Britain is moving towards a 'secular state', says Lord Carey, warning of civil unrest after Christian counsellor is sacked for refusing to see gay couples
James Meikle
The former archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey today accused judges of moving towards a new "secular state" that would downgrade the rights of religious believers. Attacking a "deeply worrying" court ruling, Carey claimed the judiciary was now tipping the legal balance against believers in "a deeply unedifying collision of human rights".
Carey reacted angrily to a judge who sharply criticised him for previously appealing for a court of hand-picked judges to determine religious rights cases. Carey had also warned of civil unrest over decisions he claimed could lead to Christians being barred from jobs.
Lord Justice Laws, dismissing a marriage guidance counsellor's attempt to challenge his sacking for refusing to give sex therapy to homosexuals, said legislation to protect a position "held purely on religious grounds" could not be justified and would be "irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective ... divisive, capricious and arbitrary".
His judgment at an appeal hearing by Gary MacFarlane, 48, from Bristol, will fuel resentment among Christian groups at what they see as unfair treatment. MacFarlane was seeking to appeal against an employment appeal tribunal ruling by Relate Avon in 2008. He alleged unfair dismissal on the grounds of religious discrimination.
Carey had sent a statement to the court calling for a special panel of judges with "proven sensitivity and understanding of religious issues" to hear the case, alleging recent court decisions had used "dangerous" reasoning and could lead to civil unrest.
But addressing Carey's concerns, Lord Justice Laws's ruling said: "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".
The judge also said: "In a free constitution such as ours there is an important distinction to be drawn between the law's protection of the right to hold and express a belief and the law's protection of that belief's substance or content." While the Judaeo-Christian tradition had exerted a "profound influence" on the judgment of lawmakers, "the conferment of any legal protection of preference upon a particular substantive moral position on the ground only that it is espoused by the adherents of a particular faith, however long its tradition, however long its culture, is deeply unprincipled".
This would mean laws being imposed not to advance the general good on objective grounds but on subjective opinion since faith, other than to the believer, was subjective.
"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 is alone bound by it. No one else is or can be so bound, unless by his own free choice he accepts its claims."
As to Carey's plea for a special court, he said: "I am sorry that he finds it possible to suggest a procedure that would, in my judgment, be deeply inimical to the public interest".
McFarlane said the decision not to let him appeal against the ruling left him "disappointed and upset", adding that "because of my Christian beliefs and principles, there should be allowances taken into account whereby individuals like me can actually avoid having to contradict their very strongly held Christian principles".
Carey said the judgment "continues a trend on the part of the courts to downgrade the right of religious believers to manifest their faith in what has become a deeply unedifying collision of human rights".
"It heralded a 'secular' state rather than a 'neutral' one. And while with one hand the ruling seeks to protect the right of religious believers to hold and express their faith, with the other it takes away those same rights. 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.
"Oddly the judge doesn't address the argument that rights have to be held in balance and he is apparently indifferent to the fact that religious believers are adversely affected by this judgment and others".
Carey was supported by the Christian Legal Centre, which said: "It seems that a religious bar to office has been created , whereby a Christian who wishes to act on their Christian beliefs on marriage will no longer be able to work in a great number of environments".
Derek Munn, of gay rights campaigners Stonewall, welcomed the decision. "You cannot refuse a service to a person based on their gender, race or disability, and you can't on the basis of their sexual orientation either. People delivering public services mustn't be able to pick and choose who they will serve on the basis of personal prejudice".
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: "The law must be clear that anti-discrimination laws exist to protect people, not beliefs".
The right to follow a religious belief was a qualified one and must not be used to legitimise discrimination against gay people "who are legally entitled to protection against bigotry and persecution." He accused "fundamentalists" of "trying hard to undermine the laws that protect gay people from discrimination" and "seeking to create a hierarchy of rights that places Christian dogma over the rights of people to fair treatment".
The Guardian
