eurealist.co.uk

The EU parliament is continuing to push its secular “religion” and for the destruction of the right to object because of religious conviction.

Last weeks report in The Christian Post says that clergymen across the United Kingdom have been left highly concerned by a European Union report which has recommended that clergy not be allowed a right of conscientious objection to conducting gay weddings if the Parliament (EU) decides to enact legislation permitting same sex marriages.

The EU ruling states that the rights of access to abortion, euthanasia, birth control and marriage trump the right of conscience to opt out of conducting gay weddings, The highly controversial report by the EU’s Network of Independent Experts on Human Rights said that where “euthanasia or assisted suicide are partially decriminalized, the right to religious conscientious objection, while it should be recognized to the medical doctors asked to perform euthanasia or to assist a person in committing suicide, should not be exercised in a way which leads to depriving any person from the possibility of exercising effectively his or her rights as guaranteed under the applicable legislation.”

The report also stated that the “right of access” should take precedence over the right for clergy or registrars to object to solemnizing gay weddings, where the law permitted them.

The Panel that made the ruling argued: “The right to religious conscientious objection may be invoked by an officer refusing to celebrate a marriage between two persons of the same sex or where one of the prospective spouses is a transsexual.”

It added, however, that “it would be unacceptable to allow this to result in marriage being unavailable to the couple concerned: any form of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (as would result from the refusal to celebrate a marriage between two persons of the same sex where this institution is recognized), and any violation of the right to marry of transsexuals, should not be tolerated, and the public authorities should ensure in such circumstances that other officers will be available and willing to celebrate those unions.”

In the United Kingdom, doctors and nurses currently have the right under law to refuse to participate in abortions, while the Education Reform Act of 1988 gives parents the right to withdraw their children from worship at state-supported schools.

Clergy of the Church of England also have the right under the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to refuse to solemnize a wedding “if it is reasonably believed that the person’s gender has become the acquired gender under the Act.”

If Parliament decides to legalize same-sex weddings, clergy will, under the recommendations of the EU report, be forced to place the right of access to marriage of gay couples above their own moral convictions on the sanctity of the marriage.

My personal feelings are that homosexual couples who have committed to each other, should have the protection of rights as a couple from the state, similar to that granted to heterosexuals who are married. That a person should have the right to end their life if they wish, that a woman should have the right to abort. However I reconise that these are my personal belifs and they are not shared by everyone.

The EU rulling is about creating a new state secular religion, which says its rules trump those of other religions. We have learned to get along with peoples of other religions in the main, because we have not challenged their religious convictions, we thus have created a system which allows each of us to go their own way we do not force a Catholic to choose between the state and their religion (well not any more) because we have learned that to do so in the end leads to bloodshed.

Those in the EU Parliament should remember this and look to their histories to understand that forcing people to do something against their strongly held convictions has no future, and no place in a democratic state.