Hierarchy of rights pushes religion to the bottom

Christian Magistrate loses claim before employment tribunal

02 March 2007

Christians are losing out in a new hierarchy of rights – that’s the message from the Evangelical Alliance after a magistrate lost a legal case for recognition of freedom of conscience.

The Sheffield Employment Tribunal has rejected Christian magistrate Andrew McClintock’s claim that his right to religious liberty was violated by requiring him to oversee cases involving the placement of children with same-sex adopters.

Mr McClintock, who the tribunal accepted had an “unblemished” record as Justice of the Peace in Sheffield since 1988, will consequently be unable to serve on the Family Panel.

His case was not based on refusal to obey the law, but on the need for the law to make reasonable accommodation in cases involving matters of religious conscience.

The tribunal rejected Mr McClintock’s claim of religious conscience as personal opinion, which they said needed to be set aside in public office positions.

Dr Don Horrocks, the Evangelical Alliance’s Head of Public Affairs, said: “Following other recent controversial developments within the human rights industry, it appears that a hierarchy of rights is emerging, with religion and belief deemed bottom of the pile and subservient – especially to sexual orientation rights.

“This illiberal trend to enforce the privatisation of faith and to tolerate everything apart from religious belief needs to be arrested, before we wake up to find that as a consequence Christian contribution has been increasingly withdrawn from the public square.”

Dr Horrocks added that Christian registrars, adoption agencies and other religiously motivated voluntary workers are already disappearing from the public scene.

“The impact for society may be significant, given the substantial levels of voluntary and community work undertaken by religious groups,” he said.

He added that while other rights can freely manifest themselves in the public arena, there is evidence of a political agenda to restrict and privatise religious liberty in a way that undermines the protection enshrined by article nine of the European Convention on Human Rights.

“The law of the land is supposed to reflect a commitment to diversity as well as equality,” he said. “So why can it not accommodate freedom of religious conscience in a commonsense way?

“It increasingly seems to be the case that when there is a clash of rights, it is usually religion and belief that has to make way.”