Churches fear Equality Bill will conflict with faith

From BBC News:
Churches have warned new equality laws could force them to go against their faith when hiring staff. They say the Equality Bill may force them to employ sexually active gay people and transsexuals when hiring staff other than priests or ministers. Churches currently have special status allowing them to turn down certain candidates for ministers or priests.

The government says it is not trying to narrow the churches' ability to employ lay people who share their values. The Equality Bill - which is due to be debated in the House of Lords on Monday - would allow churches to avoid appointing homosexuals to clerical roles.

'Special status'
However, bishops claim that they could lose the right to ensure other important staff - such as key representative and teaching roles - had lifestyles compatible with church beliefs. Anglican bishops have written to members of the House of Lords, appealing to them to vote against what they see as a weakening of the churches' special status under the Equality Bill. Churches are allowed to turn down candidates for jobs as ministers or priests if they are actively homosexual or have changed their gender, or especially relevant to the Roman Catholic Church, if they are women. That exemption currently extends to key staff such as youth workers or the heads of Catholic schools, but the bishops claim that changes proposed by the government would remove it.

The government says it is not trying to narrow the churches' ability to employ lay people who share their values, but bishops have been recruiting allies in the Lords for a protracted battle over the bill.
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" Churches fear Equality Bill will conflict with faith" - Yes. That's the good thing about equality. No one is allowed to discriminate, and the fucking Church needs to understand that.

How can we be in the 21st century and still have legal discrimination? Should the Church be allowed to discriminate against people because of their colour? No. We wouldn't accept that. That would be racism. The Catholic Cult can discriminate against someone because of the gender. I find this absolutely stupid. No one has the right to discriminate legally.

Or maybe we should allow the Church to discriminate - perhaps that will push more and more people away from them? If I were in a position to employ people would I be allowed to say, "No, because you're gay you can't have a job that has nothing to do with your sexuality"? No, of course I wouldn't. Why should churches get away with it? Because they have a book written hundreds of years ago that tells them to discriminate? Well, what a load of fucking tosh. Believe what the fuck you like but don't you dare use your unprovable beliefs to get your own way. No fucking more!

I call for a massive revolution in the UK. I call for people to totally ignore churches. I call for politicians to stop pandering to the whimsy of religious dickwads. I call upon my fellow countrymen (and women, and gays, and lesbians etc.) to take a stand against the Church. They are a bunch of idiots. Do all you can to ignore them. Slam the door in the face of religious callers. Don't buy anything from shops that are run by religious people (mainly corner shops). Actively choose not to employ someone who is religious. Don't use any tradesperson who follows a religion.

There are so many reasons to hate religion, and very few to like it. Does the Haiti earthquake prove there's no god? Yes. An all-loving, merciful god wouldn't allow that to happen, but it did. Fuck gods!