Roger Davies

In September 2010, Pope Benedict XVI is expected to visit Britain. He is coming here to tell us that our UK equality laws are wrong and that homosexuals, transsexuals and women have no rights. He will attack the democratically decided laws of our country and undermine the hard-won civil liberties of our nation. But wait – for some reason – our own government is planning to spend up to £20m of your money to do it! Why?

Let me remind the reader that The Pontiff is neither a UK citizen nor resident,  and this gives him about as much right to change UK law as Mickey Mouse.  Under his watch – and those of his predecessors – sexual abuse in Catholic schools and institutions was tolerated and widespread. The question has to be asked :  is it really in the public interest to ask every man, woman and child of Britain to pay £20m for a Papal visit, when only 9 percent of Britons are Catholic? (Source: BSA Survey 2007).

Would our government be so generous to throw this much money at an Islamic leader coming here to preach equally intolerant messages?  No, of course not!  Such double standards will impair our ability to defend human rights overseas and at home.  If we provide equal rights to everyone, but grant immunity in special cases like these, where will it end?  How can we refuse when other religions start demanding exception from arbitrary sections of British law they happen to disagree with?  We are not a theocracy, and can afford nobody to be above the law.  You may even find the army or perhaps the navy saying they too should be exempt from equalities laws under the banner of national security.  Perhaps schools, scout leaders and other public institutions would follow – after all, your children’s safety is important to protect too, right?

No dear friends, we cannot cave in to such fascism, even when it wears a friendly and familiar face.  If we surrender one inch of our equality laws, we will have betrayed the single most important value of our society.  This week, the National Secular Society launched an online petition to the Prime Minister to allow the pope to pay for his own visit.  Within hours, thousands of signatures had been collected, and just before midday Friday the website went offline due to the flood of traffic it received.  At the time of writing, more than 16,500 signatures have been collected.  Allow me to use this opportunity to read a section from one of my favourite poems, written by Pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Equality is an all-encompassing idea. We cannot pick and choose which parts we agree with and which parts we do not simply to satisfy a few.  The moment we do, we may as well rip out the rest of our secular freedoms and put our monarchy back in full charge of all UK affairs.  Religious freedom exist under secular law, but freedom of belief cannot be achieved under theocratic rule – we cannot  afford to tolerate intolerance.

We must extend freedom, where such freedom does not curtail the freedom of others.  In cases where these freedoms are mutually exclusive, the freedom of the many must outweigh the freedom of the few. This is the very nature of democracy and the reason the Pope should pay for his own visit.