Ian Smith examines religious & philosophical conundrums & provides some light relief
The bulk of this month’s column (written while snowed in here in British East Suffolk, trying to decide whether to send my wife out to the store in the next village on a long rope or to eat the cat) is taken up with two important and newsworthy cases on religion/belief discrimination, both as to its “reach” (in particular, what is a philosophical belief worthy of legal protection?), but also (in the first case) as to how the potentially contradictory laws on religious discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination fit together.
In a sense, this is only the legal tip of a larger social and political iceberg—we are seeing the enormous problems the Church of England is having in relation to gay clergy, and recently the BBC suddenly found itself caught up in a storm of criticism over a blog discussion on proposals in an African country to criminalise homosexual activity. One problem with the latter issue was that opening up discussion gave rise to a large amount of the “wrong” opinion pouring forth,
