Fostering liberty
If David Cameron were looking for a couple to symbolise the spirit of his Big Society, Eunice and Owen Johns of Derby would be ideal. At an age when many are settling down to retirement, they want nothing more than to carry on fostering, taking in troubled and abandoned children in return for modest financial reward but a huge sense of fulfilment. Described in one assessment by Derby City Council as ‘kind and hospitable people who would always do their best to make a child welcome and comfortable’, they are perfect role models, it might be imagined, at a time when there is a national shortage of 10,000 foster parents.
Yet the Johns will foster no more. Last week the High Court upheld Derby’s decision to ban them on the grounds that they showed insufficient belief in gay equality. In doing so, the court rejected the Johns’ counter-argument that the city council had discriminated against their religious beliefs. As Mrs Johns put it, ‘We are prepared to love and accept any child. All we are not willing to do is to tell a small child that the practice of homosexuality was a good thing.’ This rendered her, in the judges’ view, unfit to look after a child.
It is not necessary to share the Johns’ faith to see something deeply troubling, not to say intolerant, about their treatment. It is hardly as if they have been caught banging drums to ward off evil spirits from a child showing signs of incipient homosexuality. The issue is unlikely to arise, given that the Johns specialise in fostering children between the ages of five and ten. The council, backed up by the high court, has simply banned them from fostering because their private views do not adhere to what has become the new state religion of equality.
The Spectator has long supported gay rights. We were among the first national publications to call for the abolition of the laws which imprisoned consenting adults for engaging in homosexuality — and we did so out of a simple belief in liberty. Now, however, the threat to liberty comes from an intolerance that makes it unacceptable to harbour any doubts that gay sex is the complete equivalent of the heterosexual kind. The law has swung from one extreme to the other, and this by no means reflects public opinion. It is being driven by an aggressive gay rights lobby and a small class of politicians and lawyers.
The various pieces of equality legislation passed by Labour between 1997 and 2010 have not just resulted in a new kind of intolerance. They have created a hopeless mess. Equality law has collided with freedom of belief — and the judges are deciding who should win. This is part of a worrying trend. The 2010 Equality Act, like the 1998 Human Rights Act, involves the incorporation of vague principles into law, thereby allowing a huge power grab by the judiciary. The ruling against the Johns will have appalled gay and straight people alike for a simple reason: it offends the British idea of tolerance.
It would be reassuring to think that David Cameron, who has championed family values, might support the Johns and commit his government to resolving the contradictions of equality legislation. Admittedly he has Colonel Gaddafi on his plate at the moment, but there must be a suspicion that he is happy to leave such matters in the hands of judges for fear of upsetting members of the coalition. This will not do. If this government is serious about defending British freedoms, as both coalition parties claim to be, then it should replace Labour’s invidious equalities laws with a system that defends both equality and liberty.
Mad Dog and Englishmen
All week, MPs and foreign office bigwigs have been chastising Prince Andrew, calling for him to be stripped of his title as the UK’s special trade representative. They cite his ‘rudeness’ towards foreign dignitaries, and his relationships with gangsters like Saif Gaddafi.
True, the prince has not covered himself with glory. He is said to be so undiplomatic that at times the Foreign Office has had to send officials to follow in his wake, pacifying offended dignitaries. But even less savoury than the Duke of York’s hereditary lack of tact is the hypocrisy of the finger-wagging establishment.
As Rod Liddle points out on page 17, the last government set the trend for hobnobbing with tyrants and Britain’s intellectual elite happily followed suit. Anthony Giddens, then director of the LSE, was an unapologetic admirer of Gaddafi, claiming that Libya could end up as the ‘Norway of North Africa’. Lord Desai, then head of the LSE’s Global Governance unit, championed Saif, and MI6 cosied up to both father and son.
In this as in so many other ways, the Cameroons have shown themselves to be the true heirs of New Labour. George Osborne’s unfortunate friendship with Mandelson and the Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska is part of a familiar pattern. The prince must be more careful of the company he keeps, but there is a lesson here for the whole establishment.
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