I came to this Sunday morning programme – The Big Question - belatedly, because I had dismissed it as being a God Slot item for Sunday mornings. I was very wrong – it is a well-structured, well-moderated (by Nicky Campbell) series of discussion on highly relevant political, social and religious topics.
One of the three items today addressed the question Does the law undervalue Christian belief?
The tabloids have been covering this topic for some time now in their usual hysterical fashion under the question - implied or explicit - Are Christians being persecuted in Britain?
The persecutions being visited on them include not being allowed to wear a silver cross with an airline uniform and not being allowed to deny accommodation to same sex couples in their bed and breakfast operations. As one journalists has already observed, as persecutions go, this is hardly being nailed to a cross or burnt at the stake, but Christians argue that it is the thin edge of the wedge, and since persecution for a Christian is a traditional route to virtue if not martyrdom – not to mention tabloid celebrity – it is worth a shot to complain about it.
The accusation is that the law is being enforced in a partial manner, Muslims over Christians, with Muslims being allowed to get away with anything – if you believe the tabloids – because of either fear or political expediency. But I must stop being flippant, because there is a more serious economic aspect to this – some Christians have either lost their livelihoods, or been threatened with losing them over non-compliance with the law on discrimination.
Sunday’s audience was a well-balanced one in terms of spread of opinions, although some members of it were anything but balanced in their approach to rational debate. They had already shown their colours to some degree in the earlier two topics, especially on the question of an English Parliament, since certain opinions, not to say prejudices tend to group themselves predictably across a range of issues.
The basis of the discussion centred around our rights at law in Europe not to be discriminated against on grounds of our gender, race, colour or sexuality and the right of freedom to worship – religious freedom and the perception by some that English judges in recent cases had placed the rights of homosexuals and non-believers above those of Christians.
Nicky Campbell opened with a former counsellor for Relate, Gary McFarlane, who had worked in the area of relationship counselling, including sexual relationship, and who had been dismissed for stating, under questioning by his employer during a training process, that he would refuse to offer same sex couples on sexual therapy, e.g. assist and improve their sexual technique and their sex life. He was dismissed for gross misconduct.
This term perhaps suggests something different to a lay audience than to a human resources (Personnel) professional like myself. It means a single act, or series of actions that implies a total rejection of the contract of employment, warranting summary termination of the contract without notice. This is not, as some believe, instant dismissal (there is no such concept at law) since proper disciplinary procedures and rights of appeal are required by law, and the decision can be contested at law.
Gary, a pleasant, mild-mannered man, freely acknowledged that he had stated that he would not offer sexual therapy as defined to same sex couples, based on his religious convictions. This was, as Nicky Campbell put it, a theoretical problem, since Gary had not yet actually been presented with the situation where he would have had to refuse. Gary’s view was that such a situation would conflict with his Christian beliefs, and if it arose, he would “want to take it to his supervisor and work it through …”
Campbell asked Gary if he would offer sexual therapy to unmarried couples, and he answered yes. Campbell then observed that he was therefore discriminating against gay couples. Gary, a former solicitor, then went into a long justification of his position, saying that “there were no absolutes …”, when clearly there were some absolutes for him. He had a “personal dilemma” in assisting in the sexual relationships of a same sex couple.
Gary’s case set the core agenda for the ensuing debate. Did the right at law to religious freedom mean that if a central belief of the Christian religion (or any religion) conflicted with the rights of another mean that a Christian had the right to refuse to obey one law by invoking their rights under another, e.g. did they have the right to discriminate, in breach of the discrimination laws, without suffering any consequences?
The examples all included commercial and financial implications, under either a contract of employment or in running a business. Various recent cases have highlighted the employment contract examples, notably the airline employee wearing a cross, and an unscripted observation on the rights of a bed and breakfast operator refusing to accommodate a gay couple may yet cost the Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling his job. (His comments were recorded and leaked to the Press.)
Gary was convinced that “a level playing field” did not exist at law between Christian rights and Muslim rights, and that no action would have been taken against a Muslim in similar circumstances because “it would have been too hot a potato for Relate to have touched …”.
Dinah Rose QC was asked if it was true that the law was favouring Muslims. She replied that the law gave equal protection to anybody for their religious beliefs. Nicky Campbell cited to right granted to Muslims in the Health Service to cover their arms. Dinah Rose replied that he was talking about individual cases, but whether you were talking about Muslims, Christians, atheists or Jews, that law said the same thing – you have the right not to be discriminated against on grounds of your religious beliefs, and when you were talking about treatment by an employer that placed people with individual religious beliefs at a disadvantage, then the employer has to justify that particular policy.
