Newsline 4 April 2014

Newsline 4 April 2014

Newsline is a weekly round-up of news and opinion from the NSS website. If you're not already a member, becoming one is the most tangible way of supporting our work. Our campaigning is wholly supported by our members, people like you who share our belief that secularism is an essential element in promoting equality between all citizens. Please join today.

News, Blogs & Opinion

Success! Exam regulator bans censorship of exam questions at faith schools

News | Mon, 31st Mar 2014

Faith schools will no longer be allowed to redact questions about evolution and reproduction from science exam papers on grounds of religious sensitivity, and any attempt to do so will be treated as "malpractice" the exam regulator has said.

Ofqual has made clear that exam boards must not enter into agreements with schools to allow redactions and that any agreements currently in place should be withdrawn before any further assessments are taken.

In a letter to the National Secular Society, the Chief Regular, Glenys Stacey, said: "From a regulatory perspective we don't think it is in students' best interests to have exam questions redacted from an exam paper. Such a practice denies students the opportunity to demonstrate their full potential across the curriculum they should have been taught and therefore disadvantages them."

An investigation by the National Secular Society in 2013 revealed that exam questions on science papers had been redacted by teachers at Yesodey Hatorah Jewish Voluntary Aided girls' secondary school. A freedom of information request by the NSS revealed that the practice was more widespread than this particular school, and that exam boards, the exam regulator and the government had been colluding with faith schools to shield pupils from key scientific concepts.

The exam board in question, Oxford Cambridge and RSA (OCR), had originally said they intended to "come to an agreement" with schools concerned over "how, when and where the redactions take place – but at the same time respecting their need to do this in view of their religious beliefs".

In correspondence with the National secular Society, education minister Elizabeth Truss described this as a "proportionate and reasonable response."

However, in a dramatic change of policy, OCR this week issued a statement, to condemn the practice:

"We have now been able to consider our position and have concluded that as a matter of policy schools should not be permitted to tamper with question papers prior to a student sitting an exam".

It goes on to say:

"OCR believes that this approach should be adopted by all Awarding Bodies and supported by the Regulator. We told Ofqual that this is the approach we would be taking and wanted clarity from its Board as to whether it would be supporting this policy. We are pleased that the Regulator has said that it agrees with us that such a practice should not be permitted."

The National Secular Society, which first highlighted the issue, welcomed the exam regulator's decisive action.

Stephen Evans, campaigns manager at the National Secular Society, said: "This is a significant victory for the rights of children and young people to not have their education impeded by religious organisations seeking to pursue their own agenda of inculcation or indoctrination.

"We will now be urging the Government to introduce robust measures to ensure all faith schools teach the National Curriculum in full, including areas that clash with schools' religious ethos, such as evolution and human reproduction."

Secularist of the Year awarded to Turkish MP, Safak Pavey

News | Sat, 29th Mar 2014

Turkish MP and human rights campaigner, Safak Pavey, has won this year's award for Secularist of the Year.

She was presented with the £5,000 Irwin Prize by honorary associate and shadow foreign office minister, Kerry McCarthy MP, at a lunch-time event hosted by the National Secular Society on Saturday.

Safak Pavey is a member of Turkey's main opposition party and sits for the Istanbul constituency. She is known for her international work in human rights, the promotion of the rights of women and minorities in Turkey, as well as humanitarian aid and peace-building.

She was also the first disabled woman elected to the Turkish parliament and, in 2012, was awarded a Woman of Courage Award by the White House for her efforts to raise awareness of the plight of those with disabilities in countries where resources are limited.

