Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-02-Speech-4-165"
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"en.20090402.35.4-165"2
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"Mr President, this report rests on a conceptual misunderstanding. Outside this Chamber, equality means the right of people to be treated the same. Here in this Chamber, we are using it to mean the right of people to be treated differently.
That is a critical point. Anti-discrimination legislation of this kind is not a refinement of the principle of equality under the law. It is an opposing principle. When we pass such reports as this, we take power away from people that one can vote for – and vote against – and give it arbitrarily to jurists. If this report were applied literally, it would prohibit an opera company from declining to hire men in soprano roles, it would prohibit a Labour politician from declining to have a Conservative as their press spokesman, and it would prohibit a Catholic school or hospital from preferring to employ its own co-religionists.
When I made these points, the answer from the report’s supporters was that it would not be used that way, and that everyone knows what it really means. I have to say that it strikes me as very bad jurisprudence to criminalise everything in theory and then rely on the courts arbitrarily to disapply the law."@en1
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