She added that she would not comment on Gary McFarlane’s case because she did not know the full facts, but that the test would be the same – whether the employer’s policy is justifiable.
My perception of this was that if a Muslim employee of Relate took exactly the same position as Gary, would they too have lost their job? Relate can assert that they would, but if they have not yet had such a case, we won’t know if, in Gary’s accusation - “it would have been too hot a potato for Relate to have touched …”, and they would have reached an inconsistent decision.
The other aspect of course is the reasonableness of the employer’s position. Would it have been more reasonable to allow Gary to continue in post, accepting his caveat on sexual therapy to same sex couples? I can only offer what my answer would have been as a human resources director, an emphatic no – there is a specification of the duties required for a particular post and employees cannot opt out for reasons of personal belief or capacity. They are either willing to do the job as specified, and capable of doing it or not.
In my career, I have on many occasions accepted that discretion could be exercised where an employee had temporarily or even permanently lost the physical capacity to carry out the full range of duties in a job, perhaps because of injury or disability, and that such a restriction of performance could be accepted temporarily or permanently. But such an exercise of discretion would have set a benchmark for future cases where the circumstances were identical. Relate therefore, in my view, would have been free to allow Gary to continue in post providing they allowed, for example, a Muslim or Jew to continue in identical circumstances.
Gary was unhappy, but the QC reminded him that his barrister could put his arguments to the Court of Appeal. She was again unequivocal that the law did not place Christians at a disadvantage.
This exchange should have said it all, but it was only the prelude to the heated, often emotional and sometime irrational debate that followed. That is, of course, what made the programme worth watching, depressing though it was on occasion. Watching and listening to Dinah Ross QC made the gulf between her disciplined legal mind and that of the passionate contributors who then entered the fray seem almost unbridgeable.
The debate then moved to the case of John and Michael, a gay couple who had been denied a room with a double bed at a guest house because of the landlady’s Christian beliefs. She had been upfront about these, saying that her convictions did not allow them to stay in the house. John and Michael felt the injustice, not just as a gay couple, but as discrimination equivalent to racial or religious discrimination, or to unmarrieds – in Nicky Campbell’s words. They were preparing to take a civil action out against this discrimination.
Campbell then put the question to panel member Alison Ruoff, lay member of the General Synod of the Church of England – if she owned a bed and breakfast, would she have let the room to them, and got an unequivocal no. When pressed, she said this was because it was her own home – a B&B, not a business, as John and Michael asserted.
Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet said they would be welcome at his B&B if he had one, even though their sexual orientation was in conflict with his faith, because that was the law of the land. He also said to Gary that his case was different, but still illegal – his religious beliefs were infringing the rights of gay couples because he had voluntarily taken on that role and profession. In contrast, John and Michael were not infringing anyone’s legal rights by sharing a bed in a B&B room.
Nicky Campbell asked if it was appropriate to subvert the law because of a few things that had been said in the Old Testament. Ruoff replied that it was not just the Old Testament, it was the whole Bible. “Sorry – I stand where I stand – I would not have any homosexual relationships happening in my bed and breakfast. It’s my own home – they can go to a hotel.”
A DIGRESSION – LOT, HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTERS
I suddenly had a thought about Lot and his wife, (I was shaking salt on my egg as I watched the programme) and not having a bible handy, went to Google. One of the first sites I came across had the title What the Bible Says about Queers, which one would hope was not the first port of call for lay members of the General Synod, so I hastily exited and went to the Authorised Version – the King James. (To anyone who thinks I got this from Richard Dawkins – I was born six years earlier than the eminent scientist, and had been reading my bible daily at school for five years before he went to school, and the story of Lot always fascinated and puzzled me.)
I could, of course, have gone to the Vulgate, to Tyndale’s Version, Cranmer’s Bible, Coverdale’s version, to the Jewish texts, to the Douay Bible, and any one of the innumerable versions, but I was not in search of a passage in Ecclesiasticus, or the Book of the Maccabees, nor of Tobias, none of them present in the King James because Protestants regard them as apocrypha, but present in some other Christian bibles. Maccabees, for instance, is in the Catholic version of the bible. The Qur'an has a very different view of Lot from the Christian Bible, and venerates him as a prophet, which Christians do not. They reject the aspects of the Christian version of the Lot story that show Lot in rather a bad light. There is, as far as I know, only one version of the Qur’an.
