Third Sector reports:
The charity Catholic Care has been refused permission to appeal against a ruling that it cannot exclude gay couples from using its adoption service.
That earlier ruling was reported here on 26 April: Charity Tribunal rejects appeal from Catholic adoption agency.
This latest ruling can be found at Decision on Application for Permission to Appeal (7 June 2011).
6 Comments…In the document, Alison McKenna, principal judge of the charity tribunal, wrote: “I have concluded that the grounds of appeal before me do not identify ‘errors of law’ in the decision.
“In the circumstances, I conclude that there is no power for the tribunal to review its decision in this case and I have also, for the same reasons, concluded that permission to appeal should be refused.”
Benjamin James, a solicitor at the law firm Bircham Dyson Bell, acting on behalf of Catholic Care, told Third Sector the charity could appeal to the Upper Tribunal for a review of the charity tribunal’s decision not to allow the appeal. He said trustees had not decided whether to do so.
Press release from the Equality and Human Rights Commission: Religion or belief discrimination in Britain
A review of research evidence commissioned by the Equality and Human Rights Commission indicates there are different perceptions about the legal protections for religion or belief and about the level of discrimination towards different religions or beliefs.
Evidence in the report shows that people’s understanding of their rights around religion or belief is not always matched by recent changes to equality law. The Commission is concerned that this could be preventing people from using their rights…
View the report: Religious discrimination in Britain: A review of research evidence, 2000-10 by Paul Weller of the University of Derby.
(The Commission’s statistical briefing paper on Religion or Belief is also available.)
Read the interview with Trevor Phillips in the Telegraph: Trevor Phillips wades into debate on religion in modern society by Jonathan Wynne-Jones. This interview has provoked a lot of reactions from all sides, and I will add some further links to these later.
Some responses:
Evangelical Alliance Evangelical Alliance responds to Trevor Phillips on religious freedom and Trevor Phillips’ comments on freedom of religion and belief miss the point, says Evangelical Alliance
Christian Concern Equality Commission questions Christian ‘integration’
British Humanist Association Humanists call for EHRC Chair Trevor Phillips to apologise, following ‘sectarian and divisive’ statements
3 CommentsA Private Member’s Bill has been introduced into the House of Lords by Baroness Cox entitled Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill.
To make further provision about arbitration and mediation services and the
application of equality legislation to such services; to make provision about
the protection of victims of domestic abuse; and for connected purposes.
The full text of the bill is available as a PDF file, and there are also explanatory notes.
Some news reports:
Guardian Bill limiting sharia law is motivated by ‘concern for Muslim women’
Telegraph Plans to curb influence of sharia courts to be unveiled
This bill has won support from an improbable alliance of lobbying groups:
Andrew Brown explains, in The state cannot curb sharia law alone.
A bill to limit the scope of courts is laudable, but sharia law’s discriminatory aspects must be undermined by Muslims.
He writes:
3 Comments…What is politically interesting about this is that it represents an alliance of Christians and atheists along with what one might call normal secularists who just dislike institutionalised sexism and exploitation. The campaign against sharia law has long been confined to a leftwing atheist ghetto. Cox has broken it out of that. It’s to the credit of both parties that Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society appeared next to an American Christian missionary at the launch of the bill yesterday.
There’s no doubt that the bill will be used by some people to stir up distrust and hatred of Muslims. But I don’t think that is in itself a good enough reason to oppose it. What it does is to make explicit the fact that Islam is practised like any other religion in Britain, under the rules that parliament makes…
According to a recent report in the Telegraph,
European judges have ordered ministers to make a formal statement on whether it believes Christians’ rights have been infringed by previous decisions in the British courts, which have repeatedly dismissed their right to dress and act according to their beliefs.
The move by the European Court in Strasbourg is because Christians who believe they have suffered discrimination for their beliefs are taking a landmark legal fight the court…
Their cases have been selected by the European Court as of being of such legal significance that they be examined further.
Once ministers have responded the court will decide whether to have full hearings on them.
You can read the two documents filed with the European Court of Human Rights first here and then here.
