Our Lady Of The Assumption School Parent-Teacher Communication: Fill & Download for Free

A bit of background: I’m originally from Hong Kong but have lived in London/UK for over a decade. I have been on both ends of the spectrum, i.e. hang out with Chinese/Asian people more often than the locales, and vice versa. Here are my perspectives on the former:Acceptance and rejectionBelieve it or not, a lot of local British people find it extremely hard to believe that I can speak or even write in English.They often ask “When did you learn English?”, “How come you speak it so well?”, “Did you sit for any English exams in order to get a degree?”I often try to explain that English has been a crucial element of our academic curriculum since our nursery days in Hong Kong. Most Chinese parents speak fluent English and may even choose to communicate with their children solely in English, in order to facilitate their children in becoming more “international” (Side note: I struggle with this, as bilingualism has been shown to be good for neurodevelopment, and Chinese is a beautiful language!). Furthermore, Hong Kong has a been a British colony for so many years. The British culture has been more or less incorporated into our society. For instance, we celebrate Christmas and Easter. We use English words to express some concepts, even when speaking in Cantonese. The road signs, restaurant menus, your bills, the forms you fill out, e.t.c, are both in Chinese and in English in Hong Kong! Even our legislation was in English for a very long time! In other words, there is no escaping from English, if you’re born in Hong Kong. And personally, I have been speaking the language since I entered this world!So although I have achieved A* in A-Level Literature in the UK, did three degrees in English, have often written essays with better grammar and spelling, and scored higher marks than my British schoolmates, these facts and qualifications do not matter - my Chinese last name betrays me and leads people into believing that I’m English-ignorant. Fascinating!If a British person uses the wrong grammar, punctuation and spelling in his communication, he/she is just being careless. If a Chinese person makes the same mistake, he/she fundamentally cannot speak or write English. Double standards, no?Fortunately, having a “Doctor” in my title means that people now feel less dubious about my language ability, and my sayings and writing seem to carry more weight and credibility. However, I wish that there is no need for such superficial titles to achieve the same effect as a local person would.Increasing homesicknessWhen I first came to the UK, I was elated. A chance to break free from my overprotective parents (though well-meaning)! Freedom! I have been “preparing” for this day for so long: as a child, I had always preferred Western novels, music and food over Chinese ones, because I was pretty rubbish at the latter language (Aha! Another assumption there - “Chinese must be good at Chinese”?).However, the second year into my sixth form, I found myself watching a lot of Chinese films and reading Chinese fictions online. I even went for dim sum during the weekends with my schoolmates - something that was integral to a Hong Kong family life but rarely practised in mine. This fervent curiosity and addiction to increase my knowledge and experiences of the Chinese pop culture and history grew and grew. I started watching all the films by Wong Kar Wai, listening to Asian music, reading about Chinese history (my Chinese history teacher at my secondary school in Hong Kong would have been shocked!), enjoyed more Chinese cuisines, etc, etc.At that time, I concluded my new tendencies as follows: “Out of sight, out of mind” and “Distance makes the heart grow fonder”.On the other hand, in my first year of university, I was in halls. My friends were from all different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds - Russian, American, Korean, Chinese, Afro-British, British, German, Thai - you name it. We spent (a lot of) time with each other, partied (hard) together, and learned about different preferences. Races and cultures were not exactly at the forefront of our minds. We were just looking for people whom we enjoy being with. I think this challenged the proposition in this question that “Chinese are always in groups (of Chinese?)”.Nonetheless, as my time in the UK went on, I grew fonder and fonder of my own roots and culture. Hence, I started spending more time feeding my fondness. I do not have any preferences or aversions to where the people in my social circles are from, but I suppose you can say that there are “natural attractions” at times. Just like some people prefer blondes over brunette, small- over big-chested, tall over short - what’s wrong with that?Excerpt: A few days ago, I found that a colleague working in the other end of our office shares the same hometown as one of my best friends. They are both from a small but famous city in China, and there aren’t many of them in the UK. When I shared this connection with her, this colleague immediately became very excited and urged me to introduce them to each other. So is she xenophobic? Boring? Unwilling to socialise? This lady is married to a British man. Perhaps this is like fans of Metallic getting together and may not socialise as well with lovers of Taylor Swift?Can we not express our homesickness and reconnect with our culture, while we are far, far away from our family in another country?Fundamental errors:Ultimately, his question is poorly posed and overgeneralised. “Why are Chinese students often in a group?” - does this mean that the author thinks that all Chinese people are in (Chinese?) groups, and none of the Chinese population tries to fit into the local (foreign? Spanish? Italian? Korean?) groups? Is this phenomenon meant to be specific to a particular city or occurring all over the world?I suppose that this is only a careless question that aims to provoke strong reactions and emotions.But there you go, you have my views as above.

I went to Catholic School from KG to 7th Grade back in the 1960’s. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, so here is an excerpt from my autobiography, think of it as a written selfie! This is a tale of a boy vs Sister Margaret Jean of the Sisters of Saint Joseph.Let’s go back a year to sixth grade. This was the pivotal year in my career at SJSA. I set records that probably were never matched from that year until the school closed and the building was leased to the Chicago Public Schools. This year for the first time in my young life I did form, express, and hold onto my own opinion which ran counter to the opinion held by someone who was not only an adult, not only my teacher, but a nun to boot! For the first time, I also took it upon my young shoulders to fight back against The Teachers Pet system that for years had been treating me in a manner that I considered grossly unfair. This first taste of youthful independence did come with a cost, but it was a cost that I happily and proudly paid. If I had to do it over again, I would do the same thing today as I did back then. Question; was I grown up then or am I still a child now?Sister Margaret Jean was a firm believer in the Teacher’s Pet System. She had her pets and a small stable of snitches and they served her loyally and well. Some of her pets had their status conferred on them due to the actions of their siblings making them part of a Pet Dynasty. Very often these younger teacher’s pets hadn’t done anything themselves to deserve being anointed as a pet, perhaps a sibling had sold a lot of chocolate that year and this was the school’s way of saying thanks. Sister in her all too finite wisdom came up with an idea that we would have a class play, invite the parents and just generally show off our talents. I thought that was a grand idea and she and her play had my full support. It was to be a play where some missionaries helped some poor people. Okay, this was not exactly an original idea, but hey she was a nun! So with a slight reservation and nod of the head, I mentally approved this idea. I really did think that a good shoot’em up would be a better idea but I decided to keep the idea to myself and to give the missionary play a try. For some reason, I assumed I would be getting a leading role in this off-Broadway extravaganza and I saw myself as Humphrey Bogart talking to Lauren Bacall as we discussed helping the poor folks. “Here’s looking at you kid.” I loved all things Bogey back then.I would be great; I would be recognized as a great actor, I would finally be released from the dummy brigade as Sister, choked with emotion dried her tears with her white bib as she remembered the drama and pathos my performance brought to the stage. Upon reflection I have to say that probably I would have provided a heavy dose of pathos for the audience and as far as drama, well, maybe not so much.My dreams and expectations notwithstanding, Sister Margaret Jean did what all of the