Am I missing something here?
I was reading through the Daily Mail online today and I came across what, on the surface, was an amusing article on prisoners worshipping ‘skyclad’, which led me to follow the link to the serious ‘related’ article about this issue. This in turn reminded me of the recent article about the Christian airport check-in staff member being banned for wearing her cross and I just can’t escape the conclusion that I’m missing something crucial here.
On the one hand the government are in the process of going through a costly legal battle to stop law-abiding Christians from having the right to wear the symbol of their faith (a simple little cross on a chain that most people don’t even notice as they are usually so tiny anyway) at their place of work; while on the other, they are permitting prisoners to demand the right to dictate what they can and can’t have access to in their cells based on a religion that most of them have only adopted to cause a stir or get benefits that other inmates don’t have! Has this country gone stark staring mad!!!
I am all for human rights, don’t get me wrong, but the human rights act was designed to protect the innocent and downtrodden. Those people living under intolerable conditions and at the whims of terrible dictators. It was not designed to be a tool for people who have so little concern for their fellow man that they will steal, harm, push drugs onto and/or murder said fellow man, to gain benefits and/or cause mayhem in the prisons they have (for the most part) been so rightly sent to. A prison sentence is supposed to be a punishment and a deterrent but this sort of nonsense is why so many criminals couldn’t care tuppence about getting caught and sentenced.
As for the cross wearing Christians, what’s the problem? I wear my Pentagram every day, on a chain around my neck, usually tucked under my collar but often in full view (it depends on what top I’m wearing) and that is my right! I have a right to wear the symbol of my chosen faith at all times unless there is a security or safety reason not to (i.e. an area with a strong magnetic field such as an MRI scan room or going through metal detectors at security checkpoints and then I am usually given the choice to take it off or leave), the same should apply to all religions. Stopping Christians from wearing the cross is no different from asking a Sikh to stop wearing their turbans and, as was seen recently in another DM article, the government continues to permit females to go through customs at airports etc; wearing their burqa’s which is a clear security threat (and all hell would break loose if that were to happen), but a Christian can’t wear a cross. Get real people! It’s just a piece of jewelry, it could as easily be a patch sewn onto a garment or a design feature of their garments, or even a ring on their finger, the point is just that, it’s a simple necklace which many non-christians wear too) and unless the environment they work in makes it dangerous to wear one then they should be allowed that choice. if not then ALL jewelry in the workplace should be banned across the board! Perhaps the cross does not have any ‘legal’ status as a ‘symbol of faith’ but neither does the wearing of the Burqa or the Turban (unless I miss my guess). The important point here is, in my humble opinion, why is it even being considered that these rights should be given to convicted criminals in prisons while the same rights are in the process of being stripped from the general public.
(See below for links to the full articles concerned)
Minister in legal battle to STOP Christians being able to wear a cross to work
- Move is from Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone
- It puts the Government at odds with its own equality quango
By STEVE DOUGHTY and NICK FAGGE
PUBLISHED: 00:01 GMT, 12 March 2012 | UPDATED: 10:00 GMT, 12 March 2012
Let us pray in the nude and wear hooded robes in our cells, demand pagan prisoners
PUBLISHED: 00:14 GMT, 12 March 2012 | UPDATED: 07:31 GMT, 12 March 2012
