Well done. They have fairly looked at all the issues and the conflicting needs of the individuals, organised groups, the public sphere, and government accountability. The thing that pleases me most is that they have given the fervent a chance to quarantine homosexuals, but only where they are not using public monies, running on a commercial basis and are upfront about who they will and won’t service. The one area that will probably continue to have an uproar is on education. Up to what age students? What kind of educational context e.g. primary school, high school, university, theological college, adult… Read more »
Actually, I find the idea of a separate Legislation on Harassment a rather bright idea.
It would allow separating the very real and substantial issue of harassment from the secondary but thorny categories of religion, race, gender, age & c. and from the various yet circumstantial situations in schools, work-places, churches, the public sphere & c.
It would allow for serious challengeing of attitudinal problems, while avoiding most of the automatic yet irrelevant polemic.
Merseymike
17 years ago
There already is legislation relating to harassment, Goran. Personally, I agree – there is something to be said for not tying the two together too closely.
It’s going to be tricky to manage it, there will need to be an awareness of the extremes and lobby groups’ interests at both ends of the spectrum. I would comment that there is a merit in harassment being covered at this point, because one of the comments from the paper was the testimony of the more covert forms of harassment. I did find myself contemplating the Black Noir legislature and dynamics when reading this. There is a healing coming about as victims are able to describe how they have been hurt and evidence been put forward do demonstrate systemic… Read more »
Re a harassment law Hmmmm The usual way of constructing harassment in UK law (and latterly in EU Directives) is that harassment is a part of discrimination (usually considering it as part of direct discrimination). There are already criminal laws against various forms of harassment (e.g. stalking, but also including homophobic harassment) but generally harassment has been part of what may be termed equality enactments. Finally the UK is planning a Single Equality Act where everything is due to be rolled into one enactment across all equality strands as is common in many countries so harassment will be included in… Read more »
Well done. They have fairly looked at all the issues and the conflicting needs of the individuals, organised groups, the public sphere, and government accountability. The thing that pleases me most is that they have given the fervent a chance to quarantine homosexuals, but only where they are not using public monies, running on a commercial basis and are upfront about who they will and won’t service. The one area that will probably continue to have an uproar is on education. Up to what age students? What kind of educational context e.g. primary school, high school, university, theological college, adult… Read more »
Actually, I find the idea of a separate Legislation on Harassment a rather bright idea.
It would allow separating the very real and substantial issue of harassment from the secondary but thorny categories of religion, race, gender, age & c. and from the various yet circumstantial situations in schools, work-places, churches, the public sphere & c.
It would allow for serious challengeing of attitudinal problems, while avoiding most of the automatic yet irrelevant polemic.
There already is legislation relating to harassment, Goran. Personally, I agree – there is something to be said for not tying the two together too closely.
It’s going to be tricky to manage it, there will need to be an awareness of the extremes and lobby groups’ interests at both ends of the spectrum. I would comment that there is a merit in harassment being covered at this point, because one of the comments from the paper was the testimony of the more covert forms of harassment. I did find myself contemplating the Black Noir legislature and dynamics when reading this. There is a healing coming about as victims are able to describe how they have been hurt and evidence been put forward do demonstrate systemic… Read more »
Re a harassment law Hmmmm The usual way of constructing harassment in UK law (and latterly in EU Directives) is that harassment is a part of discrimination (usually considering it as part of direct discrimination). There are already criminal laws against various forms of harassment (e.g. stalking, but also including homophobic harassment) but generally harassment has been part of what may be termed equality enactments. Finally the UK is planning a Single Equality Act where everything is due to be rolled into one enactment across all equality strands as is common in many countries so harassment will be included in… Read more »