Safak has spoken out about the need for secularism in Turkey, a country where there are religious tests for civil servants and job applicants, no evolution on school syllabuses, segregation by gender in schools and universities, and 90,000 mosques being used as propaganda centres for the government. She has also worked for an improvement in the protection of the rights of women, against a backdrop of one out of three marriages involving child brides, honour killings having increased 14 times in the past seven years and a Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has said that he does not think men and women are equal. Freedom of expression is another deeply threatened right in Turkey, where youtube and twitter were banned in the midst of a corruption scandal involving high government officials, and where infamously last year, pianist and composer Fazil Say was handed a suspended 10-month prison sentence for "insulting Islam". Turkey ranks 154th amongst 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: "Safak Pavey is an extraordinary woman right at the centre of an enormous upheaval in Middle Eastern politics. After receiving her award she rushed back to Turkey for the regional elections that are taking place this weekend. These elections will be a significant indicator of which way the mood of Turkey is turning.

"Prime Minister Erdogan is showing a worrying authoritarian streak and recently tried to deflect criticism by attempting to ban Twitter. He has closed down TV channels that are critical of him and has jailed more journalists than anyone else in the world. He is leading his country inexorably towards becoming an Islamic state, putting in peril the secular constitution initiated by Kemal Ataturk in 1921.

"But not only is Safak at the centre of this titanic struggle between secularism and authoritarian religion, she is always looking to the rights and needs of others.

We are very proud to be able to honour her with this award."

Also honoured at the award ceremony were two nominees, Chris Moos and Abhishek Phadnis, both students from the London School of Economics who have, in the past year, challenged their own university and Universities UK over important and fundamental issues such as free speech and gender segregation.

Other nominees included Nick Cohen, Jem Henderson, Gita Sahgal, and Dan Snow.

Equality watchdog rebukes Charity Appeal panel for “mistaken” ruling on gay adoption

News | Mon, 31st Mar 2014

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has dismissed as "mistaken" a decision by the Scottish Charities Appeal Panel (SCAP) to permit a Catholic adoption agency to continue discriminating against gay couples. It implied that it would have appealed the decision, but it has no legal standing to do so.

Following a complaint from the National Secular Society, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator had originally ruled that St Margaret's Adoption Society, a Catholic agency based in Glasgow, was breaking equality law by not giving equal access to its services to same sex couples, and in some instances, non-Catholics. But St Margaret's appealed that decision to the Appeals Panel which overturned the original ruling, noting that although the charity received most of its money from the taxpayer, it was bound by the teachings of the Catholic Church. It said that if St Margaret's offered its services to gay couples it would be contravening canon law.

The Appeal Panel also decided that the Charity was protected under Article 9 of the Human Rights Act – despite not being a human being, but a corporate body.

In its statement, the Equality and Human Rights Commission says that SCAP was "mistaken in its understanding of direct and indirect discrimination". It said that SCAP's ruling was "not easy to follow".

The EHRC highlighted SCAP's finding of fact, that: "In principle [St Margaret's Children and Family Service] would consider an application to be considered as adoptive parents from a couple in a civil partnership", which was based on evidence provided by St Margaret's Children and Family Care Society during the hearing of the appeal.

With this in mind, the EHRC has "written to St Margaret's advising it to ensure that its published policies and practices properly reflect its stated position that adoption applications from couples in civil partnerships will be considered in the same way as those from married couples; and to ensure that such applications are indeed considered equally. This will give gay couples wishing to adopt the confidence that they will be treated without unlawful discrimination."

Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, said: "We very much welcome this deserved rebuke to the Scottish Charity Appeals Panel. Its ruling on the St Margaret's case was at such odds with all previous court rulings it is difficult to understand how or why it arrived at it. The ECHR clearly agrees with us and we hope that it will monitor St Margaret's very carefully to ensure they observe the law in the same way that every other charity must. We will ensure that the local authorities who use St Margaret's services are appraised of the EHRC's concerns.

"We drew attention last year to the inappropriate intervention of the Cabinet Secretary for Education regretting the OSCRs finding against St Margaret's and doubt if there will be any political will to make changes at the Appeal Panel that we believe are called for following this bizarre decision.

