A silly woman…but not a bigot

Posted by Andrew Adams on July 17, 2008
Filed Under Politics, Society |

There is a spat going on here about the case of Lillian Ladele, the registrar who won a discrimination case after she objected to performing civil partnership ceremonies for homosexuals.
Now I have certainly had little sympathy for Ms Ladele up to now; I don’t agree with the tribuneral’s decision (on the discrimination issue anyway, it does seem that her employers treated her pretty badly in other respects) and I don’t think that public employees should be able to pick and choose which duties to perform according to their religious views, or other prejudices. It is also absurd for this case to be portrayed as a victory for Britain’s quiet majority as some on the right have done - there may well be a “quiet majority” who object to those with strong religious views getting special treatment.
However, neither do I think it is fair to portray Ladele as a nasty bigot. Yes, there are some very unpleasant attitudes towards homosexuals displayed by some people with strong religious beliefs, not restricted to Christians, but AFAIK she has not expressed the view that gays will rot in hell for their sins, or even that she has any moral objection to homosexuals; she just doesn’t think they should be able to get married and sees civil partnership ceremonies as being equivalent to marriage. By all accounts she had perfectly good relationships with gay colleagues and even attended the civil partnership ceremony of two of them as a guest. Her concerns appear to be more to do with the Christian view of marriage itself rather than an objection to homosexuality per se and although I think her views are misguided and possibly reactionary I would hesitate to label her as a bigot.
As for dragging up the fact that she had a child out of wedlock twenty years ago (something she seems to have been quite open about), well that’s pretty low stuff. I’m sure that most of us fail at times to live up to the moral standards we set ourselves and have done things in the past we are not proud of. If there was any evidence that her current behavious was consistently at odds with her professed religious beliefs then maybe she could be branded a hypocrite - in fact one could certainly question why when she is so, er, wedded to the Christian ideal of marriage she is willing to conduct civil marriage ceremonies. However, using mistakes from her distant past against her is rather unpleasant. 
Yes, there is still much anti-gay bigotry around and it should always be condemned, as should the Daily Mail attitude that disapproval of homosexuality is somehow just a matter of opinion and as such should be “respected”. Lillian Ladele’s attitude is discriminatory and she is wrong to complain of discrimination herself. But to label her a bigot and a hypocrite just doesn’t seem right to me.

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