Faith Communities often the problem not the solution

Why is it that New Labour and the Trevor Phillips of this world have got away with the amazing con trick of insisting that Faith and religion are issues that need to be treated the same way as other variables such as gender, class, race, sexual orientation, disability etc? At first sight this looks like it makes sense - after all one can be discriminated against for one's religion just as one can be for these other factors. We know this from Islamophobia and anti-semitism. The problem is that by insisting that Faith Communities should be at the heart of all generic equalities work we are endangering the whole enterprise. The new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights was launched in 2006 under the "leadership" of Trevor Phillips. This body claims to be an organisation "promoting equality issues across the full raft of ethnic, gender, sexual-orientation, disability and other minority interests". Under Clever Trevor this has resulted in equalities work challenging forms of discrimination being forced together with the so-called "Faith Communities". These so-called "Faith communities" are often the most resistant of any section of society to the most basic notions of equality, diversity, women's, LGBT and other minority rights. In fact this is a joke on a massive scale that serves to totally undermine the best of equalities work and involve us all in constant rearguard actions against some of the most obscurantist, fundamentalist and prejudiced individuals and belief systems on the planet!
KEEP FAITH PRIVATE!
If religious groups want to organise across their differences and campaign as such that's fine - but they shouldn't be encouraged to infect the rest of the equalities world with their appeals to their Gods or their Holy Books. These usually make a mockery of the one set of standards that can unite us in this diverse and muddled world - the notion of Human Rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration.