The legal judgment against Asher’s bakery in Northern Ireland – who were accused of breaking equality law for refusing to bake a cake with a pro-gay-marriage slogan – has been issued, and the judge’s decision has opened up an even bigger legal can of worms than anyone anticipated. The bakers had been prosecuted for breaking equality law by discriminating against the customer who ordered the cake because he was gay. The bakers denied this and argued that it was the slogan, not the customer, that they objected to. Most commentators accepted the bakers’ assertion, but still foresaw a legal case which pitted the right to freedom of conscience (i.e. not to support or promote a cause they disagreed with) against the wording of contract law. Even the prosecuting lawyer spent much of his energy laying down a strict interpretation of contract law that he thought should be applied in this case.
But the judge instead found Asher’s guilty of discriminating against the customer because he was gay, on the grounds (a) that they must have guessed he was gay, and (b) that previous legal cases had decided motive was irrelevant if discrimination took place e.g. if a hospital selected patients for some procedure using a criterion that had nothing to do with the patient’s race, but the net effect of the criterion was to deny that procedure to patients of a particular race, then racial discrimination had occurred. Asher’s may appeal against the judgment, but for now, lawyers across the country are trying to digest the implications of a law that says it’s possible to be guilty of discrimination against a member of a protected minority group without intending to discriminate, or even actually knowing that the person involved belongs to that group. One thing that seems likely is that there will be continued calls to introduce a conscience clause into equality law -- or more precisely, to extend the existing religious exemption from some aspects of equality law to include businesses with a religious ethos, as was recently done in the USA by the “Hobby Lobby” case.
Two church denominations have changed their policies to be more open to gay ministers. The United Methodists in the USA have voted to allow clergy to be practising homosexuals and to perform gay weddings. And the Church of Scotland has voted to allow gays in civil partnerships of gay marriages to be appointed to the ministry. One church immediately left the Church of Scotland in protest – in Stornoway, where about 250 people joined themselves to the Free Church of Scotland instead, leaving about 100 (and none of the governing ‘kirk session’) in the old building.
Meanwhile, two university academics have suggested taking family-related conflicts in equality law to the ultimate extreme – by abolishing the family, so that society offers a level playing field for everyone. Adam Swift, professor of political and legal theory at the University of Warwick, and Harry Brighouse, professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), argue that since kids raised in families clearly have advantages in society, the only fair thing to do is to abolish the family. They propose to start by prohibiting private school, inheritance, summer camp, and other “purely economic means” of conferring advantages on children.
The famous American televangelist Robert Schuller has died. Schuller’s “Hour of Power” was a relentlessly upbeat radio programme that avoided what he called “the glorification of shame” that came from preaching about the unworthiness of sinners, and instead focussed on self-esteem and “possibility thinking”. Despite criticism for how little his sermons touched on the issue of sin, his meetings became so popular that he commissioned the “Crystal Cathedral” in southern Los Angeles; a huge church building with 10,000 panes of glass, seating for 3,000, an enormous pipe organ and doors 90ft high that opened at the touch of a button. Instead of an overflow room, he put a giant screen in the car park, so people could watch the sermon like it was a drive-in movie. He avoided many of the sexual scandals that brought down his high-profile peers in the 1980s, and became a close spiritual advisor to President Clinton in the 1990s. Yet the ministry ended in family disputes and bankruptcy in the past 5-10 years, and the Crystal Cathedral is now owned by the Roman Catholic church.
In the Middle East, there is good news to report for once. A Christian conference with more than 1,000 people was held at New Life church in Amman, Jordan; so many people attended that some had to watch the video link from the lobby. There was also a youth prayer meeting with over 200 youths on Saturday night, which ran for two and a half hours.
Also in North Africa, the attack on Garissa University in Kenya by al-Shabaab terrorists has triggered some members of al-Shabaab to defect. The most senior defector, Zaki Hersi, was so influential in the group that there was once a bounty of $3 million for his death. He said, “Our aim was to liberate the country … but now it has turned to terror and acts of organised crime.” He is living in a safe house because his former colleagues are trying to kill him.
A decision by the UK Supreme Court means that vulnerable homeless people are more likely to be given priority for local council accommodation. A law was passed many years ago that was intended to achieve this, but some of its wording was ambiguous (for example, it made no attempt to define different categories of homelessness) and so it became subject to case law … and the test case decided that ‘vulnerable’ meant ‘more vulnerable than the average homeless person’, a test which was almost impossible for homeless people to fulfil. The Supreme Court has now decided that Southwark council was wrong to use this test to turn away a homeless man with multiple physical and psychotic problems, and that the test should instead be ‘more vulnerable than an ordinary person’. Charities for the homeless have welcomed the news.
In sport, Brazilian international footballer David Luiz has been baptised as a Christian, under the auspices of a Hillsongs church (using team-mate Maxwell’s swimming pool) and has vowed to abstain from sex until he is married. Luiz announced his baptism on social media by quoting 2 Corinthians 5.17: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away and the new has come.”
And finally, a drug dealer from Colchester has unofficially qualified for the Guinness Book of Records for the longest time spent in police custody without going to the toilet. Sy Allen swallowed his stash of drugs when the police arrested him, then refused all food and drink for 3 days before starting to accept snacks. 23 days after his arrest, having still not been to the toilet, he became unwell and was taken to hospital where doctors recovered 24 wraps of heroin and 20 wraps of cocaine from his body. He was sentenced to 32 months in jail.
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