Christian care home in UK victorious in gay dispute

Posted March 3rd 2009

by DPS

A Christian care home in the

UK has won a victory against a council that cut its funding because it refused to ask elderly residents about their sexual orientation every three months.

David Harrison, in the national daily, The Telegraph, has reported that
Brighton and
Hove Council agreed to restore the funding after Pilgrim Homes launched a legal action for religious discrimination. The Council had cut the £13,000 funds after accusing the home – which has former missionaries and a minister among its 39 residents – of “institutional homophobia”. Officials had told Pilgrim Homes to ask the pensioners about their sexual orientation four times a year under its “fair access and diversity” policies developed from New Labour’s equality laws, and to use elderly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in its leaflets.

The home, run by a 200-year-old charity that cares for older Christians, has now agreed to withdraw its legal action after the Council said it would restore the funds, which paid for a warden, retract the homophobia accusation, and drop the request for details of residents’ sexual orientation.

Mike Judge, spokesman for the Christian Institute which supported the home’s battle with the Council, said, “Elderly Christians shouldn’t be penalised just because of their religious beliefs. Christians pay their taxes too and they should have equal access to public grants without being required to drop their Christian ethos. I hope other councils take note.”

The row began last year when the Council sent a questionnaire to the Pilgrim Home in
Brighton. It was part of a move to make organisations it supported financially ‘comply’ with the Equality Act 2006 and the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007. Care home officials were told to ask residents if they were lesbian, gay, bisexual, heterosexual or ‘unsure’. But the residents described the council’s orders as “intrusive” and “inappropriate” and refused to fill in the forms.

The Council criticised the home’s “negative response” and said that its Christian ethos might deter gay people from applying. The Council stopped the grant because there had been only “limited progress” in making the home “open to the gay and lesbian community”. It said residents could choose whether to answer questions about their sexuality.

The home replied that it had given places to gay Christians and accused the council of being “institutionally discriminatory”.