Subtle headline? Nah. Bigots defeated!

Lilian Ladele – hypocrite and bigot.

Occasionally, things happen in life that make you go: ‘good!’ And today was a day when that reaction was entirely apt.

On the way to work this morning, I noticed that judgement was due today from the European Court of Human Rights in the cases of four UK people who claimed to have been discriminated against on the grounds of their Christian beliefs.

Goodness – how was it going to go?

In the cases of Nadia Eweida and Shirley Chaplin it was a sort of one-all draw. One won, one lost.

Both involved the respective employers’ responses to a member of staff wearing a cross at work. Both are slightly more complex than the boss simply saying: ‘Oh, you can’t wear a cross/crucifix at work’, but generally, neither of the outcomes or cases are really important in terms of general human rights.

For the sake of clarity, I don't care about what jewelry people wear – whether it's religious or not. I'm personally not remotely 'offended' by people wearing a cross or a star of David or a St Christopher or a crescent or even a swastika.

And, as I've said before, nobody has – or should have – a right not to be offended. 

But the other two cases were quite different.

Lillian Ladele was a registrar in Islington in north London. Way back in 2004, when civil partnerships were introduced for same-sex couples, she decided to say that she wouldn’t conduct them because they were against her won beliefs.

Until 2007, she was employed on something like a freelance basis and she’d swap with colleagues to avoid what she disliked.

But when the council changed her employment status, that was not possible and, hey ho hum, she lost her job.

The first employment tribunal found that in her favour, on the basis that the employer had not gone about things in the right way.

At appeal, this was overturned – the appeal actually found that she was demanding to be discriminated in favour of, over and above her colleagues.

Now, the European Court of Human Rights has judged that she was not discriminated against.

The second particularly important case involved Gary McFarlane, who decided that he’d have problems counseling any of those gays, and was subsequently sacked.

Anyway, the European Court of Human Rights also judged that he had not been discriminated against.

Part of the fun in all this is the sheer amount of hypocrisy involved.

Ladele, for instance, is an unmarried, single mother.

Now personally, I’d never have a dig at that. But if you’re going to whinge and whine about what the Bible says and what you should be excluded from on that basis, then it’s a damned good idea to make sure that you yourself haven’t got any such skeletons in the personal closet, so to speak.

And, y’know, the Bible isn’t great on umarried, single mothers.

Ladele has also presided over the marriages of heterosexual couples who just happen to have been divorced and/or adulterous, and/or preggers – and goodness knows what else. But hey; all that’s okay, even though her 'holy' book says otherwise – it’s only a problem when blokes stick their dicks into each other’s bottoms.

Nadia Nweida: 'I'm going to strangle myself with my cross'

Or, presumably, when girlies shove their fists up each other’s fannies.

And there are entirely similar comments that can be made against McFarlane, who apparently had no problem with giving advice to unmarried couples that were shagging – just as long as they were straight.

If I sound a bit sarcy, it’s for a reason.

These are bigoted hypocrites – and what combination could be more bloody irritating.

But it’s a case of: ‘wah, wah: my religious sensibilities are all offended!’

Well, screw you, frankly. My sensibilities are offended by bigots like you: bigots who are usually intellectual imbeciles that can rarely create something remotely like a coherent argument.

But do I go to law to demand that you are not allowed to speak or work ­– or marry? No! I do not.

Because you know what? I don’t believe that anyone has a right not to be offended.

And I do actually believe in free speech.

And I also believe that no one set of beliefs gets to trump another – and a belief that is, ultimately chosen, most certainly does not get to usurp something that is innate.

For goodness sake, there is no evidence that sexuality is chosen, but religion most certainly is.

Okay, even when someone has been indoctrinated in a religion as a child (as I was), it is still ultimately possible to get over it and make a choice.

If you want to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, then that’s absolutely fine – and I know it's a cliché, but I'll defend your right to do so.

But do not try to pretend that that is for a reason other than for denying others their fairly basic rights.

I should just hasten to add that this is only an issue with some religious people – and not even just some Christian people. Homophobic bigotry and hypocrisy is most certainly not limited to any one religion.

But this has been a good day – and frankly, I feel a bit like laughing at hypocritical, gullible people who apparently think that the world owes them more respect thabn anyone else, just because they believe in an imaginary friend.

Yay hey! Today at least, we won.

Dancing to the beat of St Julian

There I was, reclining on a sun lounger, gazing into the blue yonder – and all the time, St Julian was 'emerging' from the Ecuadorean embassy in London to address the world, for all as though he were a global messiah.

‘Aw, come on,’ he said to the US: ‘Don’t play rough’. Well, that seems to be the basic tenet of it.

Now I’m about as far as can be from being a fan of US foreign policy, but this seems a disingenuous, since Jules is the one who started playing rough.

If you can’t stand the heat ...

So it seemed about time to have my own fourpenneth.

Let’s start by saying that, in my opinion, Assange should not be extradited to the US by anyone – quite simply because they cannot be trusted to give him a fair trail.

He should, however, go/be taken to Sweden to face the entirely different charges he faces there, under a judicial system that has a pretty damned good record.

It is idiocy to pretend that Sweden is somehow more likely to send him on to the States that Britain.

Yes, the Swedes have had their own little dirty involvement with rendition – but then so has the UK, and that doesn’t seem to be exercising Assange's disciples in quite the same way.

