There’s an obvious difference between “important to me” and “underpins my personal choices”. Football is the former, veganism/religion/etc is the latter.
For some (many ?) people, not so “obvious”
That’s why we have smart people as judges, not idiots 
Yea ? Not geriatric, out of touch fossils then ?
No. Mostly really smart, there may be exceptions but most certainly are.
1970 smart maybe. You keep believing that and life will be rosy.
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Keep reading the tabloids 
Think that’s more you than me.
For some people football does this.
They spend all their money on season tickets, travelling to all the away games, buying the latest strips, going to reserve and youth team games. It preoccupies their every waking moment and everything they do revolves around it, including choice of employment, life partner.
their kids names are after players or teams, the choice of car colour, clothing, the colour of their front door etc etc
Football meets your definition.
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My point exactly, just put far more eloquently than I could hope to do.
It is extremely valid to compare supporting West Ham, veganism and religion - all are delusional mindstates that deserve the utmost contempt, not legal protection.
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Except that provided by a Section 25 order… 
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I wonder if a social scientist would argue that we actually protect belief systems not for any fundamental reason, justifiable in the abstract, but for gritty practical reasons based on beliefs being tied so strongly to societal groupings. If there wasn’t anti-discrimination legislation we’d be back with no Catholics in the PSNI, no Jews teaching in universities (Nazi Germany and the USSR for example) and no Muslim newsreaders. The existence of angry individuals is a societal problem, but the existence of angry cohesive groups is a worse one.
The occasional spill-over into cases like the vegan’s is a small price to pay. If I had to guess I’d say he’ll lose his dismissal case. They could argue he wasn’t dismissed for his beliefs, he was dismissed for acting unreasonably on them.
VB
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Very valid points, as ever. While my tongue was somewhat in my cheek, moves which legitimise absurd beliefs are ultimately intellectually and socially regressive, because those notions generate social and intellectual ghetto-isation. It establishes a feedback loop that reinforces the ideas that some groups must always be treated differently - just as the absurd notion of “antisemitism” continues to do for Jewish people for example. It boils down to the paradox of “You’re a bigot because you don’t treat me differently.”. Social science isn’t helpful, because it doesn’t discriminate between intent and effect. Then again, calling philosophical studies a science isn’t a great starting point…
I wonder where the precedent will lead. Veganism in any form is a lifestyle choice. Lots of things are lifestyle choices: being a “furry”, obsessively building Lego sculptures, molesting children, not liking pineapple on pizza, buying too many orange watches, taking drugs, posting racist comments on discussion boards, etc. This could all get a tad messy…
Maybe the first job is to agree where particular beliefs lie along a line from ‘batshit crazy’ at one end to ‘our best hope of survival’ at the other. I guess the cult of Jim Jones is an example of the former and faith in the ebola vaccine during an outbreak is getting close to the latter.
Personally I’d put ethical veganism closer to the good end than, say, the Abrahamic religions. Some of it at least either makes practical sense (livestock farming is stressing the environment and, in the case of fowl and maybe pigs, risking the next global pandemic) or feels reasonable (some animal farming practices are more-or-less cruel, and that just doesn’t feel right). I’m not sure I’d call all of it absurd. Avoiding public transport because buses hit flies is barking though. The trouble is people don’t agree and we could spend from here to eternity not getting past that.
Then comes the question of whether particular groups are demanding that they be treated differently or are in fact demanding that they be treated the same. I guess in this particular case the vegan is arguing that his beliefs should be no more a reason for discriminating against him (by sacking him) than anyone else’s beliefs should be. He wants to be left in his job just as everyone else is left in theirs. I think this will come to a head when the court starts to look at his actions rather than his beliefs. I’m pretty much OK with ‘you can believe what you like but you have to act reasonably’.
Unusually in this case the law seems to enshrine some pretty woolly/subjective/grey tests. Philosophical beliefs have to be:
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Worthy of respect in a democratic society
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Not incompatible with human dignity
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Not conflicting with the fundamental rights of others
Those should be good enough to eliminate your molesting chldren and posting racist comments on discussion boards examples. The rest I could live with (doing drugs is a messy one because of the collateral damage).
VB
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Wow 
. You write like you’re protecting an anarchist utopia.
Maybe you should remember what beliefs underpin all societies and legal systems.
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There’s the key word. Should you enshrine imaginary stuff in law? We do, sure, and occasionally to good effect. But it also feels like a sticking plaster over the worst aspects of human stupidity. Simultaneously curating some of the worst ideas, while also trying to suppress some of the exact antisocial behaviours the protected groups enshrine in doctrine…
Veganism’s a bit of a red herring - could well be as you suggested that the judgement in question was made to enable a fair trial - if so, that is wholly the wrong sledgehammer to use on that particular nut, not least because I very much doubt he was dismissed for his mildly demented beliefs, which were hardly incompatible with those of his employer.
The ecological argument for veganism is avowedly sound up to a point, but only if you accept we should engineer human society to enable ever-growing populations. That’ll work for a generation or so - in the unlikely event the whole planet got on-board with it. But then you’re back to the already pressing issue of overpopulation - the whitest elephant in the room, the hottest spud in politics…
Wow . You write like you’re a patronising cunt.
Maybe you should remember to STFU until you’re asked for your opinion.
This kind of reminds me of why I joined the Wam all those years back. Ahh, Happy days.
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I don’t think we do enshrine imaginary stuff in law do we ? What we put into law is a protection against discrimination. The law doesn’t argue that believers are right any more (it pretty much used to, as heretics often learned the hard way). How could it ? Hindus and Christians are both protected and they can’t both be right. What the law does is to say that it’s an offence to discriminate against people because of their beliefs, as long as those beliefs don’t cross the red lines.
I fear you’re right, with the proviso that the problem’s actually worse than that - we don’t even know how to sustain the population we have now at the standard of living the first world regards as acceptable, let alone how to accommodate any further growth. If we were prepared to accept veganism (I’d take a lot of convincing) then we might sustain a higher population than if we weren’t.
VB