Europe forces UK to u-turn on ‘gays in church’ rules
November 23rd, 2009
UK laws which allow religious groups to refuse employment to LGBT staff contravene European legislation, the European Commission (EC) has announced.
The Observer newspaper reports that the EC wrote to the UK government last week with concerns that the UK was not correctly applying an EU directive prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.
LGBT employees have had protection from discrimination in the UK since 2003. However, the current legislation permits religious groups to refuse employment to a homosexual person “so as to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion’s followers”.
The National Secular Society complained about the rules, arguing that the UK government was allowing “illegal discrimination against homosexuals”.
The EC has agreed with the complaint, and has informed the UK that its “exceptions to the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation for religious employers are broader than that permitted by the directive.”
The government must now re-examine its anti-discrimination laws.
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