other good Sisters of St. Joseph always did for me; she burst my bubble. She did this when she announced who would have the speaking parts. You guessed it; her pets had all of the choice assignments. The rest of us would be more or less extras sitting or standing on the stage, mute, appearing to be poor by walking around or sitting there barefoot. I was very annoyed that I didn’t get a speaking part, to say the least. Sister was as excited as a sister could get over the play and almost twittered as she laid out the story for us. For some reason I had gotten it stuck inside my head that I would turn in a more memorable performance then David Gomez or Patricia Glowacki would. The two of them were her chief pets that year and both of them had been a thorn in my side all year. Unfortunately, there was nothing that I could do about the situation except grin and bear it. Lacking the political clout that the likes of David Gomez or Patricia Glowacki had I had to do a lot of grinning and bearing at the situations I found myself in back then. If the old saying that “you can’t fight city hall” is true, then it is doubly true that you cannot fight God, His Church, or His employees, the good Sisters of St. Joseph. This was a lesson that I was about to learn. Then in an unexplainable lapse of the infallibility Sister Margaret Jean had clothed herself in since the start of the school year she presented to me the opportunity to express my independence.We were down in the gym, which was NEVER used as a gym during any of the years I was at SJSA, getting ready for rehearsal. The class was making noise and Sister Margaret Jean in her classic “this is your last chance” voice shouted for us to be quiet. Then she did it! She herself made it possible for me to make a political statement, to declare my independence, to show my total disdain for the Teacher’s Pet System. She delivered herself into my hands when she asked in an incredulous voice;“Is there anyone here that doesn’t want to be in the play? If so just raise your hand!”With a scowl on her face that could have curdled buttermilk, she surveyed her charges expecting to see nothing but sniveling, whimpering, and cowering children. She saw a lot of those, kids were good at doing that when a nun began to shout; it was how the game was played, it’s what the nun expected and of course we were there to please her. What she did not expect to see was my hand raised high. Sister almost snarled when she asked me;“Michael, what do you want?”She could not conceive in her wildest dreams that anyone would want to opt out of her stupid play. Yes, I said stupid play! The play that had my backing just moments before had become stupid when it didn’t include me as one of the people with a speaking part. I stood, because of course you did not speak to a nun sitting down, and with a firm, but a very respectful voice said;“Sister, I do not want to be in your play because you picked only your favorites for the speaking parts and I don’t think that is fair.”Trembling inside I sat down and waited. The gym/rehearsal hall had become deathly quiet because everyone knew that a storm was about to hit. Like General McArthur, I had made my boss look bad in front of her underlings and like poor old Douglas I would suffer a tragic fate and pay a heavy penalty for my insubordination. Before our eyes, the normally mild mannered nun changed into a black-suited tigress. She rocked the walls as she bellowed at me to get on my feet. I immediately jumped up. Then In a bizarre imitation of Sally Fields of Flying Nun fame she almost vaulted over the chairs between her and me, her habit and veil flowing and flapping in the slipstream, her eyes were bright and ablaze with the fire of righteous indignation and foam was forming at the corners of her mouth. Landing in front of me as if she were a black and white avenging angel, she physically pulled me by the arm dragging me behind her and out of the gym and into the hall. This was the first (and last) time a nun actually got physical with me. I can’t remember the nuns physically punishing children back then but some of my former classmates have told me that some of the nuns were master punishers. The only physical punishment I remember witnessing was when Mrs. R. Reid forced Raylene Miller to kneel on the floor for an hour as punishment for dropping a book on the floor during class.(Of course Mrs. Reid wasn’t a nun, she was just a witch.) Personally, I never suffered physical punishment at the hands of a nun, just a good deal of mental punishment, how I wish they would have hit me instead. But today it was my own fault because I guess back then I was the same as Cool Hand Luke, a hard case and there was definitely “a failure to communicate.” Sister Margaret Jean took mental note of but ignored the twittering of the rest of the class, they would get theirs in a minute once she was done attending to me. She swiftly dragged me out into the hallway and then she twirled my body around and made me face the wall, I remember that the bricks were tope colored. She told me to stay there and to keep facing the wall. Stay there I did. “I am a born wall facer,” I thought to myself as I admired the straight lines of mortar holding the bricks in place. When rehearsal ended the class filed out past me with a very stern looking Sister Margaret Jean standing right next to me emphasizing how low in life I had chosen to descend. I was still studying the wall very carefully as I had been instructed to marveling at the precision of the bricklayers. She did not correct or silence any of the kids that chuckled at my predicament as they passed by; it was part of the humiliation she wanted me to feel. I accepted this punishment, as if I had a choice, and was very glad that I said what I said and had opted out of the play. For the next two weeks, on the days when the rest of the class went to the gym for an hour to practice the play, I was left standing outside of our classroom in the hall facing the wall until they returned. Sister seemed to have some sort of kid facing wall fetish. I was allowed re-entry into the classroom only after everyone else had been seated, and to protect her dignity, Sister would not deign to come out herself to get me, no, she would send out one of her tame snitches instead, and this way as I entered in shame, she could glare at me and all could see the fate of a rebel, of one who questioned the Teacher’s Pet System. I was the sixth-grade poster boy for “don’t let this happen to you.” I am sure that if Sister Margaret Jean been a British Admiral commanding the British fleet in the seventeen hundreds that she would have seen to it that I was flogged through the fleet and maybe even keelhauled for my offenses. Not enough punishment for you? As I had dared to question the established order still more punishment was forthcoming to me. I was awarded three demerits for being disrespectful to Sister Margaret Jean. It NEVER would have occurred to me or any of my classmates to be disrespectful to a nun – that brought consequences at school and if the parents found out about it, double trouble at home. We also thought that being disrespectful to a nun or priest just might be a mortal sin but we were not sure. Up until that day my demerit card could have been sold as brand spanking new since I had not received any demerits yet that year. Three demerits entitled me to stand in the first-floor hallway during the hour after lunch, facing the statue of the Virgin Mary for a whole week while the other kids were at play. You could also choose to face the other way and look at the stairs going up but that wasn’t as interesting. Also that semester I received capital punishment, the most serious punishment a lone teacher could, on her own authority inflict on a student. I received a D under the school spirit category on my report card. I was probably the only person in SJSA history to ever receive a D in school spirit. The rumor was that you had to be caught with a bottle filled with gasoline stuffed with a rag, and a lit match in hand, ready to burn the school to the ground before you could be given a D in school spirit. The truth of the matter was that I was very proud of that D. I would not have traded that D for an A in math and a four day school week. I learned on that monumental day, which I celebrate as the day I started to think for myself, that sometimes you had to speak up to try and right a wrong, but you had to be ready to face the consequences, that is a glimpse of God that follows me to this very day.This is what the back of a typical demerit card looked like. It is not from SJSA but it is in the same spirit. SJSA did not have a demerit for smoking or truancy (you got the death penalty for those) but it had ones for messy desks and chewing gum. On the front were 25 little boxes where the person awarding the demerit would write the code and the number of demerits awarded. It was hard to get demerits; many kids never got any. I never got any until the class play