Differences in legal standing between adherents of a religious sect and of a political philosophy If one holds an event and says no Catholics allowed, that would surely be unlawful religious discrimination. But what if one said &quot;no Tories allowed&quot;? Or &quot;no fascists allowed&quot;? Would that be legally okay? If one said that &quot;Muslims are everything that's wrong in this world&quot; then that is religious hatred. But what if one says that fascists represent everything wrong with the world? With religious hatred one can insult or decry beliefs but not groups defined by their adherence to the beliefs. Presumably this hate the sun not the sinner principle is not extended to political beliefs because politics is understood to have an intrinsic impact on the society that we all live in while there seems to perhaps be a presumption that what and how one worships is a characteristically personal, private thing that &quot;does not hurt anyone else,&quot; that ostensibly does not shape the broader social fabric of society as political orientations have as their purpose to do. But is that really true? Many religious sects and organizations have beliefs to influence the world in a certain way, whether through charity work, outreach, proselytism or, more to the point, political organising and influence. Someone who highly values the right to abortion for example, may intensely hate &quot;Christians&quot; as they tend to inherently be avowed opponents of that cause. Or one who finds it especially viscerally unsettling to see boys be circumcised might hate circumcision-observing Jews as much as other types of perceived child abusers for perpetuating the practice thereby shaping a world that that individual would not want to live in. Worse still if Jewish organizations make it their business to achieve political/legal protections for people's rights to circumcise their boys. Someone else might hate jahovas witnesses or Mormons for preaching to and harassing them on the street. Of course one may legally hate Mormonism for mandating it's adherents to do that, but is it not more natural to &quot;hate&quot; those individuals who see fit to follow a system of belief that urges them to engage in such conduct? So we have a matrix of two distinctions basically, that between &quot;hating&quot;/decrying the perceived &quot;sin&quot; and &quot;sinner,&quot; and so in cases of political and religious &quot;sins&quot;. Of course one can express antipathy and contempt for abstract sets of beliefs but they have no impact until they are collectively given force to by their adherents just as laws are merely inanimate words on paper with no force until a judge with a gavel prompts a policeman with shackles to give them effect. Similarly they don't even exist as words on a page until some political force(s) organise to muster the will for them to be passed. So either before their passage or after their application it is rather pointless to hate laws themselves. But their proponents, it makes much more sense to. How are these distinctions addressed by the law?
Hate whoever you want The law doesn’t care who you hate, who you love and who you don’t give a rat’s behind about, nor does it care about your reasons for doing so. Similarly, the law in most advanced countries doesn’t care if you express your hatred in words. Write as many social media posts as you like decrying the imagined depredations of your hated groups. Record music and videos expressing that hate. Stand on a soapbox in an area set aside for such purposes and shout your hate to the world. Just remember, no one is obliged to supply you with the soapbox (actual or metaphorical). As an aside, there are some countries, which because of their history, have particular laws about what can and can’t be said about Nazis and Fascists (note the capital F). What the law does care about Violence - you can’t hurt people just because you hate them Harassment and abuse - you can express your hate but you can’t get in someone’s face to do it ”Hate speech” - which is not speech where you express hatred. It’s speech that incites or promotes violence against the hated group. Jurisdictions differ about where this line is. The United States requires the violence to be “imminent” meaning the speech has to be targeted to affect the audience to commit violence straight away. Other countries will crack down before that. Anti-discrimination law - which only protects certain groups in certain situations. For example, it is perfectly legal to exclude non-Catholics from taking Holy Communion. Similarly, the Labour Party convention is a ticketed event and they are perfectly free not to issue invitations to Tories.
One law is 42 U.S.C. §2000a (a)All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin. Nothing about political opinion. Also, note that a web site is not a &quot;public accommodation&quot; so the rules can be different. Feel free to start a both a coffee shop and a web site that do not serve socialists.
Crime and disorder act 1988 s32 introduces religiously aggravated harassment which effectively extends S2 and S4 of protection from harassment act. This seems to completely nullify the protections of the behaviours allowed by s29J of racial and religious hatred act 2006. I don't understand how you arrive at that conclusion. Harassment is unwanted behaviour repeatedly targeting a particular individual or connected group of individuals (e.g. a family or members of a particular club or place of worship). &quot;Religiously aggravated&quot; means it has a religious component and adds to the sentence. For example, standing outside a place of worship every day, shouting at the coming and going individual(s) &quot;you Christian/Jewish/Muslim scum.&quot; https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/stalking-and-harassment Commenting or joking about Christianity/Judaism/Islam generally is entirely different behaviour and has the 29J defence.