"The greater the pool of adoptive parents, the better the chance of finding good adoptive parents. Arbitrarily excluding parents serves to reduce that pool."

The full statement from the Equality and Human Rights Commission can be read here.

Magazine raises potential conflict of interest in Scottish gay adoption charity decision

News | Wed, 2nd Apr 2014

The Scottish Review, an on-line magazine for discussion of Scottish affairs, questions in its latest issue whether there may have been a conflict of interest in the controversial decision by the Scottish Charity Appeals Panel (SCAP) on St Margaret's Catholic Adoption Society. The latest details on the case were reported this week by the National Secular Society.

The editor of The Scottish Review, Kenneth Roy, says that the chairman of the SCAP committee that made the decision is also a leading light in the Ayr Baptist Church – which has come out strongly against gay marriage and civil partnership.

According to The Scottish Review, the Ayr Baptist Church said in a submission to the Scottish Government's consultation on civil partnerships and gay marriage:

  • Religious bodies have strong convictions regarding the issue of civil partnerships and should not be required to register them
  • Same-sex civil marriage is contrary to the heritage of our nation
  • Religious celebrants should be required to adhere to the holy orders to which they have been called and to adhere to the laws and traditions of their own churches

To the question, 'Do you agree with the introduction of same-sex marriage, both religious and civil', Ayr Baptist Church replied: 'No. We do not agree, as marriage is between a man and a woman and should remain that way'.

Revealingly, the submission makes a critical reference to the charity regulator. It states that religious bodies should be protected from the use of their buildings for solemnising same-sex marriage against their wishes, in case a way was 'left open' for OSCR to claim that churches were not acting for the public benefit – one of the tests of charitable status."

Although The Scottish Review has been unable to ascertain whether Mr Walker wrote or contributed to the submission from his church, the magazine says: "if Mr Walker disagreed with its terms, he would no doubt have wished to say so publicly, then or subsequently, for the avoidance of any misunderstanding."

The Scottish Review added:

"Mr Walker makes no secret of his affiliation to Ayr Baptist Church: he includes it in SCAP's register of members' interests. It seems astonishing that the panel's secretariat, before appointing him to such a high-profile, controversial appeal, failed to check a document – the church's submission on the registration of civil partnerships and gay marriage – which is publicly available on the Scottish Government's own website; or, if they did check, thought so little of it that they allowed the appointment to go ahead.

"There is no suggestion that the panel consisting of Mr Walker, Neil Dickson (a retired university teacher) and Patricia Paton ('an active member of the Scottish Episcopal Church'), acted with less than complete propriety in its handling of the St Margaret's appeal.

"But this is not the issue. If a tribunal such as the Scottish Charity Appeals Panel is to retain public confidence, it must ensure that there are no conflicts of interest. Otherwise, the independent reputation of the Scottish tribunal system will inevitably be exposed to the risk of compromise."

The National Secular Society has already expressed surprise over the conclusion reached by the SCAP inquiry, and the Scottish Equality and Human Rights Committee this week issued a statement saying the decision was "mistaken".

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, said: "This is a worrying development. Although we do not doubt that people with deep religious convictions can put them aside when they have to make an objective decision that affects public policy, we wonder whether in this case it was appropriate for someone with such deeply partisan connections to chair this panel. We have now taken the matter up with the Scottish Parliament, with a view to it investigating any possible conflict of interest."

Police compensate street preacher after arrest for preaching biblical condemnation of homosexuals

News | Mon, 31st Mar 2014

Greater Manchester Police have awarded a Christian street preacher £13,000 in compensation after he was put in a cell without food and water for 19 hours for preaching against homosexuality.

Two teenagers complained to the police that they felt insulted after hearing John Craven preaching biblical condemnation of homosexuality in a Manchester Street. Mr Craven was arrested under the Public Order Act and detained in a police cell, without access to the medication he takes for arthritis.

