This article is part of our In praise of… series. Find the others here.
Peter and Hazelmary Bull do not approve of gay sex or sex between unmarried heterosexual couples. Many Christians, including this writer, do not believe this view of Christian moral teaching is justified or necessary.
Nonetheless, extramarital sex (gay and heterosexual) is condemned in the Bible for reasons which seem sound to the Bulls, and which they would patiently explain to anyone who asked.
Consequently, they make no secret of their wish that only married heterosexuals sleep together when staying at their home. They have, however, turned their home into a bed and breakfast hotel, which is why, when they refused to book two gay men into a double room, they found themselves booked in for a series of court appearances.
They lost. They have been fined £3,600, their business has been imperilled, they face considerable hardship; and posts have appeared on the TripAdvisor website alleging that the B&B is dirty, infested with vermin and the Bulls themselves rude and surly.
The Chymorvah Private Hotel’s policy of providing double rooms to married couples only is clearly stated on their website and the booking forms, complete with helpful definition of marriage as “the union of one man to one woman for life to the exclusion of all others”. Moreover, the Bulls’ business publicity carries the Icthus, the universally known Christian symbol.
Whether, despite all this, Steven Preddy and Martyn Hall were surprised to be offered two single rooms instead of a double is not recorded. They were though, as is the modern fashion, ‘offended’ and duly took themselves off to the police (yes, really) and then to Stonewall, the gay rights lobby group, and then the taxpayer-funded Equality and Human Rights Commission to bring a civil action under the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations of 1987 (the police had decided to record the episode as ‘a non-crime homophobic incident’ and leave it at that).
Those who supported Preddy and Hall did so on the grounds that the Bulls were offering a public service, albeit in their home, and were therefore obliged to do so on the terms dictated by the law and the equalities industry. This was also the justification for forcing nearly all Roman Catholic adoption agencies to close because they would not agree to go against Church teaching on adoption by gays and lesbians. Thus, the public square is ‘cleansed’ of dissent.
What opportunity do we have to be morally autonomous, rational agents if only officially approved visions of the good life can be promoted openly?
Behind the demand for bans and proscriptions against people like the Bulls and RC adoption agencies lurks a fear that if people are allowed to ‘get away’ with discriminating against homosexuals then ‘we’ are condoning it and putting sexual minorities back on the road to a nightmare of violence, fear and blackmail.
In the words of Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill: “Religious freedom shouldn’t be used as a cloak for prejudice.”
The general attitude just described and Summerskill’s comment in particular reveal much about the insecurities, intolerance and bigotry of the contemporary equality establishment.
The insecurities are not hard to understand, yet there can be little doubt that attitudes to sexuality have changed radically in much of society. Indeed, the progress made is testament to the capacity of human beings to persuade each other to change and to change themselves. It is strange, therefore, that Summerskill and others should be so lacking in confidence in the strength of their arguments that they feel the need to petition the courts to enforce obedience to their wishes.
In their characterisation of religious disapproval of gay and lesbian sex as motivated by nothing more than prejudice, seen as a seething, boiling brew of hatred and rage beyond the control of reason, Summerskill and other campaigners betray their ignorance.
When Hazelmary and Peter Bull say they ‘hate the sin but love the sinner’ I have no doubt that they mean it. The Roman Catholic Church’s disapproval is rooted in centuries of natural law philosophy and they are usually careful to distinguish between ‘sin’ and ‘sinner’.
Summerskill’s line that this is mere camouflage for ‘homophobia’ (a nasty term implying mental derangement in anyone who disagrees with you — see also, ironically, ‘Islamophobia’), leaves those who wish to promote gay equality perilously under-equipped for responding to a rigorously-argued, intellectually coherent, pro-life belief-system which sees an insistence on the indissoluble bond between sex and the creation of life as inseparable from opposition to abortion, nuclear weapons, the Iraq war, capital punishment and the commodification of sex (aka ‘the culture of death’).