This analysis of the subject area by Philip Henson is very helpful: Discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief. Scroll down to Persecuted Christians? for his discussion of these four cases:
How many of you have forgotten about the “big four” – the cases of Lillian Ladele, Gary McFarlane, Shirley Chaplin and Nadia Eweida? What do these people all have in common? The answer is that they have all recently issued applications at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
The European angle has been massively overlooked almost all legal commentators, but it is the ECHR which will be the final battleground in the struggle for a superior right.
The British Humanist Association had this comment: European Court of Human Rights considers hearing cases which demand more privilege for Christianity.
The Christian Legal Centre had: European Court to rule on Christian discrimination cases.
4 CommentsUpdated Tuesday
The General Assembly of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland is today considering a report on Same Sex Relationships and the Ministry. The report, and several related documents can be downloaded from here.
This week the Church Times published an article about this written jointly by Andrew Goddard and Giles Goddard. The article, as published, is available at the moment only to Church Times subscribers. But a version of it has been published by Fulcrum and can be read at Wisdom from the Scots: The CofE and Same-sex Unions.
Pending an official web page to link to, here is a summary of what they decided.
Kelvin Holdsworth has written this explanation: What the Church of Scotland decided today.
Here now is the official press release, available as a PDF here.
Tuesday press reports:
The Scotsman has extensive coverage:
Kirk split looms as members vote to back gay ministers
Catalyst that started the great debate
Analysis: ‘A peculiar decision which is unlikely to satisfy anyone’
Leader: Kirk’s vote for gay clergy marks clear divide
BBC
Church of Scotland votes on gay ministers
Mood shift points to gay clergy for the Kirk
Remember this? Methodist minister ruled employee not office holder.
This week, it was announced that Methodist Church granted leave to appeal employment ruling.
The Methodist Church has been granted leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal against the judgement of an Employment Appeal Tribunal that Methodist ministers should be counted as employees and cases concerning them heard by Employment Tribunals. Methodist ministers have always been treated by the Church as office holders rather than employees.
Leave to appeal has been granted by the Court on the grounds that the appeal “has a real prospect of success on the basis of the submissions in the skeleton argument dated 14 April 2011. The state of the authorities on the key question of whether a minister of religion is not an employee is unclear and requires further consideration by the court following the case of Percy.”
This case may have significance for British churches other than the Methodists.
0 CommentsUpdated
Last Sunday’s Observer newspaper carried an article titled Christian Legal Centre fights more than 50 religious discrimination cases by Jamie Doward and Seb Wheeler which discusses how this organisation is funded:
Questions have been asked about from where the centre – and its sister organisation, Christian Concern For Our Nation – obtain funding. Accounts show both organisations have little in the way of income.
Williams said all of the centre’s work was done on a pro bono basis by committed Christian lawyers and that what money it had came in small donations from more than 30,000 people who received its regular email updates. “We never ask clients for money,” she said. “Very often they fear losing their case and having to pay the costs of the other side. Part of our ministry is to ensure they are not burdened with that.”
Close observers of the centre believe it is adopting the tactics of wealthy US evangelical groups, notably the powerful Alliance Defence Fund, which, through its Blackstone Legal Fellowship, trains an army of Christian lawyers to defend religious freedom “through strategy, training, funding and direct litigation”.
The ADF, which according to filings had an income of almost $40m last year, is funded by prominent benefactors including Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater private security giant, the Covenant Foundation, which is financed by a leading member of the Texas Christian right, James Leininger, and the Bolthouse Foundation, a charity that rejects evolution, insisting “man was created by a direct act of God in His image, not from previously existing creatures”.
The ADF has joined forces with the Christian Legal Centre and Christian Concern For Our Nation to launch the Wilberforce Academy in the UK, which aims to train delegates “for servant-hearted, Christ-centred leadership in public life” having equipped them “with a robust biblical framework that guides their thinking, prayers and activity in addressing the issues facing our society”. Several of its delegates have already gone on to work for the legal centre and Christian Concern.
Update Wednesday
Joshua Rozenberg has written for the Guardian website that Belief is not always a good thing in an advocate.
10 CommentsShould advocates believe in the causes they argue in court? Generally speaking, it’s a bad idea.
Barristers who own up to their profession at dinner parties are often asked how they can defend someone who is guilty of a crime. The stock answer is that it’s not the lawyer’s job to decide whether a defendant is guilty: that’s a matter for the court.
