Lord Justice Laws: The law will not privilege religion, the state will “think for itself”
Gary McFarlane, a marriage guidance counsellor, had refused to work with same-sex couples. His dismissal was upheld by employment tribunal and he applied to appeal against the decision. Lord Carey weighed in to say that existing judges were biased or unable to preside over alleged religious discrimination cases and that a “special panel” (essentially a panel highly sympathetic to his arguments) should preside over McFarlane’s appeal.
Yesterday Lord Justice Laws delivered a stinging rebuke to former Archbishop of Canterbury, defending the principles of secularism in the courts.
In a powerful dismissal of the application to appeal, Lord Justice Laws said legislation for the protection of views held purely on religious grounds cannot be justified.
He said it was an irrational idea, “but it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.”
… The judge’s ruling continued: “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,
We salute you.
Lord Carey is quoted as saying: “The comparison of a Christian, in effect, with a ‘bigot’(i.e. a person with an irrational dislike to homosexuals) begs further questions.” Does this mean he believes the law should protect people who have a “rational” dislike of homosexuals? That’s reasonable, I think. Don’t you?
There’s hope for this country yet!