The Christian Institute took up Mr Craven's case and said that the police had wrongfully arrested and imprisoned him and abused his human rights. The police settled the matter before it came to court, and will have to pay in excess of £50,000 in court costs.

When the teenagers had approached Mr Craven in September 2011, they had asked him what he thought of gay people. Mr Craven quoted condemnatory biblical verses and they responded by kissing in front of him and mocking him. He was then arrested by Police Constable Alistair McKittrick for a public order offence after the two teenagers told the officer that they felt insulted by Mr Craven's comments.

In his witness statement, Mr Craven said that after the police constable dismounted from his horse, he "grabbed" Mr Craven "roughly by the arm", arresting him for "public order offences".

Mr Craven said that "The officer did not ask for my name or address...I remained calm and co-operative even though I was being handled very roughly by the police officer."

The police, however, claimed that the arrest was necessary for "a prompt and effective investigation", but Mr Craven said they failed to tell him this at the time of the arrest.

Mr Craven was arrested under section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986, which criminalises the use of insulting words with the intention of causing harassment, alarm or distress.

Section 4A requires intention to cause harassment, alarm or distress unlike section 5, which requires intention to use threatening or abusive words or behaviour.

Section 5 was recently amended by Parliament because of the large number of cases where free speech had been infringed. Campaigners – including the National Secular Society - said at the time that Section 4A might also need to be amended.

As a result of the reform of Section 5, the College of Policing has issued new guidance telling officers that they are not allowed to arrest people simply because others find their words or behaviour insulting.

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, said: "We fought along with the Christian Institute to have Section 5 of the Public Order Act amended to protect free speech.

"But free speech belongs to everybody, even those you disagree with, and so we support the right of street preachers to quote the Bible without having their collars felt.

"So long as they stay within the law, don't incite violence or mayhem, they should be able to make whatever point they want, and their opponents should be able to respond without causing a disturbance or calling the police. Being insulted is not a good enough reason to have someone thrown into a police cell."

Secular values, not religion, make us a tolerant society

Opinion | Sat, 29th Mar 2014

When trying to reach reasoned and compassionate judgments, religion is frequently a source of confusion rather than light, argues Oliver Kamm.

The secular mind is better equipped than religion to reach reasoned and compassionate judgments. That was the argument of Ian McEwan at the Oxford Literary Festival this week. It should not be controversial. Religious belief resolves no moral problem and yields no knowledge. On the contrary, much suffering is caused by people who believe they know the will of God and have a duty to enforce it.

Of course, not all religions are like that. The Unitarians are different from the Church of Scientology. Liberal Judaism is not the creed of the messianic settlers on the West Bank. The ideas of Spinoza and Bertrand Russell appeal to me, but I'd settle for the victory of moderate forms of religion, which accept science and pluralism, over absolutist ones.

Despite their outward differences, however, religions typically have a lethal assumption in common: that faith is a virtue. How often have you heard someone described as a person of deep religious convictions and for this to be meant as a criticism?

It ought to be, and McEwan does public debate a service in suggesting it. Religious affiliation is less divisive in Western societies than it was 300 years ago. That's not because believers have lately had a divine revelation about the need to live in peace with others and respect their human rights. It's because liberal, secular values have tamed religion as a source of conflict. It isn't the Bible or the Koran that has made Western societies democratic and tolerant. It's the idea, encapsulated in Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, that what people believe is irrelevant to public office. As the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote: "All men are naturally inclined to obscure the morally ambiguous element in their political cause by investing it with religious sanctity. This is why religion is more frequently a source of confusion than of light in the political realm."

The decline of religious observance in modern democratic societies is an important civilising influence. Even moderate forms of religion don't regard criticism as a way of social and personal betterment. Instead, they try to accommodate traditional (and often ancient) religious doctrines to new discoveries. And that's religion at its most benign. The more potent form of faith seeks to justify doctrines and practices that defy rationality and compassion. Not all inhumanity is due to religion but religious obscurantism, even by mainstream churches, coexists with inhumane conclusions. Refuse abortion, even in the case of rape, incest or severe foetal abnormality? Tell devoted homosexual couples that their selfless love and care for each other is sinful? It takes religious dogma to do that.

