How to Make PBS Pledge Week Even More Insufferable

May 9, 2011 8:12 A.M.
By Mark Steyn

An employment tribunal in Britain has ruled that a belief in public service broadcasting is equivalent to religious faith:

Its extraordinary decision elevates the BBC’s core principle to a place in the law equivalent to Christianity”¦

South African-born Mr Maistry, who worked for the BBC Asian Network, says he suffered discrimination for six years until he was dismissed last year.

He has filed a claim for “˜religious or belief discrimination’, which allegedly took place against his philosophical view that “˜public service broadcasting has the higher purpose of promoting cultural interchange and social cohesion’”¦

The tribunal chairman established the principle that Mr Maistry’s love of public service broadcasting amounted to a belief which should have the same protection from discrimination that the law gives to followers of religious faiths.

Mr. Blair’s ministry introduced the “religious discrimination” law in 2003. Given that, with the exception of its many firebreathing imams, post-Christian Britain is a land without faith, it was entirely predictable that the law would wind up protecting the anything they do believe in:

Two years ago, a tribunal found that company executive Tim Nicholson, a firm believer in climate change, was wrongly dismissed after objecting to his company’s use of flights and cars.

That case set a precedent and, this year, animal rights activist Joe Hashman successfully argued that he was wrongly sacked from his garden centre job after his activities were discovered. He said his beliefs should be protected by his employer”¦

At the same time, a series of cases have dismissed the importance of Christian beliefs.

Of course. If you look at these decisions in toto “” from “climate change” to “public service broadcasting” “” we are about two judges away from having the entire program of leftist conventional wisdom ruled a state church. What about soccer yobs who believe in drinking 37 pints, nutting you behind the eyes for looking at their bird, and then tossing you through the bus shelter before urinating down odd-numbered front gardens all the way home? Doesn’t that qualify as a belief system?

UPDATE: Re the Beeb and PBS, a reader points out it could be worse:

As long as they don’t start coming door to door like Jehovah’s Witnesses

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