Defeat for Christian fired over a gay snub
A JUDGE yesterday started a row over religion and the law after throwing out the case of a Christian sex therapist who refused to work with gay couples.
In a ruling that is set to inflame tense relations between the Church and the judiciary, Lord Justice Laws said legislation for the protection of views held purely on religious grounds could not be justified.
The case, brought by committed Christian Gary McFarlane, 48, a former Relate counsellor, was backed by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey.
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He was applying to the Court of Appeal for permission to challenge a ruling which supported his sacking in 2008 as a relationship counsellor for refusing to give sex therapy to gay couples.
Lord Carey had sent a statement to the judge calling for a specially-formed panel of judges with a “proven sensitivity and understanding of religious issues” to hear the case.
He said recent decisions involving Christians by the courts had used “dangerous” reasoning and this could lead to civil unrest. But, throwing out the case, the judge said: “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.”
Lord Justice Laws said Lord Carey’s claims were “misplaced” and that judges never likened Christians to bigots or sought to equate condemnation of homosexuality by some Christians.
Speaking after the case, Andrea Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre, who supported Mr McFarlane, said: “The notion that the Bible’s teaching is ‘necessarily subjective being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence’, is highly contentious.
“Mr Mcfarlane simply wanted his religious beliefs to be accommodated by his employer, which was not unreasonable. It seems that a religious bar to office has been created, whereby a Christian who wishes to act on their Christian beliefs on marriage will no longer be able to work in a great number of environments.”
Derek Munn, a director of gay pressure group Stonewall, said: “You can’t refuse a service to a person based on their gender, race or disability, and you can’t on the basis of their sexual orientation either.
“People delivering public services mustn’t be able to pick and choose who they will serve on the basis of personal prejudice.”
