Discrimination and Blasphemy - strange bedfellows

Just noticed some comments from someone I rather enjoy reading and from them realised that there is a blog entry missing. Not only that but it's not even saved as an edit so I can't repost it (now ehere and how did it go I wonder?) Still, here's a bit of late night food for thought (and a bit of a regurg' of former, now lost, post.

I was rather interested in the case of the four Brit's who recently (4th Sept I think) went to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) with claims of discrimination against them causing them to lose their jobs.

The four were:
Nadia Eweida - British Airways and the banning of her wearing of a cross
Shirley Chaplin - acted against by an NHS trust for the same reason
Gary McFarlane - sacked by Relate because he had problems giving sex therapy advice to homosexual couples, and
Lilian Ladele - a Registrar who faced disciplinary action over her refusal to conduct same-sex civil partnerships.

What we have here is a mixed bag and the reality is that there is an obvious inconsistency in the way that people react to situations. I heard of a person who said they couldn't work in a shop's meat department because they were vegetarians and so, they were moved. Transpose this into Ms Ladele's situation and immediately the responses change and attitudes harden and this demonstrates that some are more equal than others!

The real issue is the situation when rights clash. That moment when one person's equality renders someone less equal and the reality is that my right to believe as I do has to remain a right and that which I understand to be right (or wrong) in terms of lifestyle is something I should be allowed to have as a basic right. The problem comes when that right I have acts against another's right and this is where the facile, "Let's agree to differ," crashes and burns. This is what makes the case before the ECHR so interesting and potentially important (and law-changing too!).

But (always a 'but' isn't there) what gives me more than just a little concern is those who are seeing in the ECHR cases an opportunity to make that which should be protection (let use the word 'defensive') more proactive (and here the word 'offensive' springs to mind in more contexts than one) and this leads us to a situation where abuse of that hitherto 'defence' makes it something it wasn't and shouldn't be (an example being Rimsha Masih's 'blasphemy case - this law being used to silence critics and be used as a weapon against those who think or believe differently, which is exactly where we're going with the ECHR cases).

I think it was Keith Porteus who spoke about the cases saying that if they (the Christians) won their case there would be a hierarchy established where the Christians would find themselves at the apex with the others (homosexuals) somewhere below. The problem is that blasphemy laws, like those which seek to prevent persecution and discrimination are excellent until there is a (often thinly) veiled self-interest and then we're in that place where rights clash - and all see their particular lifestyle (with or without belief) as the overarching rights.

Would that we could live in a tolerant society where we could hold our views and practice our beliefs without turning everything into a fight for supremacy. I work to dialogue and engage with people, even though we differ, and try to understand their side of the equation and put mine - the problem is that being in a faith group here puts us on the same unsafe ground as being in a different faith group in Pakistan - both are sad and both are wrong.