More religion - why would I want such people to have my money?

Jock — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 20:23:00 +0000

Ruth Gledhill, in her regular religious spot in the Times blogs touches again on these regulations to outlaw discrimination in the provision of goods and services against people on the basis of their sexual orientation:

Yet more on s*x******:

Sorry folks. It depresses me to have to come back to this subject again as much as I expect is depresses some of you. But I would be remiss in my duty if I ignored it. With the introduction of yet more bureaucratic red tape, or should that be pink tape, under the heading of the Sexual Orientation Regulations, the Government is bending itself into yet more unorthodox contortions in its attempt to do right by this country's minorities. Inevitably, orthodox, Catholic, traditionalist and almost all other Christians save the liberal and most of the Anglican establishment are once more on a crusade against what is perceived as yet another demon of secularisation. The danger they fear is that, once again, in its attempts to appease one particular lobby group, the Government will end by discriminating against another, the religious.

Now some will probably see this as making complete my journey into a reactionary old fuddy-duddy, but I can't get too excited about this. Why are we having such regulations at all? Certainly is respect of private businesses. I can understand and wholeheartedly agree that if any such religious based institution or individual is receiving even a penny of public money to deliver a service that would otherwise be delivered by a public agency then yes, they should not be permitted to discriminate.

But on being refused a hotel room for being gay and wanting to spend the night with my lover? Why on earth would I want to line the pockets of a bigot against his and my will?

But that, I suppose, brings us in particular to education and social services, where religious charities are often involved, and in particular in state funded faith schools where the religious institution concerned tends to pay in a very small proportion of the cost of funding the facility with the tax payer picking up the vast majority of the cost. If these religious institutions can't live with these regulations, they should get out of the business of rent-seeking - getting public money and exerting more than their fair influence over what is done with that money.

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More religion - why would I want such people to have my money?