Nwachukwu: No, it’s not a subtle form of racism. Extremists are accusing anyone who believes that marriage cannot be otherwise than a union between a man and a woman of civil rights abuse because so many people feel guilty about how they or their parents’ generation treated black people. It is happening in the United States too, and the comparison is supposed to shut you up fast.

Just last week I was explaining to my teenage daughter, who holds the sensible view that only men and women can get married, that activists use the technique of claiming civil rights abuses to confuse people, and that she needs to know that will happen and be ready with an answer. Even if her answer is just a calm “No, it is not like that at all,” it will show that she will not melt into a guilty puddle at the very idea and that the conversation is not over.

I don’t know what to say about England or the Anglicans, they make no sense to me either. I applaud Lillian Ladele and people like her. They must stay strong or what will happen to England, and everyone else as well?

I don’t see the problem.  A person hired to do a job discovers she is unable to do it and, so, her employer cans her.  Unfortunate, certainly, and sad, but no one’s rights were denied or aspirations unfairly blocked.  Her employer, I would agree, was narrow-minded and unkind in not going along with the perfectly fine arrangement she had worked out to have others perform the ceremony when the couple was same-sexed.  Those are the sorts of arrangements that can help to smooth our path to a society indifferent to homosexuality.  Her employer acted poorly, then, but not wrongly.

What comes down to is simply this - is it legal for a registrar to refuse to officiate for ANY reason.  If so then the gov’t has no case, if not then she has no case. It sounds like she was doing it in a non-offensive way and it was hurting no one, but “religious beliefs” is one of the most over used excuses for bigotry.  If you are so offended by Western folk “pontificating” over the issues in Zimbabwe and other African countries the answer is clear - refuse to accept any money, food aid, health aid ,military aid etc., and work out your own problems free of any interference.  Of course that means that all refugees need to be stopped at the border, all those who move to other countries and send money home to their families will have to either stop or return to their country.  You want to throw out silly accusations of racism?  Here’s something to think about - LGBT people are assaulted, raped and murdered, legislated against, attacked by religious “leaders” in your country and others on the African continent.  That is “a primitive way of thinking fit for uncultured people” and it makes any racism in this case pale by comparison.

In the real world, if you can’t do your job you are removed from it.  I have not doubt that is she is the wonderful person you say she is then another job would be readily available.

I believe we`re going to see much more of this type of action.
I think of it as “civil disobedience” by the conservative/religious/right/traditionalists.
One need not have a religious view to abhor this recognition of sexual perversity.
Those who are pro-"gay" nearly always focus on religious and tradional objections in defense of this “lifestyle”.
All the “inborn/biological” arguments have have not even come close to deserving any serious consideration. The “traditional"(read:natural/biological/ God ordained)man-woman coupling is OBVIOUS as the way humans are meant to relate sexually.
“Gays” et al. can do as they like, but this “relationship” does not merit any social or legal recognituion.

Lyllian:

Gooood.  Very good.  A will that commands to consider more valuable the conscience than well being is something to appreciate and respect.  The world is as is because, in first place, we do not respect ourselves when we let others establish moral rules we know are against God’s will therefore against nature.  Heroes, real heroes, like you Ms. Ladele is what the world needs just to change the trend of things.  God is blessing you.

J. Roberto Bonilla A.

I applaud Lillian Ladele for her stand and like the author of this article, I find it disgraceful that Islington Borough Council have equated it with racism. Christians are mocked and marginalised in this country; freedom of conscience does not apply to them. It would be a simple thing to put registrars who object to same-sex unions onto different shifts...as was happening already with Lilian until Islington Council decided to make an issue of it.
This was no doubt done on purpose by the likes of Helen Mendez-Childs who have an issue with religious conscience.

I wish Lillian all the blessings due to her and that she will succeed in her discrimination case; or find a better and nicer job.

I am one of the 98% who agree with you that disagreement with others’ ideas/decisions/plans is NOT equal to hate/discrimination/or any other of the “loaded” terms so freely used today.

There is no sensible argument for support of same-sex “marriage”.  I don’t mind if two men/women have a legal agreement in terms of shared property....two sisters or brothers or friends sharing a home/estate should be allowed that privilege.  But the word “marriage” holds a much deeper meaning than “friends/co-habitants”....it is a relationship which potentially (but not always) produces new life....thus it requires a man and a woman.

Congratulations to this brave woman, Ladele.  I am grateful you have told us some of her story.  I wish her well in this fight against discrimination of the beliefs of so many of us. 
......M. Howlett

While I do believe that swapping shifts in order to avoid participating in same-sex unions is and acceptable compromise and the Ms. Ladele has not committed anything close to gross misconduct, I find it unnecessary and divisive for Mr. Egbunike to call same-sex unions “lunacy”.  There is nothing crazy about to adults who love each other to want to publicly declare the intention of their relationship nor is there insanity in those same adults looking for the legal protection frequently afforded to married couples.

Arguing that 98% of people disagree with accepting people who are LGBT is also not a particularly useful argument.  There have also been times on this planet when most people believed that slavery was acceptable, sex with children was appropriate and that monogamous relationships where a sign of male weakness. 

