The Chair of Equality and Human Rights Commission Shows Bias Against Non-believers

We all expect the chair of the Equality and Human Right Commission (EHRC) to protect and promote the legal rights and interests of all human beings. However, TREVOR Phillips, the chair of Equality and Human Rights Commission appears to not feel this way. According to reports, Mr. Trevor Phillips is in trouble and is called upon by the British Humanist Association (BHA) to make an apology for making bias statement against non-believers in a recent interview. Mr. Trevor Phillips is reported to have stated:

Our business is defending the believer. The law we’re here to implement recognises that religious identity is an essential part of this society. It’s an essential element of being a fulfilled human being.

In other words, if you are not a religious believer, you are not a fulfilled human being. It is heartbreaking to hear a man who is the head of a commission design to protect the legal rights and interests of not just religious people but of non-religious people, making such discriminatory statement.

British Humanist Association (BHA) Chief Executive Andrew Copson, commented:

Trevor Phillips is the head of a commission which is responsible for the legal rights and interests not just of religious people but of non-religious people too. When he suggests that having religious belief is essential in order to be fulfilled as a human being, he is belittling them.

Copson continued:

If [the EHRC chief] made such divisive comments on grounds of race, saying ‘it’s my job to stand up for white people’, he would rightly be excoriated. But somehow the fashionable sentiment that religion is good and non-religious people are hectoring and oppressive – when in fact the opposite is often the case – makes him think that this particular sort of bigotry is okay. It isn’t.

Mr Phillips states that the Commission’s role is in ‘defending the believer’ and that his ‘real worry’ is unfair treatment of religious people. He should tell that to the non-religious parent who can’t get their child into the local school while Christian neighbour can, or the child expected to worship in school against his or her wishes, or the employee refused promotion by a religious employer contracted to provide a public service on behalf of the state because he or she doesn’t believe in God.

He continued:

With ill-informed remarks like these coming from the head of the Commission, non-religious people must have diminishing confidence that it is concerned with or even understands their interests.

Source - The Freethinker