Gay Humanists Express Concern over New Equality Body

KENILWORTH, 29 OCTOBER 2003 — The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) has expressed its concern that the newly announced body being created by the Government to oversee equal rights will have to create a hierarchy of discrimination. The Commission for Equality and Human Rights will be created by merging existing anti-discrimination watchdogs and then extending its brief to include, for the first time, discrimination on the grounds of sexuality and religion.

GALHA says that trying to balance the rights of gays and lesbians with the demands of anti-gay religionists is impossible. GALHA spokesperson Terry Sanderson said: “We have seen recently how hostile religious organisations are to gay rights, and trying to include anti-discrimination measures to protect both in the same body will prove impossible. The rights they are demanding are mutually incompatible.”

Mr Sanderson pointed to the recently agreed employment regulations that come into effect in December. These were prompted by a European Union Directive and were supposed to give protection from discrimination at work to gay people and to the religious. But churches and religious groups managed to gain wide exemptions from these regulations permitting them to continue discriminating against gay people.

“This goes to show that when there is a clash of rights between gays and the religious, the religious always win”, said Mr Sanderson. “This is the danger that we see in this new body. There will be similar demands for opt-outs from religionists in legislation covering this new body which will seriously compromise the ability of gay people to defend themselves. After all, it is religious organisations which are the main discriminators against gay people.”