incident. The consequences of getting demerits were clearly explained. You got a pass for the first two demerits, but when you got the third you were awarded the penalty I received, standing in the hall for the hour after lunch for a whole week while the other kids were playing. If you got three more demerits, for a total of six, you got the same penalty and so on. If you really worked at it hard and got twenty-five demerits in a semester, you could be suspended. If (saints preserve us) you got fifty demerits, you could be expelled.Sister Margaret Jean was not known to give demerits. To be honest she was a mild-mannered, kind, courteous lady and not really mean at all. But I guess in my case, “turn the other cheek” was forgotten for the moment and she decided to try out the demerit system with me just to see if she liked it. Every so often the nuns would hold desk inspection. You had to do this otherwise who knows what you might find growing in a kid’s desk! I kept a fairly tidy desk, not pristine, but boyishly neat and it always passed muster.One Friday Sister came to my desk, opened it up and she found a wad of chewing gum stuck to the lid. The gum was fresh; (spearmint I believe) it had teeth marks in it- they were not from my teeth. Believe it or not, it was not my chewing gum, (really it wasn’t) but it did not matter. It must have made her day. She would have the opportunity to test the demerit system to its fullest! I could not explain the gum away, I would have loved to know who decided my desk would be the best place to dispose of this forbidden commodity, and that day, (remember that this was before DNA testing was available) I received; 2 demerits for a messy desk. Yes, gum stuck to the desk was kind of messy, I will give her that. I also received 3 demerits for chewing gum in class. This too was reasonable on her part because the gum just didn’t get stuck there by itself, someone had to have chewed it, and she was assuming I was the culprit- a completely logical if incorrect assumption. And finally, she gave me 2 demerits for being disrespectful to her, which was quite unreasonable on her part because I simply told her very respectfully that it was not my gum. Total for the day was 7 demerits. I was sentenced to two weeks of standing in the hall or as I was beginning to call it a two week hallway holiday. I was to achieve a sixth-grade record that semester of 15 demerits, and that was probably more demerits than the rest of our sixth-grade class combined. As a consequence I was provided a total of five one week opportunities and that my friends is half a semester, to contemplate the mysteries of the universe by standing alone in the first-floor hallway facing the statue of the Virgin Mary.Let me be totally honest and fair to Sister Margaret Jean. One of the weeks I had to serve was because I was guilty as charged. I was reading a Perry Mason paperback book. I loved reading Perry Mason mysteries and tried to figure out who the culprit was before the end of the book and I was pretty good at it. The problem was that this one day I was reading my Perry Mason book on the sly, under the desk, during History class, which was not a real bright move on my part at all but it was kind of a history book wasn’t it? I guess that sister didn’t see it quite that way either. Well I got caught fair and square and with a suppressed sigh I started to reach for my poor, overused demerit card, but guess what? All she did was to confiscate the book, taking it out of my hands without missing a beat while she continued on with the lecture she was delivering, she gave me no demerit; I think that my charm was starting to work on her! I knew instinctively that I had gotten off lucky that time.Lunchtime came and I noticed that she had placed the book on her desk and I assumed that it would be okay for me to read it at lunchtime so I put the snatch on it intending to return it to her desk immediately after lunch. Things confiscated by nuns were very seldom if ever returned and I was hoping to finish the book before it went to wherever things confiscated by nuns went to. It was raining that day and the lunchtime recess was being held in the gym. I sat down on the sideline and began to read. Suddenly in the distance, I could hear the sound of nun shoes hitting the gym floor. Actually, only the nuns and priests had the privilege of walking with shoes on in the gym so any shoe noise coming off of the floor could be construed as possible bad news; kids removed their shoes while playing in the gym so they did not scuff the floor. You could actually tell the difference between nun steps and priest’s steps without looking; nun steps were rapid and close together and seemed to transmit a feeling of dread and doom as they echoed off of the gray cinder block walls, while the noise a priest’s feet made were slower and somewhat heavier and louder, and they sounded almost jovial since it was not part of his duty to discipline a kid, he was just passing through. In this particular case, it was definitely nun leather slapping the finely finished wood and based on both the Doppler Echo and the shifting red to blue pattern of the sound I knew some poor joker was in for it, nuns never walked that fast unless someone was about to get it. I did not look up because Della Street was telling something important to Perry about the case that Lieutenant Trag had let slip. The case was certainly much more important than seeing some poor schmuck get what was coming to him from an antagonized, rapidly moving nun, who was obviously both on the warpath and on a seek and destroy mission. As a matter of fact, when a nun was on the warpath it was probably better if you didn’t make eye contact or draw any attention to yourself at all. I kept reading trying to spot the clue that would unlock the mystery and free Perry’s wronged client. Suddenly the sound of nun heel on hardwood stopped just as it was right in front of me. As the noise faded from my ears I thought;“Oops. I am in for it now.”Sure enough, I looked up and there she was in all her magnificence. Now all nuns had pale white faces at SJSA, it must have been a requirement of their religious order that they cultivate that pallor. Today Sister Margaret Jean’s face was a most remarkable shade of purplish red as she said;“You dirty little sneak thief! May I have your demerit card please?”Nuns were always polite; it was part of the Nun’s Code. If a Sister of St. Joseph was in charge of a firing squad she would say; “Excuse me, gentlemen. May I have your attention, please? Please get ready. (Michael kindly stand up straight) Gentlemen if you would please take very careful aim. (Michael I am not going to tell you again stand up straight and please remove those hands from your pockets!) And now, gentlemen if you are quite ready kindly fire.” The sound of the shots would echo and bounce off of the walls in the kid sock polished gym and with that Michael would hit the floor with his last act on the way down is to make sure he did not lose his navy blue clip-on tie and risk getting a demerit for being out of uniform. I gave her my demerit card as I scrambled to my feet. You never remained seated while Sister was disciplining you. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that anything a kid did with a nun was always done with the kid standing. She snatched the demerit card out of my one hand while she pried the book from my other hand, she was certainly efficient if nothing else, and then kind of ironically she used “The Case of the Reluctant Model” by Earl Stanley Gardner as a writing desk to write three demerits on my poor, starting to get dog-eared demerit card, assuring me of a week away on hallway holiday. I didn’t mean anything by what I had done, but thinking about it, I did, after all, take the book off of her desk without permission and so after school I did approach her and apologize, secretly hoping the demerits would disappear, they didn’t but she thanked me for the apology and even briefly smiled. I did silently disagree with the “dirty little sneak thief” thing, but having already received three demerits for the day I decided to let it slide. Someone told me that if you stared at the statue of the Blessed Virgin long enough she would wink at you; I never saw her wink or do anything else during those long solitary hours in the hallway. The last semester of the school year Sister Margaret Jean pretty much forgave me for being a rebel. She gave me no more demerits and even extended a few minor marks of her favor to me once in a while. The pastor arrived on the last day of school and handed out report cards. He came to mine and for once he had something to say. He said he was happy I had improved. Sister had given me a B in school spirit in the last marking period and the words “Promoted to Seventh Grade” were written in her flowery script. Michael looked at his world and saw everything was very good. Spring came and summer followed the sixth year.

