Demands for religious exemptions are coming from more and more places these days. In Britain, a family court magistrate wanted to "cherry pick" cases in order to avoid the possibility of putting kids with a gay couple. Evidently Andrew McClintock knew there would be times when gays would provide the best home for a child, but the incontrovertible facts would conflict with his religious prejudices and so he argued that his faith-based bigotry against gay people qualified him for a religious exemption to having gays in cases he was hearing.

His superiors rightfully rejected this argument, insisting that all officers of the state must represent the interests of the government and the people equally. Forced to resign rather than risk awarding custody of children to any gay parents, he filed a complaint wherein he implicitly admitted that he was wrong: instead of arguing for his religious objections to homosexuality, he offered secular arguments against placing kids with gay couples.

If he simply and sincerely wanted a religious exemption, secular arguments here would be irrelevant. This made it clear that he didn't want to treat gays as equals and was willing to offer any argument that he could find — secular or religious. He lost his case and is now appealing, but has no real chance of victory.

In his role on the family panel deciding whether children should be removed from an abusive or chaotic household, he made clear that he could not continue if he would be responsible for unwittingly placing some cases with same-sex couples.

As a committed Christian, he said, he was faced with no option but to resign after his bosses told him that he could not "cherry-pick" cases.

"I felt pushed into a corner," said Mr McClintock. "I wanted to be sure that I was not risking sending children into same-sex households. As that could not be guaranteed, I felt that I must resign rather than act against my conscience, but I was disappointed that no effort was made to accommodate my Christian beliefs."

Source: Telegraph

Andrew McClintock's "conscience" appears to simply mean "I don't agree with the government's policy on treating gays like fully equal human beings and want to be excused from having to enforce it," thus making a mockery of legitimate claims to conscience exemptions. After his faith-based arguments failed, he actually tried to argue that children in a gay household might suffer from bullying and that this would justify not putting them with gay parents.

By that "reasoning," one might argue that it's wrong to put children with Jewish, atheist, or interracial parents — anyone who might be the subject of bigotry and discrimination. It's merely a lame, superficial excuse for one's own bigotry, masked as "concern" for how others' bigotry will affect the children. In reality, this simply puts the states official approval on that bigotry by reinforcing it.

Last year Mr McClintock, a former manager in the steel industry and now a self-employed logistics consultant, said he thought it was wrong for the government to use disadvantaged children as "guinea pigs". He said placing them with gay couples was an "experiment in social science". ...

In a statement read by the tribunal panel, father-of-four Mr McClintock said: "Many of the new legislative initiatives appear directly contrary to both common sense and the accepted principles of Judeo-Christian morality.

"It has placed severe conscience issues on me and on my fellow magistrates. It is necessary for a stand to be made in order to maintain the integrity of the administration of justice."

Source: BBC

It's amazing how often acting in accordance with Christian beliefs means not treating others as fully equal in terms of law and society. It's also amazing how often Christians complain "discrimination" when they are not allowed to discriminate against others. Christians are working very, very hard to associate their religion as closely as possible with the forces of oppression, injustice, and discrimination.

A.C. Grayling comments:

If his prejudices interfere with his responsibility to serve the law as one of its officers, he is evidently much better employed elsewhere. Think of a votary of any other religion allowing his personal beliefs to prevent him from carrying out his public duties in the UK: an orthodox Jewish fireman who would not carry a woman down a ladder from a burning house because he is allowed to touch no other woman than his wife and daughters; a devout Muslim in a council education department refusing to let girls into a certain school because there are boys there, or working for an adoption agency and refusing to countenance applications from gay couples; a doctor of either faith refusing to help a woman at the scene of an accident for the same kind of scruples - odd how all the examples that spring most readily to mind involve prejudices about women and gays.

The point is an entirely general one. When individuals cannot allow their religious loyalties to be trumped by their public responsibilities, they should resign; the alternative is for the public domain to be invaded and disrupted by a Babel of claimed individual religious sensitivities, or even worse, by various religious organisations whose prejudices, taboos, anxieties and antipathies distort the overall public endeavour for a decent and equitable social order which is as inclusive as possible. The McClintock case is another powerful argument for saying: if you are serious about your religion, be consistent and honest and accept the consequences, as Mr McClintock has rightly done by resigning. What he has done wrong (apart from allowing his life to be controlled by ancient superstition and prejudice) is to complain about the rest of us thinking he has done the right thing.

Source: Guardian

Why are these cases always about women and gays? Those are the groups which have historically suffered so much faith-based discrimination. After centuries of abuse and bigotry, they are only recently and under liberal, secular democracies gaining significant equality. It's only where the law has been secularized that it is able to promote equality and justice for all — even those despised under religious dogma. This means they are able to acquire more liberty, autonomy, and rights than at any other time in recorded history.

Despite decades of progress, though, so many religious traditionalists are working hard to undermine as much as they can. Abusing religious exemptions from general laws is just one method for turning back the clock. McClintock has the right to his beliefs, however bigoted and irrational they may be, but he does not have a right to use those beliefs as an excuse for undermining people's equality before or confidence in the law. It doesn't matter if a person's anti-gay feelings are secular or religious: they have no business sitting in judgement over gays and gay families if they cannot treat everyone equally.

Part of the price of serving as an officer of the state under a liberal government which does not engage in faith-based discrimination is that you have to set aside your own faith-based bigotry while on the job. If you can't, then you need to find work in the private sector where your bigotry either won't come up, or can be expressed freely.