Far from being a 'victory for common sense', the ECHR's ruling is a worrying development in the fight for secular equality
Andrew Brown welcomes the decision by the grand chamber of the European court of human rights to overturn a 2009 ruling against the display of crucifixes in Italian classrooms, calling it "obviously a victory for common sense, of which only fanatics would disapprove". He says that "the idea that human rights legislation should be used to prevent children from being exposed to a crucifix is a profoundly totalitarian and superstitious perversion of one of our civilisation's best inventions", and concludes "a theologically neutral state takes no position on the question of which gods exist, or, if you like, which conceptions of God (if any) correspond to reality".
Few secularists would disagree with the latter assertion, but to suggest that the ECHR ruling is a victory for theological neutrality is to miss a key aspect of the case, namely that it was based on the constitutionality of a piece of Italian legislation that requires a crucifix to be displayed in every classroom in all the country's state schools, regardless of the whether they are religious schools or not. The plaintiff, Soile Lautsi, argued that this violated Italy's secular constitution, as well as the right of parents, under article 2 of protocol 1 of the European convention on human rights, "to ensure [their children's education] in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions". Thus, Lautsi v Italy was not a case of "a theologically neutral state tak[ing] no position on the question of which gods exist", but the government of Italy imposing a symbol of Catholicism on every classroom in the country.
Brown compares the case to the display of religious symbols in the Victoria and Albert museum, suggesting that no secularist would argue that a Muslim child was having their human rights violated by being exposed to Christian iconography. Perhaps not, but the two cases are hardly comparable ? leaving aside the obvious differences between an art exhibition and the use of a crucifix in a classroom for symbolic meaning, if this country passed a law demanding that every museum in the country display a cross above the entrance, secularists would quite rightly campaign for its repeal.
A neutral state is crucial to secularism, which is why those in favour of such a system view the Lautsi case as a defeat. The crucifix is not, as the Italian government laughably tried to argue, an "ethical symbol" which "could be perceived as devoid of religious significance", but the single most recognisable symbol of the Christian faith. How could its compulsory display in classrooms possibly be compatible with a plural society, in which the state favours no single religious or philosophical position?
It's worth noting, also, that the Lautsi judgement has implications beyond the classroom.
In ruling that Italy's crucifix law does not breach the European convention, the ECHR gives states a larger "margin of appreciation" in the interpretation of human rights than previously thought which, argue the European Humanist Federation, allows for flexibility "not only over how but even whether they protect some human rights". If the issue of crucifixes seems a little trivial, consider other areas in which states interpret the European convention ? in December the ECHR ruled that Irish abortion law violated the rights of women forced to seek abortions in the UK, but, working with a larger "margin of appreciation", the court could have ruled differently.
Of course, this issue opens up the wider debate over the extent to which European courts should be able to impose human rights law on individual states but, if we leave that aside, it seems clear that the Lautsi ruling is a blow to secular equality in Europe.
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