The Tories Sure Seem Homophobic…

David Cameron didn’t seem to understand about gay rights the other week. Now his putative Home Secretary Chris Grayling seems not to understand either:

In a recording of the meeting of the Centre for Policy Studies, obtained by the Observer, Grayling makes clear he has always believed that those who run B&Bs should be free to turn away guests.

“I think we need to allow people to have their own consciences,” he said. “I personally always took the view that, if you look at the case of should a Christian hotel owner have the right to exclude a gay couple from a hotel, I took the view that if it’s a question of somebody who’s doing a B&B in their own home, that individual should have the right to decide who does and who doesn’t come into their own home.”

He draws a distinction, however, with hotels, which he says should admit gay couples. “If they are running a hotel on the high street, I really don’t think that it is right in this day and age that a gay couple should walk into a hotel and be turned away because they are a gay couple, and I think that is where the dividing line comes.”

The man who intends to be the Home Secretary in a matter of weeks, from the party which desperately wants you to think it’s no longer homophobic, seems not to understand that the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007 doesn’t allow for such a distinction. As a society, when dealing with a conflict of religious and gay rights, we’ve decided that preventing businesses providing a service to the public from discriminating against gay people trumps the rights of religious people running any of those businesses to discriminate with their consciences. It’s fair, it’s proportionate and Grayling not understanding the meaning of the Sexual Orientation Regulations (and equalities legislation in general) should send a shiver down the spines of any gay person thinking of voting Tory.

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