Pages

Thursday, 10 September 2009

Religion versus reality – yet again

The case of the Relate counsellor who didn’t fancy doing his paid job for same-sex couples but only for opposite-sex couples – because of some Christian ideas he has – is being heard at appeal today.

You can read all about it at the Christian Legal Centre’s website. I was alerted to this by an email I’m signed up to and it came under the heading “Urgent Prayer Request”.

Gary McFarlane worked for the former Marriage Guidance Council, now called Relate. See some background in our last post here. Briefly, he didn’t want to do sex therapy for same-sex couples, discussed it with his superiors and asked if an accommodation could be reached in the event of his having to do this and the whole thing led to his being fired. He is now appealing against an employment tribunal hearing that went against him.

The Christian Legal Centre dresses it up in the language of an imposition on religious freedom, of course, conveniently forgetting that, if everyone found a religious objection to some aspect of the job they do and employers meekly bowed to it, the world as we know it would collapse.

1 comment:

  1. Whilst far from an edifying character, I suspect his election was the direct result of Donnie's corrupt politics and incompetent politicians.

    ReplyDelete

We welcome lively and challenging comments. However, please try to stay on topic, be polite and do not use abusive, racist or sexist language, and do not incite your readers to violence or other antisocial behaviour, or your comment will be deleted. This isn't censorship: it's a case of staying within the bounds of decency and having an eye to the law, although we realise the law will be different in different countries.

We do not bar anonymous comments at the moment, but we would prefer that those commenting play fair and use their name or at least a regular nom de plume. It does show a confidence in your convictions. We know, too, that it's easy to use a false name and be effectively anonymous, but, again, we appeal to your sense of good practice. Even a wacky nom de plume is better, since at least readers will come to know that contributor and maybe remember her or his previous comments.

Blatant commercial advertising will be removed.

Comments should not be construed as necessarily the policy or opinion of the Pink Triangle Trust.

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.