Those who argue that people like the Bulls encourage violence against gays and lesbians miss two points: firstly, under no sensible reading of Christian beliefs can the violently-inclined possibly think they act with the Church’s blessing; secondly, people must place responsibility with those who commit violence, not those who argue a point of view free of incitement to criminality.
There is something preposterous, sinister and self-defeating about Ben Summerskill presuming to dismiss what people say as dishonest cover for what they ‘really’ think and claiming to have divined their ‘real’ motives. His attitude is typical of the response of the equality ‘n’ diversity industry to any dissent from its orthodoxies: we know what you’re really thinking and it isn’t what you say you believe.
It’s intellectually shoddy, not least because its exponents think it excuses them from engaging with the arguments; and it’s risky because the same line of argument can be used against gay activists: ‘What is your interest, really, in education? You say you want to help schools encourage children to be more welcoming of their gay and lesbian peers but this is a cloak, isn’t it, for sexual proselytisation? After all, your allegedly enlightened and ‘progressive’ attitudes are just a cloak for your unrestrained lusts, aren’t they? Why are you so much more likely to be motivated solely by what you believe to be a rational vision of the good life rather than your basest desires than anyone else?’
In short, Summerskill’s ill-considered remark provides an excellent rationale for anyone who wants to limit freedom of expression and debate. Freedom, religious or sexual, might be a cloak for anything: you can’t trust anyone.
The priggish, self-righteous nadir of Summerskill’s gloating over the Bulls’ defeat in court came when he said, “For the estimated £30,000 that this court case cost Mr and Mrs Bull and their supporters during the last month, Oxfam or Save the Children could have vaccinated 100,000 people against meningitis in sub-Saharan Africa. That would have been a more Christian way to spend their money during the festive season”.
Presumably, on those grounds, Mr. Summerskill himself devotes all his spare cash to good causes and does not spend any of it on, say, going to the theatre, expensive meals out and exciting holidays.
And he will have a great deal more spare cash than the Bulls: in 2010, two employees at Stonewall earned between £70,000 and £89,999. I think we can take it that one of them was Ben Summerskill.
No-one at the Christian Institute, the Bulls’ principle backers (not taxpayer-funded), earned anything like that and, given the seriousness with which they take the letter as well as the spirit of biblical teachings, I have no doubt that many of the Institute’s employees tithe their incomes (set aside a tenth for good causes).
The Bulls should be applauded for having the courage to stand up for what they sincerely believe to be true, and for insisting that matters of conscience are for the bearer of each conscience to resolve within their own lives, and are not the business of the state. Those who take issue are entitled to say so and to live by their own standards.
In defending the Bulls, libertarians assert the rights of all citizens to conduct their lives with integrity and to resolve their disputes by means of rational argument rather than legal force majeure or, if agreement is not reached, to coexist in conditions of mutual tolerance which need mean nothing more than sullenly putting up with each other.
For the Bulls, God alone is sovereign in each individual life, but secular libertarians should have no difficulty in seeing that they are, in effect, defending the sovereignty of the individual against an increasingly authoritarian state ‘equalities’ apparatus and its para-state enforcers such as Stonewall.
Fair enough, however…
There aren’t many jobs about.
Aren’t you arguing that any private employer has the right to discriminate on any grounds, therefore?
That they won’t employ religious people, or black people.
Where is the line between the private and the public, drawn?
So does that mean that all discrimination law is to be abrogated? if my religion requires me to treat blacks as lesser beings, or to regard catholics as so inherently sinful, can I act accordingly in the public sphere by refusing accommodation to blacks or Catholics? (Remember no-one is saying that the Bulls can’t do as they think fit in the private sphere).
Mike, Harry
Thank you for your comments. I hope you don’t mind if I take them together since they raise similar and overlapping issues.
