Judicial activism does not come more aggressive than the judgement by Lord Justice Laws refusing permission for Gary McFarlane to have his case against dismissal from his job heard before the Court of Appeal. McFarlane was sacked as a marriage guidance counsellor because his Christian conscience would not permit him to provide sex therapy to homosexual couples. The case was significant enough for Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, to have submitted a witness statement expressing his concern at increasingly anti-Christian judgements being handed down in English courts.
Lord Justice Laws, in his judgement, made a number of statements that raise serious questions of public concern. The first is his interpretation of the nature and character of English law. He claimed that to give one religion protection over any other, “however long its tradition, however rich its culture, is deeply unprincipled”. How is that view compatible with the Queen’s Coronation Oath, the Act of Settlement and the Establishment of the Church of England? Our head of state is inaugurated by being anointed by an Archbishop: this is a constitutionally Christian country. The Act of Settlement is the nearest thing we possess to a written constitution, which is why informed Catholics who object to its discriminatory provisions are careful to demand amendment and not “repeal”, which would leave a black hole in the British constitution.
“In the eye of everyone save the believer, religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence,” said the judge. He claimed that affording legal protection to a position held purely on religious grounds could not be justified because “It is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.”
Where did that doctrine come from? And since when was the PC weasel word “divisive” a legitimate criterion in legal judgements which, by their nature, are invariably divisive? How can citizens influenced by subjective beliefs (ie 100 per cent of the population) be denied the protection of the law? The statement “I am a homosexual” is itself subjective, since homosexuals share the same physiology as everyone else. Yet Lord Justice Laws claims that if the law gave protection to religious belief “our constitution would be on the road to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic”.
That is a complete non sequitur. England has never been a theocracy; yet, for well over a millennium, its laws have given protection to religious belief. It is rather legal judgements such as this which are setting us on the road to an atheist theocracy – not the oxymoron it seems to be, especially when some atheists are demanding the right for their non-belief to be recognised as a religion.
This eccentric judgement ignores the wider issues at stake. This case is not only about Christianity, or even religion, but about conscience. It raises such hugely portentous issues that one wonders why Lord Justice Laws refused to allow it to proceed to the Court of Appeal, when it has always been assumed that important legal controversies over matters of principle should be heard at the highest level and considered by every tier of the judiciary.
Any civilised society respects conscience. In wartime we do not shoot conscientious objectors, who might well be atheists: we assign them to non-combatant duties. The reason for Lord Carey’s intervention was his concern at the proliferating anti-Christian judgements being handed down in our courts, most recently the case of Lillian Ladele, the registrar dismissed because her Christian faith did not allow her to conduct civil partnership ceremonies for homosexuals.
The practical outcome of this persecution is that Christians are increasingly being debarred from employment in public office and even in the private sector if they wear a crucifix or similar profession of faith. If Labour or the Liberal Democrats take power, the anti-Christian crusade will continue. David Cameron has already committed his Vichy Tories to extending “gay rights”.
Has anybody thought this through to the end game? Both the Ladele and McFarlane judgements were made in the interests of homosexuals’ rights. According to the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL), practising male homosexuals account for 2.6 per cent of the population. Is it either desirable or practical to outlaw a much larger section of the population in pursuit of ever-increasing privileges for a minority? Are Christians the only element in the population with no rights? And what will happen when this PC agenda collides with Islam?
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