Guesthouse Couple Lose Supreme Court Battle.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2514353/Christian-guesthouse-owners-lose-Supreme-Court-battle-ordered-pay-damages-turning-away-gay-couple.html

Just thought I would enter this on behalf of sp1814, because I think he may be a little shy considering that he has been criticising me for repeating the same stories even though mine were years apart.

[DTCwordfan]

Maybe if one had their breakfast, as a divorcee, then one would be pushing up the daisies, so to speak.......

[naomi24]

Divorce is a contentious issue. I don’t know what flavour of Christianity these people have adopted, but some churches, Baptists among them, concede that people make mistakes and will, in certain circumstances, conduct marriages when one or more of the parties involved have been divorced. The fact remains that two people of the same sex do not constitute the required man and woman – and that’s the crux of the issue.

[Zacs-Master]

There a critical mass when questions on here disappear up their own backsides. This one reached it quite a few answers ago.

[Khandro]

Mr and Mrs Bull expressed their dissent to the laws forcing them to act against their beliefs. John Stuart Mill in On Liberty was clear on this issue; the homosexual couple may complain at the 'offence' of being turned away, but no actual harm was done. He pointed out that incitement (which the homosexuals clearly and knowingly perpetrated) is wrong, but expression of dissent, and "even expression of dissent in forthright language is right". Radical dissent should be tolerated for the benefit of all, it doesn't cause actual harm, and it's presence makes us better individually and collectively. Discussion and dissent are, Mill maintained, forces for good.

[FredPuli43]

All very True, Khandro, and without that almost no reform which we now accept as right would have been made. What has that to do with a law, passed within recent memory, as this was ? You cannot invoke John Stuart Mill as a reason for every bit of law breaking, and nor would he have adopted such a spurious use of his words.

[Hypognosis]

I have no quibble with the law which was applied in this case.

But is the spirit of this law that transgressors should be merely financially chastised, not that their business should be entirely driven into the ground?? (Not to mention internet related enhancements, such as wheelnut tampering, dead rabbit nailed to the garden fence, vandalism etc.)

And, much as I would like to remain on friendly and speaking terms with Fred and other legal sector people on AB because I find its intricacies and foibles endlessly fascinating, I am unable to avoid saying that the being driven to bankruptcy thing was at the hands of the lawyers and probably not why the gay couple had envisaged when they set out on taking it to court.

Let's face it, if their solicitor had been honest, he would have told them straight that they were bang to rights, had no case and should have just paid the £3600 fine, shut up about the whole thing and prayed that the local snoozepaper was as far as the publicity went.

Taking their own solicitor to court though. What are the odds of them getting all their costs back, out of a malpractice suit? Who would even take on a case "against their own kind"?
(Is that worth a completely separate thread?)

[FredPuli43]

In the words of one old lawyer, faced with a client who kept on appealing a useless case, "Sir, I would like to breed from you!" Or, as we hear ourselves saying to clients "I think you are pouring money down the drain, but I don't mind because I am the drain. Now, think about it.". We are often faced with clients whose case we think has no realistic chance of success. We have, if they insist, to devise some argument in law of find some fact on which we can try to rely. That is all there is to it. This case went to the. Supreme Court , so somebody was able to satisfy that court that there was some principle of law of such public importance that it was worth hearing, but that, I suspect meant no more than the court wished to set in stone the very principle which the Act seems to be based on and put an end to such cases once and for all. It never was winnable on any reasonable view.

[Hypognosis]

Thanks Fred. I am reassured to know that there are firms out there who at least try to discourage the hopeless cases. Those who stubbornly press ahead deserve everything they get.

//the court wished to set in stone the very principle which the Act seems to be based on and put an end to such cases once and for all.//

Quite so.

I can't help thinking that maybe the legal team on their side might also have been of a religious persuasion and they, likewise, wanted to thrash out, once and for all, whether religious tolerance laws were stronger or weaker than sexual orientation laws. And now we know.

[andy-hughes]

If memory serves, and I am paraphrasing here - carrying out exactly the same action with the belief of a different outcome is a definition of insanity.

[Khandro]

Fred; I willingly accept that the law was applied, but what I support is the principle of Mr and Mrs Bull's right to dissent on conscientious grounds. A law has been passed and the consequences of disobeying it have to be faced, but I believe an automatic blind abeyance of every law, recently passed or not, leads to a weaker rather than stronger society, and that is why I "invoke John Stuart Mill".
It is a very unfortunate case and they have been treated and advised badly, but I wonder just who the 'bigots' really are?

