A JUDGEMENT FROM HELL
CHRISTIANS who believe that homosexuality is a sin, and who are not prepared to mislead children in their care, regarding this, are unfit, it seems, to foster children. This is the judgement of two High Court justices, Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson, in a precedent-setting case interpreting the Sexual Orientation Regulations which were made under powers conferred by Parliament; the judges making comments, by the way, about the whole character of English common law and the Scots civilian law. It is difficult to think of a worse judgement or set of reasonings for both jurisdictions; though bad decisions and bad ratios have been made in the past and have either been overruled, on appeal, or repealed by Parliamentary legislation. It is difficult not to think that there is something wrong with some of the judiciary in this country and we wish Andrea Minichello-Williams and the Christian Legal Centre, together with Christian Concern for our Nation, well should they, as we hope, appeal this case. The ruling was made against Christian couple, Owen and Eunice Jones, of Derby, and in favour of Derby Council; and was made on 28th February 2011.
It seems to me that there are a number of things wrong with the decision in this case and with both the narrow and broader reasoning that underlies it or has been expounded from it. Some things have come out of the case which are enlightening, however. The hideously sounding Equality and Human Rights Commission that bloated tax-payer funded instrument of oppression – has, once again, exposed its blatant inequality and anti-Christian bias in referring to the “… danger. .. ” of children being ” … infected … “ with Christian values. Well, that says it all. A pluralistic equality-of-values body is supposed to have respect for all values equally – both homosexual and anti-homosexual. After all, is that not what equality and pluralism are all about?
We have seen how they dealt with the British National Party. The BNP’s views and values, whatever you may think of them, were manifestly not treated with equality-of-respect. Now that is being applied to Christianity. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is therefore living an untruth and wearing a false mask of profession. It is not about equality at all for “difference of values … “ and ” … diversity of views “ – which was its great selling point. It is not pluralistic, or liberal, and tolerant of those peaceful differences of views and values which differ from its own. The BNP may no longer determine the boundaries of their membership criteria, even though others can, if they wish to remain a registered legal party and fight elections; and Christians may not discriminate against homosexuality, if they wish to foster children! How totalitarian. In the one case the fundamental right of freedom of association for an opposition political party was under attack; and in the other case the fundamental right of freedom of religion is being attacked. And it is being done by an establishment body which professes to be built on human rights and religious and civil liberties.
Here we have, instead, the preferring of certain values over others. Equality? Whatever this is, it is not equality and diversity. You may disagree with Christianity and the BNP – and many Christians disagree with the BNP, and many BNP members disagree with Christianity – but, whatever your views, the Equality Commission is not upholding the equal expression and manifestation of all peaceful views and moral and political judgements. Tolerance and equality-of treatment is about allowing the manifestation, peacefully, of what you do not agree with. But the Equality Commission are too thick or too evil to see that; I am not sure that it is legal to say the same about the two judges in this case. But if they cannot see this point, they are not alone. There is a lot of this in management, in hierarchy, in the political and media sphere, and in the heads of the leaders of the three thumbscrew parties. This is deeply worrying. Judicial independence of the Executive is something we must value and fight for but judicial ineptitude is something only the higher courts can rectify on appeal, or Parliament put right by legislation.
To turn aside now from the Iniquity Commission, as I have termed it – because you cannot really expect much from this coterie of overpaid, and over-inflated, imbeciles and bigots – to our two justices, of whom we have every right to expect rational fortitude and moral rectitude. They are to be severely reprimanded, I fear, in the court of public opinion, for the way they have decided this case and for how they have rambled on about issues, which surely displays their lack of discrimination and the incompleteness of both their legal and moral education. To say, as they have, that Christianity has no place in English or Scots law when Christian views and values are the rock and foundation of our legal system is trite, inconsistent, and very dangerous indeed. It is the reasoning, surely, of a banana judiciary.
Every lawyer knows that values of some kind are embedded in every legal system – in its ground-norms, its early statutes and ‘Constitutions’, its “Books of Authority”, its modern statutes and its case law going back centuries. Christian views and values underlie almost everything about English law from long before Magna Carta (1215). The same is true of the Scots system.
Moreover to argue, as these judges seem to, that law is not the product of some kind of higher ideal that keeps society in check, and that social rules must be the product, rather, of that society’s deterioration is to turn what should be quality-control into a kind of effluent or pollutant! But this is what Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson seem to be suggesting. They seem to be saying that law is not higher than society and that its function is not to preserve society from its own degenerative forces but that it should reflect those degenerative forces! Hence the ground-rules and foundation of our Christian Constitution must now be adjusted to the pagan-like dry-rot, and relativistic woodworm, which has infected it of late and which, all now acknowledge, is destroying society. Have these judges not read about the dangers of multiculturalism, when taken too far, so that society lacks any cohesion at all, the enduring cohesion that it formerly found in Christianity alone; as it has been put so eloquently put forward, of late, by Bishop Nazir-Ali? Society has deteriorated to secularism and so the law must deteriorate with it, they seem to be saying, rather than the law acting as a preservative to society and a corrective of its ills. If we become a society of whores and homosexuals, of sex-pests and paedophiles, then our law must reflect that, and must deteriorate with it. Newgate gaol must be governed by the mores of its inmates and not by those who have so far escaped its contagion. Read their reasonings in this case, as reported in the press, and this seems to be what they are saying, if I have understood them aright. It is a theory of total moral relativism – with no absolutes at all – combined with a view of law which ought to follow, rather than correct, a devastating social deterioration in morals and practises.
