Christians Are Being Hounded From Their Jobs by the Perpetually Offended

There is an outright onslaught on Christianity in the Western world. The faith on which our civilisation was built is being mocked and regarded with contempt. This is painfully visible in the U.K. which suffers possibly the highest number of incidents of intolerance against Christians in the Western world.

It did not start out like that. The inclusion of ‘religion and belief’ as one of the ‘protected characteristics’ in the 2010 Equality Act should have boded well for Christians. But what emerged instead was a hierarchy of protected characteristics with Christianity at the bottom of the list.

This became apparent in research which Voice for Justice U.K. carried out into the experiences of Christians in British society. Christians were subjects of mockery, discrimination and harassment, kept in place by threats of job loss often supported by anti-discrimination law.  Freedom of speech and conscience had been abandoned as Christians found they had to censor themselves, in schools, in their workplace, even within their church. If Christians expressed their views on sex and marriage they could find themselves on the wrong side of anti-discrimination policies.

Nowhere was this more conspicuous than with respect to LGBT ideology. Pushed to wear lanyards and adopt language and logos they disagreed with to make them voice opinions that are not their own, Christians sometimes pre-emptively left employment to avoid compromising their beliefs or being sacked.

Those working in education were most threatened. As schools have the responsibility for propagating this ideology, any hints of resistance meant loss of employment. Kwabana Peat, Olive Jones, Bernard Randall, Ben Dybowski, Keith Waters, Kristie Higgs, Glawdys Leger, Joshua Sutcliffe and many other Christians lost employment for falling foul of LGBT ideology. If pupils questioned this ideology they could be bullied by teachers. Faith schools were no better.

LGBT ideology has become the new global religion and in the U.K. this status is held in place thanks to the Equality Act.

LGBT ideology, by any metric, constitutes a significant belief system. It has clearly outlined dogmas, such as queer theory. It has its own holidays and festivals. It has propaganda, clothing, symbols and colours. It has its own blasphemy laws and it has its own degrees of belonging. LGBT+ dogma appears to be permitted a level of proselytisation not permitted to other beliefs.

How did this come about?

First homosexual behaviour was converted into an identity. Huge symbolic importance was attached to ‘coming out.’ In an early propaganda manual by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, the importance of turning homosexuality not just into an identity but into an ascribed characteristic was clearly outlined:

The mainstream should be told that gays are victims of fate, in the sense that most never had a choice to accept or reject their sexual preference. The message must read: “As far as gays can tell, they were born gay, just as you were born heterosexual or white or black or bright or athletic. Nobody ever tricked or seduced them; they never made a choice, and are not morally blameworthy. This twist of fate could as easily have happened to you!”

Twenty years later Ben Bradshaw explained that homosexuality was equivalent to race sex or disability. Without the belief that sexual orientation was an ascribed characteristic, subsequent discrimination legislation and same sex marriage could never have been achieved.

Initially, equalities legislation ignored sexual orientation. When in 2005 the Labour Party proposed an Equality Bill in its election manifesto, it focused on religion and belief. The party wanted to appeal to Muslim voters and believed that they might feel offended if they were ‘lumped together’ with homosexuals.

When the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SOR) were subsequently introduced there was little time for them to go through the same rigorous legislative processes. Instead they were drafted without opportunities for debate. The impact of sexual orientation on religion and belief was not given proper consideration. This resulted in legislation where, for example, Catholic adoption agencies had to shut down because they wouldn’t cater for same sex parents (even though plenty of other adoption agencies did). It set the pattern which we see holding sway today where there is a clear hierarchy of rights.

Key to this process was the National Secular Society (NSS), which realised it could use sexual orientation legislation to help suppress religion in the public realm. To this end the NSS issued 10 press releases championing the Sexual Orientation Regulations. Even Stonewall issued only three. The British Humanist Association similarly pushed for more gay rights while arguing against protections for religion and belief.

It did not end here. Kirk and Madsen in their propaganda manual discussed ways of undermining Christianity:

Use talk to muddy the moral waters, that is, to undercut the rationalisations that ‘justify’ religious bigotry and to jam some of its psychic rewards… This entails publicizing support by moderate churches and raising serious theological objections to conservative biblical teachings.

Conservative churches, defined by the authors as “homohating”, are portrayed as “antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology.”

The strategy proposed by Kirk and Madsen appears to have set the tone. For example, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission was so thoroughly infiltrated with anti-Christian sentiment that it even described Christian values as being like an “infection” that could harm children. Still today we are seeing due legal process threatened with virulently anti-Christian views.

This hostility towards Christianity is particularly problematic when, as we see in the Equality Act, legal processes are triggered not by objective actions but rather by what goes on in someone’s head. For example, harassment is defined as “unwanted conduct” which may have the effect of creating an “offensive environment” for the individuals. How the recipient ‘perceives’ this unwanted conduct is more important than the intention. Where Christians are perceived as “haters”, and workplaces are full of DEI initiatives telling us LGBT people are discriminated against, this can leave the door open to vexatious claims.

In fact, as research conducted by Voice for Justice U.K. showed, Christians frequently experience discrimination and a hostile, intimidating and offensive environment. But the employers who are supposed to protect them against this are often the perpetrators. And their weapon is the Equality Act.

Voice for Justice U.K. has recently published a report exploring the state of Christianity in British society today. It is also running a Commission of Inquiry into Discrimination Against Christians. For further information or if you think you would like to contribute to the Commission of Inquiry, see here.