Hoteliers seek to retain ban on homosexuals

DEVOUT Christian hotel owners who refused to allow a gay couple to share a double room have insisted at an appeal court that they should have been allowed to impose the ban.

Peter Bull, 72, and Hazel Bull, 67, refused to allow Martyn Hall and his civil partner, Steven Preddy, to stay in a double room at their Cornwall hotel. This year a judge at Bristol County Court ruled the Bulls had acted unlawfully and ordered them to pay £3600 compensation.

Challenging the ruling at the appeal court in London, the Bulls argued they did not wish to undermine or disrespect Mr Hall and Mr Preddy, who are from Bristol. James Dingemans, QC, for the Bulls, told three appeal judges that Judge Andrew Rutherford at Bristol "erred in failing to balance the respective rights in this case".

He said the Bulls believed that "unmarried sexual behaviour was wrong" but were not prejudiced against gay people.

Mr Dingemans said the law should be capable of accommodating Mr Hall and Mr Preddy's rights under equality legislation and the Bulls' rights to beliefs about sex before marriage.

He said: "[Their] beliefs may be considered outdated, uneconomic for those operating a private hotel, but, we respectfully submit, they are entitled to manifest those beliefs."

He said the Bulls had an "absolute right" to believe that "unmarried sexual behaviour is wrong" and a "qualified right" to "manifest that belief".

"If human rights is to have any value at all, it must be respecting of all rights," he said.

The website to the couple's hotel, Chymorvah, features a note: "We have few rules, but please note that as Christians we have a deep regard for marriage (being the union of one man to one woman for life to the exclusion of all others). Therefore, although we extend to all a warm welcome to our home, our double-bedded accommodation is not available to unmarried couples. Thank you."

The hearing continues.

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Are Britain's Olympics chiefs ashamed of Britain's proud naval history? In the days before Remembrance Sunday the HMS Belfast is airbrushed from poster

She is one of the most famous ships ever to sail in the British Navy. Assisting allies in World War II and fighting enemies in Korea she then retired to a permanent mooring on the River Thames as a museum.

However Olympic chiefs seem to be unconcerned with the illustrious history of HMS Belfast if the latest advertisement for next year's event is anything to go by. The warship has been airbrushed from the Thames in this poster to advertise the Festival that will accompany the Games.



It was spotted yesterday on a Northern Line platform at Camden Town London Underground station just days before Remembrance Sunday.

Veterans from the Navy, some of whom may have served on HMS Belfast during the 1940s, will attend the annual service at the Cenotaph just a short distance away this coming Sunday.

The poster above is advertising the London Festival, which hopes to bring more than 10million opportunities to see 1,000 performances and events in London ahead of the Olympics.

HMS Belfast meanwhile is one of Britain's most well known vessels and attracts around 250,000 visitors a year. It has been moored on the Thames since 1971 and became part of the Imperial War Museum in 1978. The ship was built in 1936/7 before it entered reserve in 1963.

Today visitors can explore its nine decks and experience what it was like to be in the gun turret during the middle of a Second World War battle.

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'They're trying to create a template for all aspects of life': Newest British Supreme Court judge slams human rights rulings

The newest Supreme Court judge yesterday accused the European Court of Human Rights of riding roughshod over democracy.

Jonathan Sumption QC said the Strasbourg human rights judges had tried through their rulings to set down ‘a template for most aspects of human life.’ He warned that the democratic ‘consensus necessary to support it at this level of detail does not exist.’

And Mr Sumption, who is shortly to be sworn in as a Supreme Court judge, said it was wrong for Strasbourg to treat Britain, a democratic country with high constitutional standards, in the same way as Romania, Russia or Turkey.

His scathing speech – which also accused British judges of becoming too political and stealing the democratic rights of ministers – made Mr Sumption the latest in a string of senior figures in the law to make public their unhappiness with the Court of Human Rights and its rulings.

Among them is Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, who said last month that in arguments between the European judges and Britain ‘maybe Strasbourg shouldn’t win.’

Mr Sumption became the first practicing barrister to be appointed to the Supreme Court in May. He attracted some criticism in the legal profession both because he has never served as a judge and because he has delayed taking up his post to represent Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in his protracted court battle against former friend Boris Berezovsky.

Mr Sumption, who is thought to have been earning well in excess of £1 million a year throughout the past decade, will be sworn in to the Supreme Court when the Abramovich case is over.