Now Lot was an important man, according to Genesis. Abraham was his uncle, (Haran was his father) and you couldn’t get closer to the Creator than that until Moses, Christ and Mohammed came along, as Christians, Jews and Muslims would probably agree. (For three world religions with the same roots, there is precious little else they agree upon, and that is the great tragedy of our modern world.)
According to the Christian versions of the Bible, angels came to stay at Lot’s house in Sodom. The men of the town demanded to have homosexual sex with the angels, but Lot refused and offered his virginal daughters instead. However, God is angry at Sodom, and is about to destroy the city – and four other cities of the plain - with fire and brimstone. The angels force Lot, his wife and their daughters to leave the doomed city and head for Zoar, one of the five cities that the Lord has decided to spare, and warn them not to look back as the destruction begins. Lot’s wife doesn’t take this good advice, looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt.
Lot then heads for a cave in the mountains, where his virginal daughters get him drunk and seduce him, for the purpose of preserving the family line. This incestuous union produces two sons, Moab and Ammon, who go on to become patriarchs of the nations named after them, Moab and Ammon.
Lot and his Daughters - Hendrik Goltzius 1616
This is a fascinating story, whatever your views of its authenticity. It seems clear to me that Lot refused to let the men of Sodom have their way with the angels because they were guests in his house and they were angels. His position on the rights and wrongs of homosexuality are less clear. What is abundantly clear – if you accept the Christian version - is that Lot was prepared allow his daughters to be gang-raped, and later committed incest with each of his daughters while drunk. Both of these acts would be crimes under 21st century British law and presumably the General Synod of the Church of England – and Alison Rouoff - would vigorously condemn them.
But the Lord did not seem to take a view on this, and the modern church skates over it. It was Lot’s wife who was turned into a pillar of salt, not Lot or his daughters. Jesus later enjoined his followers to remember the fate of Lot’s wife (Luke 17:32), clearly approving of the Lord’s decision, but he did not appear to have a bad word for Lot.
It seems to me that on this, as on innumerable other biblical facts, that Christians have always been highly selective on what they choose as their benchmark events, quotations and moral imperatives. Would bed & breakfast operators welcome Lot and his daughters to spend the night? Would they offer up their daughters to gay couples to deter homosexual activity? One would hope not …
Back again to the Big Question …
Dinah Rose QC asked Alison Rouaff – rhetorically - if she would agree with the old South African law that refused to admit a mixed race couple to accommodation, then answered it herself - no, of course not … She again emphasised that the law was the law, and the B&B owner’s personal views did not come into the question.
Alison Rouaf then fell back on the rather feeble argument that the law had changed on recognising homosexuality (yes it has, Alison – once John and Michael would have been imprisoned for the act, or perhaps, like the tragic scientist Alan Turing, have been offered chemical castration as an alternative to prison. Society has moved on, even if some members of the Church of England Synod have not …) and perhaps our unfortunate B&B owners had set up their operation before then. She also made the quite unsupported assertion that if the owners of this B&B were Muslims, “… there is no way we would be having this conversation …”.
The debate then moved on to a black couple, Eunice and Owen Johns, who had been fostering for a long time, but were now not allowed to continue. Derby City Council, in response to their request to foster children between the ages of five and eight years of age, asked them what they would do if a child came to them and said they thought they were homosexual, what would they do and say? Eunice and Owen replied that, as Christians, they would love them and care for them - “We would just be there for them, whatever the situation …”.
Nicky Campbell pressed the point more specifically, as Derby City Council patently did – and as I would have …
“But what would you have said to the child if the child had asked “Is it wrong to be gay?” Eunice was still evading the question, saying that she was not sure that a child of that age would ask such a question. She and Owen would not put the child down – they would have to “work it out – work it out …”
But eventually she said that she would not tell the child that it was alright to be homosexual. And there was the nub of it – for Derby City Council, and for me. Vulnerable children would be put into the care of a caring couple, a nice couple, a loving couple – but a couple with a deep conviction, one that they would express to the child at a time of maximum distress and innocent vulnerability, that the law of the land was wrong – that Eunice and Owen’s version of religion and the revealed word of their God trumped the law, and that the child’s sexual instincts were wrong. As they both said “We are Bible-believing Christians …” and for them, that ended any questions, any debate, and over-rode the law of the land.
