{"id":245,"date":"2007-01-09T21:37:32","date_gmt":"2007-01-09T20:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2007\/01\/09\/the_point_about_gays_and_discrimination"},"modified":"2007-01-09T21:37:32","modified_gmt":"2007-01-09T20:37:32","slug":"the_point_about_gays_and_discrimination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2007\/01\/09\/the_point_about_gays_and_discrimination","title":{"rendered":"“The point” about gays and discrimination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Right now, as I write this, the British House of Lords (for non-Brits, that’s an unelected upper house which can only suggest amendments and delay laws, not actually block them, although it could in the past) is debating a law which protects gay people from discrimination in service provision. The issue was a major topic of debate on the BBC London morning phone-in (hosted not by Vanessa Feltz this morning, but by Simon Lederman), and also featured on the Radio 5 Live phone-in as well.<\/p>\n


\nTo me, the answer to the issue of whether gay people should be protected from discrimination differs from the circumstances. There are plenty of Muslims working in the service sector and I’ve not heard of such discrimination taking place in restaurants and big chain hotels. A typical plea against a blanket ban on discrimination involves a small, family-run hotel whose owner is a devout Christian (although he or she could be of any religion). The likelihood is that he would be extremely reluctant to rent a room to an obvious gay couple, particularly an obvious gay male couple.<\/p>\n

This scenario is commonly dismissed by supporters of the new laws, such as Polly Toynbee<\/a> in today’s Guardian:<\/p>\n

Or how about this one? “Force a family-run B&B to let out a double room to a transsexual couple, even if the family think it in the best interests of their children to refuse to allow such a situation in their home.” Oh no it won’t: it doesn’t even cover transsexuals – and what a daft scenario anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Daft scenario? That a gay couple might decide to spend a week in the Scottish Highlands and need a room? This is not the first time the possibility has been lightly dismissed as unlikely, but the fact is that a culture of contempt for religious people exists in parts of the gay community, largely motivated by our disapproval of their sexual practices. This was illustrated at the “March for Free Expression” last March, in which the singer-songwriter Labi Siffre (whose best known compositions are It Must Be Love<\/em> and Something Inside So Strong<\/em>) proclaimed that some opinions just don’t deserve any respect, among them sexist, racist and homophobic ones and the belief that one knows there is a God. I’m aware that not all gay people share this contempt, but the idea that a couple might descend on a devout Presbyterian bed-and-breakfast owner in Scotland because “let’s face it, he has to, doesn’t he?” is not too far fetched in my opinion.<\/p>\n

The point in all of this is that a hotel owner should have the right to decide who does what on his or her own turf, and those who cry “discrimination” forget or disregard this. Polly Toynbee hilariously refers to the “weird sexual fantasies of unelected service providers”, as if the fact that someone has not had their property elected<\/em> to them should make any difference to their ability to decide who does what with it, or in it. As for our own religion, it forbids people of the same sex sharing a bed – regardless of whether those involved have sexual attraction to each other. For us, it is not a question of saying “we don’t like gays here – get lost”. Never mind speculating on what the couple might do in the bed; we simply cannot hire out a double bed to two people of the same sex. Full stop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right now, as I write this, the British House of Lords (for non-Brits, that’s an unelected upper house which can only suggest amendments and delay laws, not actually block them, although it could in...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-3X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}