Wednesday - January 19, 2011

in the dock … therapist who tried to change a queer man’s sexuality, at his request.

Some of you will recall a case wherein a Christian couple ran a “family” B & B, and said they would not give a room to any couple who were unmarried. Separate rooms was their idea because they said their religious beliefs wouldn’t condone or allow the renting of one room for unmarried people. And that certainly included homosexuals, as the bible they said spoke against that. They would allow them rooms so long as they were separate rooms.

Well, don’t ya know a queer couple tried and failed to get a room there. Some people believe that the couple were set up to fail the equality test, by a homosexual group. The judge decided against them and fined them, and awarded the odd couple £1,800 EACH. He found no evidence that they were set up as they claimed.

Some have argued that they were running a public business and they could not discriminate in that manner. Their defenders claim there wasn’t any discrimination, that the B & B was in their home, and so they should be able to insist on renting separate rooms. Or even not renting at all. And their web site clearly stated what they were.

It opens some interesting questions. For example, should it not be the right of a taxpaying, property owning person to exclude anyone they wish for any reason or no reason. Financial suicide perhaps but why shouldn’t they have that right?

Then there’s something brought up by someone today I hadn’t even thought of. What about backpackers, same sex but straight, who are on holiday and need to stop off and this couple’s B&B was in their area.  Unless they asked openly, are you homosexuals, would they still rent a room to a couple of straight men? In other words, in order to make sure they were not renting to, the wrong sort, they’d have to ask.

We live in a very complicated world. Needlessly.

Enclosed here are two editorials from two different papers. I suppose I could have posted more but 2’s enough for my purpose because I have another interesting tidbit to follow the editorials.

Tel The law is eroding our right to a set of beliefs

Telegraph View: The right to act in keeping with one’s religious faith is being set against the right not to be offended – and is losing.

The owners of a Cornish hotel who refused to allow two homosexual men to take a double room were judged at Bristol county court yesterday to have acted unlawfully. Peter and Hazelmary Bull argued that, as Christians, they did not believe unmarried couples, whatever their sexual orientation, should share a room at their hotel. They said it was a policy they had operated since opening their doors for business 25 years ago. Indeed, their hotel website describes their hotel as “family-run for families” – which prompts us to ask why the couple, Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy, should have wanted to stay there in the first place. They had an absolute legal right to do so, of course, and no one could possibly condone a refusal to give them a room on the grounds of their sexuality. The Bulls said they based their refusal on their “married couples only” rule, a fine point given that the two men are civil partners.

Judge Andrew Rutherford, awarding Mr Hall and Mr Preddy £3,600 damages, told the Bulls that their views were out of date and added: “It is inevitable that laws will, from time to time, cut across the deeply held beliefs of individuals and sections of society.” It should surprise no one that the Bulls received such short shrift from the courts and that their strongly held religious convictions should count for so little. Last year, Gary McFarlane, a Christian sex therapist, was sacked by Relate, the relationship charity, because he refused to counsel a homosexual couple. His case was taken up by Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who said Christians are being persecuted because a strongly held conviction that homosexuality is wrong is being superseded by laws outlawing discrimination on grounds of sexual discrimination. The McFarlane case went to the Appeal Court, which found against him. In a similar case, a registrar who refused to conduct civil partnerships because they were against her religious beliefs was sacked. In both cases, the aggrieved parties could have gone elsewhere to be counselled or married, just as Messrs Hall and Preddy could have found a different hotel.

The right to hold religious beliefs, and to act in keeping with one’s faith, is being set against the right not to be offended – and is losing. This is a dispiriting trend in a free society. The views of the Bulls will seem to many to be old-fashioned, even distasteful – but they have every right to hold them. A pervasive climate of political correctness, however, is driving such beliefs to the margins; the law is out of kilter. It no longer protects the freedom of the believer in the way that it defends the interests of those who consider themselves discriminated against. As we have argued before, this is an unhealthy imbalance that needs to be redressed – if not by the courts, then by Parliament.

