Uncivil conduct

Refusing to officiate at the celebration of gay civil partnerships may cost a British woman her job. 

Lillian Ladele, a Nigerian-born British registrar, has a conscience which does not permit her to officiate at the registration of “civil partnerships” for same-sex couples. Her employer, the Islington Borough in North London, says that she can keep her conscience, but not her £31,000 job. Now Ms Ladele has taken her employers to court for discriminating against her religious beliefs.

Islington is Britain’s third most popular borough for civil partnerships and more than 600 gay couples have had ceremonies there since the new form of relationship was legalised in December 2005. But Ladele holds the orthodox Christian view that “marriage is the union of one man and one woman for life to the exclusion of others and that this is the God-ordained place for sexual relations.” This constitutes, according to her employers, “discriminating against the homosexual community.” Ms Ladele insists that she has never actually discriminated against anyone, as she has been swapping shifts with her colleagues to avoid tying the knot for same-sex couples.

So basically Lillian Ladele is being threatened with punishment for the thought crime of regarding same-sex marriage as sinful. In fact the punishment began when she voiced misgivings about the new arrangements in August 2004 with her boss, Helen Mendez-Childs. Ms Mendez-Childs ridiculed her and told her that her views were like denying marriage to a black couple. Later on she was denied opportunities to preside over lucrative weddings staged at special premises. She says that her colleagues began to act in a “different, hostile way towards me.” Finally, the borough launched an investigation last year into whether she was guilty of “gross misconduct”.

Writing from Nigeria, I find it amazing that objecting to same-sex marriage constitutes gross misconduct and same-sex marriage doesn’t. It is astonishing that the country which for centuries has regarded itself as the beacon of human freedom should have sunk so low as to punish a woman for following her conscience. And not about a trivial matter, either, but about the nature of the most fundamental of human relationships. I would hazard a guess that 90 percent of the world would agree with Ms Ladele. She does not represent an unhinged minority.

No, it’s probably closer to 98 percent. In fact, the lunacy of gay marriage threatens to split the Anglican Church. Nigerian’s Jasper Akionla, Primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, and other African Bishops have stated time and again that it goes against the Gospel, which paradoxically came to us through European missionaries. Akionla is not a lone voice in this regard. The former Nigerian government of Olusegun Obasanjo insisted that it goes against our value system as Africans.

I sometimes wonder if Mother England’s insistence on democratic freedoms is not sheer hypocrisy. On the one hand, we hear her politicians pontificating about Robert Mugabe’s tyranny and abuse of democratic process in Zimbabwe. Yet when a woman asserts her natural right to behave in accordance with a rational conscience, she is bullied, ostracised and threatened with the loss of her job. Ladele’s case shows that “democracy” can also become a monster. Why should your livelihood be threatened because you hold contrary views? Or is freedom of religion dependent on a majority opinion?

What I found excruciatingly offensive was the suggestion that Lillian Ladele’s views were analogous to racism. In fact, I suspect that a subtle new 21st Century racism underlies the harshness with which she is being treated. Even though she represents a traditional moral view, even though it violates her religious views, even though 98 percent of the world agrees, she is not being taken seriously. I suspect that Islington Borough’s argument ultimately is that opposition to same-sex marriage is a primitive way of thinking fit for uncultured people. It is tantamount to racism.

I applaud my sister, Ladele, because no sane Yoruba will acquiescence in such absurdity. What will she tell her relatives? That she has been officiating at gay weddings? Tufiakwa, God forbid! “To most of us mere mortals,” Olukayode Thomas of one of Nigeria’s largest newspapers, The Guardian, writes, “a job that pays about N7 million a year plus other fringe benefits, a dream car, mortgage on a nice house in a good neighbourhood and other goodies of life in a society that works like five fingers, is the ideal job. Many who place material things above their souls will give their arms and legs to keep it.” Well done, Lillian, for daring to swim against the tide!   

Nwachukwu Egbunike is a book editor in Ibadan, Nigeria.