Sometimes you can get a bit jaded by politics. The party political knock-about takes its toll on occasions but from time to time something happens which restores your faith that we, despite what some people may think, and what some elements of our media might want people to think; live in a country where reason can prevail.

I’ve not been involved but have been following the ongoing saga that is what a complete nut-job Nadine Dorries and at least to some degree having a wake-up call as to just how close we always are to the prospect of legislation being forced upon us by those who seek to make judgments, not from the position of informed reasoning but because it fits nicely with their own religious position.

I’ve been reading a bit lately about the historical relationship between religion and law in British history. If anything, what struck me most was that I’d always considered we have moved steadily away from belief based legislation towards a more enlightened position.

Even I had somehow accepted that this was a steady one-way street away from superstition towards logic and rationality but it isn’t. The threat from those who would stoop so low as try and stir emotional responses to further their own position is ever present despite what the science actually is.

Are these intellectually lax tactics inherently the of the ‘right’? If years in politics is anything to go by then the answer is probably yes. Have I been in the position where someone on the right has gone down the route of ‘well everyone knows that’ and utilising the wonderful (I’ve lost the argument phrase) ‘well there’s lies damned lies and statistics’ while blatantly quoting a party line based on use of statistics? Yes I have and it’s disconcerting not only that this approach to political discourse is not only considered to be acceptable by some but that people might give it credence in the first place.

The worst kind of legislation is that passed purely on the basis of belief. Where there is no intellectual grounding or verifiable evidence to support the position. We’ve seen that in the past few weeks and in cases such as this, with absence of an actual substantive support for their position they choose instead to rely on pseudo-science and play to people’s emotions.

If nothing else it has made me realise that we are not on a one-way street towards greater rationality, that along the way we risk taking that step backwards if the views of people like Nadine Dorries are not challenged and shown for the shallow disingenuous nonsense that they are.

Those of us that value the rational over the superstitious, that value how far we as a country have come and surprisingly how far behind even some of our close neighbours are should never take this for granted while there are those who wish to drag us backwards.

I have to admit though that I do agree to some extent that in a perfect world there should be no abortions other than those for specific clinical or medical reasons. In a perfect world contraception would never fail, in a perfect world we wouldn’t have unintended pregnancies because people are ill-informed or lack the knowledge of how to avoid them. In a perfect world every child would be wanted and loved but we don’t live in a perfect world.

What troubles me the most is that these same people taking a religious position against abortion are the same religious people who seek to rob our children of the information to prevent them in the first place.

When I was at school the sum total of all sex education consisted of a single two hour session at age 14. I remember it quite distinctly because of the alarming lack of knowledge shown by my fellow pupils and my school was not a religiously aligned one but the lessons that we’re supposed to carry on suddenly stopped for no known reason apart from some rumour that a vicar had complained (whether that is true or not I do not know but for some reason the classes did indeed suddenly stop) and at least two girls to my knowledge in my year at school were pregnant before they left at 16.

It strikes me that if these people really do care about wanting to reduce the number of abortions in our society then instead of seeking to restrict young people’s knowledge or spouting claptrap about some mythical ‘abortion industry’ and shove the ‘just say no’ matra down their necks then they should actively to promoting better sex education in our schools. accepting that yes, shock horror teenagers do have sex with each other and no amount of moralising is going to change that.

That said, far better commentary on this whole debate can of course be found by Unity over at MoT and as the saga closes the best laugh can be found here.

I was out and about today on the trusty public transport system and picked up a copy of the Metro.

While idly flicking through I spotted this advertisement by the DWP.

