Even Christians Have To Obey The Law.

Excellent news today from Reading Crown Court where a Christian couple have been ordered to pay compensation to a gay couple whom they had discriminated against in 2010, using their superstition as the pretext for their bullying and denial of basic human rights by refusing to supply them with hotel services on the grounds of their sexuality. See BBC News - Gay couple win Berkshire B&B refusal case.

This case follows an almost identical one in Bristol which resulted in damages being awarded to a gay couple who had been similarly victimised by the Christian owners of a Bed & Breakfast Hotel in Marazion, Cornwall, in 2008. The case was upheld by the Court of Appeal last February. The message from these landmark cases should be crystal clear to Christians, and indeed any other religious minorities seeking to impose their bigotry on the rest of us.

For centuries, Christianity has been the superstition of choice in England for people looking for an excuse to bully, discriminate against and harass people or to interfere in their private affairs and indeed in any or all aspects of public life. There was nothing better for those who needed to put themselves above others and pretend to be their moral superior than to be sanctimonious, judgemental, holier-than-thou, Christian bigots.

Until recently, Christians had assumed the right to legislate for the rest of us and to impose their Bronze Age superstition on ordinary people by any and all means at their disposal. Now, to howls of protest by Christian organizations, in recognition that Britain is an increasingly secular society and increasingly rejecting the Bronze Age morality of the Bible, the Law is at last recognizing that Christians too are subject to the normal laws of civilised behaviour. It has accepted that their superstition should no longer be an excuse for antisocial behaviour and that the privileges they have abused for centuries are no longer justifiable in a society in which they form a rapidly diminishing minority of the population.