Where are we talking about?The following is a direct copy-and-paste from my current documents surrounding the issue of Christian persecution on a global scale, a piece of reading that was inspired by learning of the British Bishop of Truro’s shocking study revealing that Christianity around the world is perhaps the most oppressed religion worldwide:-Open Doors Research260,000,000 Christians under persecution in world’s fifty worst countries (one in eight Christians worldwide) in 2019This figure has risen from 245,000,000 in 2018A further 50,000,000 Christians are under attack in countries outside of the worst fifty in the worldIn the top fifty, forty-five are classed as being “Extremely” or “Very High” at risk for ChristiansAttacks on churches up by 500%This has been put down to Chinese closures of churches (“attack” does not stop at “violence”, and is a word used in bad faith in this context to evoke an emotional response); Christians are being sent to the predominantly Uighur Muslim detention/re-education centres as wellChina is a paranoid country that does not endorse religion full stop, so Christians are not special in being persecuted there2,983 Christians killed for their faith in 2019, with Nigeria being the most dangerous country for killings based on one’s Christian beliefsThis is lower than in 2018 (4,305) or 2017 (3,066), which is a result of Nigeria’s killings dropping (though more needs to be done)Syria and Iraq are especially at risk because of ISIS militant groups-Pew Research 20182016: 28% of countries in “High” or “Very High” danger for religious restrictions (this is not just for Christians, but in general): 3% increase27% of countries in danger through social hostilities to religion: stableChina is the highest for governmental interference, India the highest in social interferenceChristians harassed in 144 countries, Muslims in 142, Jews in 87Note: not clear what “harassed” means? Could be legitimate harassment, could also be very minor, wording not indicative11% of countries with political parties formed with nationalistic anti-religious sentiment attached to them-Looks like case closed, doesn’t it?Let’s look at the world’s top twenty-five countries for Christian persecution (again from Open Doors Research, bearing in mind of course that many of these places are totally inhospitable to other kinds of religion as well):North KoreaAfghanistanSomaliaLibyaPakistanSudanEritreaYemenIranIndiaSyriaNigeriaIraqMaldivesSaudi ArabiaEgyptUzbekistanMyanmarLaosVietnamCentral African RepublicAlgeriaTurkmenistanMaliMauritaniaI’m not saying that life is particularly cozy in Numbers 26 and below, but that’s where the top twenty-five worst countries are in the world.Look up the rest of the top fifty for yourself.So in a way, yes! We are living through an age of Christian persecution! No doubt about it! This sort of destruction should be fought against as best we can, because while we have so much that conflicts, we also have to recognise suffering people as human beings in and of themselves. We cannot stand for these any more than we can stand for any other egregious and illiberal breach of human rights.But there’s a big but here.I’m going to make what might be an unfair assumption here, and say that you are not from one of those countries. If I’m wrong, I will humbly eat my words and apologise to you in the comments, should you wish to raise the issue with me.But I note, Michael Okeke, that your profile says that you know about the Manchester Community College, indicating the United Kingdom or another place with British roots (maybe America? You’ll be able to guide me on that a bit better). Your questions are filled with Christian material, suggesting that this coming from a place of… bias isn’t quite the right word, but it’s about as close as I can think of for the moment.Vested interest, maybe?I dunno.On that basis of “I dunno”, you’ll likely see the word “you” used throughout this piece. I should make clear that I intend to write “you” as an abstract entity distinct from “you”, Michael Okeke, or “you”, the reader who otherwise reads my answer here. In this case, please consider the abstract entity “you” to represent the worst of Christianity, the bigotries and zealotries, corruptions and shootings and Crusades and unfettered evangelism that destroys anything that isn’t “pure” in its sight.(Actually, that’s a really good idea for a monster, the You…)Starting now, “you” isn’t Michael Okeke, but rather this abstract amalgamation of all this bunker mentality for a Christianity that has done great harm, and refuses to see it for all the pieces of gold in the world (unless it’s clearly referencing me, Andrew Drury Rayner; I sometimes talk to myself, quarantine will do that to you after a while!).Ready?“You” switch!So, proceeding on the basis of the United Kingdom (I’m Scottish, by the way!), I have some religious freedom cases that I want to discuss with you. The UK is very much along the same lines as America in their religious rights context (no official State religion, right to profess faith and speech etc), though America is far more public about religion than we’d ever hope to be! I’m a law student, who loves nothing more than a good research session on human rights, of which religion is one. Article 9, European Convention on Human Rights, among other forms of protection for thought and conscience.We’ll look at its contents first;Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.As a background, rights in our law are weighed up via a measure of proportionality. That is to say, your right is absolute until it comes into conflict with another. And rights, despite what Ronald Dworkin might say, are not trumps in the British system. They can be weighed against each other without diminishing them, because in some cases, applying one over the other among the qualified rights of the Articles 8–11 (privacy, religion, speech, assembly) infringe upon the most serious ones.For example (and this is an extreme example); the right to worship is important, but is that worship involving the sacrifice of human beings? That conflicts with Article 2, a right to life. Depending on which part of the Westernised world you’re in, you’ll have a different set of laws, but you’ll have some article somewhere that guarantees your right to life. Now, your right to life is a bit more important than the right to believe that the dreaded God Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos of One Thousand Open Mouths, will come and save you from an oncoming plague that will take the lives of all but the Worthy who feed him tasty human sacrifices upon an ancient stone plinth of True Night.Again, extreme example!Very few people actually worship a Lovecraft God!But that’s why we limit religious freedoms as a qualified right, absolute up to the point where it conflicts with another, in which case it will get weighed.Now, how do we consider this for Christianity, a far less violent religion (at least in the modern era), which isn’t quite sacrificing people but at the same time isn’t really the most accepting of social groups outwith theirs? A religion that teaches us to love thy neighbour, but also to stone gay people (or in the modern context, tell gays that they can’t have marriage rights or workplace protections while smiling) and to keep women silent in church because of the faults of the first woman at the dawn of time?I don’t know how the American courts proceed; America definitely has a lot more of a slant towards unbridled free speech than countries like the UK, and writer Stavos Tsakyrakis suggests that America doesn’t do this weighing procedure which notes an even larger individual right to religion than that which is present in European countries under the ECHR. So do read my European examples with that heightened approach to religious rights in mind please, to keep it relevant if you’re coming at this piece from a States perspective! But here, we’d protect their rights up to the point where they go after others.Remember, of course, that President Trump once had former Attorney General Jeff Sessions set up a Religious Liberty taskforce (we all know that he would have called a Christian one if he could have, given his distaste for Muslims), and that the same Sessions quoted from Romans 13 to justify the decision to separate immigrant children from their families, in an attempt to belittle the Catholic Church’s protests against the decision. Westboro Baptist Church is active and unimpeded there, as are the UK street preachers who go out to spread the Word (like Michael Overd, who preaches his homophobia through a loudspeaker and who recently received an enforcement notice regarding his insistence on open-air preaching even during the COVID-19 lockdown).I hate to say it, but if you can quote from Scripture to justify pure evil and get away with it on live camera, you don’t get much more religious freedom than that.And here, we’ll come to some cases. This first batch are those that uphold religious liberties for people who profess a