It’s time people fought back and this one deserves to win.
A Christian electrician has been granted the right to sue the NHS for discrimination by arguing that his opposition to gay marriage amounts to a religious belief.
Brian Walker, who worked at Southmead Hospital in Bristol before resigning in 2020, claims he was treated unfairly by the health service for expressing ‘traditional biblical’ views to colleagues.
The North Bristol NHS Trust ordered Mr Walker to undertake equality and diversity training and gave him a final written warning after a colleague said he had made comments about same sex relationships, mixed race relationships and Muslims.
Goose and gander again. If one religious belief is allowed, then so are all religious beliefs and Christianity has a long period of history in this country. Our culture is founded on Judaeo Christian beliefs and ideals. Unfortunately, they are also our undoing when faced by a hostile invader. So, why not use their weapon against them.
But the trust’s defence is jaw dropping.
The NHS argued Mr Walker’s claim should be struck out on the grounds his beliefs were ‘not worthy of respect in a democratic society’, were ‘incompatible with human dignity’ and ‘conflicted with the fundamental rights of others’.
That’s right – not worthy of respect, yet the belief that a man can change into a woman apparently is. Muslim hostility to women and other faiths (not to mention what they say about the gayers) is fine and dandy because its their culchure innit? But Christian belief is not compatible with the fundamental rights of others? As for the human dignity argument, that is beyond risible. The whole point about basic civil liberties is that they apply to everyone – freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association and freedom of religion are equal to all. If you don’t like what Walker has to say, no one is forcing you to listen. If you think he is wrong, then argue your case, but this… This… is evil.
So, yeah, take the bastards to court and clean them out – even though it does mean that the taxpayer picks up the bill. These bastards need to be taught good and hard, that it is they who are incompatible with the fundamental rights of others and they are not worthy of respect in a democratic society, not Mr Walker and his traditional beliefs.
But at a preliminary hearing, Judge Derek Reed dismissed the NHS’s submission and ordered a full hearing of the case should now go ahead in the autumn.
Excellent. Play the scum by their own standards – see also Alinsky (rule 4).
‘Not worthy of respect in a democratic society’? What kind of gobbledegook is that? Respecting the views of others without being subservient to them is a functional essential of democracy.
Whoever wrote that piece of divisive garbage deserves to be put in a camp by the logic police and guarded by grammar Nazi’s.
Respecting the right of others to hold their views – that doesn’t mean that you do have to respect them. I don’t resect Islam in the slightest and won’t pretend that I do, but I respect the right of someone to hold and voice those views.
And I’d be a bit careful about voicing thoughts on grammar with that stray apostrophe. Ahem.
Damn those stray apostrophes, they get everywhere don’t they? I think someone leaves a gate open.
Hilarious odd little programme a few years ago on R4 about a guy in Bristol who is so annoyed by apostrophe errors that he goes out in the middle of the night to correct offending signs. Goes to great lengths to ensure that his efforts are compatible with the uncorrected signs.
Thank God for interesting eccentrics in our grey, joyless society.
I remember him.
I used to feel insulted by that quote from G.K Chesterton, ‘When men stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing they believe anything.’ Being something of an empirisist, I believe only what is, on the available evidence, likely to be true. So I somewhat resented this generalization aimed against atheists. I always considered religion to consist of a mass of outdated and muddled thinking with the odd, but very rare pearl of wisdom here and there. Now I think that the statement is generally true, he wasn’t really aiming his comment at me at all but at the types that we refer to as woke. This is one of those cases where I wish that both sides could lose. Screw him and his mindless outdated bigotry. Screw them and their overconfident narrow minded intolerance.
Chesterton was being a sanctimonious arse. His comment was aimed at non believers regardless. It just happens that the rise of wokery has proved him inadvertently correct. I still don’t believe in his god, but I don’t believe in anything either. I follow facts, reason, evidence and logic.
Russia is maybe a case in point with respect to absence of faith, and wokery they do not tolerate. It hasn’t worked out too well for them. Apparently there’s not a single gay person in Russia either (source: Eurovision so it must be true)
Maybe you’re crediting the great unwashed with similar cognitive abilities to yourself. I’m swayed by George Carlin’s observation of people of average intelligence, or more correctly the observation that half of all people are less blessed than those of average ability. Scary thought really, a miracle we got where we are. Quite a few are in parliament as I type.
I have no faith as such, but I think it serves a useful purpose for any number of people, and some of them are almost off the IQ scale. Go figure, to each their own.
With each passing day, I am increasingly grateful that I was born and lived most of my life in a free and open society.
I really do feel for the young. Not so much for the world they will soon find themselves in, but because they will know no different.
They will likely be eagerly queueing up to be chipped like livestock before too long, although they likely won’t notice much difference as their lives seem to be ruled by phones.
Yes Mark, you have summed it up very well.
The last two years is the first time I regret having kids (both early 20s), and that’s only because I see the future holding all sorts of insanity ahead for them.
Rule by phone. The government could use SMS text messaging to nudge the sheeple in any direction it wants. Just keep on nagging. On topic: I hope he wins his case. I am fed up with Christians being discriminated against in a Christian country such as ours.