TELEGRAPH

The following is the Daily Mail’s editorial on the subject.

Tolerance, Christian values and the law
By Daily Mail Comment

As the judge accepted, Peter and Hazelmary Bull, aged 70 and 66, are decent and benevolent people.
They have no dislike of homosexuals, whom they often welcome to their small Cornish hotel, treating them exactly as they do unmarried heterosexuals.
Indeed, they had only one motive in refusing a double room to civil partners Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy.
In the words of Judge Andrew Rutherford, this was their ‘perfectly orthodox Christian belief’ that sex outside marriage, straight or gay, is wrong.
It is because they live by that belief, held through the centuries in what is still called a Christian country, that today the Bulls face ruin.
They’ve been found to have acted unlawfully under the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007 and ordered to pay £3,600 in damages.
Of course, some will side firmly with the civil partners in this classic clash between competing rights and attitudes.
After all, Mr Hall and Mr Preddy clearly had reason to feel angry and humiliated at being turned away — particularly if Judge Rutherford was right in rejecting claims that their case was a set-up.
But since no malice against a minority was involved, the Mail feels more sympathy with the Bulls, who argue that Christians are increasingly marginalised.
Yes, it is good that society accepts same sex relationships and recognises the rights of civil partners. But why is it then so intolerant of people like the Bulls?
Is there no place for a good-natured couple, approaching old age, to live by the orthodox beliefs of the religion to which Britain owes its identity?
Ultimately, the fault lies with the last parliament, which delighted in trampling on traditional values.
But was it really necessary for the Equality Commission to throw the full weight of the state — and taxpayers’
hard-earned money — into victimising a couple who meant nothing but well?

DAILY MAIL

“A couple who meant nothing but well.”
But if you’re running a public business, your version of “well” might be different from others who have the law on their side. So where does that leave you?

Now here’s something interesting and please note I do not go looking for conspiracies and don’t see one every time I read a story that confounds me.
However ... because the folks in that other story said they were “set up” and the judge said no you weren’t, and since he has almost the final word unless they appeal, this story caught my eye.  See if don’t think she was set up. Maybe not but it sure does look suspicious given that she was speaking (unknown to her) to a journalist who oh just happened to be a queer rights campaigner. Oh the coincidence. Well fancy that.
Here ya go. Take a look.

The therapist who claims she can help gay men go straight
A psychotherapist who tried to convert a gay man to become heterosexual faces being struck off at a landmark disciplinary hearing this week.

By Robert Mendick, Chief reporter

The case will expose the growing use of hugely controversial therapies, from the United States, which attempt to make homosexual men heterosexual.

The therapy has been described by the leading professional psychotherapy body as “absurd”, while the Royal College of Psychiatrists said “so-called treatments of homosexuality” allow prejudice to flourish.

A small group of counsellors believe all men are born heterosexual but that some choose a homosexual lifestyle which can then be changed through counselling.

Lesley Pilkington, 60, a psychotherapist for 20 years, faces being stripped of her accreditation to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) after treating a patient who had told her he wanted to be “cured” of his homosexuality.

The patient was in fact a prominent homosexual rights campaigner and journalist, who secretly recorded two sessions with Mrs Pilkington, a devout Christian, before reporting her to the BACP.

READ MORE HERE

If you read the link, you find that her son is she says, heterosexual, but has a homosexual problem. The poor woman is in denial. I personally doubt anybody can change anyone’s natural state. I mean, can you imagine someone believing they can change a straight person into something they aren’t?
But read the whole article please.  She may be mistaken but she damn well was set up. That’s how I read it anyway. She didn’t go looking for the fag who set her up. He went looking for someone just like her.

Mr Strudwick told The Sunday Telegraph: “Entering into therapy with somebody who thinks I am sick … is the singularly most chilling experience of my life.”

Like somebody put a gun to his head and forced him to see the woman.  Poor victim he.

Posted by peiper     on 01/19/2011 at 01:09 PM   
Filed Under: • Gay Gay Gay! •  
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