I would not want to see a child placed in the hands of such a couple, anymore than I would want to see them placed in the hands of a couple who believed that heterosexuality was wrong and their belief was that their God and their holy book condemned it, insisting on homosexuality as the natural way.
But then I had to act as my own devil’s advocate. What if I were fostering children in Nazi Germany when the race laws were in operation? Would I obey the law and surrender a child that I discovered to be Jewish to the Gestapo? Would I tell that child that they were unworthy, that they belonged to an inferior race because the law said so? Would I act on my own deeply held beliefs just as Alison Rouoff, Gary McFarlane and Eunice and Owen Johns did, and if so, where does the difference lie between us?
This is a very complex question, one to which I have no easy answers. But it would lie somewhere in the fact that, in Nazi Germany, I was living in a repressive, murderous dictatorship, not a democracy, one where every civilised value was being progressively abandoned, one where human rights counted for nothing. And my belief in what was right would not come from an ancient, highly contested set of writings of primitive peoples that claimed to be the word of God, interpreted in violently disputatious ways even by those who broadly accept them, but from the great thrust of civilisation’s painful and gradual process from ignorance, obscurantism, persecution, slavery and injustice to something approaching my ideals of freedom and justice for all mankind.
And, most of all, from the belief that I would only accept the rule of law in a democracy in which I could exercise my democratic rights to elect representatives with the power to express my views and make laws that represented them - a democracy in which the rights of minorities were also respected.
This viewpoint was eventually at least partially expressed by Liz Kershaw, panel member on the programme.
If, within such a democracy, every religious group followed their religious conviction when it was in conflict with law, there would be chaos, anarchy and violence instead of democracy, and we would have violently competing theocracies. The United States of America has always been close to this situation, never more so than now, with religious extremist groups prepared to use violence, bombing, intimidation and murder to advance their causes. (For Christian examples, look at the pro-life extremists.)
Enter the atheist – there may have been more but they kept a low profile. She rather spoilt her sound arguments by exploding into the debate, almost incandescent with righteous indignation, and very soon managed to wind up an initially mild-mannered Christian gentleman, (Mark Mullins, a Christian barrister) who said that “We (Christians in Britain) believe that it is the word of God and that it has been good for our country for the last two millennia.”
Our atheist lady challenged this on the support for slavery issue – not the ideal example, in my view. She could have quoted persecutions, hangings, burnings, torture and general intolerance, not to mention the evil performed in the name of the British Empire. The Christian barrister then offered the examples of the law letting Sikhs wear bangles, Muslim’s wear headscarfs, making accommodations for homosexuals, but when it came to the Christian faith, promoting a politically correct dogma claiming equal treatment for all but “funking it” it when it came to challenging Muslims. His view was that if someone refused to do something under their contract of employment that contravened their religious belief, quoting the example of a registrar refusing to handle a same sex marriage, then “if you’ve got other people who will take that, you’re not discriminating against anybody …”
This seems to me to be an extraordinary view for a barrister to take, but perhaps the clue lies in his earlier use of the phrase “politically correct”, much loved by Christians and those who wish to continue to use certain kinds of terminology and exercise discriminatory practices, to try to ridicule the progress of our society towards more civilised and equitable ways of dealing with minorities and our fellow human beings in general.
I am sure that Mark Mullins is not racist or homophobic, for example, (he will doubtless take the Christian position of “hate the sin, not the sinner”) but he must be aware that the term politically correct is used pejoratively by racists and bigots of various types who wish to exercise their perceived right continue to refer to blacks as niggers, darkies and coons, and to homosexuals as poofs, perverts, queers and worse, and to the disabled as cripples and lunatics. Political correctness, in my view, has made for a more civilised public discourse and made us a better, more tolerant society, allowing for the odd risible application of the principle, much beloved of The Daily Mail, etc.
Liz Kershaw made perhaps the most telling comment, that religion was perhaps “the politics of its day” with the powerful telling the ignorant and uneducated how to conduct their lives, how to see the universe, etc.
Christians in Britain once had that power – they were the establishment, and, leaving aside endless squabbling over doctrine amongst themselves, were unchallenged in the public arena. They had the power – now they don’t, and the ordinary people feel free to call out derisively when the emperor has no clothes, and to elect secular powers and representatives who will ensure a measure of equity in their society, however imperfectly.
If Christianity had that kind of power again, we would slide towards a theocracy, and, in the old Scots phrase, our civil liberties would melt away “like snaw aff a dyke” (snow from a wall).
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.
No comments:
Post a Comment