Matt 24 watch, 119: The UK's trend to delegitimise and penalise Christians under false colours of Anti-Discrimination Law

Hardly has this blog taken a moment to address the Bull Guest House case when a fresh ruling by High Court Judges in the UK further underscores the key problem that Mike Judge complained of previously:

Discrimination law is meant to act as a shield to protect people from unfair treatment, not to be used as a sword to attack those whose beliefs you disagree with.

That is immediately deeply troubling, given that UK precedents have significance for the thought of our own judiciary in the region. 

A concern that is multiplied for British Overseas Territory jurisdictions like Montserrat where (under the prompting of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office), very similar anti-discrimination provisions have been written into our new Constitutions.

So, we need to put the current cases under the microscope, noticing with Mike Judge how:

[t]he same laws used against the Bulls [and which have threatened their livelihood and the sanctity of their home]  have been used to shut down faith-based adoption agencies that want children to have the benefit of a mum and a dad who are committed to each other in marriage. Children were sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.

Indeed, we must now wonder with Mike Judge as well, if "Personal liberty may be next."

In this fresh case, as Tim Ross, the Daily Telegraph's Religious Affairs Editor, points out, two UK High Court judges have ruled that:

There is no place in British law for Christian beliefs, despite this country’s long history of religious observance and the traditions of the established Church . . . . 

Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson made the remarks when ruling on the case of a Christian couple who were told that they could not be foster carers because of their view that homosexuality is wrong. 

The judges underlined that, in the case of fostering arrangements at least, the right of homosexuals to equality “should take precedence” over the right of Christians to manifest their beliefs and moral values. 

In a ruling with potentially wide-ranging implications, the judges said Britain was a “largely secular”, multi-cultural country in which the laws of the realm “do not include Christianity”.

Tellingly, Ross goes on: "Campaigners for homosexual rights welcomed the judgment for placing “21st-century decency above 19th-century prejudice.”"

It is beginning to seem that "decency" is being redefined, and that the victims of real prejudice and hostility are being blamed for their victimisation by triumphalistic homosexualist activists.

For, what is really going on is that homosexualist agitators, flying the legal flag of anti-discrimination law -- and often acting with the aid of UK Government agencies and now judges -- are being empowered by the increasingly radically secularised British state to discriminate upon Christians, and proceed to blame the victims as though they were in the wrong, labelling them with loaded tags such as "prejudice," as though they were card-carrying Klu Klux clansmen.

Let us be clear: it is but a minor step of carrying forward a precedent, to move on to the next stage,  stripping foster or adoptive -- or even natural -- parents of their children for the thought crime of taking their children to a church where the pastor -- like Pastor Ake Green in Sweden (who was actually sentenced to gaol for preaching that homosexuality is sin to be repented of . . . ) -- might preach or simply read from Rom 1, where it teaches:

^{Rom 1: 19}  . . . what may be known about God is plain to [men], because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

 ²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

 ²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. ²⁵ They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

 ²⁶ Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

 ²⁸ Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹ they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³² Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Ironically, the underlying assumption behind the latest ruling is that Christian "beliefs" concerning morally significant behaviour and institutions like marriage -- as just cited -- can simply be dismissed without serious consideration. 

Why? 

Because Britain is now a “largely secular”, multi-cultural country. 

One in which, morality is seen as being of only relative force, depending on who -- by dint of manipulation of public opinion and the popular vote -- holds the levers of power at the moment. 

In short, "secular" is actually a euphemism for evolutionary materialistic atheism advanced under colours of "science," and for its inherent amorality. 

As Plato warned long ago in his The Laws, Bk X [c. 360 BC], when a worldview like that has in it no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT, and its adherents seize power, they will act out their belief that "the highest right is might." Thence, ruthless factions will vie for power, and if they gain it, then they will "live in real dominion over others," leading to oppressive tyranny.

In more recent times, Prof., William Provine of Cornell, summed up the matter as follows in the University of Tennessee 1998 Darwin Day address:

Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . . .

For, "scientific" materialism posits that all that is is matter and energy interacting in accordance with physical laws of mechanical necessity and/or chance. That is, the is. 

But, such an is has in it no appeal for ought, for justice, beyond: power and manipulation. Might makes right.

(To which 100 million ghosts of the victims of amoral, atheistical regimes over the past 100 years moan out: Oh no, not again!)

