HELL HATH NO FURY NOW

THE SNP’S battle to elect a successor after Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation highlights religious faith and political conviction are now at war with each other as the two favourites will have to jettison or deny strictly-held beliefs in order to get on.

Finance chief Kate Elizabeth Forbes is Wee Free with strict sacred Presbyterian God-fearing Sabbath beliefs, like only one man and one woman can be joined in holy matrimony and sex outside marriage is forbidden and NHS minister Humza Haroon Yousuf is the SNP’s first south Asian Muslim currently fasting and with equally if not more strict views against gay marriage, sex and trans ideology.

But Kate, born in Ross and Cromarty in 1990 to a couple who ran a small business, and Humza, born in 1985 in Glasgow to south Asian immigrants, find themselves battling to lead Britain’s most progressive, postmodernist, social justice theory BLM political party with increasingly more radically anti-religious, or at the very least, unsympathetic and morally incompatible basic policies on sex and morality.

So is strongly-held personal faith and belief, now, a positive impediment or barrier to progress in all areas of life and are you likely to face discrimination, censorship and policing in the workplace?

Our politicians appear to be setting a lead by praying on some days of the week in churches and mosques alongside partisan patriarchal puritans held together by strong moral and ethical guidelines forbidding liberal and permissive behaviour while on other days pontificating in political chambers alongside postmodernist radical feminist progressives hellbent on smashing up all Biblical and Islamist fundamentals on personal behaviour to establish a moral free-for-all.

And, of course, many thousands of fundamentalist faith-based believers in Christianity and Islam as well as other different faiths are now fighting to maintain their dignity while battling to somehow operate successfully and healthily in work environments where there are glaring irreconcilable differences between their traditionalist paternalistic approaches and radical feminist postmodernist ones currently dominant and in charge of HR.

The Free Speech Union spent most of its time in 2022 defending some of these people branded “hateful and harmful” for their gender critical views or refusal to accept Stonewall diktats on LGBTQ+ inclusivity and diversity.

FSU communications officer Freddie Attenborough mentions one in this:

Karen Sunderland is suing her former employer after falling victim to ‘offence archaeology’. In 2018, when Karen was a Conservative candidate in the local elections, iNews dug up some tweets she’d posted in 2017 and managed to get her suspended by the party. The tweets reflected her sincere belief that aspects of Islamic doctrine are illiberal and unfair to women.

Four years later, when Karen was embarking on a new career, someone tipped off her employer about this episode and she was fired. Karen believes her comments were protected political speech and her dismissal was unfair and discriminatory. Her claim makes two important legal arguments.

First, her dismissal was either directly or indirectly because of her belief in conservatism, a belief that should be protected by the Equality Act 2010. Establishing that conservatism is a protected belief would bring balance to the law: there is case law protecting democratic socialism, but no equivalent protections for its right-wing counterpart. If she succeeds in winning this argument, the judgement would protect employees with conservative views which, while wholly lawful, are often thought to be offensive to HR officers.

Second, Karen argues that she was dismissed because of her belief in freedom of speech. In short, free-thinkers attract controversy and always have – and employers who put rigid speech codes in place are disproportionately affecting those who believe in free speech. A finding that freedom of speech is a protected belief would give legal protection to other employees who manifest that belief by speaking their minds and testing received wisdom.

Karen’s trial begins on 28th March. She is being represented by barrister Francis Hoar, acting on a direct access basis. Francis is one of England’s best barristers when it comes to freedom of speech cases and party-political matters: in 2021 he published In Protection of Freedom of Speech, with a Foreword by Lord Sumption.

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