He revealed on the radio that he doesn’t believe in God. What’s more, he seems to have a thoroughly sensible, tolerant approach to the whole religion issue.

What a refreshing thing to hear from a politician. It does often seem as though atheism or even agnosticism is one of the worst things a politician can be associated with among some circles. Tony Blair even seemed to think it was a liability to be the wrong type of Christian. C of E while PM, since resigning he has mysteriously become a Roman Catholic.

Paul Linford, for instance has said that Clegg’s non-belief is “certainly concerning for me as a Christian” (via Bob Piper). Never mind the millions of non-Christians in this country who have never seen a non-Christian PM! I wonder if he ever found Margaret Thatcher’s sex as concerning for him as a male.

In this supposedly tolerant society, I sometimes think we’d sooner see a three-legged Prime Minister than a non-church-goer — never mind a black or openly gay PM. I wonder how many leaders of the major parties historically have publicly stated that they don’t believe in God. I assume Nick Clegg must be among the first. Full credit to him for speaking the truth.

The second thing that has impressed me is the fact that he has enlisted Brian Eno to “reach out beyond the London beltway”. In particular, Eno is to advise the Lib Dems on how to appeal to young people.

This is good in two senses. Firstly, appealing to young people is good. One of the biggest crimes in the country today is to be a yoof, as you can see with the vilification of the hoodie, a convenient item of clothing.

Appealing to young people is a typical politician’s cliché. But this comes across to me as quite a serious attempt. Brian Eno is not some greasy pole-climbing politician looking to get good headlines in the Daily Mail.

The second sense in which is this good is… Brian Eno, man!

Brian Eno is 59, which has led some people to wonder if he is really the right person to appeal to youth. I’m 21, which is pretty young, although I guess I am not like most yoofs. But I think Brian Eno is great. The person who (as legend has it) invented ambient music has got to be awesome, right?

He has created some of the greatest pieces of music of the past thirty or forty years. A lot of young people respect this. I know I certainly do. Okay, there are various U2-related crimes, but that’s a tough gig. I mean, talk about polishing a turd!

Brian Eno should be respected for actually engaging his brain (one). He is the only pop musician I can think of who doesn’t just dribble out ignorance every time he opines about a topic other than music. In a world teeming with preening pricks like Bob Geldof and Bono, Brian Eno is a real breath of fresh air.

And, unlike Bob Geldof’s sojourn with the Conservatives (presumably David Cameron has some really nice biscuits and a good belly-rubbing technique), Eno’s association with the Lib Dems is principled. Remember Eno’s website from a couple of years back, Lib Dem This Time (rather broken-looking now)? Eno is also a long-standing supporter of electoral reform.

One other thing, and it’s related to what I said yesterday. It looks as though Nick Clegg has raised a few eyebrows by saying that he hasn’t heard of ‘Fairytale of New York’ and by citing a non-existent album (‘Changes’ by David Bowie) as his favourite.

It does seem a bit odd. But what if the poor guy just doesn’t like pop music? I have written before that I don’t understand why we expect politicians to know these things. Sure, most people keep tabs on pop music. But we are all different, and we all have different interests. Maybe Clegg’s “gaffes” are just down to the fact that he doesn’t waste time on trivia.

I’m glad I have ruled out becoming a politician in the future. If I did, I would no doubt be asked what my favourite film was. I’d have to answer, “I dunno, I don’t really watch films,” because I don’t really watch films. Then I’d be crucified by a media (and society?) that wants mine to be a mirror image of the median voter’s leisure tastes.

I finally got round to reading last week’s edition of The Economist a couple of days ago, and they had a piece about the issue (link requires subscription I’m afraid), saying that:

…it steps into the mine-ridden terrain where liberty… runs up against equality

This face-off between liberty and equality vexes many. Indeed, who wouldn’t want liberty and equality to be present in a society? If one threatens the other, what a difficult choice to make.

Perhaps surprisingly, The Economist comes down on the side of equality in this instance. But I would have thought that it would be better to aim for liberty. After all, if a society is guaranteed liberty, at least there is still a chance that it could achieve equality. Meanwhile, if equality is the main goal of a society, there is very little chance of achieving liberty as well.

To illustrate this, think about the adoption row. If Catholic adoption agencies are told that they must allow gay couples to adopt, their liberty to decide who they can and cannot serve has been taken away from them. If, on the other hand, Catholic adoption agencies are left to do as they please, there is every possibility that they would one day allow single sex couples to adopt from them. After all, as The Economist notes:

Give it time

Part of the unease over the gay-discrimination rules is that they are new. It would not occur to many to defend the exclusion of black adoptive parents, for example. Churches, like societies, do change. Just as most Christians have reconciled themselves to lending money at interest and most Jews do not examine the labels in their clothes to see if they contain mixed wool and flax, so homosexual parents may come to seem another variety in the bewildering gamut of family structures.

