Gary McFarlane is a Christian who worked as a relationship guidance counsellor for Relate. When he qualified as a psychosexual therapist, he raised concerns about a potential clash between his work and his Christian views. He was unwilling to give sex therapy to homosexual couples.A lawyer concerned with his case said Mr McFarlane wanted his religious beliefs to be accommodated by his employer, "which in the specific facts of the case was not unreasonable." Instead, he was sacked.
He complained to an employment tribunal, which decided he had not suffered religious discrimination. Mr McFarlane, who said that his treatment was "without a doubt" an example of Christians being persecuted in modern Britain, asked the Appeal Court for permission to appeal the employment tribunal ruling.
Last week permission was refused. Lord Justice Laws said legal protection for views held on religious grounds was "deeply unprincipled."
"In the eye of everyone save the believer," he said, "religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence. It may of course be true, but the ascertainment of such a truth lies beyond the means by which laws are made in a reasonable society.
"Therefore it lies only in the heart of the believer, who alone is bound by it. No one else is or can be so bound, unless by his own free choice he accepts its claims.
"The promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified. It is irrational, a preferring of the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary."
Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, concerned with other senior church leaders that in past cases judges had disparaged Christianity and had in effect called Christians bigots, had asked that the case be considered by judges with an understanding of religious issues. The judge rejected his request also.
Lord Carey said the judgment heralded a "secular" state rather than a "neutral" one. "It says that the sacking of religious believers in recent cases was not a denial of their rights even though religious belief cannot be divided from its expression in every area of the believer's life.
"While with one hand the ruling seeks the right of religious believers to hold and express their faith, with the other it takes away those same rights."
Andrea Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre, said the judgment was "alarming" and in effect sought to rule out Christian principles of morality from the public square. It seemed a Christian who wished to act on his Christian beliefs on marriage would no longer be able to work in a great number of environments.
Melanie Phillips, writing in the Daily Mail, said the judge arrived at his conclusion by cherry-picking human rights law. He said human rights law conferred upon believers the right to "hold or express" religious views, when in fact the European Convention on Human Rights gives people the right to manifest "freedom of thought, conscience and religion" through "worship, teaching, practice and observance."
Writing in the Telegraph, Michael Nazir-Ali, former Bishop of Rochester, said Lord Justice Laws' judgment "has driven a coach and horses through the ancient association of the Christian faith with the constitutional and legal basis of British society.
"Everything from the Coronation oath onwards suggests that there is an inextricable link between the Judeo-Christian tradition of the Bible and the institutions, the values and the virtues of British society. If this judgment is allowed to stand, the aggressive secularists will have had their way.
"We have already had a rash of cases involving magistrates unable to serve on the bench because of their religious beliefs, registrars losing their jobs because they cannot, in conscience, officiate at civil parnerships, paediatricians unable to serve on adoption panels. . . Will this trickle gradually become a flood, so that rather than conforming to the Church of England, the new discrimination tests will involve conforming to the secular religion as promoted by Lord Justice Laws? . . .
"I fear that we are entering an absolutist era where there is no room for believers."
The day after news of the judgment came news of a 21-year-old Muslim's appearance in court for defacing a war memorial in Burton-on-Trent with graffiti proclaiming "Islam will dominate the world," "Osama is on his way" and "Kill Gordon Brown." The court was told his actions had nothing to do with religious belief and he was given a conditional discharge for criminal damage.
Then Dale McAlpine (described in some newspapers as Dale McAlpine and elsewhere as Dale Mcalpine) was arrested in Workington, about which more shortly. . .