It is legal. What would be illegal is for a public school to promote or inhibit a religion. You can teach all sorts of facts that touch on religion (millennia of Western history) and you can e.g. survey the major religions of the worlds as a cultural phenomenon. You can use circumlocutions or proper names. It's not illegal to confess to having personal beliefs. This is about public schools, which is an arm of the government. A person who is in a school, for example a student, is not prohibited from promoting or demoting a religion, therefore a student who clearly and openly advocates the Pastafarian faith is not to be sanctioned, except insofar as the conduct is objectively disruptive. This is because the student is clearly not acting as an agent of a government institution. Things are a little murky when it comes to teachers and guest speakers. Teachers do not lose their First Amendment rights when they enter the classroom. Here is a summary of pertinent court rulings. The main principle that comes from such cases is that school districts can direct teachers to refrain from certain actions when there is a reasonable belief that the actions would run afoul of the Establishment Clause. Individual teachers have been ordered to not engage in silent reading of prayers in school (Roberts v. Madigan). Case law on guest lecturers is probably close to zero, since guest lecturers don't have the same kind of property right to be at the school expressing themselves as teachers do.
It may be discrimination; not all discrimination is illegal. Details vary by jurisdiction, for example discrimination on the following bases is illegal in Australia: race colour sex sexual preference age physical or mental disability marital status family or carer’s responsibilities pregnancy religion political opinion national extraction social origin Tobacco use or non-use doesn't make the list. That's the legal position; if you want advice on how to handle the workplace stuff post your question on the Workplace Stack Exchange.
Because the 1860 law that criminalised “unnatural” sex is unconstitutional In essence, Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India decided that criminalising sex between consenting adults violated the Constitutional right to equality. You have a Law in the Constitution that says people have to be treated equally. You have another law that says people in same-sex relationships are to be treated differently. The law in the Constitution wins. According to the BBC: Thursday's decision was delivered by a five-judge bench headed by India's outgoing chief justice Dipak Misra and was unanimous. Reading out the judgement, he said: &quot;Criminalising carnal intercourse is irrational, arbitrary and manifestly unconstitutional.&quot; Another judge, Indu Malhotra, said she believed &quot;history owes an apology&quot; to LGBT people for ostracising them. Justice DY Chandrachud said the state had no right to control the private lives of LGBT community members and that the denial of the right to sexual orientation was the same as denying the right to privacy. The courts in India, like they are in most common law/civil law jurisdictions are interested it questions of law. Questions of sin and morality they are happy to leave to religion.
The English version of the law says By a maximum imprisonment of five years shall be punished for whosoever in public deliberately expresses their feelings or engages in actions that: a. in principle is hostile and considered as abuse or defamation of a religion embraced in Indonesia; b. has the intention that a person should not practice any religion at all that is based on belief in Almighty God. from the Bahasa Indonesia law Dipidana dengan pidana penjara selama-lamanya lima tahun barangsiapa dengan sengaja di muka umum mengeluarkan perasaan atau melakukan perbuatan: a. yang pada pokoknya bersifat permusuhan, penyalahgunaan atau penodaan terhadap suatu agama yang dianut di Indonesia; b. dengan maksud agar supaya orang tidak menganut agama apapun juga, yang bersendikan ke-Tuhanan Yang Maha Esa The law does not define "public", so it would normally mean what it means in ordinary language (and that is not at all easy to figure out: it might be considered "public" if the expression was made to a single person). However, in this case, it was clearly in public (at a speech with about 100 people) that the statement was made. The law does not say that those people who constituted "the public" that heard the statement have to have been offended. Rather, (first) the statement has to be made in public (it was), and second, it is "in principle is hostile and considered as abuse or defamation of a religion embraced in Indonesia". That's a matter for the court to sort out. It appears, for example, that Shi'a teachings are legally blasphemous (case of Tajul Muluk). Unfortunately, there aren't any accessible resources here pertaining to the court decisions, so it's not clear if there are any concrete limits on what could be found to be blasphemous. However, it is established law that deviant teachings are legaly blasphemous, see the 39 case synopsis and the end here.
Actually, there is not a government kill list, that is just a meme. The First Amendment says (starts) &quot;Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...&quot;. That means a number of different concrete things: there shall be no laws prohibiting any religion, or preferring a religion, not may there be laws impeding or promoting the practice of a religion. The government therefore cannot reward or punish a person for believing in skin walkers, nor for turning themselves into a coyote (if they can do it). The old practice of burning witches at the stake is illegal, similarly at least under current understandings of the law it would be illegal to punish those without a religion with a fine or death. The aforementioned person can thus practice witchcraft – up to a point. One cannot get away with murder by claiming that they are just practicing the Ásatru ritual of blót. Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah is an example of how the government can not restrict a religious practice (banning animal sacrifices of a particular religion), Employment Division v. Smith is an example of a neutral prohibition which happens to impinge on a religion (outlawing certain drugs limits a religious practice).