Religious Groups Given Right to Sack Gays

KENILWORTH, 9 MAY 2003 — New regulations aimed at outlawing discrimination at work on the grounds of sexual orientation will actually increase discrimination, says the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA).

The regulations, published yesterday, have given wide-ranging exemptions to religious groups that will permit them to deny jobs to gay applicants and to sack people who do not conform to the “religious ethos” of the organisation.

GALHA spokesperson Terry Sanderson said: “The Government has given in to pressure from religious bodies and created a bigots’ charter. It specifically permits organised religions to deny jobs to, and sack, gay people. This is particularly bad news for gay priests and vicars who can now be hounded from their jobs with the full approval of the law.”

Mr Sanderson said that although the churches may not be planning a mass clear-out of gay priests at the moment, if they did in the future, there would be nothing to stop them conducting a full scale witch-hunt. “We shouldn’t forget that the Catholic Church is considering whether to place a bar on gay priests at the moment”, he said.

GALHA pointed out that there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that are controlled by “organisations with a religious ethos”, including the many thousands of church schools where teachers could be made to conform to some kind of morality test in order to get a job.

Terry Sanderson commented: “This is pandering to the most extreme elements in religion. Any born-again head teacher could suddenly demand that everyone working in a church school should be heterosexual, married Christians, and the law would support him or her.”

GALHA is particularly concerned that the need for religious groups to prove that it is necessary to reserve jobs for people from their own faith has been weakened. Now it is only necessary for them to decide that an applicant is unsuitable because they don’t fit in with the doctrines of the religion, and they need not offer the job.

“We are shocked and alarmed by this,” said Terry Sanderson. “It’s an anti-discrimination law that encourages discrimination. The Government has been weak and cowardly in giving in to the pressure from religious extremists.”