Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 1:49am

Intolerant tolerance…

 

While on this side of the pond the nation’s bishops are waging battle against the government’s incursions upon religious freedom, an interesting battle is unfolding on the other side of the pond in Great Britain.

It seems that Susanne and Mike Wilkinson who own Uf Dorf Wilkinson—a Swiss country B&B located in Cookham, Berkshire, which also serves as the couple’s home—believe the precepts of their Christian faith trump the law of the land.  In this instance, that precept concerns the sanctity of marriage and the law is the Britain’s Equality Act Regulations of 2007, which outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation when providing goods, facilities, services, education, and other public functions.

The Swiss Bed & Breakfast property in Cookham, owned by Mr & Mrs Wilkinson, caught up in the discrimination row

 

According to the UK Daily Mail, Mrs. Wilkinson told Michael Black and his partner John Morgan in March 2010 that they couldn’t sleep in a double bed at Uf Dorf.  That allegedly “discriminatory” judgment led to a lawsuit that Black and Morgan have won, with the judge requiring Mrs. Wilkinson to pay Black and Morgan £3,600 in compensatory damages on the grounds of “hurt feelings.”

Responding to the judgment, Mrs. Wilkinson to the Daily Mail:

Naturally, my husband and I are disappointed to have lost the case and to have been ordered to pay £3,600 in damages for injury to feelings. We have the option to appeal, and we will give that serious consideration.

We believe a person should be free to act upon their sincere beliefs about marriage under their own roof without living in fear of the law. Equality laws have gone too far when they start to intrude into a family home.

People’s beliefs about marriage are coming under increasing attack, and I am concerned about people’s freedom to speak and act upon these beliefs. I am a Christian, not just on a Sunday in church, but in every area of my life – as Jesus expects from his followers.

That’s all I was trying to do and I think it’s quite wrong to punish me for that, especially after enduring over two years of vile abuse and threats.

 

In court, Mrs. Wilkinson explained to the judge that she was serious about her Christian beliefs regarding the sanctity of marriage and wasn’t discriminating because Black and Morgan are homosexual.  Mrs. Wilkinson explained that she also doesn’t allow unmarried heterosexual couples to share a double bed at Uf Dorf.

That would make Mrs. Wilkinson consistent in her intolerance or, put in another way, consistent in bringing her faith into her workplace.

Mrs. Wilkinson put her finger squarely on the truth when she observed: “We find this a strange justice in a society that aspires to be increasingly tolerant.”

In the UK, it may very well be the case that the principle of “tolerance” doesn’t extent to being tolerant of traditional Christian teaching about the sanctity of marriage.

Is this a “coming attraction” of what’s soon to transpire in the United States?

 

 

 

To read the UK Daily Mail article, click on the following link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2219594/Christian-B-amp-B-owners-refused-bed-gay-couple-ordered-pay-3-000-compensation.html#ixzz2ALQ71FAj

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Paul W Primavera
Thursday, October 25, AD 2012 4:21pm

“Is this a ‘coming attraction’ of what’s soon to transpire in the United States?”

Yes.

There is no one more intolerant vice tolerant, more inconsiderate vice considerate, more divisive vice uniting, more exclusive vice inclusive, more close-minded vice open-minded, more unfair vice fair, more discriminating vice indiscriminate, than the liberal progressive leftist.

It is only a strong Second Amendment that protects the First Amendment, and that is exactly what liberal progressive leftists fear. “And let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one.” Luke 22:36b

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, October 25, AD 2012 4:32pm

I’m with you, PWP.

We don’t force vegetarians to eat meat.

We don’t require atheists to read the Bible.

We don’t get upset when they eat meat on Fridays.

We don’t get angry when they insult our God and Redeemer.

I don’t need to sell my coat.

I have credit cards.

solly gratia
solly gratia
Thursday, October 25, AD 2012 5:11pm

It’s not a sign of things to come; they have already arrived on your side of the Atlantic, qv the deaf black female diversity officer in Maryland who was suspended because she signed a petition on SSM.
http://www.christian.org.uk/news/us-diversity-officer-suspended-over-gay-marriage-petition/
One of our Counselling bodies has now banned its accredited counsellors from undertaking sessions with anyone who wants to change their sexual orientation away from gay.
The gay lobby are gaining a strangle hold in both our countries (and elsewhere, such as Canada and France).

Rozin
Rozin
Thursday, October 25, AD 2012 5:23pm

It is ominous that a country such as England which has a far less absolutist history than the rest of Europe (excepting Switzerland) is headlong going down the path of totalitarianism. Canada and Australia are also showing similar tendencies. The state wants no competition from religion since it is the substitute for religion. But one shouldn’t think it stems from an exclusive preoccupation with religious beliefs. The next to go will be the family. Then anything which interferes with its daily convenience or more precisely the convenience of the bureaucrats and pols running the govt. This may include behavior which it endorsed the day before.

LoneThinker
LoneThinker
Friday, October 26, AD 2012 7:15am

It already has. I recall a court case back there about a refusal to rent to an unmarried couple. Either way, it is inevitable with the cultural swing to honor the “rights” of the Christian-Orthodox Jewish believer. interesting the judge fined the owners of the home for “hurt” but missed the injustice done to their feelings. I agree with the expression of anger toward Leftists and glad we can vote one out of the US White House November 6.

trackback
Friday, October 26, AD 2012 8:52am

[…] at American Catholic my friend The Motley Monk has this (my emphases and comments): Intolerant tolerance… Published […]

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Friday, October 26, AD 2012 11:22am

[…] Intolerant Tolerance on the Horizon – The Motley Monk, The Amrcn Cthlc; Fr. Z Opines […]

philip
philip
Friday, October 26, AD 2012 5:43pm

This is sickening.
The justice is unjust.
Soon pedophiles will be held secure by these same judges and parents will be packing concealed weapons to protect their children.
A nightmare on main street.

Darel
Darel
Saturday, October 27, AD 2012 6:22pm

What is really at stake here is any claim to knowing and practicing the truth in public as one understands it. As Western societies become less and less Christian while more and more liberal, everything becomes tolerated except truth claims. Anyone claiming to know anything in the realm of morals or ethics is now automatically a fundamentalist. In fact, the US Supreme Court already proclaimed this new dispensation in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992).

The new truth is that there is no truth.

Poetcomic1
Poetcomic1
Tuesday, October 30, AD 2012 1:58pm

We have been lied to all our lives by the media, by comedians, my talk show hosts, by magazines, professors, movies etc. etc.. We have been told that ‘intolerant bigots’ and ‘religious fanatics’ are out to stop anyone else from having fun. The truth is that true Christians have always been shy of ‘casting the first stone’. It is vice that in the end is intolerant of virtue and can’t bear to live in the same world with it.

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