The Boss...quiz Show....anyone Seen It!
Film, Media & TV0 min ago
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.The wedding in question was a civil wedding. The current situation is that you are not allowed to have any religious references in the music or readings used in a civil ceremony.
For that reason alone, Angels would not be allowed under the current law. However, in June 2005, the government announced that it would be looking into reviewing the law.
The report I saw on the BBC is rather misleading in the way it implies that the reason was for a PC reason - reading it, it does say that it was due to the ban on religious references.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4162896.stm
Moreover, the couple say that they were not aware that this law was in place. I find this extremely strange. When I got married in 2004, we had to submit all readings and suggestions for music in advance to the registrars and were told at the initial interview that all submissions were subject to the non-religious ruling. Our registrar was also at pains to tell us how stupid she thought the restriction was!
More importantly, shouldn't it have been disallowed on the basis that the couple clearly had no understanding of the lyrical content of the song? I'm surprised they didn't try and choose U2's One as a replacement...
"What do you think about the more general point of taking offence on behalf of some group or other that may not in fact be offended?"
I think that it probably depends on the particular instance. Your point about the muslim and not being offended by crosses is obviously valid but I can imagine some scenarios when it's perfectly possible to anticipate X will give offence to Y. Moreover, I'm not gay, black or disabled, but I can imagine plenty of comments *I* would find offensive regardless of whether actual target ever heard it or not.
People get their knickers in a right twist over the whole PC issue. A lot of the time, you can boil PC down to being respectful of other people, but it's become such an emotive phrase. Non-PC can be boiled down to 'It's my right to offend people'.
I dunno; "PC"s a bit like me referring to 'Daily Mail Islanders' (which I have done on this very site) - it's just used to imply that one can disregard the actual argument because a big emotive phrase has been deployed. The arguments should sink or swim on their individual merits.
It's just a shame the Daily Mail Islander's arguments are always so preposterous... If only they were as open-minded as me.
;-)
I got married in October 2004 and was told that I could not have any religious words, songs or phrases in the wedding (as it was a civil wedding). This suited us fine.
But note that there was no religious items - ie not just Christian, but Mulim, Hindu etc.
and yes I was very tempted to change my name to Jesus God Blessed Mary Vic!
The ban on religious music and readings in civil marriages actually goes back to the Marriage Act of 1949, so it predates any of the so called PC brigade.
However, what is relgious music? We used to have a Vicar at our church who had us singing While Shepherds Watched to the tune of On Ilkley Moor Baht'At (and it does work)
It's quite scary actually, living in a society where the majority are dictated to by a loony liberal minority who think they're right and more educated and enlightened than the rest of us. It makes you wonder 'who'll be next?' It makes you wonder just how long freedom of thought is going to be allowed to continue. Liberals are the least 'liberal' people you will ever meet. From my experience they are bigoted, narrow-minded and constantly desperate to shout their opinions and shout down anybody else's.