A victory against those damnable forces of political correctness – an employment tribunal decided last week that Lillian Ladele, a marriage registrar, should not be forced to officiate at gay civil partnerships, despite the fact that it was precisely her job to do so.
Ladele, a bigot, aged 47, does not much like the idea of homosexuals doing anything with each other, let alone getting married. Officiating at such a ceremony was in direct contravention of her beliefs, the tribunal decided.
Crucial to its judgment was Ladele’s “Christian faith” which, she insisted, precluded her from giving a professional blessing to sodomites. I don’t know what would have happened if she had told the tribunal that she wasn’t a Christian or a Muslim or of any other faith but just hated poofs. Probably she’d have lost.
But the fact that she can append her bigotry to a minority view within a church attended by a vanishingly small section of the British population apparently swung the day.
There is a double irony here: civil ceremonies, for both gays and straights, are supposedly the secular alternative to a church service, so it is a bit iniquitous to find God – or at least Ladele’s own, personal, vengeful vision of God – poking his big nose in by proxy.
Further, there is a large swathe of the Christian church which finds quite invidious all marriage services conducted beyond the reach of Jesus Christ, which is why the Church of England fought long and hard to ensure that, by law, the Bible must not be quoted at these ceremonies.
Perhaps Ladele can reconvene the tribunal and tell them that, as a Christian, she objects to all secular marriage ceremonies and therefore cannot, on account of her religion, officiate at any of them. To make her do so would be discriminatory, as would sacking her.
She has the human right to be a marriage registrar and refuse to sanction all secular marriages; to just sit at her desk playing online Sudoku all year while feverishly rubbing her crucifix.
A compromise might have been to force her to officiate at gay civil partnerships, as required in her job description, but to allow her to shower gay couples with virulent abuse as soon as the formalities were over.
Perhaps she could scream at them, as they kissed, “if there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act, they shall surely be put to death”. (Leviticus 20:13) This, I think, would get the reception going nicely and would be a good talking point for the guests.
Members of the right-wing press have seen Ladele’s case as a “victory for common sense” against the political correctness of Islington council, which employed this woman.
It seems to me quite the reverse and the very apogee of political correctness (incidentally, can you imagine the Daily Mail and others taking the same sort of view if Ladele had happened to be a Muslim?).
The victory for common sense would have been achieved if Ladele had resigned from her post because she felt that it was no longer compatible with her private beliefs since the legal approval of civil partnerships for gay people in 2004.
Instead, out of a desire to pay obeisance to any and all forms of religious bigotry, rather than insist to individuals that their views are stupid and medieval, the tribunal has opened the doors to a whole array of nutters with terrible sensibilities to plead their cases.
Ladele was not expected to endow gay couples with a Christian blessing – indeed she would be forbidden from doing so. She should have either resigned or got on with her job without discrimination, reserving her dislike of homosexuals for her private moments.
