Categories: uncategorized
Date: 17 March 2007 11:22:07
Last night we had an "outreach" event at church which involved a dinner at which our local MP was talking about faith and politics. It was actually quite a good evening and the food was delicious (proper 3 course with an excellent roast and gorgeous deserts). The first wierd thing was our church was predominantley full of old people last night (normally it's very mixed age) and it was an outreach event full of people who didn't go to our church & so may actually have managed to meet its target audience.
Anyway the talk our MP gave was actually very good and he talked alot of sense, although I ideologically disagree with a number of his views. Actually he is an excellent constituency MP - just a pity he's a Tory - so it wasn't that surprising.
Firstly he explained his decision to vote in favour of Trident (an explanation very much appreciated because he didn't give any explanation / view in the letter he sent me in reply to the one I sent registering my opposition to the renewal of Trident). Whilst I fundamentally disagreed with his central argument I respected the way he looked at it (i.e. that if the world is in chaos in 20 years time and it could have been overted by the threat being there would he have failed the next generation by voting against the renewal of the threat?).
He also impressed me by his multi-faith approach and recognition that actually most faiths have much in common, although there are clear points where they disagree.
The most interesting thing he discussed though was what had recently happened in The House regarding the Sexual Orientation Regulations. Apparently this contentious issue went through as a procedural motion without proper debate in the house (only 1 of 10 people who had asked to speak were called), even though it is possible, even if it is put forward as a procedural motion, for proper time for debate to be given.This lack of debate was down to the colusion of the executive of both parties, who thought nobody would really be bothered about it.
He then went on to point out there are a couple of main issues involved in this:
(i) the concentration of power within the exeutives of the main parties (particularly Labour and Conservative) means that back bench MPs have no real influence, particularly when there are the majorities that recent governments have held.
(ii) it meant that they thought nobody was really bothered about the SOR's and so no debate was required & so it becomes another example of the executive forcing their extreme political correctness through.
Now whilst I generally agree with most aspects of the SOR's and do not feel that anybody holding a genuinely Christian position would be right to deny goods or services to people on the basis of any social characteristic including sexuality it has to be recognised that this act it is not without it's contridictions, as our MP again pointed out. For certain groups in society being forced to provide certain services is against their religious beliefs and so could be seen as providing rights for one group at the expense of rights of another.
Also pointed out was that in certain debates and consultations around this issue it has all focused around the rights of adults without the rights of children being taken into account. (For the record & this is where I think my opinion shifts from agreeing with what was being said last night, but supports the general point - I don't believe that there is anything wrong with gay couples, or singles, adopting / fostering and that any parent is normally better than living in an institution. However, I think it does have to be acknowledged that there are some parts of society who refuse to accept people who live outside what they believe to be the "norm" and pass these prejudices onto their children and so children living outside the "norm" may be more liable to bullying by the ignorant minority than those living in traditional households and whilst this should be challenged it needs to be acknowledged).
Also for the record I don't think that enforcing the concept of equal rights is extreme political correctness but I do think that the way that the current UK government is putting these things forward and presenting them to the public does threaten people and acts as a stick, rather than taking a more positive approach of educating people why we are all of equal worth and so should be treated on that basis, whether within the legal, employment, social, leisure, religious sector or whatever. Also I think that the majority of policies at the moment (with the exception of the civil partnerships act) are not actually changing the structure into a more level playing field by tackling homophobia, racism and patriarchy effectively rather what they are doing is just creating yet another set of groups who feel marginalised on the basis of their class, gender and ethnicity (in this case white, lower middle-class, males) which is a dangerous thing to do.
For me what last night re-emphasised for me was the way we do live in a democracy but at the moment the actions of the executives of the main parties in those democracies coupled with the growth in cynicism amongst the electorate is undermining our democracies and providing us with a potentially lethal cocktail.