He said in a speech to fellow lawyers that the problem with human rights was not the general principles but the way the Strasbourg court has produced ‘a very large number of derivative sub-principles and rules. ‘Many of these sub-principles and rules go well beyond what is required to vindicate the rights expressly conferred by the Convention,’ Mr Sumption said.

'In addition, the Strasbourg court has taken it upon itself to decide not only whether states had proper institutional safeguards for the protection of human rights, but whether it agreed with the outcome.’

Mr Sumption said the court had made its landmark ruling in 1995 that three IRA terrorists shot by the SAS in Gibraltar were wrongly killed not because human rights rules were broken but because it disagreed with the findings of an inquest.

He said: ‘The Strasbourg court has treated the Convention not just as a safeguard against arbitrary and despotic exercises of state power but as a template for most aspects of human life. ‘These include many matters where are governed by no compelling moral considerations one way or the other. The consensus necessary to support it at this level of detail does not exist.’

Mr Sumption said that Britain had a strong public service tradition, a functioning democracy and an independent judiciary and ‘there is no reason why the protection of Convention rights should necessarily require the same measures in a country like the United Kingdom as they do in countries like, say, Romania, Russia or Turkey.’

He said that judges should stay out of making political decisions in what they considered to be the public interest. This, he sad, is a matter for politicians and ‘has no legitimate basis in public consent, because judges are quite rightly not accountable to the public for their decisions.’ He warned that if judges continue to take political decisions, they will be vulnerable to pressure for the public for an elected judiciary.

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Universal media decoder for the Middle East

Aggression: Killing people who are trying to kill you.

Al Qaeda: the terrorist group that, according to American security sources, embodies the world-wide Islamist movement, and that is either “significantly degraded” or is still “extremely dangerous,” depending on which government official is doing the talking.

Apartheid: The political/social system of the one and only country in the Middle East that integrates Jews, Beduins, Arabs, whites, blacks, Muslems, Ethiopians, Russians, Christians, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Bahai, et al.

“Apes & Pigs”: See “Jew” below.

Arab Emir: Military dictator.

Arab King: Military dictator.

Arab President: Military dictator.

Arab Prime Minister: Military dictator.

Arab Spring: Replacement of one dictatorship with another, with the help of Western money and media cheerleading.

Arab Street: Enraged mobs chanting and screaming their hatred, determined to annihilate Israel and the Jews. They can often be seen burning American and Israeli flags, passing out candies and firing guns into the air in response to successful murders of Westerners (closely related to):

Arab Humiliation: The pervasive feeling on the Arab street generated by their failure to annihilate Israel and the Jews in several wars. Many opinion-makers, Middle East experts and op-ed writers argue that Arab humiliation is at the root of the Middle East conflict; i.e., “If only the Jews would let themselves be destroyed, the Arab street would feel better about themselves, and then there would be peace.”

Ayatola: Persian dictator. Spiritual leader of that faith that desires to ignite nuclear holocaust in order to bring about the arrival of the Mahdi. (See “Mahdi” below.)

Bias: An expression of support for the existence of Israel.

Caliphate: The unification of lands ruled in the name of Islam, ruled by a Caliph. (See “Arab King,” “Arab President,” etc. above.)

Compromise: To give something palpable, such as land, in return for a promise not to keep on trying to annihilate you.

Developing Country: A country that is not developing.

Disproportionate Response: Winning.

Diversity: The condition in which all cultures are viewed as equally and inherently virtuous, except for the culture of the West, which is viewed as evil by virtue of imperialism, colonialism and endemic racism (see “Racist” below).

Emergency Laws: The law.

Father of the Palestinian People: An Egyptian man, raised by his uncle, Hitler’s buddy, and one of the world’s most successful kleptocrats. (See “PLO” below.)

Fatwa: A pronouncement of a mullah that sanctions murder, but only of disagreeable people, like inadequately covered women, Salman Rushdie, etc.

Female Genital Mutilation: That ritual of which Western feminist organizations seem, by virtue of their silence, to approve.

Hamas: The democratically elected government of Gaza whose founding charter calls for genocide.

Hezbollah: The democratic group whose purpose is saving Lebanon from Israeli aggression, and whose founding charter calls for genocide.

History: Having nothing whatsoever to do with what has actually happened, but rather being what has come to be called “narrative,” i.e., “storytelling.” For one example, allusions to the “Ancient Nation of Palestine;” and for another, almost all the Muslem accomplishments President Obama enumerated in his momentous Cairo speech (also see “Rewriting History” below).

