Last week, U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump provoked outrage when he said that women should be punished for having an abortion. Unusually for the self-styled maverick, he walked back the comments in subsequent interviews, saying that, actually, the woman is the victim in such cases. The idea that a woman who seeks an abortion should be criminalised (instead of or in addition to the person performing the procedure) is far outside mainstream political opinion, even in a country where religious fundamentalists have high levels of politically engagement.
Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, a woman has been given a criminal record and a three-month suspended sentence for aborting her baby in Northern Ireland. Continue reading
Tag: Human Rights (Page 11 of 40)
Yesterday I wrote again in defence of politicians. Many of the frustrations that give rise to ‘anti-politics’ are borne of people not understanding how politics works: there is a constant need to compromise and any hard choice will end up disappointing people.
Sometimes, however, the anti-political feeling is justified. I have rarely been as angry with politicians as I was when the coalition government passed the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act in just two days in 2014. This legislation made lawful a number of mass violations of privacy that the security services had been caught doing without public or parliamentary consent. The politicians from all parties made mendacious arguments in favour of the new law, claiming an ’emergency’ when there was none.
From that low point, my faith in parliament is slowly being restored. Continue reading
Not a week goes by, it seems, without a mass shooting in the USA. The world’s oldest democracy also has the highest rate of gun related deaths in the developed world. It’s a shocking public safety problem, and it’s caused by the fact that the Constitution of the Unitied States says that the government cannot curtail its citizens’ right to bear arms.
Many constitutional scholars say that the 2nd Amendment does not really mean that individuals can arm themselves. Rather, they say, it simply stops the Federal Government from preventing the formation of militia. The authors of that text were, after all, mindful of tyrannies, dictatorships and unchecked state violence. Continue reading
Remember the controversy about the ‘gay cake’? Last year, a bakery in Belfast refused to make a cake with a pro-gay marriage slogan. A court ruled that the bakers had discriminated against a customer on the basis of his sexual orientation, contrary to equality legislation. The customer, Gareth Lee, was awared £500 in compensation.
The case will be considered in the Appeal Court this week. Ahead of the hearing, the veteran gay-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has published a surprising article defending the bakery. There’s a version on the Guardian comment pages, and a longer version sent to Peter’s mailing list.
I recommend reading the entire article, but the crux of Tatchell’s argument is this:
It is discrimination against an idea, not against a person.
The bakery refused to support and propagate the idea of same-sex marriage. Lee was not refused service because he was gay, but because of the message on the cake.
This is a subtle point but also a persuasive one. The implications loom large. Tatchell asks:
Should a Muslim printer be obliged to publish cartoons of Mohammed or a Jewish one the words of a Holocaust denier? Will gay bakers have to accept orders for cakes with homophobic slurs? … If the current Ashers verdict stands it could, for example, encourage far right extremists to demand that bakeries and other service providers facilitate the promotion of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim opinions. It would leave businesses unable to refuse to decorate cakes, print posters and emblazon mugs with bigoted messages.
Freedom of expression and freedom of conscience surely means the freedom not to engage in the commerce of distributing ideas that you oppose.
I’d previously written off the Asher’s case as exactly analagous to the case of the Bed & Breakfast owners who refused service to a gay couple—This blog has previously discussed the issues raised by such cases. However, Peter Tatchell’s article has persuaded me otherwise.
The Medium of Icing
Who would have thought that patrsies are political! Almost 10 years ago, this blog also discussed the Medium of Icing.
Whenever I moan about the British Government interfering with and weakening our human rights protections, one thing I usually note is what a terrible example it sets to other countries around the world. How can we expect other Governments to respect human rights if we do not respect them ourselves.
Here is a concrete example of this problem in action, courtesy of The Guardian.
China introduces its own ‘snooper’s charter’
Defending the law, the Chinese government pointed to legislation proposed in Western nations, such as Britain’s draft investigatory powers bill, which grants similar powers to the UK government.
There is no need to comment further at this point.