Our human rights culture has now become a tyranny
Leroy N. Soetoro
man-rights-culture-has-now-become-a-tyranny.html
The Supreme Court this week effectively made the Jewish religion
illegal, argues Charles Moore.
Strange things happen in the English law, but I have seldom read a
stranger opening to a judgment than the following, handed down this week
by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the President of the Supreme Court.
"The seventh chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy records the following
instructions given by Moses to the people of Israel, after delivering
the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai," Lord Phillips began. Then he
plunged into how God, having smitten the enemies of Israel � Hittites,
Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites �
in a manner highly satisfactory to the Jews, now demanded that His
people observe proper marriage customs in return.
How did a question which involved only God and the Jews, and which was
decided roughly 3,500 years ago, come before Lord Phillips and his eight
fellow jurists sitting in 21st-century London?
The answer is that sacred text of modern times, the Race Relations Act
of 1976. The Jewish Free School (JFS), a very successful secondary
school in Brent, is run along Orthodox Jewish lines. A dispute arose
about the admission of a boy known as M. M's mother became Jewish by
conversion, but only after giving birth to M. According to Orthodox
rules (see that chapter of Deuteronomy), Jewishness passes through the
female line. M, therefore, was not Jewish, and so did not have the right
of admission to the JFS.
The Supreme Court, however, decided by a majority of five to four that
the decision to exclude M was in contravention of section one of the
Race Relations Act. He was excluded on racial grounds, it held.
This is a rather big decision. Lord Rodger, one of the dissenting
judges, said that it "leads to such extraordinary results, and produces
such manifest discrimination against Jewish schools in comparison with
other faith schools, that one cannot help feeling that something has
gone wrong".
Actually, it goes wider than that. The court is effectively saying that
a religion's way of defining its own membership, practised over 3,500
years, is illegal. This is an acute problem for Jews, who are at great
pains to maintain their own rules while respecting the law of the land.
It will also be used by anti-Jewish groups, which are growing in
strength, to bolster their argument that Judaism is racist and that the
state of Israel is the equivalent of apartheid South Africa. So the Race
Relations Act, set up to help minorities, ends up punishing them.
I would argue that the judgment goes wider still. It is part of a
current idea of equality and of human rights which, in the name of
freedom, is beginning to look like tyranny.
When you set out general principles about equal treatment for all,
regardless of race, religion, sex, age etc, people will tend to agree
with them. It is a liberal principle that all are equal before the law,
and a Christian principle that all are equal in the sight of God.
But when you frame endless laws according to these universal principles,
you run into difficulties. It may be "discriminatory" for a
Jewish/Catholic/Muslim school to prefer to employ Jewish/Catholic/Muslim
teachers, but isn't it also reasonable? Isn't it fair and natural that a
religious school should be free to prefer to admit children from the
relevant faith, in order to maintain the ethos which is so important to
its success as a school? By what morality are such things wrong?
The human rights culture which now dominates our law believes in its own
morality. It sets itself above the varied experience of civilisation,
and above the idea of independent nations. It decides that rights can be
codified for everyone and can be applied everywhere. It is not a
coincidence that our highest court has just changed its name from the
House of Lords to the Supreme Court: it considers itself supreme indeed.
This "human-rights" morality is much more coercive than it purports to
be.
One controversial example is homosexuality. All the main faiths put
heterosexual married love above homosexual acts, yet our human rights
culture makes it illegal to do this. Catholic agencies are forbidden to
handle children for adoption unless they will bestow them on gay couples
as readily as married ones.
Another example relates to terrorism. Common sense would suggest that a
nation which decides that a foreigner is trying to foment violence in
this country should be free to expel him. But universal human rights, as
now interpreted, forbid this if the suspect might be tortured in his
home country.
A third relates to charity. Until 2006, it had been accepted from time
immemorial that the advancement of religion or education was a
charitable purpose. Under the Charities Act of 2006, however, this
assumption was removed. All charities now have to prove that they serve
a "public benefit", and the Charity Commission decides what that benefit
is, according to criteria which it calls "modern". These are hard to
understand, but they appear to involve social engineering. Woe betide
the charity which provides fee-paying education.
