Last week’s Church Times carried an article with this title. I didn’t write the title, but I did write the article. It is about the most recent proposals for further UK legislation concerning discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.
The Church of England response which is discussed in the article can be found here (RTF format). The press release about it is here.
The original government consultation document is a PDF file. It is here.
Gluttons for punishment can read the Anglican Mainstream response, also briefly mentioned, here. On the other hand, for a sensible discussion of some of the serious practical issues, particularly with regard to schools, the LGCM response (PDF format) is interesting reading.
6 CommentsUpdated 24 December
The Church Times has two reports on this, both can be found at Church studies employment ruling; scroll down for Shiranikha Herbert’s report of the case.
A court case with significant implications for the Church of England (and other UK Anglicans) was decided in the House of Lords this week. Although the case itself concerned a claim alleging sex discrimination in the (presbyterian) Church of Scotland, it could have much wider ramifications in the long term.
The best newspaper reports of this are in the Scotsman and the Guardian.
Scotsman Susan Mansfield and (scroll down) Julie Sabba Ex-minister wins right to sue Kirk for sex discrimination
Guardian Clare Dyer Kirk minister sacked over affair wins right to lodge sex bias claim
Update also Woman ex-minister to sue Kirk over sex ‘bias’ by David Lister in The Times
The full text of the Law Lords ruling is online here:
Judgments – Percy (AP) (Apellant) v. Church of Scotland Board of National Mission (Respondent) (Scotland) and a PDF of this, which may be more convenient because it is some 60 pages long on paper, is here.
Other press coverage:
Observer before the judgement Minister awaits sex bias verdict … against God
The Times/PA News Woman vicar cleared to bring sex claim
Herald She worked for God on high, but her boss is down on earth
BBC Ex-minister wins sex claim fight
The promised regulations altering church legislation have come into force as The Civil Partnership (Judicial Pensions and Church Pensions, etc.) Order 2005. Part 8 of this (scroll down a way) amends all of the following:
Church Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure 1960
Clergy Pensions Measure 1961
Clergy Pensions (Amendment) Measure 1972
Deaconesses and Lay Workers (Pensions) Measure 1980
Pastoral Measure 1983
Pensions Measure 1997
Church of England (Pensions) Measure 2003
An explanatory memorandum is available as a PDF file. See pages 18-20.
2 CommentsSee my report of last March on Updating the Sex Discrimination Act reproducing GS Misc 777, which was sent to all General Synod members to inform them about the consultations being held with the government by both the House of Bishops and the Archbishops’ Council and the reasons for needing to make these changes.
The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 has now been amended significantly, by publication of The Employment Equality (Sex Discrimination) Regulations 2005.
This includes inter alia the new version of Section 19 of the 1975 Act. This is the section which enables religious groups to discriminate in certain circumstances. The full text of the new version is reproduced below the fold. It is almost identical to the earlier draft. Note also that it includes references to civil partners as well as to spouses (all of which was in the draft).
The official explanatory memorandum is available as a PDF file. It is a document of 51 pages. The discussion of Section 19 is on pages 26 and 27.
A further DTI explanatory document is available as a Word file. Again the relevant pages are 26 and 27.
The government’s response to the earlier consultation is also available as a Word file. This time the relevant pages are 25 and 26.
The Cash section of today’s Observer has an article by Jon Robins on clergy and UK employment law:
Doing God’s work, but denied rights as employees.
As the article makes clear, the issues are not specific to the Church of England, but affect clergy of all religious bodies.
Update Tuesday
Here is a good critique of this newspaper report: Get a Clue
According to Christopher Morgan of the Sunday Times the Church of England will respond to the issue of clergy who wish to enter into a Civil Partnership in the following manner:
Church to let gay clergy ‘marry’ but they must stay celibate
HOMOSEXUAL priests in the Church of England will be allowed to “marry” their boyfriends under a proposal drawn up by senior bishops, led by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The decision ensures that gay and lesbian clergy who wish to register relationships under the new “civil partnerships” law — giving them many of the tax and inheritance advantages of married couples — will not lose their licences to be priests.
They will, however, have to give an assurance to their diocesan bishop that they will abstain from sex. The bishops are trying to uphold the church doctrine of forbidding clergy from sex except in a full marriage. They accept, however, that the new law leaves them little choice but to accept the right of gay clergy to have civil partners.
The decision is likely to reopen the row over homosexuality that has split the worldwide Anglican communion. It may also overshadow an international meeting of senior bishops next month designed to heal rifts between liberals and conservatives over the issue.
The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement estimates that within five years 1,500 homosexual Anglican clergy will have registered under the new law, which comes into force on December 5.
The Church of England proposal is contained in a draft Pastoral Statement on Civil Partnerships, drawn up by Graham James, the Bishop of Norwich. It was discussed at length and provisionally agreed at a meeting last week at a hotel in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire.
