European Directive threatens Christian Liberty

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a new proposed European Directive which is rapidly in the process of going through the various stages of the European Parliament. This proposed Anti-Discrimination Directive prohibits discrimination and harassment on the grounds of disability, age, sexual orientation and religion or belief for:

 

Seeking to prohibit discrimination on grounds of disability and age is not contentious. However, it is of concern that the proposed directive includes sexual orientation and religion or belief.

It might be thought that the Directive would enhance religious liberty. However, the implementation of the 2000 Employment Discrimination Directive has given cause for concern. As a result of the Directive, a Bishop of the English national Church was successfully sued by a homosexual after not being given a position as a youth minister. A British Christian charity was successfully sued for refusing to promote an atheist support worker.

The new Directive could remove rights of conscience for those whose religious beliefs prevent them endorsing certain homosexual and religious practices. A Christian architect should not be required to design a mosque. A Christian publication should not be required to advertise material promoting homosexual activity.

We are concerned that the Directive could remove Christianity from public services. An atheist patient should not be able to sue a hospital because there is a Bible in the bedside locker. Local councils and schools should not be intimidated into cancelling Christmas carol services.

In the UK similar legislation has been widely interpreted as requiring the homosexual lifestyle to be promoted by public services. Adoption agencies, with public funding, which do not believe in placing children with same sex couples, have had to close. Foster parents have been removed from council registers because they are not willing to promote homosexuality to their children. Only the threat of legal action has led to their reinstatement.

It is of concern that the Directive could remove Christianity from public services. An atheist patient should not be able to sue a hospital because there is a Bible in the bedside locker. Local councils and schools should not be intimidated into cancelling Christmas carol services.

It is of deep concern what the harassment laws could do to free speech. Unlike criminal harassment the EU law will have a very low threshold and therefore be easy to prove. The mere explanation of the relevant religious belief to a homosexual or a Christian communication on your religious beliefs to those of another faith may be interpreted as amounting to harassment. Harassment is from the subjective perspective of the person alleging the harassment.

The loose wording of the new EU harassment law leaves huge scope for bogus and trivial complaints which will limit freedom of speech and religious liberty.

The sexual orientation regulations in England and Wales did not include harassment. The High Court in Northern Ireland struck out the harassment provisions for parallel sexual orientation regulations.

As a result of a UK Government consultation response to a forthcoming Equality Bill, with around 4,000 responses from a wide range of stake-holders, the Government decided not to extend protection against harassment outside work, on the grounds of sexual orientation or religion or belief, because they did not see evidence of a real problem.

Article 3 of the draft Directive contains exemptions for religious schools and churches and other organisations based on religion or belief. However, it is not clear whether the exemption for religious organisations is aimed only at protecting existing laws that guarantee religious freedom, or whether it allows Member States to introduce new protections when implementing the Directive. The definition of religious organisations protected by the exemptions is also unclear.

Where church-based groups hire facilities to enable them to run social activities, the religious exemptions will not protect them.

Where religious organisations provide welfare and care, a potential claim for discrimination could be made against the organisation for refusing to condone same sex activities e.g. refusing a double room in a Christian care home to a same-sex couple.

The proposed Directive has profound implications for the fundamental rights of European citizens to freedom of religion. The Directive and the accompanying documents do not appear to have properly considered the need to have mechanisms to balance conflicting fundamental rights with each other and without doing so, it may create at the very least indirect discrimination against religious believers. In our opinion, the absence of the word “morals”, found in Articles 8(2), 9(2), 10(2) and 11(2) of the European Convention on Human Convention of Human Rights, from the balancing recital in the Directive is symbolic of the changes being made.

It is essential that religious beliefs and the rights of the homosexual community are properly balanced otherwise well-meaning Directives such as the proposed Directive will themselves become instruments of discrimination or oppression. There are many unanswered questions as to the compatibility of the proposed Directive for religious organisations and individuals with the ECHR, the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights and the Declaration on Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, UN Resolution 36/55. The religious freedom of its citizens is the hallmark of a democratic society and a core value for modern human rights law.

An explanation of the Directive has stated that the prohibition of discrimination should go hand in hand with other fundamental rights and freedoms such as freedom of religion. Yet these fundamental rights are only in a Recital not in the Articles, which are the main part of the Directive. A recent European case ruling on the principle of equality overruled Recital 22 of the Employment Directive and it is of concern that this may create a future precedent for overruling Recitals in other directives. [See Case C-267/06 Tadao Maruko v Versorgungsanstalt der deutschen Bühnen at:

There are many different European Parliamentary Committees considering this proposed Directive, but the main one is the Libe Committee. The current proposed Directive can be found at the following link (from page 13):

There have been many proposed amendments put forward by the various Committees and individual MEPs to this proposed Directive. These many amendments will be considered by the Libe Committee on the 17^th February 2009 and voted upon. European Parliamentary parties may then put down further amendments but not individual MEPs. MEPs are expected to vote on the Directive in the European Parliament plenary session on the 23 March 2009 (indicative date). After that time the Directive will then be considered by the Council of Ministers (possibly in April 2009 but there is no indicative date yet) and unless there is a nation veto, the Directive will then become an official European Directive by being entered into the official journal.

We do not know what the final Directive will say. However there are a number of amendments already proposed from a Committee which may make the Directive even worse. This includes an amendment to even remove the fundamental rights and freedoms from a Recital, where this shows the importance of respecting such rights while prohibiting discrimination. There are also proposed amendments to destroy any special status nations may accord to marriage. Stating that where types of relationship, other than marriage are recognised as equivalent to marriage under national law, the principle of equal treatment should apply. Discrimination is about the need to protect fundamental rights not to promote or create a hierarchy of rights and religious freedom is a core human right which should not be trampled upon.

It is of concern that there are amendments which seek to extend the prohibition of discrimination to multiple discrimination. Seeking to introduce multiple discrimination on the grounds of age and disability is not contentious. The easiest non-contentious example of a multiple discrimination case is of a black woman with the potential of alleging multiple discrimination on the combination of race and sex. But what about the comparison between a young white male Christian (religion only) and a black disabled elderly lesbian of a different religion or belief (religion or belief, race, disability, age, sex and sexual orientation equals 6 unbalancing multiple discrimination potential equality factors).

This illustrates how the introduction of multiple discrimination between religions and between religion and sexual orientation is so complex, highly unadvisable and requires careful consideration. Multiple Discrimination is a concept which lacks legal clarity and instead of a positive approach to life may serve simply to generate an aggressive, unhealthy, detrimental multiple victim mentality. It upsets the delicate balance of rights which are already complex enough when there are only two conflicting fundamental rights being considered. It could very easily result in the application of unreasonable and circumstantially irrelevant weightings which result in both a hierarchy and unfair balancing of fundamental rights, which instead of protecting rights becomes of itself oppressive.

There have already been numerous examples of how existing equality and diversity laws in the UK have led to the infringement of religious liberty. For example, see the cases described on the Christian Legal Centre Website.

http://www.christianlegalcentre.com/

Let us pray to God for a miracle as Christian European Citizens of all European nations contact their MEPs and Nations overwhelmingly reject this new Proposed Anti-Discrimination European Directive and restore the original proposal to remove both sexual orientation and religion or belief from the Directive.

What happens in Europe is important as Directives are European legal obligations for all European countries. Please prayerfully consider writing to your MEP in your own words, using the material in this paper to help you.