Now I haven’t mentioned it before but just for the record, I’m an atheist. I don’t try and shove my own beliefs about spirituality down other people’s throats, but equally I do not appreciate it when others seek to do so from their own religious perspective. I believe strongly that we should live in a society where everyone is free to believe spiritually in what they wish as long as it is not to the detriment of those who choose to believe in something else, or equally choose not to believe in anything remotely spiritual at all. From that perspective I’m a fairly liberal person. I believe in the separation of religious institutions from the state and the abolition of faith based schools on the basis that the state cannot achieve a position whereby it is able to either equitably or be seen to be equitable to all faiths. Some will always bemoan that favouritism is being bestowed on one against the other and the only solution is the separation of religion from the workings of the state and its institutions.

Equally by their very nature, faith based organisations always come from a particular moral and ethical perspective which when given power over individuals will seek to exercise that power for the furtherance of their own particular moral or ethical perspective. We saw this recently over Catholic adoption agencies opposing the rights for gay people to adopt. By which terms they are not seeking to do the job of an adoption agency and placing children with loving and caring parents, moreover because they take a particular view towards the issue of homosexuality they seek to deny gay couples of the right to adopt purely because that certain group in society do not conform to their own moral position.

So that made me wonder about why exactly the DWP would seem to be so keen to engage with faith based groups for what is termed loosely as getting people back to work. Obviously one can only guess at to what role faith based groups would play within helping Jobseekers get back to work and I don’t discount the role that third sector partners may be able to play in this area but why it seems there is such an emphasis on encouraging faith based groups. There has been experience of using faith based groups in what could loosely be termed the social welfare system in Australia with some rather worrying results for those who choose not be affiliated to a certain religion. I would be very wary of going down the same path here, especially when there seems to be no justifiable reason.

Faith based groups can offer nothing more than any other third party organisation seeking to perform a function for society, they are no more efficient, better run or motivated to achieve the goals set them than any other group so I do not see the point. What they do however, is introduce ethics and morals into the system whereby those ethics and morals may not be accepted by or even be completely opposed to that of the person who is engaging with the organisation.

This is not a problem in wider society, if I choose not to engage in going to church, the temple or the mosque then I don’t have to. However if I am made redundant and end up on a New Deal scheme run by a faith group that may not be my own if I were to be religious or any faith given my own atheism then that poses issues that simply do not need to be there in the first place.

This passed my way today. It’s a petition on 10 Downing Street’s website. It goes like this:

Dudley council West midlands is considering spending twenty million building a mosque and comunity centre next to it in this Medevil Town which has a town centre run down and like a Ghost town, the Muslim population is two and a half per cent and they have a mosque already in a listed building. it is time to wake up in Dudley the Traffic problems not to mention the eye sore, and yet just less than a mile away we have a Hospital with a shortage of beds staff and parking no we dont want a Twenty million pound mosque but the Town centre with not one Resturant in it to be regenerated, It seems the Muslim Population have already purchased the land for the Mosque yet the Planning Department have not given the go ahead yet for another Two weeks, They must be very confident to buy the land I am very concerned.

Apart from the author’s pisspoor quality of English it is an interesting example of the limitations of the petitions system set up on Downing Street’s website. I say this because it is a complete load of bullshit and lies which fits ever so neatly into the realms of those who wish to propagate such nonsense.
So here’s the facts just for the record. An application has gone to Dudley Council for Planning Permission to build a mosque. The funding for it is nowhere near £20million and unlike what the proposer would like people to believe, it’s actually being funded by the local muslim community, not the council.
However that probably doesn’t fit in with the specific world view of this person. So this begs the question. Who is Francis Gore-Booth? One would presume a concerned local resident? So on my travels today (as in yesterday) your humble penguin got hold of some electoral registers and had a bit of a shufty. The ward in which the proposed mosque is due to be built is that of Castle & Priory so lets start there.
Hmm… No one of that name on the register, that’s strange. So I took a wider view and checked some of the surrounding areas.
Hmm… Still no one of that name, this is rather strange.
Now to be fair, there are issues surrounding this project and these need to be addressed but the right and proper place for that to happen is in the planning process whereby local residents can express their concerns.
Equally the muslim community has owned this particular bit of land for donkey’s years and unlike as the petition implies as the owners of the land they are fully entitled to seek permission to do with it what they like. (whether they get permission is of course another thing)
I could point out that this is an issue that stirs up anti-muslim sentiment in a ward that did once have a BNP councillor (Simon Darby) and this issue is very convenient for them as we head into the local election season or am I just being cynical?

