What are the main problems with the Regulations? Doesn’t regulation 14 (the religious exemption) provide all the protection Christians need?
There are a number of problems with the Regulations (many of which are set out in greater detail below). For example:
1) The Regulations automatically assume that homosexual civil partnerships are fully equivalent to heterosexual marriages and therefore it is assumed that any discrimination (in the provision of goods and services) between married couples and homosexual civil partners is illegal.
2) There is a crucial gap in the protection of vicars and ministers so that it will be illegal for them to teach their congregation that they should follow the Bible’s teaching on sexual morality even where this conflicts with the SORs. For example, it would be illegal for a vicar to cite the example of the Christian printing company and then say ‘it is better to follow the Bible’s teaching and risk being sued than to be complicit in sin by printing leaflets promoting gay pride’.
3) There is no protection for individuals to guarantee their freedom of conscience – the only exemption for religious belief (Regulation 14) applies to organisations rather than individuals. Therefore an individual Christian GP, for example, would have no freedom of conscience to refuse to give a reference recommending homosexual parents as suitable for adopting because the GP did not believe it would be right/in the best interests of a child to be raised without a father and a mother. This does not make sense in light of a doctor’s freedom to refuse to recommend/perform an abortion on the grounds of conscience under the Abortion Act.
4) There is no specific protection for faith schools which are bound by the law in the same way as all schools. Also, there is a substantial danger that it will be illegal under the SORs for faith schools to continue to teach that extra-marital sexual relationships are wrong.
5) There is no protection for commercial Christian organisations, however strong their Christian ethos (e.g. a Christian printing company will be acting illegally if they refuse to print fliers promoting gay sex).
6) There is no protection for many voluntary organisations which, although run by Christians who are motivated by their faith, are not strictly ‘religious’ in the language of the legislation (e.g. a Christian homeless shelter would not be able to hold the policy that ‘we will not provide services to someone if this were to promote homosexual practices’).
7) There is a substantial danger that where a church or other religious organisation receive funding from the local authority to provide goods or services (e.g. if a church receives state funding to run an overnight homeless shelter), it will lose all the protection under Regulation 14 and would not even be able to refuse membership of the church to openly practising homosexuals.
8) There is a danger that it will be unlawful for vicars to be able to continue to preach that same-sex relationships are sinful because preaching itself is not protected by the religion exemption and may contravene Regulation 9. It is true that Regulation 14 does offer a substantial degree of protection to churches and other religious organisations that are not ‘solely or mainly commercial’ and which do not provide goods, services etc on behalf of a public authority under a contract. So, for example, under the Regulations, in the vast majority of cases, a church will be free to refuse to let out a church hall to a group wishing to promote homosexual practices. However, as the list (above) shows, there are still many problems with the Regulations.
Lawyers Christian Fellowship Sexual Orientation Regulations 2007 Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)
Christian Concern for our Nation
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