Remove God reference from Guide promise – Please sign petition
The Girl Guides in the UK have indicated that they may drop the religous element of their “Promise” that all of its members have to make in order to join.
This is following complaints made by non-religious parents (and their children). Whilst the Promise is optional, Guides who do not take the Promise are ineligible for the highest awards including the Baden-Powell Challenge Award and the Chief Guide’s Challenge.
This is an important step in creating a fairer society to include those that do not have supernatural beliefs.
You too can add pressure on Girlguiding UK by signing the following petition.
Your assistance would be gratefully recieved!
Catholic School Told It’s Admission Policy Unfair
A complaint about the admissions policy of a Catholic school in South Croydon has been partially upheld.
They key point of the complaint is that as an oversubscribed school it had a points system for admissions that put an emphasis on early baptism and activity within the church as oppososed to geographical location (i.e. how close they live) of potential applicants.
This ruling will have a knock on effect on the selection policies of other so-called “faith” schools.
Best bet get rid of the “faith” element of all state schools and let’s make all schools truly community schools serving the local populations.
Civil Partnerships on Religious Premises
In June of this year, Atheism submitted its response to the Government’s “Civil partnerships on religious premises: A consultation”. The government has today published its “Summary of responses”, in which Atheism is listed.
Atheism does not countenance civil partnership ceremonies accompanied by (albeit separate from) religious worship. Neither, however, does it countenance special treatment of religion within the legislation. Therefore, its response was confined to a very narrow but important area of the consultation.
Atheism’s objective is to enable non-religious couples to hold civil partnership ceremonies on religious premises but without any religious element. Religious premises are often hired out for secular purposes and there is no reason why these should not include civil partnership ceremonies. Religious premises – particularly Britain’s historic churches – would provide a traditional setting for ceremonies, which may be desirable to some non-religious couples.
The summary states, on page 10:-
The vast majority of respondents agreed that faith groups should be able to refuse to allow a couple to register their civil partnership on their premises because of the couple’s faith or membership of a particular faith group. However some respondents expressed concern that this discretion should not be wide enough to allow discrimination because of other factors.
Atheism’s point is that such refusal would be direct discrimination on grounds of religion and belief.
Disappointingly:-
The Government remains of the view that faith groups should have the discretion to only host civil partnership registrations for couples in accordance with the principles of the individual faith group.
The summary states, on page 12:-
However, the majority of responses – both from those who wish to make use of the provision and those who do not – focused on the need to provide flexibility for the couple, registrar and faith group to decide when any religious element should take place. Some responses expressed the clear view that it is not the role of Government to regulate the timing of these elements.
This fails to capture Atheism’s point that, for a faith group to make a religious element (before, after or both) a mandatory requirement of hosting the civil partnership ceremony, would amount to indirect discrimination.
Atheism’s position is that, regardless of what the regulations may provide, both forms of discrimination would be unlawful. If and when any faith groups decide to host civil partnership ceremonies, we shall press them for their policies on these matters and, if necessary, refer them to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.