In fact, given Britain’s habit of asking ‘how high’ when Washington tells us to jump – including on matters of extradition – you could be forgiven for thinking that he’d actually be safer in Scandinavia.

The idea being floated by some conspiracy theorists (which is probably an injustice to the word ‘theory’) is that the Swedish investigators could come and have a chat with their man in London.

The mountain coming to Mohammed, one might say.

Why? Why change normal practice just because it’s St Julian?

As noted, he’s probably safer (from extradition to the US) in Sweden anyway.

Besides, according the the court documents, he is not wanted just for 'preliminary' talks, but for arrest, as the investigation in Sweden is apparently at that stage.

And he has had, in the UK, three opportunities to challenge the extradition decision in the courts – which is hardly indicative of it having been a rushed, legally dodgy matter.

On another note, it is really rather amusing to watch some on the left wetting their knickers over Assange.

Let’s be quite clear about this, he is not an anti-capitalist: he is a free-market capitalist who believes that the market will work best if there is no secrecy.

That’s the official ideology, at any rate.

Yet here we are, with some having decided suddenly that Sweden – praised in the past for so many of its social policies and liberal, inclusive approach – is in cahoots with The Great Satan.

You couldn't make it up. Well, actually ...

Anyway, let’s have a quick look at the whole anti-secrecy thing itself.

I'm not 100% convinced by it. There are arguments for and against.

There are claims that Wikileaks’ leaks have caused deaths – these are mostly about armed forces on duty – or increased the danger to those on duty.

Since, in theory at least, the armed forces of a country act on behalf of its citizenry, shouldn't we know what they're doing in our name, including when that means killing innocent people?

One of the arguments used in favour of the leaks is that they were a factor in the Arab Spring.

In Tunisia, for instance, a leaked document revealed that the president’s daughter and her husband had their ice cream flown in to the country from St Tropez.

One can imagine how galling that must have been for a country suffering high unemployment and poverty.

But if Wikileaks did have a meaningful impact as a trigger for the Arab Spring, then it is partly responsible for deaths there – and just because most people in the West would welcome the revolutions that have swept the Arab world doesn’t this make this less the case.

I didn’t get absorbed in the leaks at the time, although I do remember one in particular: the revelation that a member of the US diplomatic staff in Paris had cabled back to Washington calling for an economic war on Europe because our governments wouldn’t let genetically modified crops loose on the continent.

It was revealing because it showed the arrogant petulance of at least some in the US establishment – and because it revealed just how much the US is run by and for the corporatist elite.

Although we pretty much knew that anyway.

Similarly, the stories about Prince Andrew were embarrassing to some, but were hardly a massive revelation.

There has been a sense too, of a massive amount of data being flung out in an entirely indiscriminate fashion, with no sense of concern about content. Of information for information's own sake.

So let’s just say that the leaks themselves have brought some good results and some bad ones.

That doesn’t mean that Assange and his cohorts are wonderful, though, or that their motives are pure.

Sometimes, even good things come from flawed intentions, while the opposite can also be true.

But there is a certain irony in Assange's disciples citing Bradley Manning to illustrate why their hero should not be sent to Sweden (which is unlikely to send him to the US anyway).

Manning is a troubled young man who was bullied extensively during his army training – to the extent that, apparently, the army was going to discharge him before that training had finished, before it decided it couldn’t do without his geek skills.

So the US army needs to take some responsibility for putting someone like that into a position where he could access so many documents.

But Assange and his colleagues decided that Manning could be exploited – and they did so, with no obvious indication of concern for the consequences.

It seems that Manning – and others whose names we don’t know – are simply collateral damage in Assange’s little war, and there is no indication he gives a toss about them or accepts any responsibility for what has happened to them.

Then there’s the little matter of Ecuador.

According to World Report Chapter, 2012:

“Corruption, inefficiency, and political influence have plagued the Ecuadorian judiciary for many years. In a referendum held in 2011, President Rafael Correa obtained a popular mandate for constitutional reforms that could significantly increase government powers to constrain media and influence the appointment and dismissal of judges.

“Ecuador's laws restrict freedom of expression, and government officials, including Correa, use these laws against his critics. Those involved in protests marred by violence may be prosecuted on inflated and inappropriate ‘terrorism’ charges.

“Impunity for police abuses is widespread and perpetrators of murders often attributed to a ‘settling of accounts’ between criminal gangs are rarely prosecuted and convicted.”

Yet Assange is terrified of going to Sweden? Really?

And the faithful praise Ecuador for it’s belief in human rights?

Assange’s choice doesn’t suggest that he has much interest in human rights, including, somewhat ironically, freedom of speech.

Personally, I think that Julian Assange himself is a narcissistic sociopath with a messiah complex.

Indeed, how many people have leapt to his ‘message’ – even (as noted above) without apparently understanding what it is really about?

How many seem to have decided that an allegation of rape should not be treated seriously? It's that collateral damage thing again.

And honestly, do we really need thousands more conspiracy nuts?

That’s something else that can be laid at the door of St Julian of Assange as his cult-of-the-personality crusade seems in danger of dragging on interminably, and we watch as something horribly like a new sort of secular religion is born.

• For a detailed report on the myths in the Assange case, see this piece by lawyer David Allen Green at the New Statesman.