I’m both a secularist and an old-style liberal; anyone can believe in whoever or whatever they want to as far as I am concerned on the condition that no one person or group should have the right to impose those beliefs on wider society.
I believe in a modern, democratic society legislation on issues such as abortion, Sunday observance and licensing laws should always be based on individual choice; I have my own conscience and I am perfectly capable of using it, without being dictated to by those who’ve appointed themselves to be my moral guardian.
Which brings me to this...
First Minister Ian Paisley has ruled out plans for a stadium at Belfast's Ormeau Park, saying it would affect five churches, including his own.
Mr Paisley said it would not be "convenient" to have Sunday School children arriving in buses with a greyhound track outside the door.
Unbelievable.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with having a religious nutter as your country’s leader. And that, in a nutshell, is why I am very worried about how the moral and social freedoms that we are entitled to expect in a modern democracy will be threatened with the devolution of power away from Westminster to the Prodiban and their cohorts at Stormont
If you don’t want to play or watch sport in Sunday, fine (although the uber prods of Glasgow Rangers and US evangelicals seem to have no similar problems with Sunday sport).
But those are not my religious beliefs and I, like anyone else in Northern Ireland , am entitled to spend my Sunday any way I want to.
The location of the new sports stadium (a debate which I am not going to comment on this site, as it is beyond the scope of this blog) should be determined solely on economic and sporting reasons, not on one person’s interpretation about what the bible says.
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