A relationship counsellor in the UK holds that his Christian beliefs grant him the freedom to avoid counselling gay couples. The national counselling service, Relate, disagrees.
The father-of-two says his religious beliefs were not taken into account and is claiming unfair dismissal on the grounds of religious discrimination at an Employment Tribunal in Bristol.
Mr McFarlane, of Bristol, had been a counsellor with Relate for three years when he undertook a diploma to become in psychosexual therapy, which involved dealing with intimate problems.
But he says that promoting same sex physical relationships goes against his strong religious beliefs.
I think it’s fair to assume that any relationship counsellor, regardless of faith, would be risking a loss of job if it was discovered they were homophobic and unwilling to do the jobs they were hired to do. But, McFarlane sees it as yet another Christian right under attack. Christians have the right to dislike gays and have nothing to do with them. That’s certainly a right worth fighting for.
/sarcasm
While training as a counsellor he had qualms about dealing with gay couples but claims he overcame them during discussions with his supervisor – and even offered support to a lesbian couple, the hearing was told.
But in September 2006 he trained as a psychosexual therapist, which involved dealing with people’s intimate sexual problems.
He assumed his supervisors would take into account his strong Christian beliefs and that he would not be asked to do anything that would encourage gay sex and that he would not be assigned to work with a gay couple, it was said.
When you assume… well, you know how that goes.
I suspect his superiors had no real idea of just how deep his homophobia went. He was dismissed for failing to follow their equal opportunities policy and he should have known ahead of time what that meant in regards to giving all kinds of sexual and relationship advice to all kinds of people. If he knew he’d never be able to follow that agreement, perhaps he should have considered employment somewhere that supported his unequal world view instead.
From MSNBC – Is Gay the new black?
In a cover story for the Advocate magazine titled “Gay is the New Black,” Michael Joseph Gross wrote, “These past few years we’ve made so much progress that we’d begun to think everybody saw us as we see ourselves. Suddenly we were faced with the reality that a majority of voters don’t like us, don’t think we’re normal, don’t believe our lives and loves count as much or are worth as much as theirs.”
But opponents argue that being gay and being black aren’t the same thing, aren’t the same kinds of fights for equality.
“I do not consider (gays) to be a minority in legal and adjudicated terms, the same way people who only like to eat broccoli with butter aren’t a minority,” said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. “We can’t categorize things according to behavior. It’s based on ethnicity, on who we are rather than what we do.”
So he’s equating gayness with a fondness for butter on broccoli? I didn’t know your broccoli was buttered that side, Bongo…
I know we shouldn’t categorize people according to behaviour, which is why people have to stop insisting that gay behaviour is an evil sin. Bigotry doesn’t require something as specific as a skin tone or ethnic heritage to be a problem. It really doesn’t.
“Who am I to say that you weren’t born that way … (but) sexual activity, what you do, who you sleep with, is your business,” Rodriguez said. “That’s between you, your lover, and the good God Almighty in heaven. I don’t want to know. Let’s leave sexual activity in the bedroom. The government shouldn’t be legislating what we do behind closed doors between two consenting adults. And to compare it to the African-American struggle, to me that’s an abomination.”
Yes, but it IS an abomination. Targeting a group because of what they do in their bedroom makes just as little sense as targeting a group because of colour or country of origin. Why does anyone even give a damn what people are doing in their bedrooms? If arguments against gayness could be made that didn’t rely on scripture for foundation, maybe there’d be a case. But, until they find a correlation between increased homosexual sexual encounters and .. i dunno, solar flares or something, I think it’s a waste of time arguing over the morality of it.
So is gay the new black, or did the election define a new and unique set of gay challenges?
“The gay fight for marriage has its own integrity, its own background,” said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University. “The experience of blacks in the United States is very different. … I don’t think it helps the fight for equality to make that claim.”
True to a point – blacks as a group suffered under serious oppression of rights and freedoms for several hundred years and it’s still not completely tea and party cakes. The “gay thing” can’t really compete on the same level, but comparing the two still raises some awareness, still makes the point that people have stereotyped them, feared them, killed and tortured them, accused them of destroying civilizations and causing natural disasters, and secretly (and not so secretly) cheered when AIDS mowed them down like a swather. God’s punishment, thank god all mighty.
Feel the love.
Ah well, anyway. I’m at a loss to think of a nice tidy way to end this, so just pretend I wrote something fabulous and ooh and aww appreciatively.
Very nice.
