Schools The organisation opposes
faith schools because "The majority of the evidence [...] points towards their being an unfair and unpopular part of our state education system which the majority of people in Britain want them phased out." In addition, they argue that faith schools are "exclusive, divisive and counter intuitive to social cohesion" and blame religious admissions procedures for "creating school populations that are far from representative of their local populations in religious or socio-economic terms." While the organisation is opposed to faith schools receiving any state funding whatsoever, it supports the
Fair Admissions Campaign which has a more limited scope because "it furthers our aims of ending religious discrimination and segregation in state schools; and secondly because we know how important this particular topic is." The organisation campaigns for reform of
Religious Education in the UK including a reformed subject covered by the national curriculum which is inclusive of non-religious viewpoints, such as "Belief and Values Education". They believe that "all pupils in all types of school should have the opportunity to consider philosophical and fundamental questions, and that in a pluralist society we should learn about each other's beliefs, including humanist ones". Humanists UK President-elect Alice Roberts was criticised for sending her child to a faith school, despite Humanists UK's campaign against state-funded religious schools. She responded that this was the very point of the campaign: that she, like many other parents, had little choice over where to send her child and that she would have preferred a non-faith school option local to her. Humanists UK also support humanist volunteers on the local
Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education which currently determine the
Religious Education syllabus for each local authority. Educational issues have always featured prominently in Humanists UK campaigns activities, including efforts to abolish compulsory daily
collective worship in schools and to reform Religious Education so that it is "Objective, Fair and Balanced" (the title of an influential 1975 booklet) and includes learning about humanism as an alternative life stance. The organisation opposes the teaching of
creationism in schools. In September 2011, Humanists UK launched their "Teach evolution, not creationism" campaign, which aimed to establish statutory opposition to
creationism in the
UK education system. The
Department for Education amended the funding agreement for free schools to allow the withdrawal of funding if they teach creationism as established scientific fact. In 2019, Humanists UK's Wales Humanists branch revived the campaign in partnership with
David Attenborough after the
Welsh Department of Education omitted to include similar safeguards against teaching creationism in schools. Humanists UK has long campaigned in opposition to
collective worship laws in the UK which require all schools to hold school assemblies "of a broadly Christian character". In 2019, the charity backed two parents to take a human rights challenge to those laws, arguing that the state had a duty to treat non-religious pupils equally and by effectively isolating those who withdraw from compulsory worship, discrimination occurs. Later that year, Humanists UK launched a new website, Assemblies for All, which compiles school assembly resources from NGOs, charities, government sources, the BBC, and businesses to make it possible for teachers and school leaders to put on "inclusive assemblies" on diverse topics – including the environment, mental health, and public holidays – as opposed to the collective worship required by law. Through its education website Understanding Humanism, the charity also provides resources to teachers who want to include humanist perspectives and information about humanism in lessons.
Constitutional reform The organisation campaigns for a
secular state, which it defines as "a state where public institutions are separate from religious institutions and treat all citizens impartially regardless of their religious or non-religious beliefs." It points to issues such as the joint role of the
British monarch (both Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Head of State), the reserved places for bishops in the
House of Lords, the status of the
Church of England (the officially established church), and other "discriminations based on religion or belief within the system" such as those in education and Public Services.
Ethical issues accepting the Services to Humanism award at Humanists UK Annual Conference in 2012 Humanists UK has supported the
rights for those who need assistance in ending their own lives, and lobbied parliament for a change in the law, on behalf of Tony Nicklinson and Paul Lamb, in their 'Right to Die' legal cases. In 2014, it intervened in a Supreme Court case in which the court stated it would rule again on a potential
declaration of incompatibility between restrictions on the right to die and the
Human Rights Act should Parliament fail to legislate decisively. In February 2019 they helped form the Assisted Dying Coalition, a group of like-minded campaign groups seeking to legalise assisted dying for the terminally ill or incurably suffering. Persistent campaigns include defending legal
abortion in Great Britain and securing its decriminalisation and its legalisation in
Northern Ireland, defending
embryonic stem cell research for medical purposes, challenging the state funding of
homeopathy through the
National Health Service, and calling for consistent and humane law on the slaughter of animals. It has also campaigned for 'opt-out'
organ donor registers to improve the availability of life-saving organs in the UK; Wales became the first part of the UK to adopt such a register in 2015. Jersey followed in 2019, to be
