In The Name Of Official Tolerance, Mandated Intolerance

"Crucifix out, warming in" - Rex Murphy weighs in on recent court rulings in Europe:

...Blasted by the great cold winds of secularism and scientism, faith in the old sense, faith in Christianity in once or so-called Christian countries, is not only in decline and defensive. Faith is, at the public level, being actively pushed away, visited with dismissive scorn. At the same time, ideas, attitudes and “positions” that have never been seen under the rubric of faith increasingly seek the protections of “sanctified” belief.

What else to make of a human-rights ruling (no, not from one of our own restless engines of pseudo equity) from the European Court this week. According to this ruling, the crucifixes that hang in most Italian classrooms violate religious and educational freedoms. Yes, the cross in the Catholic country violates religious and educational freedoms. Is Dan Brown on the European Court?
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In this case, the European Court of Human Rights – in response to one complaint, from one atheist – told an entire country that has been the centre of world Christianity for 2,000 years to get rid of its most revered and cardinal symbol. It's the same old story: In the name of official tolerance, mandated intolerance.

At least the Italian authorities mustered something of an appropriate response to this insolent busybodyness. One government minister, Roberto Calderoli, loosed this volley: “The European court has trodden on our rights, our culture, our history, our traditions and our values.” Another minister noted that preventing the crucifix from being displayed is “an act of violence against the deep-seated feelings of the Italian people and all persons of goodwill.”

Meantime, in the country of Matthew Arnold's birth, another judge was busy passing an Alice in Wonderland verdict. This case arose from a wrongful-dismissal claim by a man of intense Green passions who said he was fired because of his global warming beliefs. The judge ruled that “a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief” for the purpose of the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations.

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So, here you have it. Those who claim that their ideology is scientifically based (and that the science is "settled",) demand (and get) court-warranted protection as an organized religion. And a mere show of respect to the nation's founding religion ends up being denounced as "discriminatory". George Orwell's legacy lives on.