Even a self-described "hairy Lefty" has noticed that something is amiss.
In his interview with this paper a week ago, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said: "The trouble with a lot of
government initiatives about faith is that they assume it is a problem."
There is now a strong secularist agenda working its way through our
public authorities. There is a even a group of militant secularists,
preposterously called "Brights", who want to drive religion out of the
public sphere. Already you can see it in rows about a nurse who prays
with a patient, or about sex education, or even about what to call
Christmas. Government ministers flatter individual religious leaders �
indeed, many Jews feel that the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, who was
given a peerage by Gordon Brown, has become too much of a No 10
favourite to defend his community properly. But it is this Government
which has exalted secular human rights over all belief systems, and made
laws to enforce them. And Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, has led a
culture war against faith schools, especially Jewish ones, for their
policy on admissions.
I am not pretending that these questions are easy. You need, for
example, to resist Islamist attempts to advance the cause of sharia as a
way of creating a parallel legal order (oppressive of women) in this
country. But if you really do see religion as the problem in society,
you are pulling out the threads which have until now held our culture
together. You are undermining the largest single motive for providing
schooling, nursing, child care and help for the old and poor. You are
turning this country into a colder place, where it is "always winter,
but never Christmas".
--
Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact, to
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel of New York's
million dollar tax evasion. Charles B. Rangel is still under
"investigation" by a "closed door" House Ethics Committee.
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CB
"Leroy N. Soetoro" <leroys...@usurper.org> wrote in message
news:Xns9CF974AEE1...@202.177.16.121...
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/6840557/Our-hu
> man-rights-culture-has-now-become-a-tyranny.html
>
> The Supreme Court this week effectively made the Jewish religion
> illegal, argues Charles Moore.
>
> Strange things happen in the English law, but I have seldom read a
> stranger opening to a judgment than the following, handed down this week
> by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the President of the Supreme Court.
>
> "The seventh chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy records the following
> instructions given by Moses to the people of Israel, after delivering
> the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai," Lord Phillips began. Then he
> plunged into how God, having smitten the enemies of Israel - Hittites,
> Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites -
> Christmas. Government ministers flatter individual religious leaders -
dracc...@gmail.com
> Good post
>
>
>
>
> >http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/6840557/Ou...
No Charlie it is a meaningless post much like anything you put out.
juanjo
wrote:
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/6840557/Ou...
> man-rights-culture-has-now-become-a-tyranny.html
>
> The Supreme Court this week effectively made the Jewish religion
> illegal, argues Charles Moore.
>
Here is another misleading article by the former editor of the
Telegraph newspaper and well know conservative commentator. What Mr.
Moore fails to mention in his article is the actual facts surrounding
this case which does not involve any controversy regarding the
definition of Jewishness in that faith but rather whether a school
which accepts public funding may discriminate on the basis of
religion. The school in question uses a very extreme definition of
what is a Jew. The youth in question is the child of a Jewish man and
a woman who converted to Judaism but not the ultra-Orthodox version
subscribed to by the administration of the school. The vast majority
of Jewry and even the State of Israel would recognize the youth in
question as a Jew but the administration of the school has decided
that any children not from the same orthodox background as they are
from are not Jews. Since the school has deigned to accept public
funding from the government, it has to conform to laws which forbid
discrimination in admissions based upon religion among other things.
There is nothing new or radical with this concept. In the United
States and in the United Kingdom a religious group can conduct its
religious affairs as it wishes, free of government interference.
However if it decides to operate a business it must conform to the
laws which govern the operation of businesses. Any group which
accepts government money for the operation of a business must comply
with government regulations which means they cannot discriminate.
Dean Turner
Twibil
>
>
> Here is another misleading article by the former editor of the
> Telegraph newspaper and well know conservative commentator.
(Snip sanity.)
You don't *really* expect a fruitcake like the OP to be swayed by mere
facts, do you?
He exists, as Terry Pratchett would say, somewhere in the calm eddys
of psychosis that exist far beyond the turbulent rapids of everyday
reality.