Dismissal of therapist who refused to deal with same sex couples's sexual relationships upheld

[lovingboth]

The BBC's story on this is on their news front page, probably because it combines a Christian, gay sex, and a former Archbishop of Canterbury (who submitted a witness statement warning of "future civil unrest" if judges did not rule in favour of Christian belief).

What it misses out is made clear in the actual judgement: the therapist signed up to a non-discrimination policy which explicitly included sexual orientation on starting the job in 2003 and only announced that he would not "endorse" "sinful" same sex sexual activity in 2007.

The judges' polite 'fuck off' to the ex-Archbishop and his call for, effectively, a religious court ("a specialist Panel of Judges designated to hear cases engaging religious rights") is particularly good:

The promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified. It is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary. We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs. The precepts of any one religion – any belief system – cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens; and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic. The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments. The individual conscience is free to accept such dictated law; but the State, if its people are to be free, has the burdensome duty of thinking for itself.

Comments

[skibbley]

Good quote. I wonder how one cites it reasonably correctly.

[fractal_angel]

Former ABC, not the current one. There's a big difference between them, and, indeed, on the amount of influence they can have. Which (fortunately in this case) is in the right direction.

[lovingboth]

Ah yes, former. I think the BBC have edited one of their earlier stories on this to make this clearer...

[ciphergoth]

Didn't the judgement in the Lillian Ladele case basically say "where religious discrimination and sexuality discrimination conflict, sexuality wins"?

[lovingboth]

BAILII are calling it [2010] EWCA Civ B1. The quote is para 24.

[lovingboth]

Sort of.

The two basic reasons they gave for upholding the overturning of the original Employment Tribunal's verdict that she had been discriminated against on the basis of her faith were that

a) it cannot constitute direct discrimination to treat all employees in precisely the same way - what Islington expected was all its registrars to do civil partnership ceremonies, and..

b) the reason for Islington to do this was reasonable - "fighting discrimination, both externally, for the benefit of the residents of the borough, and internally in the sense of relations with and between their employees".

They did go on to say explicitly that..

.. the prohibition of discrimination by the 2007 Regulations takes precedence over any right which a person would otherwise have by virtue of his or her religious belief or faith, to practice discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation.

Such an argument, in my view, accords with the natural meaning of the 2007 Regulations, and is supported by the provisions of Regulation 14, which identifies the relatively limited circumstances in which it is permissible to discriminate against anyone on grounds of sexual orientation because of one's religious belief: those circumstances are essentially limited to the membership and operation of "organisations relating to religion or belief", which plainly does not cover performing civil partnership unions, which is self-evidently a secular activity carried out in a public sphere under the auspices of a public, secular body.