The denationalisation of the conscience

Lynne Featherstone, the Equalities Minister has announced that religious groups will be permitted, if they wish, to host same-sex civil partnership ceremonies (src). The news will be welcomed by liberal groups (such as the Quakers and progressive Jewish synagogues), while it is being cautiously viewed by mainstream bodies such as the Anglican church. I have little doubt that more traditionalist and conservative religious groups will be mortified.

I, though I would oppose any attempt to have our church building used for such purposes, support the freedom for others on classically liberal grounds. More on that later. However, it raises an interesting question about the functioning of the Equalities Act, on which I was ruminating the other day. It has a partial reference, also, to the bed-and-breakfast question which was debated prior to the election last year, and explains something of how freedom of expression functions in a liberal society. It is the following.

Suppose I own and manage a firm of printers. I don't run it as an explicitly 'Christian' printers' shop, but generally print most business that comes to me. One day, inexplicably, the Jehovah's Witnesses come knocking on my door. Not so much to convert me as because they want some work doing: a tract printing off. It's pretty stiff stuff, attacking the doctrine of the Trinity and claiming that mainstream Christians a polytheists who believe in false gods.

I refuse to print the tract because it is so pointedly written against my own beliefs. Most stuff doesn't cross any kind of line with me, but in this case I really am not happy with my printing press being used for such a purpose. They claim that this breaches their right to freedom of expression, and is unfair discrimination on the basis of religion. Should they be allowed to bring a case under either aegis?

No. Free expression does not require any individual to sponsor, host or publicise your expression. And surely I must be quite free to refuse to allow my printing presses to go to work in pursuit of a position with which I profoundly disagree.

For suppose that the government forced me to accept the business on the basis that to inspect the materials before agreeing to publication is discrimination on the basis of religion. My printing press has become somewhat less mine since the passage of such legislation. I can no longer decide what materials are printed on it: the government decides. To that extent, the government has become the owner of what was my printing press. To force me to do business is to nationalise my printing press.

Fast-forward, then, to an Act of Parliament which forces all business owners to do business with all comers without discrimination, even on grounds such as religion. This amounts to nothing more than a nationalisation of one aspect of the entire economy: no longer can business owners draw a line on matters of principle even where they are relevant; the government has made those decisions for them. It is milk-and-water socialism, in one bill.

And what then? By partially nationalising private businesses, the government has also arrogated to itself the right to decide what are matters of conscience. In short, it has not only nationalised businesses: it has nationalised conscience. We no longer enjoy the freedom of conscience which once we did.

Hence my title, and my welcoming of Lynne Featherstone's announcement. For conscience ought not to be nationalised, neither for private business owners nor for religious organisations. (Ed. - nor for private individuals, but I had thought this would go without saying.) The present situation is that the government has decided on behalf of religious organisations that they will not allow same-sex partnership ceremonies in their buildings. The situation, surely, must be that it is up to those organisations to make the decision.

Therefore, to announce that religious organisations will no longer be restricted is, in some small way, a success for the campaign to denationalise conscience. And so long as Harriet Harman's bill doesn't get drafted in to make what is permitted into what is required, we can hold onto one small area where conscience is private and free, rather than public and bound.