faith:Lautsi v Italy: even in the secular State, wherein religion is not to form a part of the government for fears that religion could actually lead to a shaping of policy that undermines the rights of others who don’t profess that faith (see Voltaire’s separation of church and State!), State institutions like schools are allowed to have religious imagery like crucifixes since they are “passive” and do not amount to indoctrination. This case concerned a crucifix in an Abano Terme school, which was allowed to remain despite a complaint from Mrs Soile Lautsi.Contrast this example with Dahlab v Switzerland, in which it was decided that a ban on Muslim hijabs in a school was permissible. The teacher in question was definitely only showcasing a passive symbol! But despite the passivity, the hijab was viewed in one way and the crucifix in the other, which is pretty much a blatant show of favouritism.Eweida v UK: a British airline had tried to force Eweida to remove a crucifix for the sake of brand image, and Eweida contested this, claiming that it was an interference with her right to express her religion. Arguments in lower courts had rested on her being uncompromising in her faith, which seems to me a pretty woolly justification for a breach like this. Here, Sikh and Muslim employees were not forbidden from wearing their attire by the employer, furthering the discrimination case. The European court was in favour of Eweida’s claim, the airline discriminating with no cause.Contrast this to a case that actually called on the same day, Chaplin v UK: Chaplin was told to remove her dangling crucifix in a hospital where Sikh employees and other Christians were asked to do the same, and Muslims could only wear tight-fitting hijabs. This was claimed to be a discriminatory practice, even though it was on the grounds of medical health and she was given another option for wearing it. Of course, the court deferred to the hospital’s call and rejected Chaplin.Kokkinakis v Greece: Minos Kokkinakis, a Jehovah’s Witness, was accused of proselytising (ie. inducement to faith via fraud), a crime in Greek law at the time. The European court held that it was not shown that there was any pressing social need to ban his right to speech and religion, and as such the fines that he incurred were contrary to his human rights. Two judges even wrote in their opinions that the law itself ran contrary to Article 9.Contrast this open approach to that taken in Chapin and Charpentier v France, a case which upheld the long-standing reluctance of the European court to declare that Article 12 ECHR denoted a right to same-sex marriage. They declared that the issue of same-sex marriage lacks enough of a consensus across Europe to open up the right (read; mainly religious refusals, see Poland currently!). While I understand the line of argument, and I have to bow to the margin of appreciation doctrine, it still sucks that the court can be bold in one case and yet be so reticent in another equally-pressing matter of human rights.Across the five countries on display (remember, very few cases actually reach the European level, it’s pretty much the last resort when either the national courts are failing in the application of human rights or one party keeps appealing it into oblivion!), religious rights have been upheld. Not to say that they never get it wrong, but these are important cases. So that’s Britain, France (a rather famously irreligious society!), Greece, Switzerland, and Italy (the polar opposite of France, the home of the Vatican City and the sitting Pope!). In fact, there’s been a slight favouritism shown to Christianity, over and above other faiths (though it must be noted that the school involved in the Lautsi case did observe Ramadan for Muslim pupils too).But you’ll see that the religious person/entity was aggressed against first. Eweida was known to be a bit uncompromising and cold, but she didn’t go around hitting people with Bibles at work. The Italian school in Abano Terme only had a religious image on their walls. Kokkinakis was only discussing his faith, and could not be shown to have attempted to induce the other party to his conversation to his faith improperly to fall within the Greek meaning of “proselytising”. You can see from these aggrieved people, who won when they were hurting nobody; when others hurt them without a reasonable cause, the neutral State supported their right to hold a faith.On the point of favouritism, think of the new Belgium case in their Constitutional Court (not the ECtHR, mind you) which allows universities to ban religious attire. At first glance, that encompasses all faiths, but look closely. “Can” gives the discretion. Universities can choose whether or not to implement this (many refuse to, happily). And many of Belgium’s municipalities have already banned Islamic attire like the niqab and burkha elsewhere, but (to the best of my knowledge) not Christian attire (like crucifix necklaces) in turn. The hijab has now been encompassed here. So we know that, while the ruling looks neutral, its practical application will, in all likelihood, not be so neutral.We can even look to Spain for an example of this favouritism (though Spain was pretty ahead of the curve in gay rights too, proof that religious and secular rights need not be mutually incompatible!). In their tax laws, Spaniards can choose to donate 0.7% of their tax to the Catholic Church (a privilege not enjoyed by other faiths, raising them €284million in tax in 2019), and the State can create relations with some faiths (Catholics, Evangelicals, Muslims, Jews (Abrahamic religions, in other words)) but refuse others this support (like Santo Daime on the grounds of ayahuasca abuse).And again, just think how much more powerful this right to free religion and speech is in America, where free speech is a strong enough justification to allow Neo-Nazis to march on Skokie (a town full of Holocaust survivors).I’ll look to some home jurisprudence (Britain) for more examples, which is a far more abundant source of cases. Ready for some more?Eunice and Owen Jones: a famous case that sparked the myth of Christians being banned from adopting children. The Jones family tried to adopt, but the child was removed from their care when they were found to have made homophobic remarks. Any adoption case has to have the welfare of the child in mind at all times as per s14 of the Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007; what happens to that kid’s welfare if they grow up gay? Indeed, Lords Munby and Beatson were clear that this isn’t a ban on Christians adopting kids. There are many, many Christians who are not homophobic and would totally support adopted kids; some are my best friends.Felix Ngole: another case that relies heavily on this principle of protecting the people you’re working with. Ngole was training to be a social worker, and was found to have commented on the matter twenty times, calling the practice of homosexuality “wicked” and “sinful”. Lovely language from somebody who wants to go into social work, who might run into gay people to protect and care for! Judge Rowena Collins-Rice put it best: “Social workers have considerable power over the lives of vulnerable service users and trust is a precious professional commodity.” And despite all of this, he won a later appeal against his university!Sarah Kuteh: this was an oft-trumpeted case of a nurse who only wanted to pray for patients in a loving way, and the EVIL COURTS struck down such a generous, charitable gesture. Remember, though, that this woman was again exerting influence over vulnerable people (in this case patients), telling one that he’d have a better chance of surviving cancer if he prayed to God and forced others to pray with her. Rowena Collins-Rice would have had a field day with a case like hers! She was the subject of numerous complaints (not just one!), and eventually lost her job. Only to be reinstated, of course.Svetlana Powell: Powell was a teacher in Bristol who used her position to preach the Bible to her students during what should have been normal English and Maths classes for children. She used her position to tell gay pupils that they were going to Hell, forced children to pray with her before they could leave sessions, and lost control of her class in teaching. Her legal team tried to compare the case to that of left-wing atheist Andrew Spargo, but the case was distinguished because Spargo agreed to leave his politics out of the classroom after being reprimanded, while Powell persisted in hers.Joshua Sutcliffe: an interesting case. Sutcliffe was accused of misgendering a pupil once, which led to his firing and later court action against his school. However, while I hate the Daily Mail, they covered his case and revealed from the pupil’s parents that the case was actually raised because he had misgendered them numerous times, and that he was picking on their child for detentions (which was not upheld by the school). According to a pupil claiming to be a