Bristol, UK – A UK judge has ruled that the proprietors of a hotel were breaking the law when they denied a gay couple a room at their hotel in September 2008.
Peter, 70, and Hazelmary Bull, 66, refused to let a room to Martyn Hall and his civil partner Steven Pred-dy at the Chy-morvah Private Hotel in Mara-zion, UK.
Mr. Hall and Mr. Preddy were seeking up to $10,000 in damages claiming sexual orientation discrimination under the 2007 Equality Act Regulations 2007.
At a hearing last month at Bristol County Court, the Bulls denied the claim. The couple said they have a long-standing policy of banning all unmarried couples, both heterosexual and same -sex, from sharing a bed at their hotel. They also said that this policy was based on their beliefs about marriage, not hostility towards gays and lesbians.
Ruling in favor of the gay couple, Judge Andrew Rutherford said, “We live today in a parliamentary democracy. Our laws are made by the Queen in Parliament. It is inevitable that such laws will from time to time cut across deeply held beliefs of individuals and sections of society for they reflect the social attitudes and morals prevailing at the time that they are made.
“In the last 50 years there have been many such instances – the abolition of capital punishment; the abolition of corporal punishment in schools; the decriminalization of homosexuality and of suicide; and on a more mundane level the ban on hunting and on smoking in public places.
“All of these – and they are only examples – have offended sections of the population and in some cases cut across traditional religious beliefs. These laws have come into being because of changes in social attitudes.
“The standards and principles governing our behavior which were unquestioningly accepted in one generation may not be so accepted in the next. I am quite satisfied as to the genuineness of the defendants’ beliefs, and it is, I have no doubt, one which others also hold.
“It is a very clear example of how social attitudes have changed over the years for it is not so very long ago that these beliefs of the defendants would have been those accepted as normal by society at large. Now it is the other way around.”
Judge Rutherford awarded the couple over $6,000 in damages.
