You should now be seeing “atheist buses” all over the UK after a modest campaign to counteract religious propaganda paid off (at times of writing) seven times as well as the instigator expected.
For decades I belonged in the traditional atheist camp “as long as they don’t bother me, they can believe and do what they like”, but in recent years have come around to the view that if religion is just allowed to bumble along, it does an enormous amount of harm to society, so we all have a duty to challenge it. Particularly when the government is acting (through schools, support for charities etc) as a prosthelitiser at every turn.
The bad news unfortunately reflects a victory in Northern Ireland for some of the UK’s worst religious bigots (who just happen to have backed the government on Gordon Brown’s favourite, but now-abandoned, 42 days detention proposal).
The government’s “banner-leading feminist” (huh), Harriet Harman, has blocked discussion of amendments to modernise abortion laws, and most essentially, to give women in Northern Ireland the same access to abortion as women in the rest of the UK. Now it looks like they will retain that status indefinitely. (Although I can’t help wondering if it wouldn’t be possible to do something under human rights law.)
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