Well that didn’t take long.
Yesterday I posted on how the Prime Minister endorsed the court judgement that forcing Christians to promise to endorse homosexuality was legal. Several of us said this was a green light for further attacks on Christians.
Today I learn that the two gays who sued the elderly owners of a Christian B&B for not giving them a double bed (and were awarded “damages”) are dragging them again into court to demand more money still. The “Equalities commission” — i.e. the state — is funding the prosecution.
Expect a rash of such attacks and attempts to plunder and loot, now the PM has supported the courts, and the courts have made clear they will cooperate.
UPDATE: The case has been withdrawn! The Daily Mail reports: that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission said:
Legal director John Wadham said: ‘This morning we withdrew our cross appeal in this case.
‘It was filed initially because of an error of judgment on the part of our legal team.
‘They submitted the cross appeal in an attempt to clarify the law around how damages are calculated in cases such as this.
‘This resulted in it appearing that Steve Preddy and Martyn Hall were seeking to increase the amount of damages they receive because Mr and Mrs Bull’s Christian beliefs had led them to break the law.
This was not our intention and it was certainly not the intention of Steve and Martyn.
‘I would like to confirm that public money will not be spent funding a claim for increased damages in this case.’
I think the last sentence tells us what has happened, for we must never forget that we don’t know who is talking to who, in the corridors of power, and what is really being done here, any more than one would in a corporate power struggle. But I infer from this that someone in the government got nervous.
The government is currently slashing spending, which is very unpopular. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that a populist politician could ask why government money, at such a time, is being spent to enrich a pair of campaigners. Someone has decided not to take that political risk.