In the Book of Judges, Jephthah vows to sacrifice "whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house" on his return if God will grant him victory over the Ammonites. He, at least, has the decency to tear his clothes when this turns out to be his daughter. In Byron's telling, she urges Jephthah to "forget not I smiled as I died". That imperishable image of fanaticism is the fruit of faith. Civilisation depends on overcoming it.

Oliver Kamm is a leader writer and columnist for The Times. This article was originally published in The Times and is reproduced here with kind permission. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the NSS.

Being called a ‘fundamentalist secularist’ is an insult I would welcome

Opinion | Thu, 3rd Apr 2014

George Gillett defends the fundamentals of secularism against the persistent attempts by some politicians and media commentators to misrepresent the term. The debate on how to create a society that protects and is fair to people of all faiths and none can only begin once politicians stop misrepresenting secularism as a slur to protect their own religious agendas in government.

This article originally appeared in George's blog Against the grain

Last week, Baroness Warsi, Minister for State and Communities, described Richard Dawkins as a 'secular fundamentalist'. This is just the most recent of attacks on what has been described as 'militant secularists' and 'secularist propaganda' in the media, levelled at campaigners concerned with the relationship between religious organisation and the state. Yet although Warsi so readily treats secularism as an insult, she fails to explain what exactly makes it so radical.

Dawkins perhaps was an easy target; he seems to have suffered a decline in support over the past few years, including condemnation from previous supporters within the atheist community. It has become fashionable for journalists to criticise his lack of 'relevance' and maturity, his 'crudity', and it was gleefully reported when he'd dropped out of a Prospect magazine list of the world's best thinkers last month. Writing about the decision, the editor of Prospect magazine commented that 'it's hard to imagine that many people have been actually persuaded out of their faith by [Dawkins'] anti-religious writings'.

These criticisms, targeted at atheists and secularists almost indiscriminately, represent a grave misunderstanding. Contrary to popular misconception, secularism and atheism are separate entities, each able to exist without the other. Baroness Warsi, alongside much of the right-wing press, seems to have misunderstood this.

Dawkins himself isn't an atheist (he's agnostic), and his work goes far beyond trying to convince people that their religious convictions are wrong. Rather, he highlights the injustice in society caused by the special treatment that particular religious views are granted, and the prejudice that non-believers are faced with. Secularism isn't a radical movement trying to destroy all religion, it only aims to stop state preference for a single religion, in order to grant all beliefs equality under the law. Similarly, it aims to protect religious organisations from state interference.

Only last Saturday were we reminded of the importance of secularism, when presented with the UK's first ever same-sex marriages, the result of 22 years of campaigning and an issue that continues to divide opinion. Whilst the LGBTQ community and its allies celebrated, many religious figures were left concerned that the move had 'redefined' the 'religious institution' of marriage. Of course, had a secularist policy existed in the UK, the state would never have adopted a religious definition of a union between spouses, and the Church wouldn't have had to worry about their intervention in law-making being redefined.

It seems ironic then, that Baroness Warsi is eager to criticise secularism, which defends the autonomy of both the state and religious organisations, whilst also raising concerns about the Equal Marriage bill. It seems clear that Warsi, like many others, opposes secularism in an attempt to maintain their religious agenda in government, an act that is clearly undemocratic.

In contrast, secularism is rooted in democracy and equality, principles that are cherished by the UK public, but happily compromised when it comes to religious issues. The consequences of tying religion with the state are clear; in a 2011 poll, only 29 per cent of the British public declared themselves as religious, yet 26 unelected (male) bishops sit in the House of Lords. These unelected bishops are free to preside over law-making as they wish, enforcing their exclusively religious agenda onto new legislation.