Of course, if your client tells you he committed the crime and instructs you to tell the court he didn’t, you must withdraw from the case: a lawyer must never mislead the court. But the advocate’s job is to put forward his client’s case as effectively as possible, however implausible it may seem. That’s well understood by the court; indeed it’s welcomed. What judges don’t like are advocates who are so committed to a case that they lose their objectivity.
These thoughts are prompted by an Observer report that the Christian Legal Centre has some 50 claims of religious discrimination on its books. Many of those that come to court are likely to be argued by Paul Diamond, the centre’s standing counsel.
Updated
The Charity Tribunal has today rejected the latest appeal filed by Catholic Care. For earlier reports on this long-running saga start here.
The tribunal’s own press release appears below the fold. The full text of the judgment can be downloaded here (PDF).
Jerome Taylor had this report in the Independent Catholic adoption charity appeal dismissed.
Kaye Wiggins had this in Third Sector Catholic Care loses tribunal appeal over gay adoption.
Other reports: Press Association, BBC News, and Guardian.
Comment from:
Religion Law Blog Catholic Care v Charity Commission
British Humanism Association No ‘opt out’ from equality law: Catholic adoption agency will not be able to discriminate against same-sex couples
Christian Concern Catholic Care forced to offer adoption services to homosexual couples
Stonewall Stonewall response to Charity Tribunal dismissal of Catholic Care’s appeal
Christian Institute RC adoption group loses gay couples appeal
11 CommentsAidan O’Neill QC has written about Religious Organisations and Secular Courts: The Ministerial Exception.
Read it in two parts at the UK Supreme Court Blog.
Part 1: The Ministerial exception in US case law
On 28 March 2011 the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Perich v. Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church. This means that an appeal can be brought before the US Supreme Court in which, for the first time, that court will consider the constitutionality of the legal doctrine known as the “Ministerial exception”.
The “Ministerial exception” is a US court created (common law) principle which is said to be implicit within and derived from the US Constitution’s First Amendment’s prohibition of “religious establishment” and its guarantee of “religious freedom”…
Part 2: The Ministerial exception in UK and EU case law
1 CommentPerhaps under the influence of this US case law, by the last quarter of the twentieth century the growing tendency of the courts – at least in England and Wales – was to seek to avoid becoming mired in matters of ecclesiastical sensitivity and/or theological controversy by denying that they had jurisdiction to consider (intra- or inter-) religious disputes brought before them.
Paradoxically, this new found uneasiness as to the propriety of the civil courts ruling on matters religious might be thought to reflect the growing secularisation of public life in the UK, with the judges drawn from an increasingly unChurched class who – in contrast to their church-going and religiously literate Victorian and Edwardian forbears – felt uncomfortable and unqualified to sit in judgment on religious matters. Thus, the courts in England and Wales in this period declined to consider applications for judicial review brought by individuals exercising ministerial functions within various non-established religious denominations on the grounds that there was no “public law” element such as to make the case suitable for judicial review, apparently relying on a UK public law principle of separation of Church and State which had, in fact, no place historically with the polities making up the United Kingdom…
Aidan O’Neill QC has written at the UK Human Rights Blog about Squaring equality with religion.
…The relationship between the expression of religious beliefs and practice and equality law is a fraught one, and particular difficulty has been experienced in the matter of the application of the law outlawing discrimination…
And later on he has this:
…Thus, for the religious, their attitudes and judgments on right conduct are the very opposite of “prejudice” which anti-discrimination law was supposed to be aimed at. And, they would say, there can be no proper comparison between those who would discriminate on grounds of a religiously informed conscience, and those who so act simply from unthinking incoherent prejudice or bigotry. The pretended comparison between the religious and the irreligious wrongly treats unlike cases alike. The law should, instead, respect those who act on the basis of religiously informed conscience and make reasonable adjustments to accommodate them.