Attitudes change over time. Surely one day even the bigoted Catholic church will find itself accepting homosexuality in much the same way that racism is now seen as abhorrent when not so long ago it wasn’t.

And I want to make it clear that I am not siding with the Catholic church here. I want to say it loud and clear: the Catholic church is a bigoted organisation. But it is for precisely that reason why I find these attempts to force Catholic adoption agencies to allow single sex couples to adopt from them bizarre. I mean, it can hardly be as if there is a huge queue of gay people waiting to adopt children from such a bigoted group.

It was like a few months ago when legislation was passed to allow gay people to stay in the guest houses of bigots. Because gay people were really banging the doors down waiting to share a roof with homophobes. Wow, you really released the shackles there.

Whatever happened to that good, liberal, democratic principle of “you are a fucking arsehole but I will defend your right to be a fucking arsehole” (I paraphrased that you know). As Will P says in a strongly argued post:

We agree to disagree. If they want to cite religious reasons for not letting me seek to adopt a child with a hypothetical future partner, then fine, I’ll go somewhere else…

So that I can go to lengths to which I’d never really bother to go to express who I am, devout members of various faiths (and the gay adoption issue is just one example of this, which is why I’ve pluralised that sentence) are no longer free to express their deeply-held religious principles. In short, in our quest to be ever more liberal, we have become illiberal. We are on a dangerous course: we must stop now.

Much of this debate feels like chippy score settling than anything else, much in the same way that the ban on fox hunting was more to do with annoying some toffs more than anything else. I don’t think this really has the interests of gay people at its heart.

This does put me in the slightly odd position of agreeing with The Devil’s Kitchen. Of course, Bookdrunk is right to criticise that Catholic Church for their stance on homosexuality. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Two people can have opposing viewpoints and they are allowed to disagree with each other. What’s wrong with accepting this and ending it there?

Funny, because that’s not what she’s saying today.

I think that over the past couple of years, the level of understanding within government of the scale of the threat that we face from… Islamist individuals and organisations has really increased and I think that as a result of that we have to take to a new level our partnership with those Muslim organisations who are showing real leadership on those issues.

So is your faith a private matter as Ruth Kelly said last year, or is it a matter for state intrusion as Ruth Kelly has said today?

Ruth Kelly has rejected claims that the government is “demonising” Muslims, after reports it is to ask universities to spy on student suspects.

The communities secretary said many groups understood the need to work in a new way to “face up to” the threat.

She urged council chiefs to help battle extremism – saying it was an issue for all communities, not just Muslims.

Ruth Kelly — the communities minister — is a person who refuses to say whether she believes that sex between two consenting adults is a sin or not. She is a member of an extreme religious organisation that advises women on what they can and can’t wear. But she will defend her precious Labour government whenever it criticises a different religion for advising women on what they can and can’t wear. It is sickening.

Phil Woolas — whose brief covers race relations — suggested that a teacher should be sacked for wearing a veil. I doubt very much that Aishah Azmi’s decision to wear the veil at work genuinely created a barrier to communication.

Has Phil Woolas ever actually been in a classroom? Most schoolchildren spend the whole lesson just staring down sullenly at their desk, doodling on their jotters or gazing at somebody they fancy. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are some pupils who don’t even notice their teacher has a veil on or not!

More seriously, it is a fact that people are able to take in more information when they are not looking at the speaker’s face. Taking in information from somebody’s face is a waste of brain power. I find myself that when I have to listen carefully I end up focusing on a stationery object in middle distance. So in what way is covering your face going to make people listen less?

It is true that if somebody has hearing problems then they will have to look more at the face to understand what they are being told. But this shouldn’t even be an issue because Aishah Azmi was prepared to teach her class without the veil. Yet Phil Woolas still wanted her sacked.

That’s the person with responsibility for race relations adding to the chorus of whining about Muslims currently emanating from senior government figures. Attacks on Muslims appear to have increased ever since Jack Straw made his comments about the veil.

Congratulations to the communities and race relations ministers for doing their best to pour petrol on this race relations fire.

Update: And here is Mr Eugenides’ view.

Longrider has an interesting post on the rather manufactured outrage. I mean, surely the Pope isn’t meant to like Islam? Cos he’s, you know, not a Muslim? He’s a Catholic? Duh.

What I’d like to know is how many Islamic leaders have nice things to say about Catholicism. It would probably not go further than saying, “their stance on homosexuals is bang on the money”.

Let me just bring you some breaking news — the wires are reporting that a bear has been spotted shitting in the sea. Not really.