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Gay News: Two Christian hotel owners who turned away a gay couple acted unlawfully
Chymorvah guest houses refuses gays
Hotel broke law by refusing gays
In a judgment at Bristol County Court, Judge Andrew Rutherford ruled that Peter and Hazelmary Bull broke the law when they turned away gay couple Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy from their hotel in Cornwall in September 2008.
The Bulls had said that they could not allow Hall and Preddy a double bed as that would be an “affront” to their Christian faith.
The couple claimed that they had a long-standing policy of not letting double-bedded accommodation to unmarried couples in their Chymorvah hotel near Penzance.
However the judge ruled that they were in breach of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007, which makes it an offence to deny goods or services to anyone on account of their sexual orientation.
In his ruling, Judge Rutherford said:
"We live today in a parliamentary democracy. Our laws are made by the Queen in Parliament. It is inevitable that such laws will from time to time cut across deeply held beliefs of individuals and sections of society for they reflect the social attitudes and morals prevailing at the time that they are made.
"In the last fifty years there have been many such instances - the abolition of capital punishment; the abolition of corporal punishment in schools; the decriminalisation of homosexuality and of suicide; and on a more mundane level the ban on hunting and on smoking in public places.
"All of these - and they are only examples - have offended sections of the population and in some cases cut across traditional religious beliefs. These laws have come into being because of changes in social attitudes.
"The standards and principles governing our behaviour which were unquestioningly accepted in one generation may not be so accepted in the next. I am quite satisfied as to the genuineness of the defendants' beliefs and it is, I have no doubt, one which others also hold.
"It is a very clear example of how social attitudes have changed over the years for it is not so very long ago that these beliefs of the defendants would have been those accepted as normal by society at large. Now it is the other way around."
Hall and Preddy were each awarded £1,800 in compensation.