On this analysis, being religious is more akin, for discrimination law purposes, to having a disability. The law does not compare the disabled with the able-bodied and say that they should be treated the same – rather the law requires that account be taken of disability and appropriate measures taken to place the disabled on an equal footing with those without that disability. Similarly, the claim is made that the law should not treat the religious and the irreligious as equivalent; rather, the law should respect the beliefs and consciences of the religious and allow them to act on those beliefs without falling foul of anti-discrimination law…
Meanwhile Alan Wilson wrote Squaring a Human Rights Circle.
26 CommentsSo what about religious particularity and freedom from discrimination? Pushed to an absolute degree either could compromise the other. If an atheist could fight a way through the courts to become Pope that would be a magnificent expression of openness, but bad news for the Papacy, which partly exists to define and maintain a particular identity in a way that can only credibly be done by a Roman Catholic. If, conversely, a Police force decided to soft pedal on the misdeeds of some clergy because they are authority figures in the community representing the dominant religion, this is plainly wrong and deprives the victims of a basic justice they have every right to expect.
This becomes even more complicated when people start asserting Christian rights. Jesus’ teaching about non violent resistance (turning the other cheek etc) and the strand of wisdom represented by Romans 13, does not lend itself to crusading militancy. Whenever the Church has ignored this principle it has made a fool of itself and compromised the gospel by behaving in a violent and assertive way to whch it might notionally have been entitled, but which was far from Christlike. People who are being reviled have a notional right to revile back, perhaps, but Jesus tells his followers to do the exact opposite. This being the case it is hard to represent an assertion of that right as something required of his followers by their religon. It damn well is not.
A few preliminary jottings are emerging for me about the ways christians are supposed to apply human rights law to ourselves…
Updated
The Government Equalities Office has announced the opening of this consultation.
Press release: Civil partnerships on religious premises: a consultation
Opening date: 31 March 2011
Closing date: 23 June 2011
In February we announced our commitment to enabling civil partnerships to be registered on the religious premises of those faith groups who wished to host them. This will be done by implementing section 202 of the Equality Act 2010. This provision removes the legal prohibition on civil partnerships being registered on religious premises, enables regulations to be made setting out the arrangements for these premises to be approved by the local authority and clarifies that there is no obligation on faith groups to have civil partnership registrations on their premises.
Civil partnerships on religious premises: a consultation sets out detailed proposals for this voluntary measure which enhances the freedom of both faith groups and same-sex couples. The proposals are designed to enable faith groups to opt in, respect the different decision-making structures of different faith groups, minimise the risk of successful legal challenges and be straightforward for local authorities to operate. The law will make clear that faith groups are not obliged to host civil partnerships. It would also be unlawful for a civil partnership to be registered on a religious premises that had not been approved for the purpose by the local authority. That approval will be given only with the approval of the faith group concerned.
We propose a two stage process for enabling civil partnerships to be registered on particular religious premises. First the faith group concerned will have to consent to this and the consultation document sets out how this could happen. Then the local authority in whose area the premises is located will have to approve the premises and the consultation document sets out what conditions should apply to the approval. The registration of civil partnerships would remain secular, despite taking place on religious premises, but a religious service could be held to mark the registration.
This consultation will be of particular interest to:
- faith groups including religions, denominations and individual independent religious congregations
- Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) organisations, LGB individuals and their families and friends
- Local authorities, including registrars and other relevant local authority employees
- owners and managers of buildings approved for civil marriages and civil partnerships
Comments from other interested parties are also welcome.
Download the consultation
The official CofE response to the second sentence of this paragraph (emphasis added) from the consultation document will be interesting:
21 Comments1.8 Please tell us whether you are responding as an individual or whether you
are representing the views of an organisation. If you are responding on
behalf of an organisation please tell us whom the organisation represents
and, where possible, how the views of members have been sought.
Updated
A recent decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal is concerned with the employment status of Methodist ministers.
The case is UKEAT/0219/10/DM between Ms H. A. Moore and The President of the Methodist Conference. The judgment, dated 15 March 2011 is available here, and can also be downloaded from here. (49 pages as a .doc file).
Here’s a news report from the Western Morning News Female church minister wins landmark employment rights case.
A sacked [but see comment below] female minister in Cornwall has won a landmark ruling to bring a case against the Methodist Church for unfair dismissal.
The decision by the Employment Appeal Tribunal reverses an earlier decision by the Court of Appeal and paves the way for all clergy to challenge their employers in the courts.
