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

It's got nothing to with 'Gay Rights' as such, it's about equality.

The B&B owners said they didn't allow unmarried couples to share a double bed which personally wouldn't fall foul of any laws as long as you apply it equally - however the gay couple were civil partners, which currently is as close as you can get in the UK to marriage for same sex couples. As far as I understand it, because they were then treated differently, that was the issue.

Bouncers can't discrimitate by sexuality, age, or colour, so why should a B&B. Also quite a lot of clubs and other venues these days operate mixed toilet facilities

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

It's not about support for any group, because that would be saying that they were different. It's about not discriminating against any group due to race, religion, sex, sexuallity, or disability.

If you advocate discriminating on religious grounds because that person doesn't have the same beliefs as you, then that makes you just ad prejudice as the people with the B&B.

If you are prejudice, then don't run a business where people from all all walks of life will want to visit.

---------- Post added at 17:28 ---------- Previous post was at 17:26 ----------

:clap::clap::clap:

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

No they just make up any excuse to stop you entering.

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

But that's a different thing, and still if you could prove that their justification was hiding a different reason you might still have a case

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

To be fair to the couple, you don't know that. And in some respects, that statement itself is prejudiced

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

A B&B most certainly can. We are a B&B. We don't get many walk-up guests because we're normally full with pre-booked ones, but on the odd occasion when someone just turns up on our doorstep we can, and do, make a decision on whether to let them in based not just on the number of empty rooms available. ;)

I should add, we don't make that decision based on whether they look gay or not. It would have more to do with the possible use of alcohol and, most of all, how late at night it is (we live in a remote spot and have no guarantee that we can discover the identity and home address of someone who just turns up on our doorstep, so are quite likely to have a blanket 'no availability' for people who arrive at 10pm, or young couples who have tried camping in their car, are fed up of it, but then want to haggle over the room rate on the doorstep. Basically, if we have reason to believe they're not going to cherish our lovely room and appreciate everything that makes it worth the price, they're not likely to get a foot in the door).

The Christian couple in question here made the cardinal error of telling the gay couple, truthfully, why they were being refused entry. They gave the couple an avenue for legal redress, because the reason they were given was one disallowed by law. They could simply have refused admission and would have been under no obligation to give any reason whatsoever. The guests might have had a civil claim for expenses suffered as a result of this but given that this sort of thing happens all the time without people going to court I can't see it having ended up this way under those circumstances.

Now, despite pointing all that out, I'm not saying the couple should have lied. That would have been somewhat dodgy from a faith point of view IMO. I also happen to think it is dodgy from a faith point of view that they are rejecting people who do not live a Christian life. That's no way to reach out to a fallen world and it's not the way Jesus operated.

There was a lot of argument when this case was first aired (and another similar to it) over whether the HRA was being used to over-ride someone's right to religious freedom or family life. We got into a lot of detail over whether a small B&B, which for fire and food safety purposes is not treated as business purposes, was therefore a private dwelling where the owner's religious preferences are sacrosanct. Clearly, the court and the appeal court have determined that a B&B, guest house or inn, no matter how small, is operating as a business and therefore has to follow anti-discrimination laws just as any other business does.

---------- Post added at 18:56 ---------- Previous post was at 18:50 ----------

Don't put the cart before the horse. Everybody is brought up with a certain moral code. Religion isn't a cover for prejudice, it's the source of morality for a great many people, and not just those that actively practice the religion.

People don't think, "I don't like that, and I can use my religion as an excuse for not liking it". They think, "My religion teaches me that this is wrong - therefore I don't like it".

This is not a semantic difference, it's a crucial one. It's all very well railing against religious people from the safety of your keyboard, especially on a forum where you feel comfortable that the majority will agree with you, but the fact is, we all need to get along out there in the big wide world, yet the view you have expressed here, IMO, is not just prejudice but teetering on the brink of outright intolerance.

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

Didn't they also have a notice on their website saying that they only allowed married couples, or am I confusing this case with something else?

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

There were a couple of similar cases around at the same time, I don't remember which one this was. They may well have done, and in one of the cases there was some suggestion that this was a 'sting' operation by a gay rights group which planned to fund a civil court action if, as they expected, the couple were turned away.

Despite any and all of this, I simply point out that Jesus never erected a banner over his pitch, whenever he stopped to preach or to heal, insisting that only people whose morals he approved of could stop by.

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

He just got his disciples to mingle and usher them away without attracting too much attention :)

Have you ever turned away a known gay couple due to other reasons?

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

As of right now, we have only got a double room. We have had people stay who we knew to be gay and it never occurred to us to turn them away.

We have also had Mormons, Jews and Muslims. We never turned any of them away either. Why would we?

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

Because you said this earlier.
Was there any gay people when Jesus was alive?

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

I also said, in the very next paragraph:

... though I appreciate that post may have had too many words in it for you to read to the end. ;)

Yes.

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

So I'll ask again, and so we don't go backwards and forwards.. you said you can and do. so have you ever turned away a gay couple for any of the reasons you say you can and do turn people away for? :)

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

Does it matter if they were not turned away for being gay but for one of the other mentioned reasons?

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

I have absolutely no idea whether any of the people we have declined to put up in our B&B were gay ... had we known, it would have made no difference to our decision one way or the other. We turn people away if they arrive too late at night, if they look like they might cause trouble, or if they try to haggle the room rate (because we're not a commodity - we're only interested in having people here who want to be here, not people who are just looking for a cheap bed for the night).