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The Isle of Man Freethinkers believe it essential that government understands that major churches, far from representing the ‘moral majority’ of the island, may in fact be a totally untypical minority. It is also essential that the government practice of ‘automatically’ consulting on ‘ethical’ issues with church bodies who do not even consult their congregations before offering an opinion quickly ends, and is replaced by an open, transparent consultation process.
In 2006 we abandoned a previous position whereby individual Freethinkers made personal responses to publicly advertised government consultations for a structured response written by the secretary after calling for personal opinion, anecdotal evidence or other contributions from the general membership.
We have serious concerns that such ‘consultations’ come too late, after decisions taken behind closed doors with interested parties – including religious groups, but feel that unless more impartial views such as ours are put on record to protest such ‘rubber stamping’ the situation cannot change.
In addition, after persistent pressure, we have recently been able to contribute to some government advisory bodies. These include the steering committee which set up Kemmyrk (the public/private/voluntary sector partnership charity tackling Manx homelessness) and an ethics committee advising the health service on policy in the event of national disasters such as a flu pandemic. We were also instrumental (against opposition from some interested parties) in ensuring that a Manx homelessness database was set up to understand the specific nature of local homelessness and thus tackle it efficiently, though we are disappointed that the model decided on by civil servants does not appear to allow evidence gathering on the extent to which homelessness is caused by common prejudices such as homophobia, racism or sexism - sometimes in turn influenced by rigid religious views - or failures of government departments or policy.
In 2008 we also turned down the opportunity to join one government advisory body which is required to consult a fair cross-section of community bodies and interests, having decided that the selection procedure was a sham and that those ‘selected’ were interested parties who had, in effect, been allowed to choose themselves in order to prevent proper public scrutiny of their activities.
The table above provides links to some of our responses to government consultations. Some cannot be included because the information included was private and confidential. Some details have also been removed from one response included here because it included information given to us by the Scottish Registrar General solely to assist the Manx Registry. Others will be added as they are submitted.
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