Holocaust: That genocide that did not happen, but that the Jews orchestrated in order to steal Arab land, and that of which the Jewish presence in Palestine is worse than.

Honor Killings: The cultural imperative to murder one’s daughter/sister/niece for humiliating male members…(see “Shariah” below).

Human Rights: The credo by which murder committed by a person from a country which used to be called “Third World” (now considered racist terminology) is good (see “Resistance” below); retaliatory killing by a person who is either from a developed country, a white person or most especially a Jew, is bad (see “Agression” above).

Human Shields: Integral part of Hamas & Hezbollah military strategy.

Islamic Republic: Military dictatorship.

Israel: Occupied territory (see “Zionist Entity” below).

Israeli Prime Minister: Hawkish, right-winger, hard-liner.

Jerusalem: City holy to Islam in which the Jews have no history.

Jew: The source of all decadence and evil in the world; descendent of apes and pigs.

Jihad: The inner spiritual struggle for self-purification or the bloody military struggle for world domination depending on to which journalist and in what language one is speaking.

Judeo-Christian Values: The credo of that civilization which has lost all its values, except for that racism is bad, and diversity is good.

Koran: The book that was revealed word-for-word to the Prophet Muhammed (Peace Be Upon Him) by the Angel Gabriel…or not.

Leftist: Supporter of PLO (see “PLO” below) and Hamas (see “Hamas” above) and Muslem Brotherhood (see “Muslem Brotherhood” below).

Mahdi: The Shia Messiah who has been hiding for centuries at the bottom of a well.

Martyr: Someone who kills someone else while killing himself, said to be rewarded for his martyrdom by the acquisition of 72 virgins upon his arrival in Paradise, at least according to what the Prophet Muhammed (Peace Be Upon Him) said the Angel Gabriel told him (see “Koran” above).

Militant, Assailant, Gunman, Activist: terrorist.

Moderate Palestinian Leader: Former KGB operative, Holocaust denier, and financier of Munich Olympic massacre.

Mosque: A place for the storage of armaments.

Muslem Brotherhood: A mostly secular and non-violent political party in Egypt.

Occupation: Jewish presence in disputed territory. (See “Israel” above.)

Peace: War of attrition.

Peace Process: The dismantling of Israel.

Peace Talks: The avoidance of peace.

PLO: Organization created in 1964 to end the 1967 occupation.

Palestinian Authority: The world’s most successful kleptocracy.

Palestinian Hero: Murderer of children.

Palestinian Prime Minister: Moderate, bold (see “Arab Prime Minister” above).

Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The authentic Jewish playbook for world domination.

Racist: A person who disagrees with or does not like or does not support the reelection of President Obama.

Radical Islamic Movement: A group whose stated official goal is genocide (see “Hamas” and “Hezbollah” above).

Recognition: A truce until the next time.

Refugee: Someone who has refused to take refuge, or who has not been allowed to take refuge.

“Religion of Peace”: That civilization with which the Judeo-Christian civilization is locked in a war to the death.

Resistance: Randomly killing civilians, especially children.

Rewriting History: See “History” above.

Right: Demand to live in Israel by people who hate it and wish to destroy it.

of Return: By people very, very few of whom have ever actually been there.

Settlement: An illegal community made up of settlers. (See “Settler” below.)

Settler: Someone who builds his house in order to thwart any chance at making peace between Jews and Palestinians.

Shariah: The Islamic system of jurisprudence which codifies and dignifies rape, child marriage, specific classes of murder such as honor killings (see “Honor Killings” above), etc.

Shia: People who are certain that Sunnis are not real Muslems, and are in fact infidels, and should therefore be slaughtered.

Sunni: People who are certain that Shia are not real Muslems, and are in fact infidels, and should therefore be slaughtered.

War Crime: Retaliation and defense. Any action whose intent is victory.

War on Terror: Pretense that the enemy of the West is made up of small, shadowy groups motivated by childhood poverty (see “Al Qaeda” above). (“We’re depraved on account of we’re deprived” — apologies to S. Sondheim.)

Zionism: The ideology of the Jews who aspire to control, dominate and take over the world.

Zionist: Someone who is worse than a Nazi.

Zionist Entity: That place that does not exist, as on Arab maps, but that must be destroyed.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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