Re: OMG - Christian wins employment tribunal : Fri Nov 16, 2012 8:00 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

1) At no time have I seen reference to any church being forced to conduct gay marriages, the proposal is a civil marriage and if any church so wishes, it can (not must) conduct a same-sex marriage.

That is what the situation is at present. A church can, if it so wishes, bless a civil partnership. However, Stonewall wants to go further than that and people of faith - Jews, Christians, Muslims and maybe other faiths too - do not want that.

As for the OP, I am very glad that the man has won his case. However, he has not been reinstated to his old job and therefore he has only half won his case. He should now sue to be reinstated, if that is actually possible. Given that the judge decided his contract had been breached then he should now be returned to the terms of his original contract as otherwise surely Trafford Housing are acting unlawfully?

It would have been a sad day for this country if he had lost: to not be free to post your personal opinion on your (private) Facebook page in your own time about an issue that was not even directly connected to your employment without fear of being punished by your employer would have been a sinister development.

Re: OMG - Christian wins employment tribunal : Fri Nov 16, 2012 8:04 pm  

SaintsFan wrote:

That is what the situation is at present. A church can, if it so wishes, bless a civil partnership. However, Stonewall wants to go further than that and people of faith - Jews, Christians, Muslims and maybe other faiths too - do not want that.

As for the OP, I am very glad that the man has won his case. However, he has not been reinstated to his old job and therefore he has only half won his case. He should now sue to be reinstated, if that is actually possible. Given that the judge decided his contract had been breached then he should now be returned to the terms of his original contract as otherwise surely Trafford Housing are acting unlawfully?

It would have been a sad day for this country if he had lost: to not be free to post your personal opinion on your (private) Facebook page in your own time about an issue that was not even directly connected to your employment without fear of being punished by your employer would have been a sinister development.

Good post.

Sadly, I fear we have reached the stage where any opinion which runs contrary to the liberal Guardianista elite is derided as 'bigotry' and its proponent vilified and prosecuted. Thank Heaven for small mercies such as this.

Re: OMG - Christian wins employment tribunal : Fri Nov 16, 2012 8:15 pm  

kirkstaller wrote:

Sadly, I fear we have reached the stage where any opinion which runs contrary to the liberal Guardianista elite is derided as 'bigotry' and its proponent vilified and prosecuted. Thank Heaven for small mercies such as this.

The ruling sets a positive precedent IMO. For too long Councils have been enjoying increasing freedom to interfere in areas they have no right to interfere and this was a particularly vindictive example. The message is now out that there is such a place as private and such a thing as a valid personal opinion, and work has no reach there.

Re: OMG - Christian wins employment tribunal : Fri Nov 16, 2012 9:07 pm  

Jesus, are you still feeding this troll?

Don't argue with Kirkstaller, don't give him chance to air his medievel views, he'll get bored and go away.



(Or, as I suspect, create another identity and come back with a different set of beliefs.)

Re: OMG - Christian wins employment tribunal : Fri Nov 16, 2012 11:20 pm  

SaintsFan wrote:

They are not supplemented by taxes at all. Churches pay their taxes, same as any other organisation. They are funded by churchgoers and investments made by the relevant denomination.

Some church schools are part financed by taxes.

Very interesting, so religious organisations in the UK only receive funding for schools?

[Kosh]

Re: OMG - Christian wins employment tribunal : Fri Nov 16, 2012 11:24 pm  

SaintsFan wrote:

The message is now out that there is such a place as private and such a thing as a valid personal opinion, and work has no reach there.

Actually the ruling says nothing whatsoever about the validity of the opinion expressed. It simply upholds the right to express one in private without being punished by an employer.

Re: OMG - Christian wins employment tribunal : Sat Nov 17, 2012 9:02 pm  

Sheldon wrote:

Very interesting, so religious organisations in the UK only receive funding for schools?

That's not what I said.

You referred to 'specific churches'. The taxpayer funds no churches at all. The churches fund themselves. The churches also fund their own diocesan or other organisational bodies, and other monies will come in through investments. For example, the Church of England is a massive land owner. At one point it was second only to the Queen I think in the amount of land it owned. That's simply historical. It makes money on that land or from it when it sells it and/or the property on it. And it's been selling a lot of church buildings and vicarages in recent years.

Religious charities are open to applying for the same external funding as are all other charities. So, for example, the Salvation Army (a religious charity) will be able to apply for stuff like lottery funding. I'd like to see you criticise their work.

Some religious schools - Jewish, Muslim, Roman Catholic and Church of England - receive funding either in part or wholly from the government (some receive no funding from the government). The church or churches do not receive that funding and nor do their diocesan or organisational bodies. It goes to the school in the same way as funding goes to any other state sector school. If a religious school receives such funding then it is subject to all the same rules, etc, that a non-religious school is which is to say not much difference really.

Re: OMG - Christian wins employment tribunal : Sat Nov 17, 2012 9:21 pm  

Kosh wrote:

Actually the ruling says nothing whatsoever about the validity of the opinion expressed.

Clearly you haven't read the judgement then.

Read from point 62. The judge has clear opinion about what was said.

Re: OMG - Christian wins employment tribunal : Sat Nov 17, 2012 9:54 pm  

If the "salvation" army are anything like their Australian sect I'd happily critise them.

66% of they're income gets lost in "adimistration" and of course they refuse help to homosexuals.

Re: OMG - Christian wins employment tribunal : Sat Nov 17, 2012 10:08 pm  

Sheldon wrote:

If the "salvation" army are anything like their Australian sect I'd happily critise them.

I've no idea what the Salvation Army is like in Australia, I've only spent three months in Australia and I didn't come across any Sally Army people there, to my knowledge.

Here in the UK though they are the ones who do the real dirty work, mostly cleaning up homeless drunk people and stuff like that. I have heard nothing to say they don't clean up gay homeless drunk people but hey, you never know. They may in fact ship them off to the north pole to freeze their bits off.