Sussex University Secular Society Manifesto
This society:
- Promotes a rational world view based on our best scientific understanding and evidence.
- Promotes inclusive and cohesive community schools run on a basis of equality, without arbitrary divisions based on the religious beliefs of the child’s parents
- Advocates constitutional separation of church and state.
- Supports funding being diverted from religious institutions to scientific research and community bodies.
- Supports a humanistic world view based on human empathy and compassion
- Supports the declaration of human rights
- Supports a (mentally fit) person’s right to do as they choose with their own bodies, free from religious or legal sanctions and punishments. This includes, but is not limited to, the right to abortion, the right to end one’s own life, or to do so with the assistance of another.
- Supports the humane treatment of animals – up to and including death – without religious exceptions.
- Advocates freedom of expression, regardless of religious or political sensibilities. There is no right not to be offended.
- This society believes that a secular state is the only state in which the right to believe in any or no religion is guaranteed and protected.
- Support the teaching of comparative religion in schools to show that there is no one true faith, but many different, competing and mutually exclusive ones.
Accordingly, this society opposes:
- Discrimination on the grounds of religion, gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexuality or disability
- Unelected religious representation in government and parliament, including but not limited to, positions for bishops and rabbis in the House of Lords and ‘religious advisers’
- The promotion and use of ‘alternative’ medicines and treatments, which the society deems to be fraudulent and dangerous
- Monarchy, because of, among other reasons, its basis in the divine right of kings.
- The tax exempt status of the church and other religious institutions
- The genital mutilation of children, male or female. As children cannot give their consent, the society deems this as child abuse.
This society resolves:
- To participate in local, regional and national campaigns against religious privilege
- To get involved with, and share resources, information and activities with similiar, like-minded organisations, such as Brighton and Hove Humanist Society and the National Secular Society.