Pledges: Humanism And Tolerance
#3 in the series!
Last time was Fossil Fuels. Today it’s a different topic.
Pledge: Humanism
The email:
Dear Karl Drinkwater,
As someone who lives in your constituency and a humanist, I know the good that humanists do here and across the UK. Before I cast my vote, I want to know if you support the work of humanists in our communities and where you stand on some of the issues that matter to me.
Humanism in our community
Humanist celebrants provide non-religious namings, weddings, and funerals attended by over one million people each year across the UK. In Scotland, where humanist weddings have had legal recognition since 2005, humanists conduct more weddings than any religious group. Humanist representatives support high-quality RE lessons in schools by making school visits reaching nearly 100,000 pupils every year, and as part of council RE committees attached to over 150 local councils. Across the UK, over 100 humanist pastoral carers provide listening and emotional care as an alternative to chaplains in hospitals, prisons, and the armed forces. Over 100 volunteers promote good-natured dialogue with religious communities. According to YouGov, around 5 million people in the UK already call themselves ‘humanists’.Humanists are non-religious people who ‘think for themselves and act for everyone’. You don’t have to join an organisation to be a humanist but the national charity, Humanists UK, was founded in 1896. It has 120,000 members and supporters and campaigns on a range of equality and human rights issues, and produces expert briefings for MPs on issues relating to freedom of thought, choice, and expression, as well as medical and ethical topics. Before dissolution the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group in Parliament had over 115 members across both houses.
My questions for you:
Will you support humanist celebrants and couples in our community who are campaigning for the same recognition as humanist celebrants in Scotland and Northern Ireland?
Will you champion the availability of humanist pastoral care for patients in our local hospitals, in line with the new NHS guidelines?
Will you support reform of religion in schools? For example, there is a growing need for non-discriminatory admissions to state school places.
The national curriculum in England hasn’t been updated since 2013. Would you support an update for today’s UK, including learning about humanism alongside religions in RE?
Will you stand up for humanist asylum seekers, locally or elsewhere? These are often vulnerable adults who have fled violence and death threats because of their beliefs.
The humanist community feels strongly about the need for a compassionate right to die law. Where do you stand?
Would you support putting abortion rights on a firmer footing by taking abortion out of the criminal law, as recommended by the UN?
If elected, would you meet with Humanists UK to discuss areas where humanists can contribute meaningfully to policy, or to share your expertise?
Finally, if elected, would you consider joining the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group?.
My thoughts:
As far as I can remember from my days of studying philosophy, humanism considers our species to be the core focus for moral and philosophical inquiries, and the pinnacle of the triangle of animal existence.
Even though I’m not a humanist (I don’t think my own species is the most important; we’re just part of the larger biosphere) and not secular (I am a Pagan), I actually have a lot in common. It may be because my starting point is always to try and find points of agreement. I also don't care what belief system someone has, as long as it does not lead to harm and hatred. I’m perfectly fine with materialists or idealists; spiritual or secular. It’s what we do in the world that determines our value and whether we are a force for good or not.
The following are my personal views, not planned policy.
I think there are many topics that are nothing to do with the state. Relationships fall into this category, and can be fundamentally separated from the government, and even from religion. People should be able to make vows and wed however they want.
The current set up forces us into compromises. Instead of marriage, my partner and I chose to become Civil Partners as soon as it was legal to do so (well, in the first week of it being legal!). And we only did that because otherwise we would miss out on rights that are given to married people e.g. our pensions could have been denied to the surviving partner, just because we hadn’t got married, even though we’d been together almost twenty-five years. (According to 2016 UK figures, the average marriage lasted twelve years before divorce.) The law should treat everyone and every belief system equally in terms of relationships.
I’ll answer a few of the questions where I’ve thought about the topic a lot over the years – the ones I don’t are just because I’ve not looked into all the context and implications yet.
“Will you support humanist celebrants and couples in our community who are campaigning for the same recognition as humanist celebrants in Scotland and Northern Ireland?”
I don’t see any reason why all people’s choices to declare relationships shouldn’t be treated equally. As I said, ultimately I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to remove all legal restrictions on marriage and just let it be a personal decision as to how people celebrate their love, based on their belief system (as long as no one is hurt!) It’s possible for contracts to deal with any elements people want to keep, such as fair division of assets if a relationship breaks down, agreements on children and so on. And with much more flexibility than the one-size-fits-all law at present. Marriage could then truly fit with the vows and belief systems of the participants.