‘There aren’t many jobs about.’ There have been plenty of new jobs created in the recent past, 90% of which have been going to immigrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Why? By and large, they are better educated than many people here and have a better work ethic, not least because the welfare system in the UK makes worklessness a rational option for many. Employers, clearly, are interested in recruiting the right people to work for them, that is, people who are right for the jobs. Of course, they would be stupid not to be.
Enlightened self-interest was always going to be at least as powerful a factor in ending irrational discrimination as legislation. Together with the moral objections, indeed, it is more powerful because people are acting out of their own understanding of the issues and how they impact on their lives. Even if anti-discrimination legislation were a justifiable response to a particular situation it is now well beyond its use by date.
The assumption that all unequal outcomes are necessarily the result of irrational discrimination still permeates much debate on equalities issues and is deeply unhelpful, to put it mildly. Of course, it is difficult to justify leaving the legislation in place if the causes of inequality are more complex than or different from willful refusal to give certain groups a fair chance. In education, for example, looked-after children, black boys and traveller children are among the worst-performing groups whereas Chinese children of all classes do better than anyone. The reasons for this cannot simply be attributed to one simplistic, reductionist explanation.
Legislation ignores this complexity; it fails to recognise that the causes of under-achievement may lie within cultural pathologies within the affected groups or be traceable to the upheavals of a broken family.
The Bulls are being told what they can do in their own home. The logic of insisting that they allow unmarried and gay couples to sleep together despite their belief that it’s wrong is to ban the freedom to dissent from public orthodoxy. Moreover, refusing people the right to live out their beliefs renders the freedom to associate with whom one chooses (and, therefore, not associate with others) pretty meaningless.
No-one, least of all me, is arguing that the case against what the Bulls did should not be put to them but the growth of a mature freedom requires that we resolve such issues by consent and persuasion not force. So, yes, some employers will irrationally discriminate against one group or other. Organise and argue, by all means. You probably won’t need to, however, because an employer blind to the advantages of a rational recruitment policy will pay a heavy price anyway, in the end.
Mike, Harry & Charles
The way I would argue it is that in a liberal society we should all have the right to exercise freedom of conscience and association. So that in the private sphere of our personal and social life, and in our business dealings (as opposed to the public sphere of state-funded institutions) we should be able to discriminate on any grounds whatsoever, no matter how objectionable they may seem. As such, while the Bull’s have been prosecuted over who they wish to do business with in their own home, it would be no different if it was a big hotel chain or any other private business concern.
If an employer only wanted to do business with, hire, or employ on an unequal basis people of a particular religious or political persuasion, race, gender or sexuality, etc, they should be allowed to do that – and stand or fall in the market place of public opinion, as well as the actual market place itself. After all, discrimination works both ways: we can also decide not to do business to them. While within the workplace, employees can, and should, oppose any discriminatory practices.
I disagree with the Bull’s world-view on the issue of homosexuality, but I support their right to stand by their beliefs. The prosecution of the Bull’s does nothing to extend the principles of equality and tolerance in society. Worse, it strengthens the hand of the state to interfere in the private sphere, undermining our right to exercise our conscience and determine our associations.
The couple lost their appeal and it is right that they should. I actually feel somewhat sorry for them, as they have allowed themselves to be treated as a trojan horse by groups willing to pay for their costs, despite the personal notoriety this case has brought them. I see no beatification for Mr and Mrs Bull, only the shame of being labelled as bigots and homophobes.
I don’t wish to enter into the debate about personal beliefs, its a circular argument that cant be resolved, however, I do wish to make this simple point. The moment Mr and Mrs Bull opened their home in the pursuit of income and profit, they forgo their personal right to discriminate against sections of the community, and rightly so. The law on this is perfectly clear and if Mr and Mrs Bull hold beliefs that generate discriminatory views then they should not have elected to run a business that is open to the public.
I wish Mr and Mrs Bull no animosity, but I am delighted that the law regarding discrimination and acceptable reasons for hold discriminatory views has been clarified. It is shameful in this day and age that people rely upon a 2000 year old text to support their bigoted and narrow-minded views and it is heartening that both society and the law have moved forwards.
