of rights, freedom or equality…

SIR Simon Jenkins (he’s one of them fellas that accept a K then insists that no one addresses him with his title, I’d make it compusory if you accept an honour it is it is used at all times) is a pompous bore who considers the world as his parish.

He’s in the fine tradition of Guardian columnists like the late Hugh Young; all very de haut en bas, very private school and Oxford giving instruction to us plebs.

He’s the sort of ‘polemicist’ who will now have a go at Murdoch now, after having accepted the Murdoch shilling for 20 years. He is frequently wrong about subjects he writes about, but it’s all water off a duck’s back to him. He’s got his arse in the butter, thank you very much.

I don’t know why anyone takes this pontifical, smug, right-wing toady seriously.

“From what I can tell, either Jenkins thinks that it’s ok to discriminate against eg Black people so long as you’re a ‘private association’, in which case he’s a BNP-level racist.

Or he thinks there’s something special about gay people meaning it’s ok to discriminate against them specifically. In which case he’s a homophobe.”

Alternatively, maybe he upholds the libertarian view of freedom of association? One doesn’t have to be a racist or a homophobe to believe that private organisations and businesses should not be told who they can or cannot hire.

Tim is right. I’m sick and tired of the anti-pluralism that comes from certain quarters of the left. That is how neoconservatism got started.

Jenkins column is silly, but it appears that Laurie hasn’t quite managed to take it down. For instance, she says “suggest that forbidding gay people to work in one’s institutions”, as if that’s what the Equality bill will prevent. If the government got its way, the bill would properly end discrimination in jobs for religious institutions that are not “wholly or mainly” religious. But they could still only have heterosexuals for (say) the job of a priest, if that’s what they want. That’s the right balance of freedom of association for me. But Laurie seems to be attacking Jenkins using a position beyond that of the Equality bill. Maybe that was unintentional. If not, well I’m a secularist, so I’d oppose that.

Looking like Harriet Harman’s going to back down,though: she loves to talk the talk, but seldom walks the walk if it’s going to in any way lead to her losing face or position. This Government still carries too much of a flame for faith communities, IMHO, maybe as part of Blair’s poisonous legacy, maybe because of trying to garner votes by playing faith identity politics:very good to encourage sectarianism, segregated schools etc. Religions are but sets of ideas, and as such must be open to scrutiny (and even ridicule,just like any other set of ideas or beliefs), not given special protection or privilege, like the special ability to run publicly-funded schools: what would the reaction be if you applied to run an academy on anarcho-syndicalist lines? Would you get public funds?

If we’re going to start talking Voltaire, some people may get a shock from reading his (ahem) robust comments on Judaism. They were helpfully collected in one volume by the Nazis.

Speaking as someone who doesn’t believe in the infallibility of Harriet Harman, and who has actually taken the effort to read what Benny said rather than what the papers reckon he said… well, there’s rather a lot of projection here, isn’t there? I was half expecting to see references to the Spanish Armada or Popish Plots, or a call to deport the Catholics to France (again).

I’d love to see a campaign called something like Atheists For Religious Freedom, or maybe Secularists Who Aren’t Worried About What Other People Believe. We may have to wait a while for that one.

@ Splintered Sunrise. I’d actually back such a group, as a secularist not worried about what other people believe, so long as their beliefs aren’t given some elevated status by the state and funded by the state…

“The ailing Catholic church, like most hallowed institutions, does much good work, and it does bad. But the bad is not an incarnation of such evil as to merit state persecution, as if this were still the 17th century. ”

Yes, but they would so love to have that position back ,and spend a lot of time both here, and in the US trying to push laws that will give them back the kind of power they once enjoyed. Keeping religious bronshirts down is a constant battle. It never ends. Decades will pass but the brownshirt hiding behind a religious fig leaf never goes away. There is no difference from the Islamic nut to the Catholic nut to the Jewish nut to the Protestant nut.

It amuses that all you have to do is claim to be a religion and then you can do what the fuck you like. I think I will start a religion that says I hate brownshirt religious bastards who should be denied any for of health care seeing has they hate govt.

Is Harman’s legislation actually going to be of benefit or just another piece of labour bureaucracy? Labour is addicted to increasing the number of offences which does not correlate to making Britain a better place. As Harman sends one of her children to the RC London Oratory her approach lacks credibility. I cannot see how her legislation will increase the vote from some working class Roman Catholics.

