GAY TRUTH

In a controversial decision, the United States Supreme Court has held by 6-3, in Bostock v Clayton County, Georgia (No. 17–1618; June 15, 2020), that the prohibition of “sex discrimination” in the workplace in Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 means that an employer cannot discriminate on the basis of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity”. Both majority and minority focus strongly on the issues of how statutes should be interpreted.  In my view, the concerns expressed by the minority about the “literal” approach of the majority judgment are well-justified, as are the possible detrimental implications for religious freedom in the USA. I will also comment briefly on how similar issues would be resolved in Australia. The Facts The judgment of the Court relates to not one, but three separate claims. Without going into the details, two of these claims involve an employee dismissed on account of his homosexuality; the third involved an employee dismissed on the

An important decision of the England and Wales Court of Appeal, The Queen (on the application of Ngole) -v- The University of Sheffield [2019] EWCA Civ 1127 (3 July 2019) has ruled that a social work student, Felix Ngole, should not have been dismissed from his course on the basis of comments he made on social media sharing the Bible’s view on homosexuality. The court says in its summary at para [5], point (10): The Queen (on the application of Ngole) -v- The University of Sheffield The mere expression of views on theological grounds  (e.g. that ‘homosexuality is a sin’) does not necessarily connote that the person expressing such views will discriminate on such grounds. The decision is a welcome one, which will hopefully provide guidance in similar situations. The background to the case was noted in my previous blog post on the case, here. I encourage readers to go there for the details of the original post and the subsequent disciplinary proceedings. Perhaps this summary

Trinity Western University, an evangelical tertiary institution in British Columbia, has lost two cases it had brought protesting the decision of two Canadian Provincial Law Societies to not authorise graduates of their proposed Law School as able to practice in the Provinces. The reason for the denial of accreditation was that TWU requires students and staff to agree to a Community Covenant Agreement, which undertakes (among other things) that they will not engage while studying or working at TWU in “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman”.  The Supreme Court of Canada, in two linked cases, has now held by a 7-2 majority that the Law Societies were justified in their refusal to accredit the TWU Law program, on the basis that any interference with religious freedom was minor, and that the Societies were entitled to take the view that the Covenant requirement imposed “harm” on LGBTQ law students. I disagree with both those conclusions,

A recent decision by a California Superior Court Judge holds that a bakery cannot be required by discrimination law to make a same sex wedding cake, where the owner has a religious reason for declining to do so. In  Department of Fair Employment and Housing v Cathy’s Creations Inc  (Cal Sup Ct, Kern Cty; BCV-17-102855; Lampe J, 5 Feb 2018) Judge Lampe refused an injunction against Cathy Miller, proprietor of Tastries Bakery, which would have required her to create a wedding cake for the same sex wedding of Mireya and Eileen Rodriguez-Del Rio. The basis for the decision was the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution , the judge holding that creating a wedding cake was a constitutionally protected form of “free speech”. The decision is possibly subject to appeal, and it is not, of course, binding on Australian courts . But it provides an excellent example, in my view, of how the case can be made for protecting the free speech and religious freedom