Language (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 02, 2010, 12:16 @ dhw

From an article in today’s Guardian, under the headline “Your equality laws are unjust, pope tells UK”:

The pontiff has apparently attacked the British government’s equality legislation, which among other things will make it harder for churches to turn away homosexual or female applicants from certain jobs. The pope said that this legislation will “impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”

The archbishop of Westminster is reported as being encouraged by the pope’s intervention, and as saying: “We do not support the notion of discrimination. But you have to distinguish between people.”

So according to the pope, backed up by the archbishop, religious communities should be free to discriminate against homosexuals and women, because if they are not allowed to treat homosexuals and women unequally, that means they themselves are not being treated equally. Got it? It’s the Catholic equivalent, I suppose, of Muslim fundamentalists claiming the right to kill us in the name of their religion, because if we say no, we’re denying them the freedom “to act in accordance with their beliefs”.

On the subject of equality, George Orwell summed it up very neatly in Animal Farm: “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”