Bernard Dineen: Equality that threatens religious expression

He is supported by the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, who says that using the ideology of "human rights" to assault religion risks undermining the very foundation of human rights themselves. He adds: "When a Christian airport worker is banned from wearing a cross, when Roman Catholic adoption agencies are forced to close because they do not place children for adoption with same-sex couples, we are in dangerous territory." What do the Church of England's leaders say? Heads well below the parapet as usual.

The latest threat to religious expression comes when the Bill could force the Church to employ openly gay members of staff or face being sued. In a free society such interference by politicians should not be accepted.

A leading journalist, who is gay himself, speaks from experience about adoption law. For the first two years of his life he was raised by nuns in a Catholic orphanage. He says that children such as him could be the real losers of Harriet Harman's obsessive drive to force the Church to embrace her doctrine of legalised social engineering. The 12 Catholic adoption agencies in England used to place a minimum of 200 children with adoptive parents. By tradition, they handled a third of the boys and girls who have been judged "most difficult to place". Some of those children had to wait years before finding a home.

The effect of Harman's legislation is that Catholic adoption agencies have to consider placing children with gay couples, even though it went against their spiritual teaching, or close down.

Scarcely a month passes without pressure being brought on Christians. There was the 67-year-old woman who wrote to Norwich Council objecting to a Gay Pride march. Two police officers warned her that she had committed a "hate crime". Then there was a couple who ran a guest house, threatened with prosecution after discussing religion with a Muslim women guest. Enter the police. Two pensioners who were devout churchgoers wanted to distribute their Christian leaflets alongside the gay rights literature promoted by their council. Again the knock on the door by police.

The gay journalist asks what sort of society we are becoming when people are threatened with criminal prosecution in this way. He believes Harman, far from helping to promote tolerance, is in danger of undermining the great strides towards gay equality in recent years by provoking a backlash.

The Chief Rabbi says the Pope's remarks should be used to launch an honest debate on where to draw the line between our freedom as individuals and our freedom as members of communities of faith. One should not be purchased at the cost of the other.

Harman calls her Equality Bill "an opportunity not only to build a new economic order but a social one as well". Those are words worthy of Orwell's 1984.

She is an out-of control zealot whose views are as alien to traditional Labour as they are to freedom itself.

TELEVISION adverts for ambulance-chasing lawyers have now been joined by another breed of tout. Gold dealers invite you to turn over your "unwanted gold" to them.

No trouble at all. Simply pop your stuff into an envelope and post it. You'll get your cash back by return. Judging by the number of firms getting into the business, it must pay big dividends.

The high price of gold must surely be good news for Britain's massive gold reserves, particularly at a time of recession. Unfortunately no. It would have been if Gordon Brown hadn't sold off half our reserves – 395 tonnes out of a total of 715 tonnes – as soon as he became Chancellor. The gold was sold off in 17 auctions at an average price of $275 an ounce: the price today is about $1,100. Brown had chosen the lowest price in two decades to plunder the national treasure, and take the proceeds in paper money. What a financial genius. It has taken the best part of 10 years for the genius to be recognised as the fake he is. Meanwhile, Britain is an estimated $11bn worse off because of his incompetence.

DIPLOMATS are angry at the practice of governments installing their cronies – usually failed politicians – as ambassadors and high commissioners (which means ambassador in a Commonwealth country).

Sending Paul Boateng, a bombastic character who scarcely distinguished himself as a Treasury Minister, as our man in South Africa was one such case. His tenure was marked by his staff threatening to strike after complaining of bullying by Boateng's wife.

Canberra has been a favourite target. First the Tories sent one of their senior MPs, and now we have Baroness Amos, former head of the equal opportunities quango. You might have thought she would be there to meet Prince William on his recent visit to Australia, but she had returned to Britain for a "senior leadership" course at the Foreign Office.

The bizarre explanation for her absence was that he was travelling only as "Prince of Australia and not as a British prince". It is time we stopped regarding embassies as rest homes for cast-offs. Britain has some of the finest diplomats in the world and they should be treated with respect.