Harmful hobbies

 

So I see that the Church of England has "declared" that gay sex is still a "sin". The leader of that organisation Justin Welby confirmed this during a recent meeting of 650 bishops attending a conference in Lambeth, London. It's clear to most people (with at least half a brain) that this decision is a political one, the conservative countries represented at the conference won't tolerate any movement on this issue and these (mainly third-world) countries such as Nigeria, Uganda, Somalia etc. are simply too important to the existance of his church (numerically) that Welby can't afford to alienate them! He did however throw the more progressive consituents in the UK a bone and said he would not "punish" those who performed same-sex marriages.

All of this would just be tomorrows fish and chip wrapping for most people in the UK until you realise that this homophobic cabal is the established religion of this country with the Queen at it's head. It's top clerics sit (as of right) in our Parliament (the only other country that allows this is Iran!) and we hand over state-funded schools to this cult to run. It's time we changed things.

Church members need to realise that what they believe amounts to no more than a "hobby", it's nice for them, provides social cohesion, something to do on a Sunday morning and perhaps some degree of support in times of stress, however for the rest of us the whole thing could dissapear tomorrow and we wouldn't notice or care. For the most part non-religious people such as myself are completely fine with anyone believing what ever they want, we're also fine with folk joining clubs of like-minded people and following the rules of that club as long as it doesn't do harm. Unfortunately, when establishment institutions cling onto medieval attitudes around things like homosexuality and support ridiculous practices such as "gay conversion therepy" it DOES do harm, a lot of it, primarily to vulnerable people and has done for centuries, enough is enough!

It's time to cut these organisations loose, set them free, allow them to make their own little rules and dogmas free from the public gaze! Decouple all religions from the machinary of the state, come to some arrangement over all that money, property and land they've stolen requisitioned from people down the ages and make all schools fully inclusive and secular! Everyone needs a hobby and religious people should be free to follow their own interests free from the shackles and constraints of the modern zeitgeist, all we ask in return is that religious people stop insisting that everyone adopt the same hobby as them, or even worse insist that the parochial rules of their little clubs become somehow entwined in the laws of our land and enforced upon all of us!