“Will you support reform of religion in schools? For example, there is a growing need for non-discriminatory admissions to state school places.”
If a religious school is fully self-funding, then it’s probably up to them how they do things. But if they receive any state money then yes, they should be open to all pupils equally. (If I have understood correctly.)
“The national curriculum in England hasn’t been updated since 2013. Would you support an update for today’s UK, including learning about humanism alongside religions in RE?”
I don’t think it should even be called Religious Education. It should just be education about belief systems, with spiritual and secular ones all covered. Christianity, socialism, Paganism, materialism, Buddhism, existentialism, and so on – they’re all world views, and it is useful to have an understanding of them all. It helps prevent prejudice and misunderstandings.
Religions are just belief systems, not something separate from secular ones. We all have a world view, and any world views that don’t create division and harm probably have things that can be learnt from. I am a Pagan, but I often learn valuable lessons from the teachings of my Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Christian and Buddhist brothers and sisters.
Also from my atheist ones. Even though I am not a materialist, I have a partial science background, including astrophysics, geology and information science, so I have a good understanding of secular and scientific belief systems, too. In fact, I am a science fiction author, though in the space opera realm where the focus is more on characters and emotional stories than on the banalities of torque and pressure!
“Will you stand up for humanist asylum seekers, locally or elsewhere? These are often vulnerable adults who have fled violence and death threats because of their beliefs.”
Of course. People often have muddy thinking, but refugees, immigrants, asylum seekers, they are not the same thing. In many cases people seeking asylum have suffered due to Western colonialism, militarism, resource theft and disruption. So we absolutely should help, but even more than that, we should change our foreign policy to one of cooperation, not conflict. US and British imperialism often create the awful conditions that lead people to need asylum. Our governments are hypocrites.
I would love a day where that all changes, and we can have peace instead, and there won’t even be a need for people to seek asylum. It’s even more worrying that the western media is hardly covering the US push for a world war with China and Russia, using Europe as a supply route and sacrificial buffer. Their violence in the Middle East and full support for genocide, and arguments for conscription, are just tastes of the horrors to come if they are not stopped.
Someone’s belief system is irrelevant as long as their beliefs are not ones that cause harm.
“The humanist community feels strongly about the need for a compassionate right to die law. Where do you stand?”
I believe there is only one core human right, and things get unnecessarily complicated because, instead, rights get broken up into pieces. It’s like treating the symptoms rather than the cause.
That one human right (though I think it applies to other life too) is: autonomy of the body. The one thing we can ever be said to truly own is our body. We should have absolute say in what is done to it. This core right therefore makes murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, forced medical practices and so on automatically illegal.
And, conversely, if we have full bodily autonomy then it is our choice what happens to our body. If I was suffering with no hope of ever getting better, then it is absolutely my right to choose to end it in as painless a way as possible, to die at a time and place of my choosing. Yes, there are implications for assistance and abuse and so on, as with anything, but none of those are reasons to deprive people to their right of bodily autonomy.
“Would you support putting abortion rights on a firmer footing by taking abortion out of the criminal law, as recommended by the UN?”
Again, there are issues with abortion that will always need to be addressed (regarding cut-off dates, welfare, what counts as an autonomous human, whether people are unfairly compelled by poverty or pressure) but when those things are properly considered and accounted for, women should be able to get a safe abortion. No woman would choose one frivolously, as some abortion critics claim. It is likely to be emotionally traumatic and an incredibly difficult decision. And as a society we should be supportive.
As an aside, I think human overpopulation is perhaps one of the biggest threats to quality of life for us and other species, though I favour dealing with it through education, changing culture, providing choice, free contraception and advice, and normalising those who choose not to have children i.e. peaceful, progressive systems that some people would choose when given options and support.
“If elected, would you meet with Humanists UK to discuss areas where humanists can contribute meaningfully to policy, or to share your expertise?”
Time permitting, I would meet with any organisation that isn’t hateful and aggressive!
“Finally, if elected, would you consider joining the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group?”
I’m not sure. In some ways I feel it might be hypocritical of me. I am more likely to just support their goals where they are sensible and fair and work to remove discrimination and prejudice.
I hope what I say is reassuring. I’m likely to be in strong conflict with a number of reactionary, conventional, bigoted factions, but I am pretty sure humanists would not be one of them! I absolutely want a more tolerant culture.
Promoted by Karl Drinkwater (Green Party) at The Gate, Keppoch Street, Cardiff CF24 3JW.