christianity

Not The Protest I Expected

I just got back from another trip to Westminster, and I think it’s fair to say that I’m absolutely furious. I went up there again today, this time to check out the protests about the assisted dying bill. To be honest I don’t have that strong an opinion on the issue as I can see both sides of the argument, but by and large I share the fear that it could lead to vulnerable and disabled people being pressured into ending their lives.

I got to Parliament Square to find it slightly quieter than I had been expecting: this event obviously wasn’t as big as the last one I had been to up there. It took me a while to find the protest, slightly along the road from the Houses of Parliament. When I did, though, I was almost instantly appalled. I had been expecting to find plenty of my fellow disabled people, but instead the action was peopled by able-bodied religious nutcases! There were speeches being made about how this act would go against the will of god, the commandments and everything. While disabled people and our rights were mentioned once or twice, the emphasis seemed to be on religion, particularly Christianity. To begin with I could just about tolerate it, but when the lady speaking invited everyone to pray I had had enough.

Political protests are, by their very definition, political; and religion has no place whatsoever in politics. These people were close imposing their religious views on quite a critical issue, and essentially using it to promote their anachronistic belief system. You don’t need to believe in any gods to be concerned about what might arise from this change in the law, and that, sooner or later vulnerable people may start feeling pressured into opting to end their lives when they otherwise might not. That would strike anyone with a grain of human decency as problematic. Yet the people there were trying to make it seem like an entirely religious issue, and that they were acting on behalf of their god.

I have written many entries on here about what I think about religion: it is a harmful, dangerous anachronism which humanity needs to outgrow. Thus to find these people there, usurping the issue at hand for their idiotic belief system, really pissed me off. Fortunately the event was drawing to a clear by the time I got there, but it really pissed me off to see it being hijacked like that. This is quite a sensitive political issue: it needs to be dealt with rationally and thoughtfully, not by people who derive their entire worldview from a set of bronze age fairytales.

Welby’s Opinions are Irrelevant

I really wish Justin Welby and guys like him would keep their opinions to themselves, and stop trying to intrude into UK politics. I just heard that Welby has spoken out against the Assisted Dying Bill, saying that it was the beginning of a ‘slippery slope’ to something far darker. Now, I am more or less on the fence when it comes to assisted suicide: yes, people should have a right to choose what to do with their lives; but I also think such bills open up dangers and risks which need to be guarded against. That isn’t what has got me agitated this morning though. What I find offensive is that Welby thinks he has a right to interfere in UK politics, simply because he calls himself a reverend. I know I’ve written about this before, quite a few times, but it really angers me how some people think their religion awards them as much authority as elected politicians. Welby wasn’t elected by the public, he doesn’t have any relevant qualification which would make his views on the subject especially pertinent; he just thinks his religion gives him the right to tell the rest of us how to live our lives. I find that profoundly arrogant and insulting. Quite frankly, Welby should just be ignored, as we would ignore any other nutcase who claims he has an invisible imaginary friend telling them what to say.