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Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling says that it is right that owners of Bed and Breakfast accommodations should be allowed to ban gay guests.
By: Nigel Robinson
Grayling: No gays at the inn?
Grayling: No gays at the inn?
B&Bs should have the right to ban gay couples, says Shadow Home Secretary
Chris Grayling, who stands to become Home Secretary if the Tories win the general election which is widely expected to be held on 6 May, made those comments in a conversation last week.
The conversation was secretly recorded.
In it Grayling says that bed and breakfast businesses should be allowed to turn away gay couples, if the proprieters of the B&B objected to their guests’ sexuality.
This follows a recent incident when when a gay couple was refused accommodation at a Berkshire guest house because its Christian owner said it was against her convictions to allow the two men to share a bed.
"I think we need to allow people to have their own consciences," Grayling said in the recorded conversation.
"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 did, however, say that gay couples should not be excluded from hotels.
“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,” he said, “and I think that is where the dividing line comes."
The Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) 2007 clearly states that no-one should be refused services on account of their sexuality.
In a statement, Ben Summerskill of Stonewall said:
"The legal position is perfectly clear.
“If you are going to offer the public a commercial service – and B&Bs are a commercial service – then people cannot be refused that service on the grounds of sexuality.
“No one is obliged to run a B&B, but people who do so have to obey the law.
"I don't think anyone, including the Tories, wants to go back to the days where there is a sign outside saying: 'No gays, no blacks, no Irish.’”
Grayling’s comments can be heard on the Guardian website, about 2 minutes 30 seconds into the conversation.
His comments follow what is widely agreed to have been a disastrous interview for David Cameron with Gay Times in which the leader of the Conservative Party appeared to be equivocal, or ignorant, of his party’s stand on gay rights.
