Retired Pastor - barred for not marrying homosexuals
A retired pastor has been barred as a marriage celebrant because he won't marry same-sex couples. Auckland pastor Barrie Baker, 65, is one of 22 people barred from becoming marriage celebrants in the past 15 months because they refuse to do same-sex marriages . Family First director Bob McCoskrie says the rejections breach their rights under the Bill of Rights Act to "freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief". "It's coercing and it's bullying," he said. But the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Jeff Montgomery , said independent marriage celebrants were bound by the Human Rights Act not to discriminate against people on the basis of their sexual orientation. Labour MP Louisa Wall 's marriage equality bill, which legalised same-sex marriages in 2013, exempted celebrants nominated by a church or other approved organisation whose "religious beliefs or philosophical or humanitarian convictions" do not allow sa...