Last Thursday found me in BBC London TV studios discussing the Cookham B&B case with Sam Dick, head of policy at Stonewall (here).
Earlier in the day Mrs Susanne Wilkinson, who runs the B&B at her home, had been fined £3,600 in damages ‘for hurt feelings’ experienced by a gay couple she had not allowed to share a bed. Her policy, based on Christian principles although regrettably unpublicised, is that only married couples can sleep together under her roof – in the past she has even refused to accommodate co-habiting members of her own family.
This court case is just the latest skirmish in the triumphant gay-rights march across society, crushing people’s consciences, trumping other liberties and, as eccentric gay atheist David Starkey says (here), imposing a new intolerant state-defined morality. 
It’s extraordinary that a democratic society which considers itself mature enough to protect the freedom of conscience of pacifists even in times of war, does not now allow citizens the freedom peacefully to run a small business at their home according to their own lights. The new state-defined morality is to be forced into every nook and cranny of our culture.
It’s the new liberal totalitarianism. They’ve done for smokers (here) and Christians. Maybe they’ll come for pacifists too.
Sam Dick seemed a decent bloke and we had a pleasant half-hour chatting before we went into the studio. But on-camera he reverted to the standard Stonewall myths, fables and nonsense.
First he claimed that gays should be free from discrimination “simply for the way they were born”. People are born gay? Really? He ought to read gay commentator Matthew Parris: “… male sexual orientation is less fixed than we suppose. It may alter. We gays fought that idiotic ‘Section 28′ on dishonest grounds. Homosexuality can, as the statute implied, be ‘promoted’. So can heterosexuality. It has always been, with much success.” (The Times, 21st April 2012).
Sam later equated Mrs Wilkinson to the landlords who used to put up notices, ‘No Blacks, No Jews, No Irish’. 
He was spouting silly Stonewall duplicity. The facts are that Mrs Wilkinson is a good love-thy-neighbour Christian who offers exactly the same warm hospitality to everyone – black and white, male and female, straight and gay.
I honour her. I hope she appeals the court fine on a point of principle and conscience. But unfortunately she’s fighting a losing battle as we continue our downward slide into an illiberal un-diverse intolerant state.
“Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants,” said Benjamin Franklin. Guess which way we’re heading…
October 26th, 2012 at 11:44 am
I watched the interview, and was as impressed by you as i was underwhelmed by Sam. The poverty of the arguments put forward by Stonewall et al are a cause for hope and strength. The difficulty comes from the fact that the political world knows how useful the promotion of homosexuality is to its own end. Gay rights are the perfect weapon against family and society. Against life itself, in fact.
Keep walking in the strong light of the truth. Obedience to god demands our rebellion to the new tyrants.
October 26th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
When someone operates a money making business from their home, the laws of the land apply. If this was just their home, and no fees were charged, the couple would be free to let in any one into their home that pleased them.
When they took the deposit fees, they should have included their religious bias, so these people would not make their plans, only to have them broken on arrival. That was not very christian.
January 12th, 2013 at 12:12 pm
I am shocked to see that a Bishop of the Church of England is attacking other Christians in an aggressive, rude and insulting fashion. In his website http://bishopalan.blogspot.com/ he has lashed out at Christians who uphold traditional Christian teaching on love and marriage and called them “abnormal” even comparing them to “cattle”.
He uses the most contemptuous terms throughout his blog and subsequent comments for anyone who does not subscribe to the full LGBT nonsense, and he accuses them of “corrupting” the church.
Presumably then Jesus was corrupting the church?
He writes such nonsense that it is quite incredible, calling anybody who disagrees with him a “bigot” and denying that the Old Testament (in the story of Sodom) condemned homosexuality. It is not just what he says but the heated, hate-filled language that he uses which are totally inappropriate for a bishop, or for a priest, and also in my opinion for any Christian talking about any other Christian.
It is plain that Bishop Wilson has replaced the teachings of Christ with those of Stonewall and Peter Tatchell. Please write to the new Archibishop of Canterbury the Rt Rev Justin Welby [ bishop.of.durham@durham.anglican.org]
and demand that Wilson is sacked.