The right to marry the person of one’s choosing (consenting adult) is now considered a fundamental human right right up there with the right to practice the faith (or not) of one’s choosing.  If Mr. Egbunike wants to make the case for the respect of Ms. Ladele’s right to religious freedom he’d likely be better served respecting *all* basic human rights.

Communism may never have taken root politically in most Western countries, but sadly socialist ideologies took root in govt dept’s, particularly in areas of education and social services in many western countries. This type of thing is just another example of an attempt to break down the family and society in a subversive rather than violent way.

The lunies have taken over the asylum in this Borough.

I have always avoided engaging with anyone about the many ontologies of homosexuality: gayness, gay marriage and so on. It’s often a futile dingdong. While I will never agree with anyone that gay people are committing any ‘sin’ or that what they are doing is wrong, I will not expect religious bigots to come round to my way of thinking.
Even then if it comes to it, I will defend those who are living with the biological fact of gayness, although I do find myself on the obverse of such a fact.
I understand where Egbunike was coming from displaying such antediluvian animus against the state of gayness in his article. Just like him I grew up in Nigeria, where even today most still think homosexuality is an impossible taboo. But do we need to bury our heads in the narrow white sheets of missionary-position morality?
There are thousands of gay people in Nigeria, and by extension Africa. It gets my goat when some fellow Africans gloat about gayness being unAfrican. It sounds so differentist, it’s as good as saying AIDS is unEuropean or un-American. Just because gay people flaunt their gayness in the West than in places like Africa does not mean the continent is innocent of gays or the promptings of homosexuality.  A nineteenth central African king, in today’s Uganda, was almost as voracious as Caligula in his appetite for boys, I mean this was even before Europeans stepped foot on that corner of Africa. Through skin, flesh and bones, I guess we are all brothers and sisters to the very marrow of our common humanity. It’s time Africa stopped seeing itself as permanently esconced in the shaded pre-Nabobokovian cradle-bed.

(Continued)

Egbunike knows quite well that Obasanjo, the ex-president, who says homosexuality is against Africa’s value system is not the sagest of humans, nor is he the most morally solid. A man - the president of a country who also paraded himself as a born-again Christian - who slept with his son’s wife could hardly have stood on a higher moral ground than a gay man might not have a son in the first place let alone sleeping with a daughter in law. Is such Obasanjo’s misbehaviour part of Africa’s value system?
Like Obasanjo and the woman who declined to marry a gay couple in Islington, I am of Yoruba extraction, and I do ‘acquiesce in the absurdity’ of gayness and gay union - although I may not parse it as a ‘marriage,’ really to me it does not matter what the relationship is called.
Like comparisons, generalisations are indeed odious. I think you’ve gone over the top writing that no ‘sane’ Yoruba person should approve of gays. And Mr Egbunike, how do you define the boundaries of sanity?

One can only compare racism and the discrimination commited
in it`s name to the “discrimination” against “lgbt” people if there were a legitimate comparison between the two.
Those who claim a “gay” identity have the same rights as anyone else. If a “gay” is attacked, it`s a crime. “They” are not legislated against, behaviors are legislated against or not given recognition.
Same-sex marriage is lunacy. Marriage is the social and legal recognition of the unique, natural union of male and female. Any two adults can love each other, but if it`s not a mature male and female, what is sense of this love being eroticized? Why should we have legal and societal recognition of relationships, that by thier very nature are unnatural and whose only biological basis is a mental, emotional abberation?
If 98% of people agree with something (in this case,that “lgbt” behavior is unnatural) after thousands of years there might be something to it.
Why is there no physical difference between “gay and straight” males; “lesbians and straight” women? When a baby is born why can`t the doctor say"Awww, it`s a little lesbian!”? Has anyone ever been born obviously “homosexual”?
“Gay” is a purely cultural creation whose promotion and approval are utterly demeaning.

Michael Carrack in Australia:
High time to stop calling “gay marriage” a right and come clean, “sodomy is a right.”

I think what’s being lost here is that Lillian Ladele has not been fired. I believe she has been moved to a position where she does not have to officiate over civil unions. She objected to some of those civil unions and now she doesn’t have to worry about it. Obviously, she can’t make as much money because she won’t be getting the extra money for performing these ceremonies. What she wants is a special deal just for herself. She doesn’t seem to care about the burden she would put on her fellow employees by getting this special deal. I’ve got three In-laws who are supervisors in local government in England and, from the stories they’ve told me, it sounds like she’s trolling for a golden buyout. She is not making a ‘principled stand’ because that would require a willingness to accept the consequences. None of her actions point to that. They point to a cynical manipulation of a soft system that all too often bends to this kind of blackmail.

In a related matter, the Reverend Pakula, a Unitarian minister from Islington who has publicly commented on this case, has refused to perform any weddings until the law calls all English marriages equal. Gay marriage in England is a pitiful shadow of heterosexual marriage. No religious institutions are allowed to perform same-sex ceremonies, regardless of their willingness to do so. The law governing civil unions is a tribute to the cowardice of English politicians. Reverend Pakula, by refusing to perform weddings until they are equal for everyone, is giving up a decent part of what I’m sure is a paltry income. Now that is a principled stand.

I think the only way Ms. Ladele can hold her position is if she also refuses to marry opposite sex individuals.  We have been too inconsistent in how we view cohabitation, same sex, civil marriage, divorce, etc.  They’re all of the same fruit.