No prayers please

I have no problem with people who're religious, if that helps them through life's difficulties. But I think religious belief is essentially a private matter and shouldn't be imposed on people who have no interest in religion.

A Muslim pupil has lost a legal case against a London school that has a ban on prayers after an earlier controversy over religious observance.

The pupil argued that the prayer ban was an act of discrimination against ethnic minorities and made her feel "alienated from society".

But the prayer ban only applies within the school. There's nothing to stop her praying or following her religious beliefs anywhere else.

When I was at boarding school I was expected to attend two religious services every Sunday, although they meant nothing to me but a waste of 1½ hours.

We occasionally get religious leaflets through our letterbox, and we occasionally get approaches from religious charities, but in general believers (who are numerous in Northern Ireland) keep a low profile and don't try to get us interested.

In fact I have no idea whether any of our immediate neighbours are religious or not, with one exception. The subject just never comes up.

As the school head teacher Katharine Birbalsingh says "A school should be free to do what is right for the pupils it serves. Schools should not be forced by one child and her mother to change its approach simply because they have decided they don't like something."

Word association

I'm bemused by those fanatical campaigners who think that endless tinkering with the words and phrases we use somehow makes life better for all those groups of people who're discriminated against.

The latest daft initiative from an obscure pressure group reprimands anyone who uses phrases including the word black, because according to them this could be racist. We shouldn't say someone deserves a black mark, or we're feeling in a black mood, or we're in someone's black books, or we bought something on the black market. We should find alternative phrases that avoid the word black.

This seems to me absolutely dotty. If I say I'm in a black mood, how on earth is this linked to racism? Wouldn't people understand it to mean simply that I'm feeling rather grumpy and irritable, with no sense whatever of a racist overtone?

Surely the way to combat racism is not to make umpteen changes to our vocabulary but to treat black people like fellow human beings, with courtesy and respect and fairness. Obviously we avoid the offensive n-words that are clearly abusive, but terms like "black mood" are referring to something quite different.

Yesterday I met my first black bus driver (Yes, Belfast is still mostly white). I would think that treating him as just another bus driver rather than something unusual and surprising is probably more appreciated than no one mentioning their "black mood".

I hope nobody offers him a black coffee or some black grapes. You never know, he might be mortally offended.

The gay cake

The global controversy continues over the so-called "gay cake" case, and whether a Belfast bakery was entitled to refuse a cake order that included the message "Support gay marriage" on the icing.

The British Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Ashers bakery was indeed entitled to refuse the order, as this wasn't discrimination against the customer's homosexuality, simply an objection to a particular message that conflicted with their religious beliefs (the owners being devout Christians).

The two lower courts had sided with the customer, Gareth Lee, but the Supreme Court sided with the bakery. Which has reignited the tangled debate over homophobia, what amounts to discrimination, whether a business can refuse an order or not, to what extent you can assert your religious beliefs and so on.

The legal action has already lasted almost 4½ years and cost over £500,000 (partly funded by the Equality Commission). It could last even longer, as Gareth is considering a further appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (through crowdfunding).

Personally I wonder if this interminable legal action is really worth it. Surely the whole dispute could have been resolved at a much earlier stage, with a bit of common sense and flexibility? Someone suggested that after his order was refused, Gareth could simply have shrugged his shoulders, recognised that some people don't agree with gay marriage, and found another bakery that was happy to make his cake.

If one particular bakery throws a wobbly over the message on a cake, is that such a big deal? There must be plenty of bakeries that are more obliging, so does it really matter?

If I ordered a cake with the message "Bollocks to Brexit" and the bakery refused the order, would it be worth  starting a £500,000 legal action to demand my culinary rights? I think not. It would just suggest I had a very large chip on my shoulders.

Pic: Gareth Lee

Dyed in the wool

One way I've wised up as I get older is my growing awareness of the enormity of prejudice and discrimi-nation. I've realised it's much deeper and much more permanent than I thought.

When I was young, and typically optimistic the world could be rapidly changed for the better if people just pushed hard enough, I fondly imagined prejudice against gays, or transgender people, or blacks, or foreigners, was a very temporary thing and would soon die away.

I was completely ignorant of how engrained these prejudices were, how reluctant people were to drop them, how much they passed from one generation to another, and how eagerly they were nurtured by politicians and the media.

I assumed other people were basically tolerant and open-minded and couldn't hold such prejudices for long without realising how damaging and inhumane they were. I assumed they were as fleeting as snow-storms or flash-floods.

Gradually it dawned on me that these prejudices were often rock-solid. You could argue against them till you were hoarse, but people still held them, utterly convinced of their soundness. The very idea of dropping them would seem like an act of madness.

I realised that although prejudice against certain groups had lessened, it had happened incredibly slowly and was still far from over. There's still strong opposition to gay marriage, to giving transgender people jobs, to promoting blacks, to treating foreigners fairly. In fact many people would like to turn the clock back and remove all the rights these groups have painfully and laboriously gained.

So nowadays, a great deal older and wiser, I assume that rather than demolishing prejudice, which seems near to impossible, the only realistic attitude is to work around it and try to chip away little bits here and there.

My optimistic younger self would be shocked at my new-found pragmatism.

Toxic cake

The utterly absurd row over a gay-themed cake shows no signs of abating. The Northern Ireland bakery that refused to make the cake has been taken to court by the Equality Commission while Christian groups are weighing in with support for the bakery.

It all started in November last year when Ashers bakery rejected an order for a cake with the message "Support Gay Marriage" and the name of a gay organisation, Queerspace.

The bakery said their deeply-held Christian beliefs made it impossible to provide the cake, so the customer got it made by another bakery.

Ashers Bakery is now defending itself in court against the Equality Commission's charge of unlawful discrimination.

It's ridiculous that a disagreement over a cake should have escalated into a full court hearing with both sides earmarking thousands of pounds for the legal costs. The Equality Commission has already spent £8,500 on the case while Christian groups have pledged large sums in support of the bakery.

Surely the initial disagreement could have been settled in a few minutes in some simpler way?

The bakery could have taken the attitude that the message on the cake was the customer's concern and nothing to do with the bakery or its religious convictions. They could have easily baked the cake and ignored the message, just as they ignore a thousand other "irreligious" messages they come across.

Customer Gareth Lee could have shrugged off the ludicrous objections, got the cake made somewhere else (as he did) and thought nothing more of it. He could have simply dismissed the bakery staff as intolerant diehards incapable of treating other people as human beings rather than religious hate-figures.

But Mr Lee agreed to front an Equality Commission court case which turned the whole thing into a global cause célèbre in which Christians and gays have been hurling abuse at each other for months.

We now await the court's verdict. Even if Judge Isobel Brownlie decides in Mr Lee's favour, it will be a rather hollow victory, as the bakery won't be keen to change its practices. It may simply look for ways of getting round the law.

And the case has led to the infamous "conscience clause", a proposed law about to be debated at Stormont, which would allow Christian businesses to turn away gay customers whenever they felt like it.

This one will run and run.

Pic: the sinful cake

PS: The case has now finished, but the Judge will give her decision later. "It is not a straightforward area of the law. Obviously this is a case in which I propose to reserve my judgment."

Just a joke

Blistering outrage as the famous petrol-head and loudmouth Jeremy Clarkson says public-sector strikers should be executed. So far over 22,000 complaints have been received by the BBC.

Some people insist it was just a stupid joke. Others believe he was being deliberately inflammatory and offensive.

Whatever your opinion, it once again raises the tangled question of whether to allow total free speech, however outrageous and vicious, or whether to restrain people with a battery of legislation.

The UK has a mass of laws forbidding discrimination and hate-crimes, and promoting equal treatment for all citizens. But it's often asked firstly if such draconian laws are necessary and secondly if they actually work.

There seem to be remarkably few court cases relating to any of the equality laws, even though scandalous examples of homophobia, misogyny, racism and workplace favouritism and bullying go on day after day.

The legal constraints may act as a deterrent in more formal and public settings where prejudice will be immediately visible and acted on, but in more private situations many people are still happy to mouth off and ostracise as freely as they like.

Okay, so laws will always be flouted if people can get away with it. They may be only a limited restraint on inflammatory behaviour. But without them all hell would break loose and we'd see the sort of mass-hatred that in other countries leads to routine beatings, lynchings and executions.

The local equivalents of Jeremy Clarkson aren't just making mindless "jokes", they're running amok with machetes and machine guns. I don't want to go down that road.

Pic: Jeremy Clarkson

Jenny has a related post on living with diversity in Northern Ireland

No room at the inn

A court has decided that two Christians who wouldn't allow a gay couple to book a double room in their hotel were acting unlawfully.

They had insisted that their religious objection to unmarried couples sharing a room entitled them to turn the pair away.

The court said no, a civil partnership had the same legal status as a heterosexual marriage and therefore the owners of the hotel in Penzance, Cornwall, were clearly discriminating against Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy.

It's amazing to me that people running a hotel feel they have the right to tell their guests what they should or should not be doing in their hotel room (except for wrecking the place, obviously).

Of course they're free to hold whatever religious beliefs they like, however preposterous we may think them. But to enforce those beliefs on their guests regardless of their guests' own beliefs and preferences, is simply dictatorial and unChristian.

It's particularly absurd when they're running a hotel and inviting couples to stay with them. If they really don't want gays under their roof, shouldn't they be running some entirely different business - like selling ice cream?

I'm surprised they don't also try to regulate the behaviour of their heterosexual guests. I mean, who knows what deviant, blasphemous nocturnal activities they might be up to? What would the Good Lord think of all those strange fetishes and foibles your average straight couple go in for? A bunch of miserable sinners, surely?

Pic: Steven Preddy and Martyn Hall

Size matters

Should a transsexual be entitled to breast enlargement on the NHS, just because it makes her feel better about herself? Couldn't you say the same of a £5000 dress or a facelift?

A transsexual known only as "C" has had her request for the operation turned down by West Berkshire Primary Care Trust and is now suing them in the High Court.

Among other things she is claiming her rights under the Sex Discrimination Act and the Human Rights Convention.

She says that as a transsexual, her flat-chestedness causes her psychiatric distress because she doesn't feel sufficiently like a woman. The operation would relieve this distress.

But surely natural women come in all shapes and sizes and bust dimensions and if you think flat-chestedness makes you less of a woman that's purely a subjective opinion. So why should the NHS cater for personal opinions?

If she feels so strongly about it, she should find the money and get the operation done privately - as thousands of women do every year. It isn't a medical need by any stretch of the imagination.

Of course transsexuals are coping with a unique psychological dilemma which is different from those of other men and women. I understand that. But there's nothing unique about wanting bigger breasts. If you want them, go out and buy them.

Who's for the chop?

There's serious concern that the rising unemployment caused by the banking meltdown will mean further discrimination against groups of people already treated badly by employers.

Despite recent British anti-ageism laws, it's feared that firms cutting jobs will look first at the oldies and start muttering about "early retirement". They might find ways of not hiring older people and favouring younger applicants "with growing families and big mortgages".

Women, already getting a raw deal from many employers, may be painted even more as liabilities, about to get pregnant and demand maternity leave, wanting flexible hours to fit in with their children's needs, and not tough enough at the negotiating table. They'll be edged out in favour of "more reliable" males.

Likewise the disabled may be seen as "not up to the job" and "not productive enough" while the able-bodied are given priority.

Bosses who're naturally averse to certain types of employee will use the pretext of disastrous trading conditions and looming insolvency to say that while they reluctantly conform to equality laws when the economy's booming, in the midst of a recession they have to take tough decisions and not take on the "burden" of "less capable" staff. You can easily predict all the spurious excuses and red herrings they'll come up with.

Which is why it's so vital for the government to help businesses to cut their costs in ways that don't involve dumping so-called "underperforming" workers. If they could cut overheads like rent, taxes and utility bills, which are rising dramatically, then a lot of sackings could be avoided.

But Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, has already suggested a cutback in flexible working (which is particularly helpful to women) in preference to other measures. Women have reacted furiously to his suggestion.

So if you're old, or female, or disabled (or black), don't be too optimistic as the recession starts to bite.