The tribunal concluded that Haley Moore, who was dismissed as a minister in Redruth, was an employee under the Employment Rights Act and can take action against her former employer, the President of the Methodist Conference.
The Unite union, which has been fighting for equal rights at work for religious workers for 16 years, said the decision was a “significant step forward”.
but note also:
A Methodist Church spokesman said it would appeal the ruling.
Kenneth Howcroft, assistant secretary of conference, said: “The Methodist Church is seeking an appeal against the judgement that Haley Moore’s case is a matter for an employment tribunal.
“As it stands, Methodist ministers are office holders, not employees, of the Church and have legal rights of redress under long established, procedural channels.”
And a press release from the solicitors: New Landmark Employment Ruling for Clergy.
The decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal is a significant step towards achieving this as it establishes that a Methodist minister is an employee under employment legislation, which is contrary to the Court of Appeal’s decision about Methodist ministers in 1984. The Methodist Church has 21 days from the date of the EAT’s order of 15 March 2011 to make an application for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal.”
And a press release from the Trade Union: Church of England urged ‘to smell the coffee’ over employment rights, following landmark ruling in Cornwall.
Religion Law Blog carries some comment on this by Neil Addison:
In Moore v The President Of The Methodist Conference BAILII:[2010] UKEAT 0219_10_1503 the Employment Appeals Tribunal decided that a Methodist Minister was an Employee for the purposes of Employment Law, in this case a claim for unfair dismissal. The EAT applied an earlier House of Lords case Percy v. Church of Scotland [2005] UKHL 73 in which the House of Lords decided that a Church of Scotland Minister was an employee.
Prior to Percy the general assumption in law was that religious ministers, of all denominations, were office holders rather than employees and so were not protected under unfair dismissal and/or discrimination law. In Percy however the House of Lords decided that, on the specific facts, the Minister in the case was an employee and the same decision was made in Moore as regards a Methodist minister.
How far this principle will extend is difficult to determine. It is possible that Denominations which have a very sacramental view of the status and role of the Clergy, such aside the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, will continue to be able to claim that their clergy are “office holders” rather than employees. However for Free Church Ministers, Rabbi’s and Immans the position may be different and they may be held to be employees of their respective congregations should they decide to sue for unfair dismissal or discrimination.
Update
The full text of the Methodist Conference statement quoted in part above:
11 CommentsThe Revd Kenneth Howcroft, Assistant Secretary of the Methodist Conference, said: “The Methodist Church is seeking leave to appeal against the judgement that Haley Moore’s case is a matter for an employment tribunal. It is treating the matter with great seriousness as something that would affect all our ministers. The Court of Appeal held as long ago as 1984 that Methodist ministers are not employees. A minister’s role is one which is traditionally based on the ethos and laws of the Church rather than on a secular ethos. Our ministers have legal rights of redress under Church procedures. The Methodist Church cares for all who serve it, whether lay or ordained, paid or volunteer, and we want to ensure that we treat everyone fairly and properly.”
Updated Friday morning
Neil Addison has written at Religion Law Blog about this case, see Italian Crucifix Case – Grand Chamber Judgment.
As I predicted in my earlier Blogs the ECtHR based its decision on the concept of the “margin of appreciation” and decided that it was for individual countries to make these decisions so that just as France is free to ban all religious symbols from state schools so Italy is free to put religious symbols in state schools. In the UK context this is a significant basis for the decision. When UK Courts apply the Human Rights Act 1998 which incorporates the European Convention into UK law they apply the “margin of appreciation” so as to give that margin to Government and public bodies. The fact that the display of the Crucifix, or indeed any other form of religious symbol, is governed by the “margin of appreciation” will go a long way to free local and central government, schools etc from the danger of legal cases being brought to ban Nativity Displays, prayers at remembrance parades etc.
Unusually for the ECtHR there were a number of separate concurring judgments and I feel that some of them deserve quoting in detail because they do pick up and question the often unquestioned assumption that Secularism is the same as religious neutrality.
And he includes some quotes from them.
William Oddie wrote at the Catholic Herald that Fr Lombardi is wrong: the judgment on crucifixes isn’t about Europe’s Christian roots.