[Khandro]

andy; Think Robert the Bruce and spider!

[jomifl]

Strangely Khandro I find myself agreeing with you, it must be an age thing:o)

[andy-hughes]

Khandro - "I believe an automatic blind abeyance of every law, recently passed or not, leads to a weaker rather than stronger society,"

Fortunately, the legal system does not work on a system of 'Everyone obeys the law ... unless they don't feel like it!' which wouldf mean there is no law at all.

I may decide to disagree with the law that says a 30 m.p.h. speeding limit is to be observed, because I decided that I am sufficiently skilled and experienced drive to set my own speed limit - but that law would disagree and I would be fined if found out.

To take my case to the Supreme Court in the hope of a higher judge deciding that i am right, and the law is wrong, is frankly laughable - as indeed it should be.

But that is what this couple have done - and they have paid the price, as they should.

Laws are for everyone, being a Christian does not entitled you to chicane around a law you don't approve of.

[jim360]

Khandro -- in what way did the men "incite" anything? To my understanding, though perhaps I'm wrong, they just turned up to claim the room they'd bought for the night but were turned away on the grounds that they were gay. I don't think they said "Oh and by the way we'll be going at it like the accursed of Sodom in your house dedicated to the Lord..." The people who brought the issue up were the B&B owners themselves. So yes, in what way did the two men incite the Bulls?

[andy-hughes]

Khandro - "andy; Think Robert the Bruce and spider!"

A poor analogy if I may say so - the spider had only to exercise persistence and willpower to obtain its objective - there was no law of the land preventing it from getting what it wanted.

[lady-janine]

i am not going to comment on this case. no need as far as i can see.

they used to do a very nice afternoon tea and the view from the patio area is beautiful.

[Kromovaracun]

I have to say, Andy, I'm not too comfortable with the idea that this couple were wrong purely on legal grounds or the idea that we must all obey every single law to the letter. What if you have bad laws? To take a related example, it wasn't long ago that just by existing homosexuals were breaking the law - were they obliged to stick by it because "otherwise we have no law"?

Or to take smaller examples, in practice most people do ignore laws that they just don't consider important. Piracy is a good example -everyone does it now. But you could also cite laws against jaywalking in countries where they apply - nobody really pays them any attention because they don't consider them valid.

What interests me about this isn't the legal stuff (though I'm glad the law puts them in the wrong) - it's that they're morally wrong. Intellectually speaking there is no justification for their discrimination and their views of homosexuals/marital sex are simply badly thought out.

[andy-hughes]

Kromovaracun - "I have to say, Andy, I'm not too comfortable with the idea that this couple were wrong purely on legal grounds or the idea that we must all obey every single law to the letter. What if you have bad laws? To take a related example, it wasn't long ago that just by existing homosexuals were breaking the law - were they obliged to stick by it because "otherwise we have no law"?"

Your point is a good one, and has given me second thoughts about my statement.

Because morality is a moveable feast, it would simply be the word of this couple against the rest of the civilised world in their argument that they refuse a gay couple a room on the grounds of their orientation - so that law is what the case rests on.

I find myself, as an outsider and an atheist, thinking that the blind belief of the rightness of their faith led this couple into a legal area where they were absolutley bound to lose, and it is this blinkered stuborness that gives Christians a bad name.

[whiskeryron]

I must confess that I am a little uneasy about the whole shebang, OK a law has been passed & the Bull's broke that law but are all laws because they are laws good laws ? In their defense they were running a guest house & the very word guest suggests to me that they should have the freedom to invite guests of their choosing to stay in what is after all their own home. I feel that there could be get out clauses to laws that are not popular to 100% of the population. I know there is no comparison but it was in the news yesterday that Afghanistan is thinking of re-introducing the law of stoning to death people found guilty of adultery, if you were involved would you be happy to accept a law that would be passed by a government that would not be popular with a large percentage of the people ? I am not advocating that some of our people in this country should not be protected in law, but at the end of the day I think that the Bull's are as much entitled to their opinion as the 2 guys who felt they were slighted by being asked to leave.

WR.

[mikey4444]

Andy...I like "blinkered stubbornness " very much...I might very well steal this from you and use it in further posts, if you have no objection !

I have looked up stubbornness in my dictionary and found it means ::

Bloody-mindedness
Bullheadedness
Obstinacy
Pigheadedness
Mulishness

Sort of sums up religious people doesn't it !