Not all are equal in His sight, apparently

It may be a recurring theme on these pages but there was, in the news this week, yet another example of religion being used as a discriminatory tool. George Pratt, an eleven-year-old who'd been a Scout for some ten months, has basically been thrown out as a result of his atheist beliefs.

I happen to disagree with the premise of Ally Fogg's otherwise excellent article in the Independent on this matter - I do think this is a call for faith rather than a call for obedience. His refusal to take the Scouts' oath on the grounds that it requires duty to be sworn to God seems to be the sole reason for his exclusion. This after ten months with the organisation with no reported trouble. I accept that people may ask why he'd seek to join a body whose aims and values he does not share, but the fact is, he does share many of the values of the Scouts, or he wouldn't have been with them for ten months.

In response to asking why he'd want to join, all the other shared values would seem sufficient to me. A modicum of flexibility on the part of the Scouts may be in order, too, if they want to admit kids who are genuinely keen to join. But this one value seems to be the one which matters more than all the others. No matter how well he's done, no matter what he's brought to the group and they to him, out he goes.

And on that flexibility; the Scouts allow children of other faiths to take an amended version of the oath, replacing 'God' with 'Allah', for example, for Muslim children. Fair play, so they should. The fact is, though, that they would not dare exclude somebody on the basis of their religion. Religious kids are protected from such discrimination, while atheist kids are not. So faith, any faith, gets you in - or simply being prepared to stick your hand in the air and lie while you take the oath, pledging to do your duty to a God you don't believe in. That'll get you in too. It seems the Scouts would rather take a chance on having a kid like that in their ranks than let somebody in who has the principles not to take their oath under false pretences.

Their loss, as far as I'm concerned. They've lost a bright, obviously intelligent (other interviews with him reveal he's thought about this carefully, having been left to make his own mind up by his parents), morally upright kid and made themselves look like an anachronistic, discriminatory laughing stock in the process.