EU forces Government to put gay equality over Christian conscience
From Cranmer
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Whatever one’s interpretation of the above scriptures, the European Commission has just subordinated the Christian conscience of the United Kingdom to the Divine Right of Europa, religious conviction to the infallible proclamation of secular orthodoxy.
Perhaps it was only a matter of time.
The spirit of Factortame is alive and well as once again Her Majesty’s Government is forced to amend a sovereign Act of Parliament in order that it might conform to a higher-sovereign EU directive.
There are now so many sovereigns that it is difficult to find the head that wears the crown.
Readers and communicants will recall that Labour’s Equality legislation granted religious groups certain exemptions when it came to employing homosexuals ‘so as to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion's followers’. Some agreed, some disagreed. The majority view prevailed: that is democracy.
But the EU has decreed that such exemptions are incompatible with their directive prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of a person's sexual orientation. The Guardian informs us: ‘The ruling follows a complaint from the National Secular Society, which argued that the opt-outs went further than was permitted under the directive and had created "illegal discrimination against homosexuals".’
Again, Cranmer has no argument with the National Secular Society in expressing its view: in a liberal democracy they have every right to argue their case in the public sphere. But to read that the Commission have heeded the ‘reasoned opinion’ of its lawyers that the view of the NSS may be imposed upon the professing Christian majority is of immense concern. The Government have been told: ‘exceptions to the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation for religious employers are broader than that permitted by the directive’.
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