Education also suffers from religious prejudices; in faith schools, religious groups benefit from discrimination in admissions policies for students based on their parents' religion. These schools constitute one third of all state schools, receiving vast state funding, yet children as young as four years old are routinely denied places because of their parents' church going habits. Most importantly, the majority of the UK public believe state schools should be secular, yet there is no government policy to represent these views.

Healthcare spending is also dominated by a religious lobby; the NHS, currently facing a funding crisis, spends £29 million each year on chaplaincies to pursue a religious agenda in hospitals. Secularists question this, and suggest that the money should instead be spent on medical treatment with proven clinical benefit.

Likewise, animal rights are infringed because of the special treatment religious belief is given; whilst fox-hunting and cosmetic testing on animals is banned, the brutal and painful killing of animals for Kosher and Halal meat is routine in slaughterhouses across the UK. Although condemned by advisory bodies to both the UK government and the EU, the method still continues. Secularists challenge this extraordinary influence that religious groups have in influencing government policy.

And secularism doesn't only benefit atheists and agnostics. The movement has support from a number of religious figures; Giles Fraser, a Church of England priest, has spoken of how 'society is too diverse to sustain a state religion'. Gandhi too, showed support for the movement, once describing an ideal society;

'The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern.'

So, why then, is secularism so readily scorned? The movement aims to protect freedom of religion, alongside democracy and equality; beliefs that are all widely supported among the public. Yet when Baroness Warsi and the right-wing media use the term 'fundamentalist secularist', they use it as a stand-alone jibe.

Here's the thing. I'm proud to say that I'm a secular fundamentalist. In the same way I'm proud to be a fundamentalist on civil rights, universal suffrage and the campaign against homophobia. According to the Oxford English dictionary, 'fundamentalism' is defined as 'the strict adherence to the basic principles of any subject or discipline'. When did it become a bad thing to hold some basic principles and adhere to them; when did 'fundamentalism' become a dirty word?

I take a strict adherence against racism, sexism and homophobia. I also take a strict adherence to the idea that nobody should be granted privilege in law-making because of their religious belief, and that state provision shouldn't be targeted at one religious community to the neglect of others.

You can lace up secularism with dirty words such as fundamentalist, radical and militant, in the same way that anti-apartheid, feminist and civil rights campaigns have been described. To use such a term to denigrate someone only highlights a reluctance to engage in debate, and to instead ignore and ridicule their beliefs because they are different to your own.

Those who claim Dawkins will not succeed in eradicating religious belief in society are probably right. But fortunately, that isn't what most atheists want. It certainly isn't what secularism aims to do. Baroness Warsi and sections of the media are pretending otherwise in order to silence secularism and pursue a religious agenda. We cannot allow this to happen; a debate is needed on why a small religious elite are granted such preference and disproportional influence in our society.

It is this debate that secularists, both religious and otherwise, are fighting for. The movement doesn't aim to destroy or dismantle religion, but to create a society where no one group is granted special privilege or power. A society which ensures that all beliefs are protected and welcomed equally. But this debate can only be had once you stop using 'secularism' as a slur.

Photo credit Dave Fayram

George Gillett is a medical student at the University of Oxford, he writes about current affairs for the Huffington Post and Left Foot Forward, as well as regularly contributing to both of Oxford's student newspapers. This article originally appeared on his blog Against the grain. You can follow him on Twitter @george_gillett

NSS Speaks Out

Our campaigns manager Stephen Evans was quoted in The Telegraph and the Times Educational Supplement over faith schools being banned from censoring exam papers following an NSS investigation.

NSS executive director Keith Porteous Wood was quoted in The Times following the Equality and Human Rights Commission's criticism of the St Margaret's Catholic adoption ruling. He also discussed the Law society's guidance on 'shaira compliant wills' on a number of BBC local radio stations.

A letter from NSS President Terry Sanderson calling for reform of religious education was published in the Times Education Supplement.