The Scotsman reports (10 June 2013) the
Scottish Government Minister for Community Safety Roseanne Cunningham stating,
in awarding grants to groups to tackle 'grassroots' religious sectarianism,
'that we are determined to create a Scotland which is not weighed down by the
prejudices of the past'.
Why then does the Scottish
Government, in its proposals for an independent Scotland, propose to retain the
current UK monarchy with its sectarian religious basis which excludes Roman
Catholics and those not in communion with the Church of England from the throne
and which requires a new monarch to swear oaths affirming Protestantism and
rejecting Roman Catholicism despite the Scottish Parliament agreeing, on more
than one occasion, that such religious discrimination should be abolished from
the public life of the state?
Religious sectarianism is not just a
problem in some street incidents and on some football terraces. It is evident at the
highest reaches of the UK state and the proposed constitutional arrangements
for an independent Scotland. It needs attention there as well as at the
grassroots.
Letter in the Scotsman 11 June 2013