student of his on Reddit, he would also constantly preach from the Bible during his classes, though that is only one source. He arrived at a settlement with the school outside of the employment tribunal, so far as I can tell.Duke Amachree: here, we would be led to believe that Amachree was only trying to give a woman comfort in his role as a homelessness prevention officer in Wandsworth Council. Instead, he not only gave his caller (Mrs X) a thirty minute tirade about God and how medicine and doctors (she had an incurable illness) don’t have all the answers, but he also revealed confidential information about her to the press which could have been used to identify her later. Amachree was found to have been lawfully fired on both bases; I don’t like the concept of the Council not allowing anyone to say “God bless” (a policy that the Council denied), but a half-hour tirade and the leaking of confidential details by Amachree were what swung the final judgement against him. He was fired not for his religious beliefs, but for his otherwise unprofessional conduct in his job.Lee v Ashers Baking Company: possibly the most well-known case of religious freedom in modern British times, and possibly the most expensive cake of all time (coming in at a whopping £200,000+ in legal fees). Ashers refused to bake a cake in support of gay marriage, citing religious beliefs, and Lady Hale of the Supreme Court held that this would have been the approach taken to anyone who sought such a cake, that they were against the message and not the messenger, rendering the discrimination argument futile. The “would you ask a Jew to bake a Nazi cake?” holds no water in the UK since Neo-Nazi organisations get proscribed as terrorists. Nonetheless, the decision was taken as soundly as it could possibly be (it was common ground apparently that the decision would either result in a judgement of direct discrimination or nothing) and the bakers won the case.And what of less well-known cases that manage to fly under the radar, which affirm a more extreme Christian’s right to discriminate against others, or at the very least make those around them incredibly uncomfortable?Steve Loha: Christian who lost his business licence as a market trader due to selling tracts containing anti-LGBT+ sentiments, later had his business licence reinstated since the removal was deemed illegal in the first place, despite the hateful speech contained on the tracts in question.Sarah Mbuyi: childcare worker who gave a lesbian colleague unwanted Biblical materials, referred to her “struggle” in notes, and told her that she opposed the colleague’s lifestyle; firing was not allowed over discrimination against Mbuyi and procedural irregularities in her disciplinary hearing.Victoria Allen: teaching assistant who was disciplined through a written warning from her school for saying that homosexuality is wrong (stop TARGETING US, motherfuck!), and the school in question even publicly apologised to her for upsetting her during the school’s disciplinary process.Let’s even consider some cases where Christians were again doing nothing wrong, and the courts protected them and their rights? I apologise that this is a bit more threadbare a section than others, but it’s not without cause:Colin Atkinson: electrician working for Wakefield and District Housing who bore a cross in his van, his employers tried to force him to remove it from sight after a tenant complained about it, he was later allowed to keep the cross as it was not harming man nor beast when passively resting inside a vehicle.Paul Song: a sad instance of intolerance from another religion, Song was a Brixton prison pastor who was driven out of his work by a Muslim colleague. The case never went to court so I cannot speak on behalf of the other side, but on the basis of available facts, he was later reinstated to his post.Oxford University Christian Union: students in 2017 preemptively stopped a CU from joining Balliol Freshers fair to promote secularism; the decision was later overturned by a university committee, with a vote that no such organisations would be banned in future (this was resolved without any court action).But sure, I’ve not provided enough evidence perhaps.Those who point to gaps in transitional fossils are never happy, either.All I can say is this: miscarriages of justice do indeed happen. There are cases that are decided wrongly. I don’t much like the example of Ladele v UK, wherein Lillian Ladele lost her job after the UK law on same-sex marriage changed to include it as a right, and she did not want to proceed with that. As much as she was breaching the rights of others, she had entered into a job expecting to be able to carry out her Christian values, and I have sympathy where there has been a breach. I’d have rathered she be given a conscientious objection-based exception on this ground, caveated to protect the rights of gay people to strike a fair balance. But even then, Christianity still attracts protection from discrimination under legislation such as the Equality Act 2010.They’re just asked to share that equality for a change.Miscarriages happen, and I’m not naive enough to think that this is not the reality in which we live. Be it Manchester, Britain, or Manchester, America! And they get amended! I’ll give you an example from Scotland in Parliament: we were originally going to restrict churches from operating services until the 23rd July 2020, which would disadvantage them compared to restaurants and the like, but with enough pressure and work with faith organisations the government reviewed and allowed them to gather with a person cap of fifty. And even then, religious people weren’t happy, calling the limit “arbitrary”, forgetting that nightclubs, bingo, theatres, music venue, and live outdoor events are being limited for review after the 31st July 2020. Churches are live music venues and theatres in essence, so they’re the better comparator for discrimination than restaurants, and they’re getting a fifty-person head-start on any other venue due to their religious character.It’s a bit of an arbitrary line at fifty, but so would fifty-one be. So would forty. It’s a bit unfair that a church can’t open at the same time as businesses, but businesses have taxes to pay to kickstart a post-COVID economy (unlike places of religious worship). And at present, the Scottish Parliament is coming under fire for a new hate crimes law that would place restrictions on (you guessed it) hate crimes, with opponents claiming that the provisions would disproportionately affect religious people expressing their religious views. The legislation needs tightening (the role of a legislature), but even at that, I wouldn’t be shocked if this indeed is the case. Quite frankly, religions do hold some severely hateful views which can have horrifying implications for the affected. You don’t want to be shut down as phobic pests; don’t be phobic pests then, you ninnies!And remember, even with this, religions are protected as a vulnerable characteristic! Scotland has loads of initiatives and attempts to curb crimes motivated by religious hatred and bitter sectarian rivalries (nowhere is this better depicted than in Scottish and Glaswegian football culture and the Orange Marches, the latter of which is still inexplicably allowed to continue). A good example of this in legal practice is the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 s74, which makes an offence of religiously-aggravated prejudice (yes, even Christians!). This legislative zeal has led to some legal absurdities, such as the unworkable Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 (now repealed) which was slammed as an illiberal measure “railroaded through Parliament”, which is very problematic in and of itself. Nobody likes bad law.But damn, you can’t tell me they didn’t try.I can’t quote the entire cabal of religious liberty cases for you. I’m tired and bored of it by this point. I have plenty, plenty more in my research pile, and I’ve cherry-picked the best ones for you. I’m nice like that, you see. Cases where Christians won, cases where they didn’t. Not always, but for a disturbing portion of the time, the Christian has been seen to do something shitty, has been called out for it by employers, has then lost their job, and has either had that decision to fire them upheld on a balanced view or has been remunerated somehow for their troubles and losses.Remember how I described the above cases, the Eweidas and the Lautsis and the Kokkinakises? They were aggressed against by the State (which is why supranational organisations like the EU and Council of Europe are so important, to correct State-level wrongs where home judges get it all wrong!), or by an employer, or by a private individual. Their harm came first, was unprovoked, and they fought against it. I know wonderful Christians, and I think the world of them; I know that many would never transgress my rights, as I would hope to never transgress theirs (and if they want to talk with