A barrister says the widespread condemnation of the court victory of a Christian registrar shows up the intolerance of today’s liberal crusaders.
Neil Addison
In June, Christian registrar http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5222 following the judgement, one might think that the Inquisition was already setting up stakes outside St Paul’s, with the Archbishop of Canterbury issuing fatwas from Number 10.
‘Secularism in peril!’, declared the National http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4851 Society (NSS) (1) whose president, Terry Sanderson, wrote in a Guardian comment piece that ‘This is a catastrophic judgment, not just for gay people but for the wider community’. It might seem easy just to dismiss this comment. But, significantly, the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) decided that the NSS statement should be the only information about the Ladele case to be put on the its website (it has now been removed).Since the CEHR has a statutory responsibility to oppose all forms of discrimination, one might have expected it to have applauded, rather than criticised, a victory for a victim of religious discrimination. But the reaction of the CEHR and other ‘liberal’ commentators to the Ladele case has shown up the nasty, intolerant underside of the modern diversity and equality establishment, and its double standards concerning the interrelationship of Christianity, law and society. In addition, the reactions demonstrate an increasing inability to understand the concept of conscientious moral objection.
If you take the trouble to read the tribunal judgement in the Ladele case (2), it will become clear that Ladele was not trying to avoid her work responsibilities, nor was she abusive or insulting to any gay colleagues or members of the public. She had moral, religious objections to performing civil partnership ceremonies because she saw that as an endorsement of homosexual conduct – something she disagreed with. So, when a civil partnership came up, she asked other staff members, who were happy to perform them, to step in. This did not cause any administrative problems for her employers, Islington Council. It did not delay or cause problems for a single civil partnership and no complaints about Lillian were received from any gay member of the public.
But two employees at Islington, who described themselves as ‘members of the gay community’, complained about Ladele. In consequence, Lillian was bullied by her manager and details of her personal situation and a ‘confidential’ management letter about her was revealed to the local Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Forum. What her complainants ultimately objected to was not what Lillian did or how she acted, but what she thought and what she believed. She could not be allowed to continue her work in peace, she had to be challenged and her views had to be changed because, in the mind of the heresy hunters of the modern diversity industry, she was guilty of ‘thought crime’.
Ladele’s case was brought under the 2003 Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) regulations (3), which were brought in at the same time as the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) regulations (4). In paragraph 50 of its judgement, the employment tribunal notes that there is a complex interrelationship between these two sets of regulations and the two principles of non-discrimination they represent: ‘This is a case where there is a direct conflict between the legislative protection afforded to religion and belief and the legislative protection afforded to sexual orientation… One set of rights cannot overrule the other set of rights.’
In all areas of discrimination law, there is the question of ‘reasonable accommodation’ so that, for example, Sikh employees are not required to take off their turbans in order to conform to the uniform worn by everyone else. However, during the tribunal hearing, Ladele’s manager said: ‘I don’t believe we should be accommodating people’s religious beliefs in the registry service.’
The tribunal had to reject that point of view just as they would have to reject the point of view of any manager who didn’t believe it was necessary to accommodate someone’s sexual orientation, disability, sex, race or age. If it had been impracticable for Islington to accommodate Lillian, or if it would have made the working of the registry service impossible or unreasonably difficult, then Ladele would not have won her case. But the evidence was that Ladele’s unwillingness to conduct civil partnerships caused no such problems. Her manager was not prepared to accommodate her religious beliefs because the manager did not agree with them.
Rod Liddle criticised Ladele in The Sunday Times and described Christians as a ‘vanishingly small section of the British population’ (5). Even if assuming, for the sake of the argument, his remark is true, surely the whole purpose of discrimination law is to protect minorities? In any event, the number of civil partnerships in 2007 – 8,728 – is also ‘vanishingly small’ compared to the number of marriages – 275,140 (7).
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