What is actually much more interesting about the court’s full judgment is that it gives a lengthy account, with generous quotations, of the original judgment in an Italian court which was subsequently set aside by the European Court, a reversal now itself reversed by the highest European Court, the “Grand Chamber” (maybe it doesn’t sound so silly in French). The Italian judgment found in favour of keeping crucifixes, not for their religious value, but because they symbolised the moral values which in the end led to the Enlightenment and the modern Italian secular state. Neat, eh? This the Italian court did by delivering itself of a lengthy disquisition on Italian cultural history which had nothing whatever to do with legal argument at all, long and windy stuff (wonderfully Italian: you simply can’t imagine it in an English courtroom), a lot of which is actually rather interesting stuff.
And he goes on to give an illustrative quote.
Andrew Brown at Cif belief writes Raise high the crucifix!
The decision of the European court of Human Rights that Italian schools may continue to display a crucifix in the classroom is obviously a victory for common sense, of which only fanatics would disapprove. But it is also, in a small way, something to help rescue the European project, and to preserve us from the wilder excesses of American political life.
The idea that human rights legislation should be used to prevent children from being exposed to a crucifix is a profoundly totalitarian and superstitious perversion of one of our civilisation’s best inventions. To understand why, consider another family which would want their children protect from crucifixes, but this time not secular Finns, but Muslims. They exist. One Shia Muslim girl I know was not allowed as a child to walk through much of the Victoria & Albert museum, because to do so would expose her to Christian symbolism…
Update
Shiranikha Herbert writes at the Church Times that Classroom crucifixes can stay, Strasbourg rules.
…The 17 judges of the Grand Chamber decided by 15 votes to two that there had been no violation of the rights guaranteed by the Convention. Judge Bonello said that a European court should not be called upon to “bankrupt centuries of European tradition” and “rob Italians of part of their cultural personality”. The court should, “before joining any crusade to demonise the crucifix”, place the presence of that emblem in its rightful historical perspective in Italian schools.
Until relatively recently, the “secular” state had delegated education to Christian institutions, who had a virtual monopoly on education. The presence of the crucifix in Italian schools testified to that historical reality. Now, Judge Bonello said, “a court in a glass box, a thousand kilometres away, had been engaged to veto overnight what [had] survived countless generations”, and was being “asked to be an accomplice in a major act of cultural vandalism”.
It was “uninformed nonsense”, the Judge said, “to assert that the presence of the crucifix in Italian schools bears witness to a reactionary fascist measure imposed, in between gulps of castor oil, by Signor Mussolini”, whose circulars merely took formal notice of a historical reality that predated him by several centuries.
“Nations do not fashion their histories on the spur of the moment…”
Strasbourg Observers has Lautsi v. Italy: the Argument from Neutrality (H/T 3minutetheologian)
8 CommentsLautsi v. Italy was destined to achieve legendary status in the ECtHR’s case law. In fact, it became the stuff of legends long before the Grand Chamber’s judgment came out. Rarely has a judgment of a supranational court put such a spell on people. Rarely has it inspired such passionate comments and speculation even before it was released. Rarely have so many people looked forward to a judgment with such anxious anticipation. But why? What is it about the issues involved in this case that causes them to speak so strongly to the hearts and minds of so many? It is a question I have been asking myself for a while now, while reflecting on the tension between freedom of and freedom from religion in the Court’s case law. And the question is haunting me now more than ever, having read the Lautsi judgment and the comments in the blogosphere thereon and preparing a post of my own. I have not been able to come up with a satisfactory answer to the question. At least not satisfactory to a legal mind. My personal preoccupation with Lautsi seems to stem from a strong conviction that neutrality requires that the state should not hang crucifixes on the walls in public schools. I will attempt to explain my opinion in this post. But I will also explain why this is perhaps not an issue to be decided by a human rights court.
Updated Friday evening
Long-suffering TA readers will recall this case.
The Associated Press reports today: European court: Crucifix acceptable in classrooms.
The full text of the judgment is available as a PDF over here.
Here is the official press release from the court also as a PDF.
The ECHR Blog has published Grand Chamber Judgment in Lautsi: No Violation.