me where I may have done so, I want to hear about it and do better!).But then, in others, like Powell and Sutcliffe and Amachree and Ngole, this aggression came first. Gay people were denied shelters and a safe working and learning environment. Parents espousing homophobic values were asking to take on the care of a child that wasn’t theirs who could have very well grown up to be gay, or bi, or trans, or non-conforming, or whatever else. Others were being told that they were Hellbound, or unworthy of cake, or were preached to down a phone for half an hour. Some were forced into prayer against their own secular freedom of conscience (freedom of religion also means freedom to not believe in a religion!). Pastors hold whole prayer sermons to beg forgiveness from God for the Gays and the evil curses they bring to the world, and then complain when their employers want nothing more to do with them.But hey, Christians want to be able to fire gay people because reasons! There was a Bible burning in Portland in August 2020 during a protest, and I strongly condemn that as a highly offensive action, but a) this was the action of a group of protesters, not the State, and b) other protesters came by and put the flames out. Claiming this as a sign of your impending discrimination is inaccurate; it’s hateful and senseless (despite Christianity as a religion in the West being totally entangled with both systemic power and the historic slave trade), but it is nowhere near discrimination. Remember, the most extreme religious people would do the exact same thing to secular materials if Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humane Vitae is anything to go by, so while I am angry at that group of protesters for their actions, my sympathies are watered down by context.Free speech is great, but if it’s protecting Nazis and Westboro in the US, it can sure as hell cover a book burning as a symbolic act. A horrible act, but the right extends. Unless you want to argue that free speech shouldn’t, in fact, be absolute, in which case we can then discuss how your rampant homophobia is gonna get a walloping limit placed on it to protect minorities against the aggressions you’re known for levying against them?It’s stuff like that that really tap-dances on my last good nerve.See how these cases play out? Christians aren’t free to force their beliefs on others! Religion is a right up until you shove it down someone’s throat without consent. Being gay is a right up until you shove your penis down someone’s throat without consent (bad wording, but I couldn’t make it work any other way). If I attempt to convert a Christian friend, colleague, or family member into the Gay Brethren, as a bisexual, I will have infringed upon their rights. They will genuinely believe as a sincere value that Christian values are the best for their life, so if I try to force them to convert, I as a bi have breached their rights to their identity, and that’s just not on for anyone to do.It’s a very simple equation.But while we’re not trying to force people to be gay (and no, giving them the option and the representation and the love does not force anything), evangelical mantra dictates that religion must be preached, brought forth into the world, witnessed to the non-believers and infidels. Any religion in the world has that element to it. If that’s not helpful, think of it like this; I don’t choose when I get a boner, but you choose what you’re going to believe, what you think is right and wrong, and who to hurt.So quite frankly, when they’re preaching, they gotta behave themselves so to not cross a line into our rights. Our rights to not believe, to hold no faith, to live an agnostic or atheistic lifestyle, to love and marry and have sex with whoever we like, to have abortions when our conceptions of the beginning of life are so divergent. The right to religion works a bit like this; you don’t want an abortion or a gay marriage? Then don’t have one, friend! I’m not religious, but I want religions to succeed and thrive, in recognising the common humanity between myself and the one who holds to their faith in God, karma, or anything.But don’t force others to not do so, equating homosexual love to “murder” as a sin, because they hold a different value! That’s where persecution comes in! And the counter-argument is “well, we don’t want to believe in The LGBT+/abortions/women’s rights”; trouble is, we’re here, and we’re tangible (unlike God), so you’ve got no reason to not “believe” in us unless you’re claiming solipsism or a variant as your life philosophy! And religion was at the heart of all of those issues that still require protection to this day. Religion justified the slave trade, which has had repercussions for black people in America, Britain, and all across the Western world. Religions played a significant role and provided significant justification for some of the greatest evils (and joys!) of our world history. So please don’t create a problem, then refuse to clean up your mess when called out.It’s like that Bo Burnham song Straight White Male said:Straight white maleI know the road looks tough aheadThe women want rightsThe gays want kids (what?)Can't you just leave us alone?And also "No" to the things you asked for(They're being greedy and they know it,)And that’s the thing; we never did get left alone by you!Like, when you say “can’t we get along, even if we disagree?”, we can! Of course, of course we can! But what are we disagreeing about, and why?Are we in disagreement about whether or not Peter Capaldi was the best Doctor in Doctor Who? I think he was, but I’ll respect you if you disagree. Many preferred David Tennant or Matt Smith, and both are strong contenders for that title. Do you prefer hot dogs to burgers? I think you’re crazy, but I’ll buy you one when I go for my burger. Besides, hot dogs are delicious too! Do we disagree on politics? That’s a tougher one, especially in our current climate, but I’ll take a measured approach. I’ll disagree when someone says “I agree with BLM, but I wish they hadn’t attacked X statue…”; like, I genuinely couldn’t have given a shit about that statue, but we agree on the important part.We can make a distinction between a passive “not-racist” and an active “anti-racist”, but I’ll be your friend at the end of the day.The Brexit debacle is a good example; a very good friend of mine and I disagree so much on it! She’s far from a traditionalist, but she’s in favour of some of the economic arguments from the Leave side, which failed to sway my sympathies in light of losing twenty-seven other states and an enormous trading and human rights bloc for what was essentially a vote fueled by xenophobic masses. But she’s not xenophobic at all! She considered the arguments and drew a different conclusion to me. I won’t agree with her, but I respect and want her as my friend. We disagree and we know that, but I was still at her wedding as her bridesman (told you she wasn’t a traditionalist!).But are we disagreeing because you believe that, since you are religious, everyone else should toe your line and deny human rights to others?Then you can get fucked.I owe you nothing.It’s kinda hard to take seriously the rights of those who have treated the rights of others as a joke for so long. I make a conscious effort to not get angry at my situation, but there’s always a nagging voice. If you were born a few decades ago Andrew, you might have been killed or chemically castrated like Alan Turing was (y’know, one of the British heroes who helped win WWII through combating German cipher technology), with many Christians thinking more about the fact that you wanted to have sex with a man more than the fact that you were being, say, executed by your own government and all.Or, if we wind the clock back even further, a lovely stoning!Only this month, the US Supreme Court ruled that employers could refuse to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees on the grounds of sincere religious belief. The UK and other legislatures account for the conscientious objection of medical staff in carrying out abortions unless it is necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life (see s4 of the Abortion Act 1967 and Spain’s Ley Orgánica 2/2010). Only last month, the US Supreme Court threw gay people a wee bone by making it that we (they in America) can’t be fired from their jobs for being gay. Isn’t that the best compromise, mate! Such important provisions in healthcare is denied to one group (including a watering down of trans healthcare access by President Trump in June and hitting their access to refuge shelters as well) on the basis of a religion whose claims are non-testable and unsubstantiated beyond the twisting of (abundant) apologetic literature.But we at least have a right to keep our jobs after boning someone! How charming! How special I must feel! Gay people have been “pardoned”!THE FIRING THING SHOULD HAVE BEEN SETTLED FUCKING YEARS AGO.HOW DARE YOU WHINE ABOUT PERSECUTION IN THE WEST.You are