Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007

My Lords, I think I can claim with justification and with pride that in every issue that has come before your Lordships’ House before, I have consistently supported the position of the gay community in the face of quite a lot of opposition from people like the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, who based their opposition on the totally honest belief that homosexuality was wrong and was contrary to religious teaching. I respected their views on that, but it did not seem to be right that they should prevail, because I did not believe it was for the criminal law to impose the morality of the majority on the minority. That has been my consistent point throughout debates on this topic. While I am convinced that there is much in the regulations that, if this were primary legislation,we would wish to see preserved—several pointshave been made about bullying and so on, which undoubtedly should not happen—there is no doubt that in the regulations there is much that seeks to impose the morality and views of those who disapprove of any form of discrimination against gays on people who hold genuine views the other way—namely, that they cannot forward an adoption by two men living in an active homosexual relationship. Now we have come to a position that is precisely the opposite to where we were on all previous regulations, where the gay lobby, if I can so describe it, is seeking to impose its morality on the religious communities and saying, ““You cannot do this under the sanction of criminal law because we do not approve””. If it was sauce for the goose—probably not a very good phrase to use in this context—if it was right to say that we would not persecute, discriminate against or criminalise homosexuals because of the moral views of the majority, it must also be right to say that we will not criminalise the acts of the church and religious believers who genuinely believe that it would not be right for them to take part in adoption of this kind or in other such matters. I urge your Lordships’ House to see that this now shows the wrong side of the coin and that the argument and the beliefs that led us to repealSection 28 and to remove discrimination and lower the age of consent and so on is now against much of the content of the regulations.