Dear Friends,
Admittedly, my title is not nearly as snappy as Dickens’ original ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. However, it is what came to mind as I reflected on the news this week that a Christian couple who run a hotel have been found guilty of discrimination because they refused to allow a homosexual couple to rent a double room.
John Wadham of the Equality and Human Rights Commission commented that, “The right of an individual to practise their religion and live out their beliefs is one of the most fundamental rights a person can have, but so is the right not to be turned away by a hotel just because you are gay.” Campaigner Peter Tatchell described the verdict as a “victory for equality and a defeat for discrimination”.
What we have in this case is a clash of rights: it was not possible for both the Christian couple and the homosexual couple to “live out their beliefs” at the same time. Someone had to decide whose rights were more important. So, it wasn’t so much “a defeat for discrimination” as the defeat of one kind of discrimination (against practising homosexuals) by another kind of discrimination (against practising Christians).
The question at the back of all this is: who should decide what is right? Whose rights are right? It should not surprise us that a society which has turned away from God no longer wants a morality based on what that God says. We can only tremble at that decision. Which will be better for our society? A morality ‘from below’, or one ‘from above’, from the God who “so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son”?
Chris Hobbs
Vicar