persecuted elsewhere. Anyone who is denying that is an idiot and a fool, who should be taken to review the evidence from the Bishop of Truro (real name Philip Ian Mounstephen) and other think tanks that publish the actual facts and statistics of what happens in theocracies, and in otherwise oppressive regimes that cannot afford the serious competition that religion brings to their reigns.But you are not persecuted in the West.Being asked to be nice to gay people, being asked to let women speak in churches and access necessary healthcare, that is not persecution.Being prevented from discriminating against others is not persecution. It’s the recognition that some (not all) Christians who take their religion to the extreme are garbage people who want to instate theocracies for the minority. Persecution comes from State efforts to hunt you down, a concerted effort at the highest echelons of government (the one that’s implementing religious liberty taskforces and supporting the Bishop of Truro’s report and quoting from the Bible to drum up nationalistic support) to kill you, to make you a nobody in the country, to revoke citizenship, to take away your job on the sole basis of who you are, to commit acts of violence against you, to make legislative decisions against you on the single, sole basis of who and what you are, and nothing else.Not that Christians never experience this, but until you can talk about having the police raid bars looking for Christians to arrest for being Christians (like they did to LGBT+ people prior to Stonewall), being denied the right to vote (like they did to women), be deemed legally as property (as they did to black people), have your healthcare removed (like they’re doing to women and trans people), have your livelihoods destroyed by concerted State efforts (like in Kristallnacht) and being shipped to unspeakable horrors (like Uighur Muslims and yes, Christians in CHINA are experiencing), you’re a far cry from persecution.So please, ask me why you can’t storm a mosque as a Christian, or why you can’t ask the Stonewall charity to print out conservative propaganda that’s done so much harm to LGBT+ people, or to hold an anti-gay rally during Pride Month, all in the name of the free speech you want for yourself and nobody else (and while we’re at it, stop whining when I swear if free speech to express religion is your whole bloody shtick, yeah?). These are questions that an actual, real life Christian has asked me, along with asking how it could be discrimination to refuse a gay couple (with dreams, hopes, aspirations, and human dignity (all important here, which you’ll understand once you see the comparator they used)) a place at a B&B but not for a farmer to sell non-sentient, lifeless grain and crops to ASDA and not to Tesco (both of which are British supermarket chains).Oh, and another real question; why shouldn’t science classrooms cater to religious tales on the creation story since they’re all just “possibilities” and “theories”, despite the presence of religious courses in school and university curriculums (and forgetting too that not only are scientific theories testable (not infallible, but testable), but we’d be here till Kingdom come if we started with Shinto accounts, moved to Buddhism, Islam, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, then to the accounts of Wicca, Voodoo, Rastafarianism, Pastafarianism, the Greek and Roman pantheons, Hinduism, the Egyptian Gods, the Lovecraftian Dream Cycle… or was it just the seven-day creation account from the Book of Genesis that you wanted?).All asked hypothetically, I hope.I was watching a film series recently which encapsulates this sheer naivety and lack of critical thinking, called God’s Not Dead. In it, an elderly character with a straight face says the following line: “In this day and age, people seem to forget that the most basic human right of all is the right to believe.” Mate, that’s a really lovely sentiment, and belief is innately human. I can’t stop thinking! But I rather prefer having my head attached to my shoulders, without the looming threat of the Christian extreme right cropping up with a view to taking it for their warped interpretation of the Bible.Hearing the odd horrible word against your faith isn’t a nice experience. I know that, as a former Christian. When I was flyering for my university’s Christian Union, hearing such hurtful words was difficult, and it made me feel bad. I lost a friend to my former homophobia. But Article 9 ECHR rights to religion are intrinsically tied to Article 10 ECHR rights to free expression; mean words are mean and saddening and even cruel, but if you attack free speech, the only thing that’s standing between anyone and really, really real persecution, by shutting down mean words (which are often valid critiques that evangelicals just don’t like!), then your whole religion goes down. You’ve opened the floodgates, as Christians are so fond of saying in the wake of gay rights legislation.And atheists can abuse free speech too! Nobody’s denying it! We’ll go too far, on the merits of the case sometimes, and actively abuse faiths; an imbalance that needs redressing! But if Christian values against gay people, that God despises the “lifestyles” we choose, have been held to be “worthy of respect in a democratic society” (see the Mbuyi example again), then so is an atheist’s right to tear into a belief system. You can’t have that scale tipped entirely in your favour without that same consequent imbalance. And atheists and agnostics are absolutely going to ask you about your stance on gay people as a Christian (even the nice ones that wouldn’t hurt a fly!), because so many of you make such a ruckus about us as immoral monsters who want to corrupt your children that it’s become a rightfully intrinsic part of our perception of Christians and Christianity.We’re wary of you because of that, and just a little scared.Sorry.I know this is a hard concept, given that the Bible has told you to expect persecution for your beliefs because we unbelievers hate “The Truth”. You’ll find that sort of language scattered throughout the Bible: take Galatians 4: 13-16:As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you, and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. Where, then, is your blessing of me now? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?Early Christians faced serious persecution. Many of them were executed and tortured for their faith. I know that Emperor Nero was famous for his fervour, using the practice of damnatio ad bestias (destruction through beasts) in which Christians were wrapped in animal skins and thrown to rabid dogs. Most of the New Testament disciples were executed horrifically, with many Christians even suggesting that this points to the strength of their convictions (and therefore, because they believed it so, they had to be correct, just like I believe that pineapple tastes bad on pizza and therefore it is so!).Being asked to be nice to groups you’ve since oppressed for centuries, and then seeing those groups getting sick to death of it, is not persecution. You’re not a martyr on a cross for defending God from the liberal plague; you’re just a dick.Even God doesn’t get in the way of people who just want to live their lives without Him! It’s disgusting language, but check Romans 1: 21–24:For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.I mean, thanks for calling us “degrading”, you mass-murdering lunatic, but I’ll take whatever I can get by this point. Does your God paint Himself as a damsel in distress? No! So why would you feel the need to batter down the human rights of others, if you’re not doing it in some sad show of virtue-signalling to your church community?If you’re discriminated against by private individuals on the basis of your religion, as seen above, there’s a good chance the courts will see your case on its merits and rule in your favour. In a religiously neutral State (or a mockery of one, in the case of the United States), the State will do you no sin on the basis of your religion.But it’s not gonna do you any favours above other people, either.That latter scenario is called “theocracy”, my friend.I’ll leave you with one last thought:Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.Karl Popper told us this. If we tolerate the people who want to destroy tolerance, it vanishes under the weight of that onslaught.Any democracy has to recognise this. Recognise rights not as trumps that defy any attempts to balance them, but as open to balancing on the merits of their case. You (the general and abstract “you”, not intended to be directed at anyone in particular) want to practice a faith calmly, you want to leave gay people and women and black people and all alone and live with us in peace, love, and understanding?Wonderful. Sit at the table. Please!Let’s find you a nice drink and refreshments.Try to start a fight with vulnerable people? I promise it’ll be finished.Law is just a very civilised way of doing so.