A little bit of religious bigotry is tolerable in a healthy society (Porter | The Guardian)

[struggle4progress]

Henry Porter
The Observe
Sunday 2 May 2010

The first thing you want to ask about Gary McFarlane, the man who lost his case against unfair dismissal from Relate because he refused to counsel gay couples, is whether a fundamentalist Christian heterosexual with strongly held views about homosexuality was necessarily the best person to give advice on gay sex. The second is why it didn't occur to McFarlane before he signed up with Relate, which advertises courses on counselling gays, lesbians and bisexuals, that his religious beliefs might prove an obstacle ...

Even an atheist like me understands that religious conviction is as vitally important to some people as sexual orientation is to most of us ...

Is this really such a terrible thing, given that he would almost certainly be lousy at advising gay couples? Of course, if he was to go around whipping up hatred against gays, that would be different, but he simply said he would prefer not to do something and I cannot see that he is causing any harm by quietly making that choice. We should allow for these prejudices if they don't affect the lives of others for the good reason that court cases and the sort of legislation against speech crimes proposed by the last government will not make them go away. I wonder why Relate didn't work round his views but perhaps a rather prim correctness suggested that he was not the person to be doing counselling of any kind, which is why his case ended up with the activist judge ...

... The rights of gay people to receive counselling and to be treated equally under the law are now thankfully assured, but they should not always trump the rights of Christians to decline and demur because of their beliefs ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/02/muslim-veil-religion