Just before Christmas I wrote to Sajid Javid at the Department for Communities setting out my reasons for not being willing to sign an oath of allegiance to “British values” which, I argued, are not values at all but politically-correct diktats. Today I received a reply which claimed:

“The Equality Act of 2010 protects all individuals from discrimination on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnerships.”

No it doesn’t. It doesn’t defend me against discrimination on the grounds of my religion, which is Christianity. If I try to put my Christian principles into practice – which is what the New Testament tells me to do – then, like the Irish bakers who refused to decorate a cake with a slogan expressing support for homosexual “marriage” – I could find myself convicted of discrimination against homosexuals.

This, of course, is a crime, while discrimination against practising Christians isn’t.

The reply continues:

“People are also free to hold their personal views about marriage.”

Tell that to the convicted Irish bakers!

Perhaps in some abstracted sense, I am free to hold my personal views about marriage – but only so long as I don’t articulate these views. Effectually this denies me my freedom to be a practising Christian and in effect bans Christianity from the res publica.

There is nothing tolerant or liberal about this. The reply from the Department for Communities reveals beyond doubt that we are ruled by an intolerant, illiberal, secular metropolitan elite.

If I may express this epigrammatically, I would say: “In today’s Britain, all communities are equal – but some communities are ,more equal than others.”