And, if you reject such "science," the powerful and "educated" can simply take this as a further proof that your beliefs are ignorant, insane or stupid. So, of course you should be restricted in what you can do to act out such irrational, dangerous pre-Darwin "prejudices." (NB: here as well as here,  and cf. here, here, here and here, on the "irrational ignorance/stupidity" vs. false enlightenment and closed minded arrogance issue.)

In short, evolutionary amorality naturally trends to tyranny at the hands of the popular prejudices of the day [at least, those popular among the elites], here homosexualism. 

 But, a question lurks, begged: why is discrimination wrong, so wrong that the desires of others must not be allowed to prevail over opposition to "discrimination"?

In short, the very action of the court and the words of the homosexualist advocates give the lie to the notion that morality is just a subjective matter of the preferences of the powerful in a given time and place. There is a true moral equality of human beings, and one that properly cries out for fair treatment. 

Immediately, that highlights how evolutionary materialism collapses in a heap of self-refuting self-contradictions.

It also points to a sounder basis for genuine law and liberty, one pointed out long ago by Locke when he cited "the judicious [Richard] Hooker" in his Ecclesiastical Polity, when in Ch 2 Section 5 of the 2nd Essay on Civil Government, the basis for true liberty and justice was to be stated:

. . . if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man's hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men . . . my desire, therefore, to be loved of my equals in Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant.

Will Hawthorne, in the blog Atheism is Dead, has cut to the heart of the matter:

Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism [[= evolutionary materialism] is true. Assume, furthermore, that one can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is' [[the 'is' being in this context physicalist: matter-energy, space- time, chance and mechanical forces].  (Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.)

Given our second assumption, there is no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer an 'ought'. And given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there's no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer that one ought to refrain from performing that action.

Add a further uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action . . . We've conformed to standard principles and inference rules of logic and we've started out with assumptions that atheists have conceded in print. And yet we reach the absurd conclusion: therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to perform that action. If you'd like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan 'if atheism is true, all things are permitted'.

For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible . . . . 

Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible (for example, racist actions) . . .

Plainly, evolutionary materialism cannot stand up to the basic fact that there are moral truths that are as firmly known and generally accepted as the law of gravity. And, that is why the above pro-homosexualist rulings are so plainly wrong, and strike us as being so obviously unjust.

With that correction of the underlying error in mind, we can now turn to a saner balance on homosexualism and the law. 

Homosexuality obviously cuts across the biological requisites of human reproduction. So, if there is a genetic influence, it is not a beneficial one, similar to how prone-ness to alcoholism is said to be partly genetic. 

Nor, are we locked up to the programming of our genes: we have minds of our own, and can make responsible choices of our own. Our tendencies are only one input to those choices, and a responsible person will act based on what is for the good of him or her self, for that of others and for the good of the community. 

Agenda-driven, selfish factions that impose on others in ways that interfere with ability to make a livelihood, cut across principled acts of conscience, and their freedom are plainly destructive.  So, when we see that already beginning to happen as the homosexualist agitators push their agenda through the courts, that throws up a few warning flags.

While we do not want to gaol homosexuals for their views or sex habits, or turn into vigilante mobs that beat such up, and we wish to treat them with the dignity due a fellow sinner made in the image of God for whom Christ died as Saviour, that does not give homosexualist agitators an excuse to turn legal protections into a club to batter down and rob those who have a principled moral objection to homosexual behaviour, or to the attempts to redefine marriage to enfold homosexuality into it. 

Nor does it give them a right to demand that churches censor their moral teachings, nor to interfere with the livelihoods or family life of those who differ with them.

The very fact that this is already happening and that homosexualist agitators are not pausing to stop the blatant injustices that flow from it, is worrying.  

Worse, leading homosexualists are actually gloating on their power to oppress others, and are blaming the victims, tagging them with very poisonously loaded labels.

Such are bad signs for the future of the UK.

They also point to difficult and probably costly battles that lie ahead for our own Parliaments and judicial systems in the Caribbean.

Plainly, in months and years ahead, we will have to confront the homosexualist push surging into our region through precedents in law and through policy actions and aid preconditions set by development partners in the UK, Europe and North America.

We must now think, very carefully indeed, about where we stand, why, and how we will respond to such pressures. END