The High Court has ruled that Bideford Town Council has been acting unlawfully by including prayers at the start of all its meetings, it has been effectively forcing all councilors to engage in religious worship. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-16980025 and: http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2012/02/council-prayers-unlawful-rules-high-court . The instigator of the lawsuit, Councilor Clive Bone, an Atheist, said very clearly “Religious freedom is an absolute right and so is freedom from religion.” I’m glad he said that, otherwise I’d have been extremely worried by this ruling. Although I’m not religious myself and support Secularists who wish to keep religion out of politics, I get a bit concerned by the vehemence of some of the most prominent antireligious campaigners. We could be entering an all-too-familiar situation in our society: one in which the only tabled solution to an injustice is an attempt to cancel it out with another injustice. I suspect that what the most extreme Secularists really want is a world in which all practice of religion is forcibly banned from society by law, whether mature, informed adults wish to practice it in their private lives or not.
See here for background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-if-skeptics-had-their-way.html
And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/07/skeptic-in-pub-21808.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/01/pat-condell-is-not-atheist.html
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