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Christ taught tolerance not this attitude to gays
• CLEARLY, it is not sensible for staff to apply for a job that is going to include elements that they will find uncongenial (Second registrar ‘No’ to gay marriages, June 26).
One registrar claims merely that her objection is “religious”, but does not specify the religion; the other claims it is because she is a Christian, but has never been asked where in Christ’s teaching she can find homophobia. All his teaching is of inclusiveness and tolerance of strange practices. She needs more than that to claim justification for her homophobia.
DIANA SIMPKINS
Dagmar Passage, N1
• THERESA Davies is the second Islington registrar refusing to conduct civil partnerships for gay couples. She says that it goes against biblical principles. Yet her barrister at the Christian Legal Centre claims she has not got a “bone” of prejudice against anyone.
The barrister also says that “Theresa believes something that’s been believed from the beginning of time”. No, it hasn’t. The various books that make up the Bible were written by many different people over the course of several hundred years. Also, they were written in an age of superstition. Unfortunately, many religions never encourage people to question anything but to blindly accept what they are told.
Does the Christian Right think that all gays should be hounded all their lives because of a supposed “sin”? They are asking the rest of us to be tolerant of their intolerance. And, no, I am not gay.
Name and address supplied
• ON the case of Theresa Davies, the registrar who refused to preside over civil partnership ceremonies, I had thought that after Lillian Ladele’s similar bid was roundly slapped down by judges we had heard the end of this.
When will these Leviticus-junkies realise that this is no longer a country where you can discriminate against perfectly upstanding members of society?
Welcome to the 21st century.
AXEL JOHN LANDIN
Former Camden Youth Council chief
Town Hall, WC1
• THE concept of democracy in England is secular but with a morality historically linked to Christianity and a Queen who is head of the Church of England. The fact that many English citizens are not Christian or part of the English church seems to be evidence that religious tolerance is a legal part of our constitution and thus a democratic right along with sexuality and other important everyday issues.
Religions are not actually as tolerant as our legal system is. Whereas several mainstream religions would happily kill people for their transgressions against God, we no longer legally punish people by putting them to death in this country, even in cases of murder and other even more atrocious crimes.
Where someone works for our legal system by way of managing the requirements for recording marriages, births or deaths, it would seem incumbent on them to understand that the requirements of a religion (for example, killing transgressors) are not legal in this country. The law is secular and based more on science and the social arts than belief, except it does have a belief in truth, justice and the like.
So it would seem prudent for workers whose job is managing part of our legal system to take stock of their responsibilities and if they feel unable to engage with the system we democratically require in this country then the answer is not actually quite obvious but fairly so.
If the law changed after the individual who feels unable to comply with the legal requirements of the job took up the post then they should be compensated and alternatives offered, although morally they should stand down from that job. If the law was in place when they took the job and either they converted to a religion afterwards or were persuaded to make a fuss only after taking the job, then they should be dismissed.
As a longer-term alternative the individual, having dealt with their own moral certainties, should perhaps join whatever political party believes in everything that they do and seek to change the law, although my experience tells me that such parties are not on the side of freedom and democracy and as a result are generally rejected at the polls in England, and long may that be so.
DR BILL THOMPSON
Barnsbury estate, N1
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