British Christian Magistrate Loses Freedom Of Conscience Case

by Michael Ireland
March 6, 2007

SHEFFIELD, ENGLAND (ANS) -- A British Christian magistrate has lost his case to have his freedom of conscience recognized when practicing as a Justice of the Peace. The Sheffield (England) Employment Tribunal handed down their judgment on February 28.

The decision of the court means that Andrew McClintock, a committed Christian who became a Justice of the Peace in Sheffield in 1988, will not be able to serve on the Family Panel, even though the Tribunal recognized that "he has an unblemished record and is well regarded by fellow magistrates and by the Department of Constitutional Affairs."
A media advisory obtained by ANS from the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship, which exists to influence lawyers and the law for Christ, says that difficulties first arose for McClintock when he considered the implications of same-sex adoption, arising from the Civil Partnerships Act 2002.

The advisory says: "He became concerned that a tension existed between his Christian beliefs in the Biblical model of the family and his work as a Magistrate sitting on the Family Panel. In March 2004, McClintock raised his difficulties with the Chairman of the Family Panel at Sheffield. McClintock was not asking for a change in the law, rather he was requesting that his religious conscience should accommodated, and that he should be 'screened' from cases which might require him to adopt children in to same-sex households. He also expressed his concern that children could be put at risk by the untried social experiment of same-sex adoption, in which vulnerable children were being used as 'guinea pigs.'"

The Employment Tribunal rejected McClintock's claim that he had been discriminated against because of his religious beliefs, and that his right to religious freedom was infringed.

Commenting on the judgment, Andrea Williams of the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship said: "This case is a clear picture of how Christian faith is becoming privatized in society. It is yet another example of the repression of Christian conscience and signals the prevalence of a secular 'new morality' and the erosion of Christian values at the expense of our children's welfare."

Williams stated: "Andrew McClintock believes that the best interests of the child are served by placing them in a situation where they would have both a mother and a father and therefore he could not agree to participate in gay adoption. Andrew's case demonstrates what will happen as greater numbers of men and women of integrity (as the court described McClintock) are forced to choose between applying a law which runs contrary to their fundamental Christian belief or obeying their conscience. The imposition of secular values in every aspect of our lives will force those who hold Christian beliefs out of jobs. It will be to the detriment of the whole of society."

Williams says that McClintock's Christian belief in the traditional Biblical picture of the family was backed up in Court by expert evidence from Dr Dean Byrd who has conducted research into this issue for over four decades. Dr Byrd stated the evidence conclusively showed that children flourished when raised by a mother and a father and suffered detriment when placed in same sex households.

Williams added: "Contrary to this sort of compelling evidence, Parliament legislated in 2002 to legalize gay adoption and further, to make gay adoption legally equal in all respects to adoption into a married family. Andrew McClintock was not seeking to change this law, although he believed it was wrong. He was simply asking to be allowed to act in accordance with his Christian conscience and not be involved in cases where adoption into a gay household might be an outcome. The fact that the Court system could not accommodate him is an example of the exclusion of Christians from public life."

Thomas Cordrey, Barrister and Public Policy Analyst at the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship, added: "We are supposed to live in a free society which is characterized by respect for one another's views, and yet the message from the Tribunal in this judgment was clear: for Christians your only freedom in such a situation is the freedom to resign. As a prediction of things to come, the court was right to say that this 'choice' to resign is one that 'many people' will feel the need to make --particularly with the Government's evident disdain for Christian conscience being demonstrated in the row over gay adoption."

Cordrey explained: "The Tribunal also said 'to suggest that Mr McClintock's Human Rights are being infringed by refusing to allow him to opt out of a situation whereby he might feel forced to discriminate against same sex couples strikes us as being wrong.' It strikes many hundreds of thousands of Christians as 'being wrong' that in both this judgment and in the Government's position on the Sexual Orientation Regulations, there can be no accommodation for the Christian moral, rational and centuries-old view that extra-marital sexual practices are wrong and that such practices are ultimately to the detriment of society."

Andrew McClintock commented: "This ruling is going to make it harder for many conscientious people: whether they are JPs in the family court, or otherwise involved with children, or maybe with different matters of conscience. Anyone who holds seriously to the traditional morals and family values of Jews, Christians or Muslims will think twice before taking on such a job. It is like a re-imposition of a Test Act, such as that abolished in 1828, and will diminish the pool of people willing to do such work, both in numbers and diversity."

McClintock concluded: "There will be more children now whom the courts remove from one kind of harm, but only to face another hazard. The expert witness in the case, Professor Byrd from the USA, said there was little research into the effect of same-sex nurture on childrens' development, and that what had been established was worrying. This view of the scientific facts was unchallenged by the other side. So, more needy children will be fuelling this experiment in social science, and suffering what the experts call mother-hunger or father-hunger."

© 2007 ASSIST News Service, used with permission.