I was going to put this on the JKR exposing the guff laws thread, but its full now but I think its really relevant to this ongoing discussion:
There are protections on the basis of religion within the new scottish hate crime law.
There is no UNIVERSAL definition of religion within english (or scottish) law at present however there IS case law about what constitutes religion in various separate areas of law.
I note the following:
Discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief was originally prohibited in England and Wales in relation only to employment, under the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, which defined religion or belief as meaning ‘any religion, religious belief, or similar philosophical belief’. Employment Tribunals used the word ‘similar’ to exclude certain non-religious beliefs such as nationalistic and political beliefs. However, the Equality Act 2006, which extended religion or belief discrimination to cover the provisions of goods and services, took the opportunity to remove the word ‘similar’ and to expressly include lack of belief. The current definition, now found in section 10 of the Equality Act 2010, states that ‘religion means any religion’ and ‘belief means any religious or philosophical belief’.
AND
the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Grainger PLC v Nicholson, which concluded that an asserted belief in manmade climate change, together with the alleged resulting moral imperatives arising from it, was capable of constituting a ‘philosophical belief’ for the purpose of the 2003 Regulations because it met the criteria laid out by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights which was directly relevant. Employment Judge Burton summarised the meaning of ‘philosophical belief’ as including five requirements:
- (i) The belief must be genuinely held.
- (ii) It must be a belief and not … an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available.
- (iii) It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour.
- (iv) It must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance.
- (v) It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, be not incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.
So in terms of hate law and its implimentations, we've potentially got a paradox if its fundamental to your job to say: understand biology or the impact of trauma on women who have been victims of domestic abuse.
How do you deal with the potential that you might be done for a hate crime if you HAVE to acknowledge sex or safeguarding as part of your job too. You could be held negligent if you DON'T raise certain questions too.
Equally, a non-crime mark on your DBS which prevented you from say working from children because of a belief WORIADS would be slightly problematic because it would effectively be at odds with employment laws on discrimination by merely being a belief even if its not catergorised as a religious belief by the Scottish Government or within the hate law definitions (cos the Scottish Government HAS to beholden to the ECHR even if it doesn't answer to Westminister on this matter).
Other areas of law also make a point that religious protection ALSO applies to individuals who DON'T share a belief. In other words in certain situations someone could claim they have been discriminated against because they DON'T share a religious belief and are atheist.
Given theres a case to make that gender identity is a religious belief due to the 'concept of being born in the wrong body' (which a lot of organisations have suddenly backed away from) and the idea of souls you could argue that Gender Critical Beliefs are protected as they are worth of respect but oppositional to these religious beliefs too.
There is PLENTY of conflict between existing law and the idea that being gender critical is in any way hate. The issue is how this is enforced and the way that the fear of enforcing it is held (the threat of being reported is included in this as its a form of intimidation) and whether someone might be forced to go through court to uphold their legally held and respectful beliefs.
Quite frankly its a fucking awful mess tbh. And makes many of the same mistakes as the Equality Act in terms of poor definitions.