A final draft with some amendments will be produced for approval by the House of Bishops, the upper house of the church’s General Synod.
Under the proposal, a priest intending to register a civil partnership would inform his or her bishop in a face-to-face meeting. The priest would then give an undertaking to uphold the teaching of the Church of England, outlined in the 1991 document Issues in Human Sexuality. This paper prohibits sex for gay clergy.
Although no sanctions are included in the new proposal, it is expected that a breach of the rules may lead to disciplinary action or the possible suspension of clergy.
Some bishops, however, are uncomfortable about subjecting their priests to the proposed interviews.
One said this weekend: “We all have clergy in gay partnerships in our dioceses and there is a genuine reluctance on the part of a number of us to make their lives more difficult.”
…The bishops have also agreed to a government request to change ecclesiastical law to favour civil partners. A change to the Pluralities Act of 1838, for example, will enable gay partners to occupy vicarages for up to two months after the death of a priest.
This matter was the subject of questions at the General Synod in February, and the answers were published exclusively on TA here. The Civil Partnership Act can be read in full here.
The government is also proposing to amend the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003. Clause 3 (defines the meaning of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation) and Clause 25 (benefits dependent on marital status) are the sections affected. The purpose of the first of these amendments, which would add a new sub-clause 3.3, is explained thus:
Purpose and effect
1. The purpose of this new provision is to make it clear that, for the purposes of the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, the status of a civil partner is comparable to the status of a spouse. The effect is to enable a civil partner who is treated less favourably than a married person in similar circumstances to bring a claim for sexual orientation discrimination under the Sexual Orientation Regulations. New paragraph 3(3) prevents the discriminator from being able to say, by way of defence, that being married is a material difference to being a civil partner. The discriminator would have to show that the married person and the civil partner were not in a comparable position for some other reason, for example, that they were doing different jobs.
2. An employer etc would not be able to justify less favourable treatment of a civil partner as compared to a spouse in similar circumstances unless he could show that being heterosexual was a genuine occupational requirement (GOR) of the job within the meaning of reg 7(2). The additional GOR exception in reg 7(3) for employment for purposes of an organised religion permits an employer to apply a requirement “related to sexual orientation” (rather than to be a particular sexual orientation). It may therefore permit a narrow range of employers, such as religious organisations, to require that an employee be married (rather than a civil partner) but only where such a requirement is necessary to comply with the doctrines of the religion, or because of the nature and context of the job, to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion’s followers. It is likely that these defences will only be available in a very limited number of circumstances.
The proposed wording of the clause is as follows (the consultation is now closed and this might change when the proposal is formally published for parliamentary approval):
15 CommentsNew regulation 3(3)
3. Discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation
“(3) For the purposes of paragraph (2), in a comparison of B’s case with that of another person the fact that one of the persons (whether or not B) is a civil partner while the other is married shall not be treated as a material difference between their respective circumstances.”
On 7 March the Department of Trade and Industry published a consultation document and draft regulations to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (SDA) in order to bring it into line with the Equal Treatment Directive which comes into force in October. Amongst many other changes the proposals will alter the circumstances in which sex discrimination is legal in the Church of England.
The most important consultation documents can be downloaded from the website of the DTI’s Women and Equality Unit.
consultation document
executive summary
draft regulations
These and other documents are linked from here including the response form. Unfortunately this Word document uses the font Univers55; if you do not have this font installed on your computer you might find the document unintelligible. The consultation period ends on 31 May 2005.
The proposed changes include the repeal of section 6 of the Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure 1993. The DTI view is that this section is too widely drawn. In its place a new section 19 of the SDA would still allow discrimination in certain circumstances, and would be applied equally to all religious bodies.
General Synod members have been sent a paper outlining how the proposed changes will affect the Church of England, and giving the text of the proposed new section 19 of the SDA. I have copied this paper below the fold.
0 CommentsA number of questions were asked about matters relating to the Civil Partnership Act 2004 and other Employment Equality legislation. The full text of these Questions and Answers is below the fold.
Only the first of these questions was answered in tonight’s session, and no supplementary question was put. The other answers are available only in written form.
News reports specifically about this matter:
Yorkshire Post Bishop signals church pensions for gay clergy’s partners
Telegraph Gay priests’ lovers to get pensions
What follows is a portion of the 8th Adullam Homes Housing Association Annual Lecture, given to an invited audience at Keele University. Adullam was established in 1972. It offers accommodation and support to some of the most marginalised, vulnerable and at risk people in our society.
This was reported briefly in the Guardian as Bishop gives warning on equality law.
I hear rumours that as faith based bodies revisit their employment and recruitment policies, partly in the light of the recent implementation of directives outlawing discrimination on grounds of religion or sexual orientation, a number are coming up with a maximalist position. The claim is that every board member, and in some cases every employee, must be firstly an adherent of the particular faith and secondly satisfy additional requirements regarding sexuality.
