A feminist eventually, and then a change of subject

Under the heading "This is why I'm still a feminist", Liz Williams cites a sickening story from Saturday's Guardian about a so-called honour killing in a Muslim family. A young woman was butchered for daring to fall in love with the wrong guy - right religion, wrong background. The Guardian tells us 'The Old Bailey heard the method was "barbaric"', raising the question of whether there's actually a nice way to do it.

But being a perversely minded male, and while being able to see where Liz is coming from, I immediately asked myself: why is that a feminist issue? Because surely pinning down anyone and multiply stabbing them in front of their infant nieces is horrendous, regardless of gender. But then I thought a bit wider. Women of all cultures have been downtrodden much more than men; therefore these legacy bigotries are clung onto much more tenaciously by many cultures and, yes, religions (or at least religious interpretations) than any distorted image of manhood. Battered wives outnumber battered husbands. Male babies are generally valued. Male circumcision is (probably) less painful and certainly less damaging than the female kind. Male rape victims are a distinct minority.

So, fun as it would be to proclaim self-righteously that "actually I'm an everyone-ist, I treat everyone equally", the sheer weight of precedence means this has to be a feminist issue. The law can proclaim equality, but cultures and mindsets only follow suit when hearts and minds are changed; when people are taught that because women are just as important as men, therefore and ipso facto these medieval hangovers cannot be right.

On a separate bugbear, this is why church and state should be two absolutely distinct entities, and the state should be on top. The state should not care whose sensibilities it offends or whose toes it treads on. The state should be able to say, I don't care what your culture is - if you live in me then you respect my citizens, you do not murder them.

Now, yes, a state can go mad and bad - we've all seen that in the past hundred years - and it can be up to religion, or religious people, to put up an opposition. The difference is, it's far easier to change a bad state than a bad religion. A state is in one place, a religion is global. The basis of a state is that it makes a few simple laws to enable the general prosperity and safety of its citizens. The basis of a religion is that it's no more than a halfway house between here and a better hereafter. So, putting the state first seems the safer bet. The state should tolerate any and all religions, and indeed give them equal protection and rights, up to the point where they transgress certain basic principles, whereupon the state comes down on them like a ton of bricks.

The question is really what those certain basic principles should be ... I also realise that yes, this would give my beloved Church of England exactly the same status as the Scientologists or the Cult of the Invisible Pink Unicorns. But hey, I'm ranting, not debating, and my God can wipe the floor with yours. Bring it on.