Suing For The Right Not To Do Your Job
Say your job is to officiate over marriages and civil partnerships, but you are so blindly committed to what it says in the Bible that you refuse marry gay couples. What should you do?
a) Find another job, one that you can do, or
b) Sue for the “right” not to do your job.
This person chose option b.
Islington council in London has told Lillian Ladele she could lose her job unless she agrees to preside at the ceremonies. She claims “discrimination or victimisation on grounds of religion or belief”.
As they damn well should. But she feels that she should be given an exempton from doing her full job:
“I feel strongly about maintaining my Christian beliefs and conscience…
I can’t go against what it says in the Bible. I don’t understand why the council can’t use other people who have no problem with the ceremonies.”
That would be because it is your job to preside over marriages and civil partnerships. You are not working for a religious body, but a public, sectarian, organisation. Either you do your job, or you go and find another one. There is no two ways about this.
You are not being asked to do anything but preside over their civil ceremony. This is not a religious ceremony, but a state ceremony. It has nothing to do with religion, but everything to do with individuals rights to formalise their relationship with someone they love - who just happens to be of the same gender.
It is very simple. If your job is to do something that your “conscience” - however fucked up it is - objects to you doing, then get another job.
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Problem is that you never know how the Tribunal will look at this one.
The opening steps of a discrimination claim are present - a practice that puts Christian at a disadvantage. It’s now for the Council to prove that the practice is a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”.
Tribunals are normally pretty grumpy - why can’t they schedule ceremonies so that Ms Ladelle only needs to preside over marriages?
Yup, the law is an ass…
But it’s not a religious ceremony and has absolutely nothing to do with religion - it is purely a state ceremony. Thus, what Ms Ladelle’s personal religious convictions are is not relevant.
If she can’t or won’t do her job, then she should find another one.
Common sense lucidly and eloquently conveyed. Nice one!
Hey, I agree with you - but asking someone to work Sundays or Friday evenings has nothing to do with religion.
It still can be discriminatory though…
Damn lawyers :p
I think religious days of observance should be respected for any worker, but they have to respect the diversity in society and the rule of law when either or both connect to their work. I think… staying away from work on a Sunday to go to church and observe it as a day of rest dictated by God isn’t inherently offensive to others. But refusing in your job at a registry office to register gay unions is very offensive, and yes, if you don’t do your job, if you point blank refuse, you should and most of us would get sacked.
And she was, I think.
Well, she has won her case. I’m with Thunderdragon on the principle, with the complication that when she became a Registrar there probably weren’t civil partnerships.so the goalposts have changed during her career.
In the crazy game of minority top trumps, today’s surprising hand is that being a Christian trumps being Gay, although she is a black Christian which may or may not have had a bearing on the case.
Apparently it doesn’t became case law unless it is appealed (which no doubt Islington will do, after all it is only Public money) and if it is and upheld, then we will see the crazy stuff like checkout staff refusing to sell us condoms and so on.