Austen Ivereigh at America has written Lautsi overturned: secularization has a reverse gear. Earlier he had written a much longer article, Waiting on Lautsi.
The National Secular Society has reacted with Crucifix case overturned by Human Rights Court.
Riazat Butt writes in the Guardian European Court of Human Rights rules crucifixes are allowed in state schools
AFP has Vatican hails ‘historic’ ruling on crucifixes in schools
14 CommentsThe Equality and Human Rights Commission (Scotland) has issued this press release: New Scottish Government called upon to address Equal Marriage for same sex couples.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission Scotland today launched a new report calling for access to equal marriage for same sex couples in Scotland. The report is a result of a symposium recently held by the Commission to investigate perceived barriers to equal marriage and suggest ways forward for legislators.
Scotland currently has a segregated family law system in which marriage is available only to mixed-sex couples, and civil partnership only to same-sex couples.
In England and Wales, the UK Government has announced public consultations on proposals to hold civil partnerships on religious premises and to open up civil marriage to same-sex couples and civil partnership to mixed-sex couples. However, because marriage and civil partnership are devolved issues, these proposals apply to England and Wales only.
The report calls upon the Scottish Government to consider these disparities and to take steps to bring about equal access to marriage in Scotland. The evidence and research contained within the report aims to inform their deliberations…
The EHRC report is available here: Equal Access to Marriage: Ending the segregation of same-sex couples and transgender people in Scotland. (PDF)
24 CommentsSee earlier reports here, and also here.
Third Sector Online reports that Catholic Care’s exclusion of same-sex couples ‘unjustified’, charity tribunal hears.
3 CommentsThe Charity Commission has defended its decision not to allow the charity Catholic Care to prevent gay people from using its adoption service, at a charity tribunal hearing.
During the hearing, which finished on Friday, the commission argued it would be a “serious and demeaning act of discrimination” for the charity to restrict its adoption services to heterosexual, married couples.
The charity appealed to the tribunal to quash the commission’s ruling, made in August last year, that it could not change its objects to prevent same-sex couples from using its adoption service. Catholic Care argued that failing to change its objects would force it to close its adoption service because it would lose its funding from the Catholic church.
The commission’s barrister, Emma Dixon, said at the hearing: “The exclusion of same-sex couples is a particularly serious and indeed a demeaning act of discrimination. Weighty reasons would be needed to justify discrimination on the grounds of sexuality.”
… Alison McKenna, principal judge of the charity tribunal, said it would make its decision in about a month.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued a statement: Commission statement on Preddy and Hall legal case
11 March 2011
John Wadham, Legal Director at the Commission, said:
“This morning we withdrew our cross appeal in this case. It was filed initially because of an error of judgment on the part of our legal team.
“They submitted the cross appeal in an attempt to clarify the law around how damages are calculated in cases such as this. This resulted in it appearing that Steve Preddy and Martyn Hall were seeking to increase the amount of damages they receive because Mr and Mrs Bull’s Christian beliefs had led them to break the law. This was not our intention and it was certainly not the intention of Steve and Martyn.
“I would like to confirm that public money will not be spent funding a claim for increased damages in this case…”
That’s the second retraction the EHRC has made in recent days. See also Johns v Derby City Council.
The Press Association report is available at Gay couple end hotel payout claim.
33 CommentsA(nother) lawyer wrote Foster care and religion: the legal debate.
Bishop Alan Wilson writes again today: Munchausen loses Court Case.
…Ah, but you may say, there are people out there who don’t like Christianity. There are, and there always were. Some English Christians seem hell bent on behaving like a persecuted minority, and who am I to try and stop them? They’ve obviously never been to Pakistan or anywhere else Christians really are persecuted as Christians.
Historic Christianity does have massive historic, cultural and legal influence in the UK, not least in the pursuit of ancient rights founded on the principles of Equity that gave rise to our human rights law in the first place. The surest way to destroy this influence is for a group of zealots to take upon themselves the role of being the “one prophet left,” and indulge in the legal equivalent of Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy…
Andrea Minichiello Williams at Christian Concern wrote Permanent Exclusion and the Johns.