Couldn’t resist this one.
Here’s a translation of the BBC article into what it actually means with a few commentaries.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said he was disappointed with the decision
Ministers have been accused of trying to impose “a new morality” by ruling Catholic adoption agencies should not be exempt from gay rights laws.

You’ve done something we don’t like.

Tony Blair has ruled against an opt-out despite agencies saying they will close rather than act against their beliefs.

Tony actually standing up to the Catholic church for a change and doing the right thing instead of caving in to prejudices dressed up as a religious belief.

However they are to be given 21 months to adjust to the new regulations.

To be given 21 months to make their mind up whether their prejudices or a fair bit of tax payers wonga is more important to them.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor said he was disappointed, but said he hoped there might still be some way the agencies could “continue their work”.

Shit shit bugger bugger, we thought the Government would back down like on faith schools but they haven’t and we don’t want to give up all that lovely tax payers money that we’re getting so sod the principles of our church, we’d rather have the dosh.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the head of Catholics in England and Wales, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Some legislation, however well intended, in fact does create a new kind of morality, a new kind of norm - as this does.”

“The government has a right to legislate and homosexual couples are also able to adopt in other agencies but we want to hold onto this principle.”

Damn, we’re not in charge anymore and the Government is making decisions that are in line with the moral position of the majority, not our little bigotted group. We believe that homosexuality is wrong despite there being bugger all in that book we base our religion on to actually say it but we’re quite happy to want to continue to hold prejudices handed down to us through centuries of equally bigotted Bishops and Cardinals from Rome.

Mr Blair said the proposal was a “sensible compromise”

Best I could come up with without pissing off either the missus’ or the PLP.

He said the move risked forcing religious people out of public life.

The problem being?

“Here the Catholic Church and its adoption services are wishing to act according to its principles and conscience and the government is saying: ‘No, we won’t allow you to … you have no space, you have no place in the public life of this country.’

Principles and conscience = prejudice and irrational beliefs based on no imperical evidence.

“Now that seems to me to be just one step and there will be further ones.”

Hopefully yes, the more we move away from daft superstition and towards an enlightened humanist perspective the better.

The row was said to have split the Cabinet and was opposed by the Catholic Church, backed by the Church of England and some other religious groups.

Yep, religion whatever it’s guise and prejudice go hand in hand, is there something new there?

There may well be some way in which without breaking the law, our Catholic services can continue in their work

Yep, we have realised we quite like being funded by the taxpayer and our morals are open to question when it comes to the dosheroonies.

The proposed measures are likely to face a vote in Parliament next month before coming into effect on 6 April.

Hopefully a good progressive day in Parliament.

But Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor told the BBC: “I’m very disappointed that we haven’t been given the exemption that we desired.”

Why can’t you let us be a bunch of homophobic twats if we want to?

He said that he hoped Catholic adoption agencies could still operate once the transition period was over.

Yep, still want the money, sod the principles.

“There may well be some way in which, without breaking the law, our Catholic services can continue in their work according to Catholic principles.”

We’ll just change the principles on which our faith is based, hey it’s not the first time, even the Pope is on about reforming ‘original sin’ so maybe we’d be happy to change our mind on homosexuality to increase our market share and keep getting those lovely cheques from HM Treasury.

I know I’m not predisposed to using outright offensive language on my site but from time to time it is wholly justified.
This is one such occasion.
Well, it’s simple, if you are a bunch of homophobic twats then you can fuck right off! Oh, and all those millions of pounds of public money that fund your schemes you can kiss goodbye to as well.