Marc
I suspect you’re grinding a particular axe here as you’ve misrepresented the Bull’s views and your account of what caused them to deny a room to the gay couple veers largely away from their own testimony. The Bulls felt that their adherence to their Christian beliefs meant that they couldn’t let a room to _any_ unmarried couple, regardless of sexual orientation. You could claim that this was discriminating against a section of the community – the unmarried couple section of the community – but caricaturing them as bigots and homophobes is a distortion of their outlook.
What’s really going on here is that the fact that this elderly couple are religious means it’s open season for finger-pointing and ridicule from so-called liberals. You may find it shameful that they rely on a 2000 year old text to shape their views on marriage but what’s even more shameful is the intolerance heaped on them in the name of tolerance itself.
i would lke to donate a small sum to help this couple fight the unjust ruling, how can i do this/
I tend to sympathise with this couple purely because I believe we should all be free to make our choices. If they want to restrict or specify the range of people they receive as guests, paying or otherwise, that should be their right!
However, when they opened their guesthouse, was the law under which they were prosecuted already in place?
If so, they broke that law and have no real defence. The law was there, they had a duty to comply with all laws pertaining to the opening of a guesthouse, and they didn’t. Simple.
If the law was not in force when they opened, then I believe they were treated unfairly.
We should all have the right of choice. To live our lives as we see fit, to make our choices of lifestyle, sexuality, association, religion. It is no business of government or the law, as long as we’re not harming anyone else!
Adrian
You say it should be no business of the law what choices we make in life (as long as it harms no one else), but precede that by saying this couple have no defence if they’ve broken the law. But the problem here is the law, preventing the Bull’s from freely running their guesthouse how they see fit. Isn’t their defence, therefore, that freedom against the law?
Paul
The law forbids “discrimination against” i.e. “action detrimental / unjust towards”. Maintaining a taboo is not proven to be detrimental or unjust; it might be quite the opposite; it depends on your philosophy. And the law does not specify what one’s philosophy has to be.
If natural law theory is true, the cruelest thing you could do to a person inclined to perform unnatural acts, is to undermine that taboo. Hence according to natural law theory, Peter and Hazelmary Bul were not behaving detrimentally, but beneficially, towards Preddy and Hall – hard though it may be for liberals to understand this.
Part of the trouble is, people are scared of giving comfort to racism. You often hear the argument that if the Bulls had had their way, the next thing would be people being allowed to discriminate on grounds of race. Liberals tend to assume a close analogy between racism and “homophobia”, on the grounds, presumably, that both involve disapproval of something. A somewhat vague basis for analogy! It is flawed in other respects also:
Millions of coloured people hold traditional natural-law views and would be insulted if you were to tell them that support for racial equality and support for sodomy are closely analogous.
Furthermore, the analogy could equally well be used in the opposite sense – support for sodomy compared not with racial equality but with racism itself, insofar as racism is arguable a kind of sexual perversion or at least a sign of sexual disturbance (“would you want your sister to marry one”, etc). In which case, racists and sodomites are equally perverts. I am not saying this argument is conclusive, only that it has equal value or non-value with the opposite one. Race and sex can be compared in more than one way. Rigorous logical proof is lacking.
Of course, liberals do have a point in that race and sexual orientation are both involuntary. But race is not an action, it is a state of being, whereas sodomy is an action. Liberals would emphasize that it springs from a state of being (“orientation”) but so what – we all want to do things which are wrong, and the way to deal with that, if the impulse is otherwise too strong, is (according to natural law theory) by means of taboo.
Oddly enough, liberals are hopelessly inconsistent with regard to taboos. There is a whole long list of activities which are traditionally regarded as perversions, all of which spring from involuntary “orientations”, but liberals, instead of abolishing the list altogether, have removed just one item from it (i.e. sodomy) – not a credible proceeding.