followed by England in 2020. The organisation also campaigns on marriage laws, demanding full equality for same-sex and humanist marriage ceremonies throughout the UK. Humanists UK had been providing same-sex wedding ceremonies for decades, and had strongly supported legalising same-sex marriage years in advance of eventual UK and Scottish legislation. In 2013, it secured an amendment to the same sex-marriage bill to require UK Government to consult on letting humanist celebrants conduct legal marriages. Though the consultation result strongly indicated that legalisation should go ahead, ministers have so far declined to use the order-making powers to effect the change. It also campaigns for same-sex and humanist marriages in Northern Ireland. In 2017, it supported a humanist couple to challenge Northern Ireland's refusal to give legal recognition to humanist marriages through the High Court in Belfast, which resulted in legalisation of humanist marriages in Northern Ireland in June 2017. After campaigning to legalise same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland, it celebrated its success with a promotional billboards across Belfast emblazoned, 'Love wins for everybody', advertising
humanist ceremonies. The charity has been consistently supportive of
LGBT rights across its history. It was also among the first organisations to protest
Section 28 in the late 1980s, and was one of the most vocal and longstanding advocates of a ban on
gay conversion therapy, which it denounces as "religious pseudoscience" with harmful consequences. This eventually led to a 2018 commitment from the UK Government to ban the practice. Its humanist celebrants conducted non-legal partnership/wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples for many decades prior to the law changing. Many of its campaigns are based on
free speech and
human rights legislation and it has based much of its campaigning on the Human Rights Act 1998. In 2008, the
blasphemy law was repealed, an issue over which Humanists UK had long campaigned. It sought unification of existing anti-discrimination legislation and contributed to the Discrimination Law Review which developed the Equality Act 2006 and then the
Equality Act 2010. In January 2008 Humanists UK (known as the BHA at the time) and the National Secular Society approached the Scouts Association about a conflict between the claims of inclusivity on their website and their oath. In February 2008 journalists
Bryan Appleyard and
Deborah Orr criticised both Humanists UK and the
National Secular Society for the (ultimately successful) campaign to end discrimination against non-religious children in the
Scouts' Oath of Allegiance. In April 2008 Jonathan Petre, The Daily Telegraph religious affairs journalist, countered this position pointing out that the Scout Oath of Allegiance was discriminatory. After consultation with Humanists UK over a five-year period, Girlguiding UK in June 2013 and eventually the UK Scout Association in October 2013 recognised the discrimination and amended their oaths to accommodate non-religious young people from 1 January 2014. In the 2020s, Humanists UK was one of the charities at the forefront of campaigns to defend the Human Rights Act and the freedom to instigate
judicial review from threats of being watered down or repealed. It assembled a large civil society coalition of charities, trade unions, and human rights organisations speaking in defence of the present settlement.
Public awareness at the bus campaign launch On 21 October 2008, Humanists UK lent its official support to
Guardian journalist
Ariane Sherine as she launched a fundraising drive to raise money for the UK's first atheist advertising campaign, the
Atheist Bus Campaign. The campaign aimed to raise funds to place the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" on the sides of 30 London buses for four weeks in January 2009. Expecting to raise £5,500 over six months, the atheist author
Richard Dawkins agreed to match donations up to £5,500 to make £11,000 total. The campaign raised more than £153,000, enabling a nationwide advertising campaign to be launched on 6 January 2009. On 8 January 2009
Christian Voice announced they had made an official complaint to the
Advertising Standards Authority asserting that the Atheist Bus slogan broke rules on "substantiation and truthfulness". In total the ASA received 326 complaints about the campaign, with many claiming that the wording was offensive to the religious, however Humanists UK contested the complaint and commented on the plausibility of the ASA making a claim as to the "probability of God's existence".
Robert Winston criticised the campaign as "arrogant". The ASA ruled that the slogan was not in breach of advertising code. Posters for the campaign which used the slogan "If you're not religious, for God's sake say so" were refused by companies owning advertising hoardings in railway stations following advice from the Advertising Standards Authority who believe the adverts had "the potential to cause widespread and serious offence". The Census results for England and Wales showed that 14.1 million people, about a quarter of the entire population (25%), stated they had no religion at all, a rise of 6.4 million since the 2001 census. Humanists UK said the fall in the number of Christians from 72% to below 60% was "astounding", and calculated that they could be in a minority by 2018. Set up in 2010, the Resolution Revolution campaign aims to "[recast] the tired old New Year resolution – so often about breaking a negative habit – as a pledge to do something positive for others". Participation is open to all and not restricted to humanists or the non-religious. In 2014, Humanists UK launched two public awareness campaigns. The first, called "That's Humanism!", was an Internet-based campaign revolving around four videos on humanist responses to ethics, happiness, death, and the scientific method, as narrated by its distinguished supporter,
Stephen Fry. The videos, which were widely shared on social media, were intended to introduce non-religious people who were humanist in their outlook to the existence of a community of like-minded people living their lives on the basis of reason and empathy. The second campaign, called "Thought for the Commute", was a London Underground campaign featuring posters depicting humanist responses from
Virginia Woolf,
George Eliot,
Bertrand Russell and
A.C. Grayling to the question "What's it all for?" The campaign intended to be a positive introduction to Humanism for commuters, as well as to highlight the exclusion of humanist voices from BBC slots such as
Thought for the Day. After announcing that it intended to replicate it in other UK cities, the campaign moved to bus posters in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool for four weeks in November and December 2014, this time depicting humanist responses from
Jim Al-Khalili,
Jawaharlal Nehru,
Natalie Haynes and Russell once again. ==Organisation==