Evan Harris Secularist Manifesto

source: Guardian

Evan Harris was an MP who lost his Oxford Libdem seat at the May 2010 Election. He did some great work for Humanism and Secularism whilst he was an MP. Harris is a humanist, and is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association. He was also a vice-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, before his defeat in the 2010 general election.In addition, he is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society

Secularism is unfairly characterised and attacked by religious leaders as a way of seeking to protect their privileges.

Secularism is not atheism (lack of belief in God) and nor is it humanism (a nonreligious belief system). It is a political movement seeking specific policy end-points. Many secularists are religious and many religious people – recognising the value of keeping government and religion separate – are secular.

Secularism seeks to defend the absolute freedom of religious and other belief, seeks to maximise freedom of religious and other expression and protect the right to manifest religious belief insofar as it does not impinge disproportionately on the rights and freedoms of others. This is essentially a summary of article 9 of the European convention on human rights. In addition secularism aims to end religious privileges or persecutions and to fully separate the state from religion which is a necessary means to that end.

A manifesto for secularist change would look like this:

1. Protect free religious expression that does not directly incite violence or crimes against others or publicly and directly cause someone distress or alarm.

This is why secularists:

• Led the battle against Tony Blair's over-broad religious hatred bill working alongside some religious people who wanted the freedom to attack other religions and against some religious organisations.
• Achieved a singular success with the abolition of EnglishChristian-only blasphemy laws.
• Seek to abolish public order offences that lead the police to question religious people for speaking their minds, short of direct abuse of someone else.
• Oppose a defamation of religion law that has been proposed at the UN by some Muslim-majority states.
• Oppose burqa bans except where it is necessary for security, safety or effective delivery of public services
• Support the right of Muslims to build mosques subject to normal planning rules

2. End discrimination against nonreligious belief systems or organisations by ending their exclusion from:

• Protected religious broadcasting slots.
• Committees that draw up the syllabus for religious studies.
• Bodies that advise the government on matters relating to religion.

3. End unjustified religious discrimination by:

• Stopping faith schools from sacking or rejecting a teacher based on his/her religion or marital status.
• Preventing state-funded faiths schools from discriminating against, and segregating, children on religious grounds.
• Allowing royals to marry Catholics by amending the anti-Catholic Act of Settlement.

4. Where religious organisations join others in delivering public services, ensure they do so without:

• Discriminating against their employees.
• Withholding services from users on religious or sexual grounds.
• Proselytising when delivering that service. 

5. Limit the right of religious people delivering public services (for example marriage registrars, judges, pharmacists, or care workers) to conscientiously object to carrying out lawful parts of their job to rare and specific exemptions (eg doctors and abortion) agreed by parliament.

6. Allow for reasonable adjustment to cater for religious practice in employment or in facilities (eg Sikh turbans in the police force, the hijab or kara in uniform policies, and prayer facilities in the workplace) but not to extend this to a blanket religious exemption based on subjective feelings, nor to impose religious practice on nonbelievers.

7. Cease religious inculcation by the state by ending compulsory worship in schools and making religious education the study of what religions and other belief systems believe, rather than instruction in what to believe.

8. Disconnect religion from the state by:

• Disestablishing the Church of England.
• Ending prayer in the parliamentary or council chamber.
• Abolishing bishops automatically sitting in the House of Lords. We are the only country outside Iran to have reserved seats in parliament for clerics. Religious people can and do stand for election in the normal way.

9. Resist the imposition of parallel legal systems based on scripture, or the legal presumption that religious people are any more or less moral than nonbelievers.

10. Work to end segregation of people based on religious dividing lines.

None of this involves anything to do with doctrinal matters such as women bishops, gay priests or Latin masses, which are matters for religions. Nor does it involve the banning of religious opinion from the public square.

None of it engages with what families get up to in their home, or religious leaders within their own families.

If you agree with all the above, while you may be an ardent secularist, you are in no way "militant" or "aggressive". If you agree with only most of that manifesto, you may well be a vicar. If you oppose it all then you are probably archbishop material.

The worst excesses carried out in the name of secularism – neither of which are supported by UK secularists – involve a proposed burqa ban in France and bans on religious dress in Turkish universities. They are wrong but they hardly rank compared to what is carried out by religious regimes.

Evan Harris Losses Seat by less than 200 votes!

Evan Harris loss in Parliament will be a blow to Humanists.

BHA Vice President joins Commons debate on Christianity

source:

HASSNERS.org highlights

HASSNERS.org comments

Mar 122009 BHA Vice President joins Commons debate on Christianity

BHA Vice President Dr Evan Harris MP joined a debate in Parliament yesterday on ‘Christianity in Public Life’, where he called for a ‘line to be drawn’ when people’s religious beliefs interfere with the rights of others.

Dr Harris was the only MP in the debate to speak from a non-religious point of view and he touched on a range on subjects, from shared values to discrimination by Christian public servants.

Dr Harris began with setting out the non-religious position, that there should be no discrimination to prevent people of religion from playing a role in public life. He said, ‘Should Christian values play a role in public life? Yes, they should, of course, in the battle of ideas, just as any others should, whether humanist, socialist or conservative, because we base our policies and moral standpoints on values.

Whether there should be a monopoly for one set of values I very much doubt. Some countries have such a monopoly, whether through political dictatorship or theocracy, and we know that in theocracies some groups, such as women and gay people, do very badly. That is predictable and identifiable.’

Dr Harris then went on to discuss how there is continuing privilege for religion, ‘The privileging of religion, which I oppose, would be to allow religious organisations that deliver public services to discriminate against their employees when they were delivering such a public service… I am talking about the people who provide the soup kitchens, shelters, and so forth. They should not be discriminated against on religious grounds, and we should not give money to organisations that discriminate against gay people or people of religion when delivering public service. They should not discriminate against service users on religious grounds. They should not have the right to do that, and should not be allowed to proselytise on the state, as it were, using public funding, or while delivering a public service.’

After being challenged to discuss the appropriateness of religious service providers offering pray to their service users, Dr Harris spoke on the recent case of Nurse Petrie, arguing that it was inappropriate for someone in her position to offer to pray for her patient. He said, ‘She was a district nurse in a position of responsibility, going into a patient’s home. Doctors and nurses in that situation are performing a function as a doctor or nurse and their primary responsibility is to their patient, who is in a vulnerable position. As I understand it, there had been a series of complaints against Nurse Petrie, not just one. It is very unusual for an elderly person receiving district nursing care to think to complain unless something pretty obvious has happened. What took place had happened more than once. It was inappropriate, and I believe that the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the General Medical Council would also argue that

it is inappropriate for a person delivering care to say, “Would you like to pray with me?”… A medical professional employed by the NHS or any other body needs to have a clear boundary, otherwise there is a feeling of pressure being put on someone.’

Further clarifying the point, Dr Harris stated,

‘There is a balance of rights and freedoms and we have to be aware that people feel strongly about their religion. But a line should be drawn. People should be allowed to practise and manifest their belief as long as it does not interfere with the rights and freedoms of others and where it does the state has a role to protect the freedoms of others from discrimination—even well-meaning discrimination in the name of religion.’

Responding to the debate, Iain Wright MP, Minister for Communities and Local Government said,

‘I am not suggesting for one minute that humane values and good works are the preserve of religious people. Humanist non-believers such as Bertrand Russell have a proud record of service, too’.

Notes

Read the full text of the debate here.

The BHA briefed MPs ahead of the debate; read the briefing here.

Finally – the blasphemy law is dead and buried

Finally – the blasphemy law is dead and buried via NSS Newsline 9/5/08
The House of Commons voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to support the abolition of the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel. This was the final stage in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, and the amendment was carried by 378 votes to 57. The Bill received Royal Assent yesterday, so the blasphemy law is now officially dead and buried.

In a tetchy and bad-tempered parliamentary debate, Conservatives put in their final bid to block the abolition, arguing that it represented a significant step in the secularising of Britain. Some raised the spectre of it being the beginning of a process that would eventually lead to disestablishment. Government Minister Maria Eagle MP assured MPs that there was no such "hidden agenda".

