If You Can Afford To Be Discriminating Beyond Red, Purple & Yellow What Business Is That Of The Courts?

If you feel your business can afford to look beyond the reddies, purplies & yellowies, then what business is that of the courts?

A gay couple are suing a Christian bed and breakfast owner after she told them it was 'against her convictions' for them to share a bed, it emerged yesterday.

Michael Black, 63, and John Morgan, 58, are claiming sexual discrimination after being turned away from Swiss B&B in Cookham, Berkshire, last March.

Their case follows that of Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy, who won £3,600 damages from the owners of a Cornish guesthouse last week for refusing them a double room.

Now I am a Christian - sometimes I lapse; my language can be atrocious, I drink far too heavily and frequently get vitriolic when discussing the turds of any rosette (to coin that acronym: TOARs.)

But I love God and all he's done in my life; I would be in a much darker place right now where it not for him.

All that said my God is a God of liberty and freedom; his kingdom is open to everyone who chooses to follow him but he doesn't persecute those who adopt a different lifestyle in this world* - that is the very essence of free will after: to live and let live.

This has honed my libertarianism; a belief in individual freedom and the pursuit of it up to the limit of another's freedom: gay marriage, adoption** and a right to dispense with property as the owner sees fit all come with this.

What also comes with this is the right to discriminate; how you conduct your business and who you conduct it with is sacrosanct and is at the very core of our natural rights.

And all this case represents is an encroachment on the right to do business and conduct oneself as you want.

By saying you have a right to do business with someone who doesn't want to do business with you, you disenfranchise them of their freedoms.

Yes this does mean that racists and a whole assortment of other bigots would be able to wear their prejudices on their sleeve, but is this really any worse than the unintended consequences this type of law making will have? Will it kill bigotry and prejudice or just push it into more subtle, faux-intellectual ways of handling business with people you don't like? Will it encourage friendship and trust or a pervasive atmosphere of distrust and intergenerational irrationality?

My guess is that this will only make the problems associated with it more ingrained, and put hardliners in positions of power over sheeple.

* = please note this is saying what God does, not what established churches do or people do, as is made in my point about free will.

** = yes, as a Christian Youthworker I see the problem caused by, quite frankly, shitty heterosexual "parenting" (if you can call it that); parents who gladly choose smokes and cider over new shoes and clothes for their beer voucher subsidy progeny.

However, this is not the same as saying adoption agencies must consider all patrons irrespective of deeply held convictions; the true answer to this problem perhaps lies in parental choice and a liberalising of adoption providers.