There is no doubt about it that these two honourable judges are in great need; and so are we, if we are subject to them. But there are higher courts and there is the court of public opinion. It is not their independence from government interference that I query; it is their reasoning – even their rationality – and their moral precepts. At one sweep they have – with an arrogance, not to say ignorance which baffles comprehension – legislated away by far the greatest part of English and Scots law and legal history. Could it have been Parliament’s intention – and that is the final rule for judicial interpretation of statutes – to do that? If so, Parliament has not, in my view, made it clear; and in my view they would have to make it very clear to effect such a momentous change in the constitutional and legal landscape of these islands and of its peoples. The Labour Party, it is true, have never been competent at anything they handle. They can be relied upon fairly well to get things wrong, or, where they do get things right, to do things badly. This area is no exception. But it beggars belief for me to think that Parliament, even with a Labour Party majority, could have intended, or be taken to have intended, to effect so great a change in the Constitution of this country or in the liberties of its Christian majority. No, in my view, the judges have got it wrong – badly wrong, fundamentally wrong, viciously wrong – and the case needs, must be, appealed.
Let us look, now, more at the wider merits, or demerits, of the ‘Equality’ legislation which has led to such an appalling injustice and mishmash of the law by our two judges. Though I have judged the Equality Commission by its own profession of standards and by the fundamental liberties of a free society, and though I do believe in equality before the law, I do not believe in their equality legislation, as such, for the simple reason that Ido not believe that right and wrong are equal or that homosexuality is good or should be socially promoted, as normal, or beneficial – to the individual, or to society in general. Homosexuality is unnatural, abnormal, debased and abominable. We should not be in any illusion as to that, however much we may have regard for homosexuals themselves, as people, made in the image of God. Homosexuality is also, alas, closely connected to other depravities – extreme promiscuity, paedophilia (pederasty), the spread of disease, physical illness, violence between homosexual ‘lovers’ because they detest what they do to one another, even though they cannot break it off; and other highly questionable sexual practices which are unnatural. It also produces, in its perpetrators and patients, anguish of soul and of conscience with the attendant psychological illnesses, and psychoses, which are the characteristics of serious criminal or delinquent behaviour. Quite a lot of this is well documented in the research. The way of the sinner is hard, however much Satan paints it up as pleasant. There is nothing gay about being an adulterer, a drunkard, a thief, a fornicator or a homosexual. In their honest moments when they are alone they will know this, as we all do when we sin. These things always bring their own penalty as well as social disapproval or, where these things are not known, a condemning conscience and a troubled, overly-protesting and anguished soul. Hence the militancy of many homosexual rights activists.
There is no way that homosexuality should be deemed normal by the law or by the establishment unless they themselves are into its depravities. We know from ancient history, however, that it was the elites – not the common folk – who promoted and practised many of these sorts of depravity. And that is part of the problem. As Lord Devlin suggested in The Enforcement of Morals, popular opinion, the opinion of the masses, should inform law-making for it is very often their plebeian opinion which reflects the absolute morals that the elite too often seek to free themselves from and which in the end destroyed ancient civilization.
So where do we go from here? For the moment it seems that if you think homosexuality is a sin, as it undoubtedly is, this will stop you fostering children; but that if you are homosexual, and therefore are part of a group which is more likely to put children at risk, then you will be allowed to foster children. Bent and dangerous? Very! But this is the result of the judgement of these two judges. We do not have equality between Christian and pro-homosexual, children are being put at risk, and we have the most amazing example of judicial ignorance, bad reasoning, and judicial legislating beyond their remit in the common law. Truly we are living in interesting times.
Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of the homosexual group, Stonewall, has said that he was delighted that the judgement put 21st century ‘decency’ above 19th century ‘prejudice.’ But since when has anal activity of the sort he commends, and to get excited about it as well, been considered anything more than bent, dangerous, invasive and odd, to say the least; and I have to inform him that the ancients were doing this kind of thing to little boys, as well as to one another, long before he appeared on the scene as the result of normal activity. These perverts seem to have some idea that they are doing something modern. They are not. They are just conjuring up ancient depravities, as I have said elsewhere; ancient depravities and aggravated depravities which are mentioned in the Holy Bible of the Jews and Christians and condemned by it; and which you also see mentioned in the classics of ancient Greece and Rome, whose depraved elites, and toffs, were besotted with this kind of thing and who often died young as a result. The same is the case today. This is a bad judgement for homosexuals. It is a bad judgement for children. And it is a bad judgement for all.
In the future it may come to pass that your children could be taken from you if you do not have “equality” views; and who would they then be farmed out to? A burgeoning paedophile industry would then need many little boys, especially, to be farmed out to welcoming “two daddy” homes! They are already preparing this propaganda in the primary schools. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has probably got plans for this further measure already. Prominent homosexual activists are already on record as wanting the age of consent to be abolished, totally. You, your children and your family are in more danger than you think!
It happened in ancient Rome and Greece, it could happen again. We need to take warning from this judgement.
© The Revd Robert West lectures in Ancient History and was, for many years, the Law and Legal Practice Lecturer for Peterborough Regional College with the Regional University and Ruskin University, Cambridge. He was ordained in 1979 by the Apostolic Church in Wales.
