By Hilary White
LONDON, May 21, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com ) - British churches
will be forced to accept practicing homosexuals or "transsexuals" in
positions as youth workers and similar roles, under upcoming equality
legislation, the government has said. The Labour
government's Equality Bill will prohibit churches from refusing to hire active
homosexuals even if their religion holds such behavior to be sinful, said
deputy equalities minister Maria Eagle.
The legislation is due to come into force next year, and
churches fear that it will force them to act against their religious
convictions in a broad range of areas. Eagle indicated at a conference called
"Faith, Homophobia, Transphobia, & Human
Rights" in
"The circumstances in which religious institutions can
practice anything less than full equality are few and far between," she
told delegates. "While the state would not intervene in narrowly ritual or
doctrinal matters within faith groups, these communities cannot claim that
everything they run is outside the scope of anti-discrimination law.
"Members of faith groups have a role in making the
argument in their own communities for greater LGBT acceptance, but in the
meantime the state has a duty to protect people from unfair treatment."
The bill allows a religious exemption for roles deemed to be
"for the purposes of an organised religion"
but restricts this definition to those who conduct liturgical celebrations or
spend their time teaching doctrine.
The Daily Telegraph quoted Neil Addison, a Roman Catholic
barrister and expert on religious discrimination law, who said that the bill
will leave churches powerless to defend the fabric of their organization.
"This is a threat to religious identity. What we are losing is the right
for organizations to make free choices," he said
Equality commissioners include the homosexual lobbyist, Ben Summerskill, the head of the leading British homosexualist activist group Stonewall. Summerskill
has called for churches to be forced to employ homosexuals and for the police
to stop Christians who were peacefully protesting against 'gay rights' laws
outside Parliament.
Tony Grew, a homosexualist
activist and the former editor of PinkNews.co.uk, wrote recently that the
Equality Bill will "entrench gay rights in all aspects of public
life." Grew wrote on PinkNews that the bill will
open unprecedented opportunities for homosexuals.
The bill, he said will cover central government departments,
local authorities, education bodies, NHS bodies and the police service, plus a
wide range of other public and private bodies, including churches and
church-run institutions. It will impose the "Equality Duty" on all
organizations providing public services, he said, such as residential care
homes that "would have to consider the needs of same-sex couples."