Other MPs were, though, less shy about hoping that one day the Church of England would be disestablished. David Howarth, Liberal Democrat shadow Solicitor General said:

"It is the policy of my party to work towards the disestablishment of the Church, and the separation of Church and state. I am fairly comfortable with that position."

Mr Howarth continued: "The principle of the separation of Church and state is not about the separation of religion and politics, which I think is impossible. We cannot separate people's moral, religious views from their political views. We are talking about the state, not about society, and about the religious commitments of the state, not about whether people in society are religious or not. In the course of debate we have heard three separate arguments against the idea of state neutrality in religion. One of them; it might be called the "this is a Christian country" argument.

"We do indeed have an established Church, we have Acts of Parliament such as the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, which mandates an act of broadly Christian collective worship in schools, and we have Prayers in this place. The trouble with that point is that what is, is not necessarily what ought to be. It ignores the new circumstances in which we find ourselves, which make it important now more than ever to reject the idea of the mixture of Church and state, any notion of theocracy or any hint that the state should be built on a particular religious view."

NSS honorary associate Dr Evan Harris, Lib Dem MP for Abingdon and Oxford (the original architect of this amendment), challenged Tory MPs who were arguing for the preservation of blasphemy laws. In an earlier debate that evening on the same Bill they had argued that new proposals to outlaw hatred against homosexuals would unnecessarily restrict the right of religious people to make clear their disapproval of homosexuality. Now they were arguing that the blasphemy law was necessary to protect religious people against offence. It seemed that their defence of free speech was not entirely consistent.

Dr Harris said: "When it came to the issue of incitement to homophobic hatred, we heard a number of speeches and interventions from Conservative Members claiming that freedom of speech was critical and that freedom of expression was under threat. Yet when it comes to an issue—blasphemy, as opposed to incitement to hatred—that causes individuals themselves no damage, making the case for proscribing it much weaker, those very same people argue that freedom of expression has to go in order to maintain their version of no change. They want to maintain some symbolic law or the safety of the UK constitution, which they fear may be shaken to its foundations by the abolition of these unnecessary and discriminatory laws."

Read the whole debate here

You have only one life so be an organ donor

PM backs automatic organ donation

Campaigners say people are dying while waiting for transplants

Gordon Brown says he wants a national debate on whether to change the system of organ donation. reposted from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7186007.stm
Chris Street comments are in bright green;

highlights in yellow blockquotes.

He believes thousands of lives would be saved if everyone was automatically placed on the donor register.

It would mean that, unless people opted out of the register or family members objected, hospitals would be allowed to use their organs for transplants.

But some critics say the state should not automatically decide what happens to people's bodies after they die.

Currently there are more than 8,000 people waiting for organ transplants in the UK - a figure which rises by about 8% a year.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, the prime minister said a system of "presumed consent" could make a huge difference.

I was reborn 16 years ago after my liver transplant operation and thanks to that donor I'm alive Tito Mora Praise for Spanish system How Spain's system works

"A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery in the UK and the limits imposed by our current system of consent," he wrote.

The system already operates in several other European countries and has boosted the number of organs available for transplant.

Mr Brown, who carries an organ donor card, said he hoped the measure could be introduced.

Lib Dem MP Dr Evan Harris, chair of All-Party Kidney Group and member of the BMA Medical Ethics Committee, welcomed Mr Brown's comments.

"Under an opt-out scheme donor's real wishes will be more often respected, more lives would be saved and grieving relatives will be spared the experience of making the wrong decision at the worst time," he said.

ORGAN TRANSPLANT PROPOSALS Twice as many transplant co-ordinators to be hired 24-hour transplant teams to be set up System of presumed consent to be considered Other proposals to be made public later this week Source: Department of Health

Mr Harris said too many people were "needlessly dying while waiting for organs".

Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon, re-stated her position that she was "sympathetic" towards a system of presumed consent.

She said: "More Scots have put their names on the Organ Donor Register than in any other part of the UK.

"Despite this, Scotland still has one of the lowest organ donation rates in the EU and it's clear that we need to do much more to increase the number of donors."

