Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

Freedom has always be restricted. Arguably necessarily in some places..

While I agree that people should be free to decide who uses their business, there are limits. It's easy to argue that the should be free to ban unmarried couples, but should they be free to ban gay people? Should they also be free to say "No Blacks"? "No Irish"? "No Women?". Where do you draw the line?

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

IIRC they didn't ban gays, they just wouldn't offer them a double bedded room. A small but distinct difference.

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

plenty of men only clubs the other 2 would be labels racist which is worse than just a discrimination

---------- Post added at 20:36 ---------- Previous post was at 20:36 ----------

I agree this point makes a huge difference

I would like to point out I have no problem with homosexuality I just do not subscribe to popular thoughts on it

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

Perhaps these two should have started up an entirely different enterprise..One which would not made them have to compromise their religious beliefs. :erm:

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

No, you have to allow the couple in question to speak for themselves. By all means say you disagree with them (I do, as it happens), but at least do them the respect of acknowledging that they have explicitly stated what their intentions were, and they were to honour the Christian concept of marriage. In law, a gay couple cannot (yet) be married. A civil partnership is not entirely the same.

They wanted to restrict their double beds to married couples. By their own testimony outside court this morning, they didn't even set out thinking about gay couples. A great many people of their generation don't - people of my parents' generation are sometimes surprised we have had single-sex couples in our rooms and not because they thought we would try to prevent it, but because many of them are still taken aback that that sort of thing actually goes on in public. In this case, discrimination against a gay couple was a side effect they hadn't even considered, not the stated intention of their policy.

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

I personally respect their policy and think the law is an ass for not doing so also

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

I agree. I think the couple in question were wrong-headed but if "equality" actually means anything, we have to leave room for people to be wrong-headed. Otherwise we haven't legislated for equality, we have legislated to create a hierarchy of rights.

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

Isn't that what we have done though ? if practicing a religion and the beliefs that go with it causes discrimination then that religion takes a back seat to civil rights ,that is how i see this result ,intended or not practicing their religious beliefs has caused the couple to fall foul of the law so their beliefs take second place

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

Yes, that is what has happened. The effect of the legislation is to force people to act contrary to their conscience, under pain of civil liability.

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

I would have just told them the place was full and we had no vacancies

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

Which would have been a lie, and therefore counter to the way of life they are trying to live ... ;)

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

...but not against the law (of the land anyway ;) )

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

The point is that our Government, on rushing through the marriage bill, promised that peoples's beliefs on marriage would not be adversely affected - another broken promise

Re: Christian B&B owners lose appeal....
 

The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 was passed in July 2013.

This story was from February 2012.