Tag Archives: Religious lobby

Church and humanists clash over Bishops in parliament

Wed 7 December 2011 / Posted by EPPSP

The conflicting views of the Church of England and the British Humanist Association (BHA) were clear at yesterday’s evidence session on Bishops sitting in the House of Lords, the ‘Lords Spiritual’. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and Andrew Copson, BHA Chief Executive, were both invited to give evidence to the parliamentary Joint Committee looking at the draft House of Lords Reform Bill on Monday 28 November. The BHA had, last month, submitted detailed written evidence to the Committee opposing and criticising the government’s proposals on the Bishops (http://www.humanism.org.uk/_uploads/documents/submission-to-the-joint-committee-on-the-draft-house-of-lords-reform-bill-bha-final.pdf).

In his written submission to the Joint Committee, Dr Williams described why he supports having Church of England Bishops in the House of Lords as of right and why the appointments process should also have regard to increasing the presence of leaders of other denominations and faiths (http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2011/11/archbishops-question-case-for-elected-house-of-lords.aspx). The UK is the only democracy in the world to have reserved seats for clerics in its parliament, and the BHA has been campaigning for many years to have abolished this outdated, undemocratic, unequal and unfair tradition which, if retained, would seriously undermine the validity of any reform of the House of Lords.
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Sophie in ‘t Veld receives International Humanist Award

Sun 14 August 2011 / Posted by EPPSP

(13 August 2011) Sophie in ‘t Veld receives the International Humanist Award in the Norwegian capital Oslo. The prize is awarded by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, an organisation dedicated to spreading humanist ideas.  Previous recipients of the International Humanist Award include Nobelprize winners Amartya Sen (India) and Russian dissident and nuclear scientist Andrei Sakharov, and Alexander Dubcek, the Slovak politician leader of Czechoslovakia (1968–1969), famous for his attempt to reform the communist regime during the Prague Spring. Sophie in ‘t Veld is very honoured with being awarded the prestigious prize. “This is a beautiful surprise. Humanism offers the right answers for many problems in society.”
“More and more, society is being organized as a permanent trade off of collective interests and privileges, rather than a community of individual citizens and their individual rights, protected by state institutions. But in a society built on collective, rather than individual interests, there is greater potential for conflict between groups. Therefore the focus should be first and foremost on promoting a secular democracy, based on individual citizens’ rights for all, including for women, for gay and lesbian people, for religious and for non-religious people…As the experience of European integration shows, the humanist idea of individual freedoms, as well as secular state institutions that treat all citizens equally, is a precondition for peace and stability.”

“It is urgent and imperative that humanists and secularists get organised and make themselves heard in the European political debate. Conservative religious groups are well organised, and not reticent to make their voice heard and to actively seek political power and influence. It is time we became less timid as humanists. It is time for more assertive, more “militant” humanism. It is crucial not only for our own European citizens, but for the effectiveness of Europe’s soft power in the world. ”

Sophie In ‘t Veld said being awarded the prize “gives me the energy to work even harder and bring human rights to the attention of an even wider audience.” Read Sophie in ‘t Veld’s speech on ‘The Role of the EU in conflict prevention” here.

Earlier this year in the UK, Sophie in ‘t Veld was proclaimed ‘Secularist of the year 2011′ by the National Secular Society.

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Report on EPPSP meeting on Art 17 – 29 June 2011

Thu 30 June 2011 / Posted by EPPSP

On 28 June 2011 the EPPSP organized a meeting on the Implemenation of Art 17 in the European Parliament. Contributions were made by President Jerzy Buzek and Vice-President Tökès in charge of the Art 17 Dialogue.

President Buzek, who makes no secret of his strong Christian beliefs, spoke emolliently of “a community of shared values, whatever their source” and, noting the variety of arrangements in Europe for relations between church and state, said that this was a matter for member states, not for the EU authorities. He preferred to talk of the “autonomy” rather than the “separation” of church and state: religions (and non-religious philosophies) and governments should maintain a mutual respect coupled with full freedom to manage their own affairs. As to the Parliament’s implementation of the “Article 17″ dialogue mandated under the Lisbon treaty he had delegated this to his vice-president László Tokés to organise. Meantime a meeting of the three EU presidents – Parliament, Commission and Council – had been held recently with religious representatives and arrangements would be made for a similar meeting with non-religious groups later in the year.

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AIDS Summit at the UN: Not Enough Talk About Sex

Mon 13 June 2011 / Posted by EPPSP

by Evelyne Leopold, The Huffington Post, 13 June 2011

World leaders gathered at the United Nations to mark the 30th anniversary of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and put out a 102-paragraph declaration. Adrienne Germain, the president of the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), has been working on women’s issues all her adult life and was active in the 1994 Cairo conference on women, also known as the CPD (International Conference on Population and Development). In an interview with the Huffington Post, Germain and Alexandra Garita, an international policy program officer at IWHC, discuss the declaration and the controversies that arise whenever sex is on the agenda. The declaration, produced every five years, gives U.N. agencies a mandate for their programs and advises governments where best to spend monies.

Q: What about access to family planning, to birth control?

AG: We lost reproductive rights and reproductive health language from the 1994 Cairo document and from early drafts here. Reproductive rights, for example, also includes the right to freely and responsibly decide on the number and spacing of one’s children. If you lose that and you have no reference to family planning services in the document, then you basically have no reference to contraception for women. You also don’t have protection for women living with HIV who are sterilized without their consent and who are forced to have abortion. It is not a rare occurrence in southern Africa (including South Africa).

Q: Who opposed rights for adolescents or women?

AG: Some people have referred to this as a perfect storm created by a combination of the Holy See and Egypt (less so Iran). Read more…

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Adrienne Germain

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