However, several patient groups, including Patient Concern, are against a system of presumed consent, arguing that it is not up to the state to decide what becomes of people's bodies when they die.

Joyce Robins from Patient Concern told BBC Radio 5 Live presumed consent turned volunteers into conscripts and that proposals did not tackle the problem of donor shortages.

"Presumed consent is no consent at all. We've worked for years to get a system of proper, informed consent in the health service in this country and Gordon Brown is willing to throw it all out of the window," she said.

These recommendations are an essential first step to improve the systems supporting organ donation Alan Johnson, health minister Send us your comments Transplant stories 'We're not old cars'

The Organ Donation Taskforce, set up by the UK government in 2006, is due to publish its report on Tuesday.

It will make 14 recommendations, which it is hoped will boost the level of organ donations. However there will not be a report on the issue of "presumed consent" until the summer.

The new proposals include doubling the number of transplant co-ordinators in the NHS to 200 and employing and training them centrally rather than by individual trusts.

Co-ordinators identify possible donors, talk to bereaved families and inform the national transplant list.

Dedicated organ retrieval teams available 24 hours a day would also be established to work closely with the critical care teams in hospital.

Consent

The taskforce says an extra 1,200 transplants could be done each year, which it says could save the NHS more than £500m over 10 years.

This is because dialysis for kidney failure patients costs £25,300 a year, whereas a transplant costs £45,900 initially followed by annual treatment costing £7,100.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson said: "Last year around 2,400 people in the UK benefited from an organ transplant, but more than 1,000 people die every year waiting for a transplant.

"These recommendations are an essential first step to improve the systems supporting organ donation."

Is it extreme to defend free speech? By Dr Evan Harris

reposted from NSS Newsline 3rd August 2007

Evan Harris(MP and NSS Honorary Associate)
When is a liberal like me an extremist? When, in the words of Asghar Bukhari, chairman of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, I defend the right of Salman Rushdie to offend the likes of Mr Bukhari – and defend the Government for knighting the novelist. At least that was what Mr Bukhari screeched at me in a televised rant yesterday.

True, Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses was insulting and offensive to Muslims. But that is no basis to deny him an honour. In fact the reaction of Islamic extremists to his work – with al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri now threatening retaliation against Britain for the knighthood – underlines precisely why he should be honoured. To recognise our society's values and freedoms as well as the talent it contains.

And in one sense, Mr Bukhari was right about my own "extremist" views. For I will stop at nothing to protect the rights of people like him to be offensive and wrong.

But I will not tolerate the persistent demands, led by Muslim activists, for special protection for religious views. People should be allowed to attack religious ideas in ways which adherents may find offensive – whether by criticism, lampoon or even insult.

I organised the Parliamentary campaign that last year voted down – by a margin of one – a Government plan to outlaw the incitement of religious hatred. Recent outbursts by the likes of Mr Bukhari make that vote all the more crucial for freedom of expression.

Those who argue for such laws say that one should separate the person from the ideology: hate the sin but love the sinners. But I don't just hate Nazism, for instance. I hate Nazis. We should all hate Nazis. It is not just their ideology which is loathsome, they are loathsome people. So I believe I should be entitled to incite hatred of Nazis, short of inciting violence. My words ought not to be intimidating to any Nazi of fragile disposition. But the language I used could well – I hope – be insulting to any self-respecting Nazi.

And in the same way, I should also have the freedom to advise others to hate jihadism or homophobic bigotry. I should not be criminalised for promoting hatred of Islamic jihadists or fundamentalist Christian homophobic bigots. After all, they have the freedom to promote hatred of free-speech loving, gay-rights campaigning, non-God-fearing Liberals like me.

To give protection to religious views that we do not give to political views would be a recipe for promoting religious extremism, especially since those most easily offended are often those least moderate in their own views.

So the Government is right to reject Holocaust denial laws. The Government was right to knight Mr Rushdie. It is now time for Gordon Brown to complete the free speech story by repealing our illiberal and outdated (Christian-only) blasphemy laws.

Evan Harris is Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon and member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights.