Religious persecution has been responsible for some of the greatest slaughters in human history. Somehow, your belief that perhaps the Pope wasn’t in control of your day to day affairs was enough reason for me to round you up with thousands of other heretics and put you to the sword.

My belief that the Holy Trinity didn’t quite make sense and perhaps a bit of free will wouldn’t go astray made it perfectly acceptable for you to skin me alive. And let’s not get started on events of the past seventy years or so around the world.

Thanks to the revelations of science and the inestimable benefits of almost universal education, we no longer live out nasty brutish and short lives in absolute terror of demons and a God that is watching our every move and makes Himself known through thunderstorms and plague.

So, at least in the civilised world, we are past that, and matters of religious conflict largely contain themselves to arguments over what people do in bed or what they download (see my other feature article/rant). Which doesn’t overly concern me; I feel about religion the same way I feel about gay sex, that is, you’re welcome to do it, just don’t do it in front of me, or try to get me to do it with you.

So I have no problem with freedom of religion, and respecting other people’s right to believe what they want to believe, no matter how stupid it may be, as long as they’re not actually hurting anyone. So we have laws in Victoria against religious vilification, and the right is further enunciated in the Charter of Human Rights. No one should be discriminated against because of their religion, and they should not be stopped or limited in their right to worship however they may see fit.

However, these laws haven’t yet, to my knowledge, been used to protect some small group of down-trodden individuals from persecution because they worship at a small shrine to a spider-god.

What they have been used for, over and over again, is as a cover, to allow various religious groups to discriminate against others, in the name of religious freedom. There are plenty of examples, but I’m going to concentrate on just one. Stand back, folks, I’ve been doing research, I’ve got references and links and shit!

You all know about the Abortion Bill; simply put, abortion has been in the Crimes Act all this time, but no one has been charged with it since 1966, and since there are several thousand abortions performed every year it made sense to de-criminalise it under certain circumstances. MPs were allowed a conscience vote, and there was, naturally, much debate, and an awful lot of gobbing off from Catholics.

Concerning the bill's controversial conscientious objection provisions for doctors, Cardinal Pell said: "The rights of freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief are fundamental. The ability to exercise conscientious objection is a keystone of democracy. All of us should have the right to hold a belief and not be compelled by the state to act contrary to that conviction.

"It is the difference between the free society and the one subject to tyranny. That conscientious objection is a fundamental human right is expressly recognised in similar legislation in various jurisdictions both overseas, as in the UK and New Zealand, and also domestically."

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=9390

Now that all sounds fine – Catholic doctors shouldn’t have to perform abortions, but the Bill says that a doctor who refuses to perform an abortion must refer the woman onto another doctor, who presumably will. The doctors have a right to conscientiously object, don’t they?

But what are they really objecting to? Yes, they shouldn’t have to perform a procedure that they see as murder, one that would see them kicked out of the church that means so much to them. They believe so strongly in this that they would resign from any hospital that forced them to perform abortions. They would be perfectly within their rights, and I would support them in this, to claim religious discrimination if faced with such a choice.

So, what is their problem with this legislation? It accepts their right to not perform abortions, it respects their belief that, legal or not, it is a sin, and they won’t have anything to do with it.

However, since the woman has come to see them (but really, if you wanted an abortion, wouldn’t you check with your GP that the specialist to whom he’s referring you isn’t a Catholic?) they have to on-refer, to a doctor or hospital that won’t refuse to do an abortion.

Their problem isn’t that they’re being forced to do something, their problem is that they’re not allowed to say to a woman “You should not having an abortion.”

Let’s get this one thing crystal clear right now: all the debate and hand-wringing about a free society and conscientious objection is NOT about Catholics’ (and others’) right to conscientiously object to abortion. It IS about their right to infringe upon the rights of those who AREN’T Catholic.

They want the freedom to make choices that suit their beliefs, they want the rest of us to respect their beliefs, but that freedom and respect is only allowed to flow one way. Everyone else is just plain wrong, and is impinging on their beliefs by disagreeing with them. And I should know, cos I disagree with just about everything.

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