no, really. all of these things are fundamentally the same.

1) somebody that gets caught discriminating against trans people or gay people uses "religious freedom" as an excuse, and accuses you of actually discriminating against them. and, they think they're smart.

2) somebody calling out islam on it's treatment of women or homosexuals gets accused of being "islamophobic", meaning they're the one being oppressive for calling out the culture on it's shit. and, the crowd thinks it's very smart for being sophisticated enough to work it through.

3) a black person reacting against a white racist gets accused of "reverse racism", meaning they're the actual racist, not the white person. and, the racist thinks they're very smart.

"religious freedom" is kind of the same thing as "reverse racism" or "islamophobia"; it's just a bullshit excuse that privileged people use when they get caught actually discriminating against somebody. but, the danger lies in actually legislating it or taking it seriously in a court of law.

again: if i could open up the constitution, i would abolish the concept of "religious freedom". but, the uk does not have a constitution, and the idea that you're going to find a precedent in common law for the premise that this is a substantive attack on his "religious freedom" is asinine.

he got fired because he refused to do his job correctly.

https://windsorstar.com/news/world/u-k-doctor-fired-after-refusing-to-refer-to-theoretical-six-foot-tall-bearded-man-as-madam-sues-government/wcm/5392b52e-99f7-494a-8733-307a08cd4460

i saw through this from day one...

in some sense, he's using the same kind of language we heard from other charlatans like barack obama, when he talks of "bipartisanism" and "ending partisanship". that is code for handing over power to the corporate sector, and has been for quite a while. but, he's added a new layer to it - he also talks of "independent oversight" in the same way, which essentially means removing oversight from government.

it's not that this is new, overall. i mean, that's what nafta is, to an extent. instead of having real courts apply real laws, they set up these kangaroo courts staffed by corporate cronies that rule on whether a policy will affect profits, at the behest of just about anything else. and, what are these kangaroo courts? they're "independent advisory committees - just like those phony nafta panels.

what is new is that i've never heard a politician talk like this, or to try to generalize the process so widely.

so, what we have here is really a whole new level of corruption, in a politician that appears to be actively working with industry to entirely dismantle the entire role of government oversight. it took way too long for people to figure it out, but better late than never...

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/07/11/news/advisors-storm-out-and-accuse-trudeau-government-dithering-corporate-watchdog

freedom is not impossible the way that property is.

but, it comes with the same set of contradictions - and it is reasonable enough to argue that freedom is not a realistic end goal until property is abolished, first, for essentially the same reasons.

freedom is not merely a lack of restraint, but is rather a lack of restriction. for, even the most enslaved person can discard restraint, if they are willing to face the consequences, and to be free of consequence from your own actions is merely to enslave those around you to the ramifications of them. so, that is not freedom. freedom is only real when it allows for the actualization of responsible self-interest, in a way that minimizes harm to everybody else.