I want to stick my neck out and say that I find this trend quite alarming. I urge those who are giving consideration to this specific point to be aware of a number of risks in that approach:
i. Confusing the faith with the values.
When we substitute adherence to the tenets of a particular faith group for commitment to a set of values or ethos we risk losing the latter. Despite all the evidence from the fall out over homosexuality and bishops last summer many religious people retain a touching and naïve belief that the person next to them holds the same values as they do themselves. In some cases it may be fear of discovering otherwise rather than simple naivety.
ii. Excluding valuable contributions.
Some years ago I heard of the formation of a new body to support Christians engaged in the Housing world. When I approached it I found that I was only eligible for membership if I could subscribe to a particular understanding of the doctrine of salvation. I still fail to see the connection. Narrow religious requirements inevitably limit the range of views and perspectives that an organisation can bring to the task of working out its values. Some of the best board and senior staff members of Christian organisations I know are those who stand sympathetically but outside the church structures and can ask the rest of us the sharp questions.
iii. Avoiding or abusing the law undermines the policy of exemptions. Government rightly continues to give faith based organisations scope to claim exemption from aspects of equalities legislation. But when I hear rumours of substantial organisations claiming that every staff member has a “Genuine Occupational Requirement” to be an adherent of a specific faith I fear we are stretching the law to breaking point. If we are seen to be exploiting loopholes in order to operate policies that discriminate widely on grounds of religion or sexuality then we are likely to find the law tightened up so that we lose the exemptions that are justifiable.
iv. Discrimination contravenes our values.
Most faith based agencies have somewhere in their list of core values that they take equalities issues seriously. To suddenly resort to special pleading diminishes that commitment.
v. Inconsistent application of exemptions is illegal.
This is particularly relevant to the exemptions organisations make claim on grounds of sexual orientation. The legal advice published on the Church of England website makes it clear to me that the Christian ethic here is about the restriction of sexual activity to marriage. Any organisation that seeks to exclude gay employees whilst condoning or ignoring extra-marital heterosexual activity could find itself on very shaky ground.
vi. It isn’t necessary.
There is nothing that we want to achieve that cannot be achieved through having a clear core of faith adherents who take responsibility for the carrying forward of the vision both at board and senior management level. Moreover it is in the very nature of faith based organisations that they will tend to attract at all levels of staff those who are adherents of the faith in question. To revert to biblical imagery, there is plenty of leaven in the lump.
Today the Church Times breaks the news that somebody has produced a handbook to help organisations avoid having to employ non-Christians.
Bill Bowder’s story is headlined How to employ only Christians – a guide.
I’m sending off for a copy of this book immediately.
Here is some more background in a 6 June press release from the Evangelical Alliance.
On 8 May, a letter was sent to members of the Council, members of the House of Bishops, and Diocesan Secretaries, reporting what had been achieved by Church House staff in their negotiations with the government about the Employment Equality Regulations. The full text of this letter appears below.
Analysis real soon now 🙂
0 CommentsIn my earlier analyses of the Sexual Orientation Regulations, I failed to report that in addition to Clause 7(3), there is a further special exemption for “organised religion” at Clause 16 which deals with Qualifications Bodies. Clause 16(3) reads:
(3) Paragraph (1) does not apply to a professional or trade qualification for purposes of an organised religion where a requirement related to sexual orientation is applied to the qualification so as to comply with the doctrines of the religion or avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion’s followers.
I’m not entirely clear what this is intended to refer to as far as the Church of England is concerned. Is ordination to be considered as a trade qualification?
The DTI guidance note says:
48. Regulation 16(3) provides an exception in relation to qualifications for purposes of an organised religion, which is similar to the exception in regulation 7 (see above), and to section 19 of the SDA. Where a qualification is for purposes of an organised religion, it allows the body to apply a requirement related to sexual orientation so as to comply with the doctrines of the religion or avoid conflicting with followers’ religious convictions. This could apply to qualifications required to be a minister of a particular religion, for example, to the extent that such a position constitutes a profession or trade for the purposes of regulation 16. Regulation 16(3) is consistent with Article 4.1 of the Directive, although it does not copy out its wording. This is because a requirement which meets the criteria defined in regulation 16(3) is necessarily a genuine and determining occupational requirement which is applied proportionately, within the meaning of Article 4.1.
I have written previously in my personal blog here about the Employment Equality regulations and the role played by the Archbishops’ Council in their framing.
Here is the full text of the letter which William Fittall, Secretary General of the General Synod and the Archbishops’ Council, sent to the Clerk to the JCSI on 9 June.
Comment about this is invited from readers. I expect to publish my own analysis here shortly.
0 Comments