Job Laws will Worsen Discrimination against Gays

KENILWORTH, 24 OCTOBER 2002 — The Government’s proposals announced yesterday to outlaw discrimination against gays and religious people will make bias against gays worse not better, says the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA).

Exemptions that permit religious groups to deny jobs to gay people and others they don’t approve of have survived the initial consultation and in some instances have been firmed up. In effect, these exemptions will legalise anti-gay bigotry.

GALHA spokesperson Terry Sanderson said: “The Government has decided to ignore the alarm bells that gay groups (including GALHA) rang during the initial consultation and have given in to pressure from religious groups to allow them to continue discriminating against their gay staff. What is worse, the Government is now encouraging faith groups to take a greater role in running welfare and support services. This means that many more jobs that are nothing to do with religion will fall under their control. The jobs of gay people in some of these organisations will be at severe risk.”

Last week the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Paul Boateng, held a reception at 11 Downing Street for “Faithworks”, a pressure group that is pushing for greater involvement of religion in the running of such services. Mr Boateng pledged that the Government would co-operate in every way to ensure that this came about.

Terry Sanderson said: “The new proposals specifically say that people whose job is transferred from a non-religious to a religious employer will not be protected from religious bigotry.”

GALHA says that another provision of the new legislation will permit employers to claim that having a person of a particular sexual orientation is a “genuine occupational requirement”. “We believe that this is aimed at closing the loophole that might have permitted the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement to challenge the Church over its refusal to employ ‘practising homosexuals’ as vicars,” says Terry Sanderson.

Much of the new law is so vaguely worded that it will have to be clarified by appeals to industrial tribunals and courts. “This is a shocking cop-out by the Government. Either they are eliminating discrimination or they are not. There’s no such thing as partial equality,” says Sanderson. “In this instance, they are actually legitimising religious bigotry and writing it into law.”