Discrimination must not be tolerated

· Any black person who is arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the priest who represents your God must die.

· A black person who works on God's holy day will be put to death.

· If a person has sex with a black person, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own hands.

The above verses are racist and abhorrent. They deny black people equality. Such a religious text must be treated with the contempt that any racially discriminatory text deserves. The proponents of the new religion would say that their God moves in mysterious ways or that the text is not meant to be taken literally. Neither explanation conceals the underlying racism and discrimination.

The astute observer would realise that these verses have been extracted from the Christian Bible and reworked to substitute the phrase 'black person' in biblical verses that condemn women, non-believers, a person who works contrary to God's laws, and homosexuals. It is clear that the terms 'woman', or 'gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersexperson', 'Caucasian male', or 'pregnant person' could have been similarly substituted.

If the newly drafted religious text is abhorrent, discriminatory and unacceptable in modern society, then so too is the Christian religion. Other discriminatory religions and organisations should be condemned with equal vigour.

It follows that public funding or support of any discriminatory religious organisations should be handled in the same manner as that for a body that might discriminate on the basis of race: governments should condemn them and never support or finance them, directly or indirectly.

It is absurd in modern society that governments give massive tax exemptions, and exemptions from discrimination legislation, to religious organisations. Many religions teach that only people of their religion are worthy of reward in a speculated afterlife. They discriminate in churches and hospitals, educational institutions and nursing homes. In recent times a horrendous record of child sexual abuse in religious institutions has become public. Furthermore, many churches indoctrinate children to worship a god or gods that, according to their scriptures, are guilty of indiscriminately killing humans­­­-the most warped of moral messages. Religions peddling discrimination and perverse moral messages deserve condemnation.

It would seem that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is no more than an aspirational piece of paper. People must work hard to secure the most fundamental of rights, because, while governments continue to allow people, organisations and religions to invidiously discriminate, there can be no equality.