If Harman wants to reduce inequality, making sure everyone has decent standard of maths and english would probably be of greater benefit. Harman is more afffectation than effect.

Nick/30: Maybe you should read the relevant anti-discrimination laws more closely. It is equally legal or illegal to refuse to hire someone because they are male as it is to refuse to hire someone because they are female. (Similarly for race and sexuality) This is true both of the current and proposed legislation

Charlie 2/48: Why does that make her approach lack credibility? One can accept that the Catholic church does good work in some areas while criticising it in others – indeed, one of its most vocal critics on this topic has been Stephen Hughes MEP (Labour, North East England), who is himself Catholic.

Those with abysmally low standards iof maths and english have major problems in obtaining well paid work which is probably the greatest cause of inequality- probably 20% of the population suffer. Sending a child to the London Oratory which is a very traditional RC school attached to a a very traditional church because the schools of Peckham are so poor, to me, typifies many middle class Labour politicians . The London Oratory, I believe still holds the Tridentine Mass.

For years people have been saying to me that anti-Catholicism is the anti-semitism of the English Left.

To which I have always replied: ” No, antisemitism is the antisemitism of the English Left.

But hey – there are three anti-Catholic threads running on LC at the moment, and only one antisemitic one!

So “anti-Catholicism” has come to mean “any criticism of Catholicism, Catholic doctrine, or anything said by a Catholic (other than those the complainant disagrees with)” now, just as “anti-Semitism” has come to mean “any criticism of Israel, Israeli military tactics, or anything said by a Jew (other than those the complainant disagrees with)”, huh?

I think I’m going to start whining about anti-Atheism every time anybody disagrees with me in future.

He would have no possibly recourse to anti-discrimination law (so long as he was white and male too, of course), so I would refuse to hire him without hesitation.

I thought the majority of cases brought to trial under equality of employment laws were actually by white males?

Dunc @ 52

So “anti-Catholicism” has come to mean “any criticism of Catholicism, Catholic doctrine, or anything said by a Catholic ..

No. Just look at the post:

The poor Catholic Church, one of the biggest enforcers of punitive ideology and state-level persecution of anyone who happens to be a little bit different.

That isn’t reasoned critique. It’s hate-fuelled rant. As is the vile antisemitic outpourings on the Aaaronovitch thread.

Evidently your definition of a “hate fuelled rant” is somewhat different from mine.

“That isn’t reasoned critique. It’s hate-fuelled rant. As is the vile antisemitic outpourings on the Aaaronovitch thread.”

And what the frig would you know about reasoned critique troll? Nothing, if most of your crayon written ramblings are anything to go by.

Another idiot troll who thinks he is important.

And indeed, almost everyone who isn’t a puffed-up right wing loon.

Damn you, sally; you’ve harshed my flow!

I was following on from #55, obviously.

Dunc @ 55

Evidently your definition of a “hate fuelled rant” is somewhat different from mine.

Didn’t the:

just makes me want to stub out a fag in your face, Simon

strike you as even the teensiest bit ….well….psychotic?

Just a bit, coupled with the apparent argument that anyone who disagrees with Harriet Harman is a misogynist. On the back, this, of a media shitstorm arising from a speech in which the Pope didn’t even mention homosexuality. If Laurie doesn’t agree with what the Pope says, that’s fine – I often disagree with him myself – but not bothering to even try to criticise what he actually said is not worthy of someone with her evident intelligence.

That’s before we even get onto the “this society cannot tolerate” stuff. I wrote over on my own blog about this, that a liberal who says “there is no right to be reactionary” is a liberal with no sense of irony. I think we’ve had a demonstration of that here.

‘Nick/30: Maybe you should read the relevant anti-discrimination laws more closely. It is equally legal or illegal to refuse to hire someone because they are male as it is to refuse to hire someone because they are female. (Similarly for race and sexuality) This is true both of the current and proposed legislation’

you are right, apologies. But the problem remains that the thinking behind this legislation is that government auhorities can second guess the decisions of employers (sometimes without the presumption of innocence). This could lead to employers taking a protocol and compliance driven approach to recruitment in order to avoid potential suits.

51

> But hey – there are three anti-Catholic threads running on LC at the moment, and only one antisemitic one!

And I’,m pretty sure that there has NEVER on LC been an anti-muslim, anti-hindu, anti-Buddhist thread.

Can’t even recall an anti-Iran one, or anti-Taliban…. but maybe I missed those