United approach to celebrate diversity
Police and councils are flying a rainbow flag outside their bases in a show of support for the gay community.
The flag is flying outside Leicestershire police headquarters in Enderby, County Hall in Glenfield and Leicester Town Hall to mark the national launch of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) History Month.
Leicestershire's assistant chief constable Steph Morgan, who speaks on LGBT issues for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: "Flying the rainbow flag together in this way is a symbol of our joint commitment to the LGBT community locally and is part of ongoing work with our local authority partners to create a just and fair society for all.
"As national LGBT strategic policing lead, I was pleased to see 10 police forces, including Leicestershire police, featured in the Stonewall 100 Index of gay-friendly employers in January 2013.
"LGBT History Month is a great opportunity to become aware of the challenges LGBT people face everyday."
Councillor Nick Rushton, leader of Leicestershire County Council, said: "We are delighted to be joining our colleagues at Leicestershire police and Leicester City Council in raising the flag to mark the start of LGBT History Month.
"LGBT people have overcome huge challenges throughout history, both here in Leicestershire and across the world.
"This month is about remembering the contribution of those people and celebrating the diversity of our city and county."
Councillor Manjula Sood, assistant mayor of Leicester, said: "The city council is committed to celebrating Leicester's diversity."
This article appears on the website of the Guardian today: "Anti-gay" book puts Gove at centre of faith school teaching row
Education secretary says Equality Act does not extend to school curriculum – allowing faith schools to use homophobic material
By Jamie Doward
Michael Gove, the education secretary, is at the centre of an escalating row over how faith schools discuss homosexuality in sex education classes.
The TUC has accused Gove of failing in his legal duties by insisting that equality laws, which prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, do not extend to the school curriculum.
The TUC complains that the current situation sends mixed signals to the playground, because schools are legally obliged to condemn discrimination on sexual-orientation grounds but free to use religious materials that equality campaigners claim is homophobic.
Brendan Barber, the TUC's general secretary, wrote to Gove in December expressing alarm that a booklet containing "homophobic material" had been distributed by a US preacher after talks to pupils at Roman Catholic schools across the Lancashire region in 2010.
The booklet, "Pure Manhood: How to become the man God wants you to be", discusses a boy dealing with "homosexual attractions" which it suggested may "stem from an unhealthy relationship with his father, an inability to relate to other guys, or even sexual abuse".
The booklet, which claims that "scientifically speaking, safe sex is a joke", explains that "the homosexual act is disordered, much like contraceptive sex between heterosexuals. Both acts are directed against God's natural purpose for sex – babies and bonding."
Referring to the Equality Act 2010, which prohibits discrimination against individuals, Barber said: "Schools now have a legal duty to challenge all forms of prejudice. Such literature undermines this completely."
But Gove insists: "The education provisions of the Equality Act 2010which prohibit discrimination against individuals based on their protected characteristics (including their sexual orientation) do not extend to the content of the curriculum. Any materials used in sex and relationship education lessons, therefore, will not be subject to the discrimination provisions of the act."
Gove's response has triggered anger from the TUC. "Having written to the education secretary to express our worry about the distribution of homophobic literature in faith schools, his lack of concern is very alarming," Barber said.
A DfE spokesman insisted: "Any school engaging in the promotion of homophobic material would be acting unlawfully." But the row highlights a grey area over the teaching of sex education. A review intended to provide new guidelines on what was appropriate for schools to teach was kicked into the long grass when the last election was called.
"It would certainly be helpful if there was clarity as to what is appropriate for young people of all ages," said Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the gay rights group Stonewall. "The water could no longer be muddied by people pushing age-inappropriate sex material on the one hand and fundamentalist anti-gay religious materials on the other."
The row comes at the end of an extraordinary week in which the role of religion in society has come under acute scrutiny.
The chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, said religious rules should be left "at the door of the temple" and give way to the "public law" laid down by parliament. Phillips said: "Once you start to provide public services that have to be run under public rules – for example, child protection – then it has to go with public law." Phillips spoke out after Baroness Warsi, the Tory minister, warned Britain was under threat from a rising tide of "militant secularisation".
Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, warned that Christianity was being marginalised. Days earlier, the high court ruled that councils had no statutory power to hold prayers in meetings, while the Christian owners of a bed-and-breakfast lost an appeal against a ruling that their policy of restricting double rooms to married couples discriminated against a gay couple.
Concerns that faith matters are being marginalised at school has prompted the creation of a new coalition of faith groups and politicians. The Religious Education Council of England and Wales is to back the creation of an all-party parliamentary group that will focus on protecting religious education in schools and stressing its value to young people.
This has been posted today on the website of Pink News, Europe's largest gay news service.
National Secular Society will advise in religious vs gay rights cases
The National Secular Society has been granted permission to intervene in four religious rights cases due to come before the European Court of Human Rights.
The body will submit legal arguments in four cases where plaintiffs are appealing against UK court decisions – two of which involve Christian employees who refused to provide services to gay people.
The other two concern workers who were barred from wearing religious symbols.
Keith Porteous Wood, the executive director of the NSS, said his organisation would focus on legal arguments, rather than expressing opinions on the cases.
In the past, the NSS has praised judgements in the case of one of the plaintiffs, Islington registrar Lillian Ladele, who said her Christian faith meant she could not carry our civil partnerships.
Mr Porteous Wood said: “These four cases have a major bearing on the extent to which employees’ manifestation of their religion can impinge on others. We want to make sure that the European court considers all aspects of the relevant law.
“The NSS submission will deal with the implications for equal treatment that would be raised by the granting of greater protection to actions motivated by religious belief than is granted to actions motivated by fundamental beliefs that happen to be non-religious in nature.
“The NSS will further focus on the degree of protection which it is necessary under the convention to afford third parties who may be subjected to a detriment which is motivated by, or a manifestation of, a religious belief.
We will also deal with the significance of a religiously neutral public space for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
“Finally, we will address the nature of the limitations prescribed by law and necessary in a democratic society in the interests of the protection of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has also applied to intervene in the four cases, which are likely to be heard together.
The commission stated last month that it believes ‘reasonable adjustments’ could be made for such employees in the same way that disabled people are accommodated in the workplace. This could mean allowing anti-gay Christian workers to swap shifts to avoid gay people.
After strong criticism from Stonewall, Peter Tatchell, trade unions and some MPs, the body appears to have decided not to argue for ‘reasonable adjustments’.
Former Stonewall chief executive Angela Mason, who is the body’s only LGBT commissioner, said this week that the EHRC had come to a “preliminary view” on the matter.
In response to emails from concerned PinkNews.co.uk readers, she wrote: “The commission has already decided not to put forward ‘reasonable adjustment’ arguments if we do continue with our intervention.”