…I hope that the highlighting of the issue in the press will shatter the misconception that the Equality Act means equality for all. Some are very much more equal than others. We are currently living in ‘Animal Farm’ days; “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
And Paul Diamond wrote Why the Johns Case will not be appealed.
…I have reluctantly advised the Johns not to appeal; such an appeal would normally be expected but now, in my opinion, futile – a waste of resources. The Courts are so set against religious freedom for Christians that an appeal is likely to only make matters worse.
The problem is a combination of bad laws and, in recent years, a number of poor judicial appointments by the previous Government. Where there are excellent Judges they are restricted by bad laws. Unfortunately, there are also Judges making law based on personal predilections. Parliament must remedy this situation as a matter of urgency.
The ideals of the Equality Acts and the Sexual Orientation Regulations have much to commend them in so far as all civilised people would not accept overt discrimination against any person based on irrelevant considerations as to their sexual orientation or faith. However, the laws are bad. They are poorly drafted leaving too much discretion to the Courts; they are contradictory in so far as one cannot have a society without substantive values. Finally and most importantly these laws are political laws seeking a political objective.
The laws are currently being used to eradicate Judeo Christian morality and usher in secular values. The secular movement is but a variant of the Utopian ambitions that have inspired man from the beginning of time. However, the end game of such programmes is always the same. To repeatedly promote a failed ideology is base ignorance or at its worst criminal. Coerced morality or coerced immorality (depending on one’s perspective) is not the hallmark of a free society…
Mr Diamond was interviewed this morning, along with Lord Falconer, a former Lord Chancellor, on the BBC’s Today radio programme, listen at Are courts enforcing a ‘new morality’?
16 CommentsThere seems to be no end to the comments on this.
Alan Wilson writes for the Guardian’s Face to Faith column, Homosexuality, Christianity and child welfare.
…So what does the case really show? First, that the customary paranoia of rightwing newspaper op-eds sounds silly in court. Courts will injunct in cases of real urgency, but they are, quite rightly, very reluctant to compensate people for wrongs they have not yet suffered, simply to make a point on behalf of a group of zealots, however sincere they may be. It is absolutely no part of a court’s job to enter into such antics, just to create a story for the press.
This case was the fourth bite at this particular cherry by the barrister Paul Diamond and his chums in the Christian Legal Centre. There is now nothing more legally to be said on this subject than various judges, especially Lord Justice Laws, a devout Christian and churchwarden, have said so far. Rightwing Christians must establish their views on their merits, not expect courts to do the job for them.
How does orthodox Christian teaching relate to the views that were seeking legal protection? When Mrs Johns averred, for example, that “having a different sexual orientation was unnatural and wrong”, she put herself well beyond what either the Church of England or the church of Rome are prepared to say on the matter of orientation. The Johnses are entitled to their views, but cannot expect them to be unquestioned insofar as they could affect the welfare of a child…
Anglican Mainstream has reproduced an editorial from the Church of England Newspaper The unique problem of Christianity for the judges.
…The three most potent decisions of the High Court of Justice, delivered by Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson, were that they were ‘secular’ judges, that they accepted that caring foster parents were not acceptable for holding sexual morality corresponding to the historic Christian ethical stance on homosexual sexual intercourse, and for denying a scintilla of place for Christianity in British law. They also implicitly accepted the dogma of the EHRC, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, that Christian beliefs taught to young children would ‘infect’ them. We have come a very, very long way from ‘Clause 4’ and the ban on promoting homosexuality in schools, now that is compulsory and Christian belief is positively harmful. In the eyes of the law homophobia is not religious, anyone of any belief can be guilty, but this raises serious questions for traditionalist Christians and the Churches in general. Doctrine must now be viewed in subordination to the country’s anti-discrimination laws…
And Paul Sims at the New Humanist writes about Fostering, gay rights and the secular law.
31 CommentsDamian Thompson asks: Catholic bishops mount ferocious attack on gay weddings. So why don’t they want to talk to the press about it?
The National Secular Society thinks that Church-state confrontation over gay marriage could be solved with disestablishment.
Giles Fraser says I don’t see a threat in gay blessings.
Benny Hazlehurst has written: Towards a Theology of Gay Marriage.
And there was a letter in the Guardian published under the headline Toilets, insects … but not civil partnerships.
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