UK court ends prayer in town councils - but on technicality

A UK court issued an interesting ruling today – finding that it is not lawful for town councils to say prayers before meetings. What makes it an interesting case is that the UK, unlike the US, does not have a legal separation between church and state.

In fact England has an official state religion – the Church of England. So having local government say Anglican prayers before a government meeting might not seem so unusual. But an atheist counsellor in a town called Bideford in Southwest England decided to challenge his council’s practice of saying a prayer before meetings. The legal challenge, brought by the National Secular Society, said that prayers have no place in "a secular environment concerned with civic business".

Because the UK has no formal constitution, and no domestic legal guarantee of religious freedom, the NSS cited the European Convention on Human Rights - which protects an individual's right to “freedom of conscience” and protects against discrimination. The ECHR (transposed into British law through the 1998 Human Rights Act)  is often cited in British cases involving human rights because there is no British constitution to appeal to. This lack of a legal code for human rights often means that Britain is more subject to the non-binding verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights (which guarantees the convention) than other countries.

DADT repeal: US joins the Western world

Yesterday America's infamous Don't Ask, Don't Tell ban on gays in the military was officially repealed. It was a hard-fought battle for the Democratic Party, and the Obama administration was keen to publicize the fulfillment of one of the president's key campaign promises. It wasn't easy, and the past three years have been met with opposition and setbacks.

The level of jubilation from Democrats was incredible, but understandable considering how long they have fought to end this ban. But looking at the situation in a global context, the excitement over a rather small policy change might seem strange. After all, until Tuesday the United States was the only country in the developed world that still had a ban on gays serving in the military.

Barring gays from military service is illegal under European law, and no such ban exists in any EU state - even in ultra-Catholic Poland or Italy. In fact the only country in all of Europe to have a ban on gays in the military is Serbia. In Latin America, the only countries to have bans on gays in the military are Cuba and Venezuela. As can be seen in the map above, the divide between gay bans (in red) and no gay bans (in blue and gray) mirrors the divide between the developed and developing world. Gay service bans are common in Africa and the Middle East.