The Quadruple Lock Won’t Work

18 December 2012

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Government has proposed a ‘quadruple lock’ to protect churches from equality activists who might use the new ‘gay marriage’ laws to force churches to perform same-sex wedding services.

The quadruple lock moves beyond Government’s original position of restricting same-sex ‘marriages’ to civil services and allows churches a voluntary opt-in should they wish to host gay weddings.

In tacit acknowledgement that their religious liberty provisions will be insufficient, Government has taken special care to protect the Church of England by denying them the opt-in available to other denominations.

Culture Secretary Maria Miller explained on her blog that, “we have to provide a specific legal protection for the Church of England, to ensure that its ‘duty to marry’ applies only to opposite-sex couples. If we didn’t do this the Church could have been vulnerable to legal challenge, something I have been clear I will not accept.”

If this proves anything, it is that the Quadruple Lock is worthless. If the Church of England needs all this extra protection, why are other churches (Baptists, Assemblies of God, Roman Catholic, Elim Baptists, Presbyterians, Eastern Orthodox, Methodists, etc.) excluded from it? As Telegraph journalist Charles Moore has pointed out,

“It is obvious, too, that the safeguards for churches, hastily and without consultation offered by the Government, will be breached. Indeed, religious freedom is breached by the Government’s weird proposal to ban the Church of England from implementing the new law Mr Cameron has just thought up. The fact that Mrs Miller has proposed a ‘quadruple lock’ for the churches is an acknowledgement of how difficult it all is – why else would you need four keys instead of one?”

The Government’s decision to make the Church of England exempt from its proposals was an attempt to divert a potential church-state crisis since Anglican Canon Law states that marriage is “…a union permanent and lifelong for better for worse, till death.” (Canon B30) The Coalition Government has made clear that if any of its plans should conflict with Canon Law, then Parliament is prepared to strong-arm the church. As Government stated in the consultation response: “We do not dispute the Church’s authority here; however it is equally true that Parliament is sovereign and can enact to take account of potential conflicts with the Canon law.”

The four points of the ‘Quadruple Lock’ are:

1 Ensuring the legislation states explicitly that no religious organisation, or individual minister, can be compelled to marry same-sex couples or to permit this to happen on their premises;
2 Providing an ‘opt-in’ system for religious organisations who wish to conduct marriages for same-sex couples;
3 Amending the Equality Act 2010 to reflect that no discrimination claims can be brought against religious organisations or individual ministers for refusing to marry a same-sex couple or allowing their premises to be used for this purpose; and
4 Ensuring that the legislation will not affect the Canon law of the Churches of England or the Church in Wales who will thereby not be allowed to ‘opt in’ under point 2.

Even if the fourth point of the Quadruple Lock were extended to other denominations (which we are campaigning for), it is almost certain that this will be insufficient to withstand a challenge from the European Court of Human Rights, who are able to rule against domestic law. In the case Gas and Dubois v. France, European judges already stated that if a government chooses to extend the definition of marriage to same-sex couples, then it would be a violation of human rights for homosexual couples seeking ‘marriage’ to be denied rights and privileges offered heterosexual couples.

The European Court is simply not going to sit by and allow one of their countries to sustain a two-tier system in which same-sex couples are denied access to a service (i.e., religious weddings in the Church of England) available to heterosexual couples.

WRITE: to your MP and insist that the fourth point of the quadruple lock will be extended to all the other churches in England and Wales. Ask why the Church of England is being given special protections not available to other denominations. Is this because Government anticipates that the first three measures of its “quadruple lock” will not be strong enough to withstand a challenge from equality activists, and because of this it wishes to have extra safe-guards in place for the Church of England?

Also point out that the European Court of Human Rights is almost certainly going to find the proposed two-tier system in breach of equality legislation. Point out that Government’s response to the consultation shows that they have not understood the import of Gas and Dubois v. France.

Ask for your concerns to be forwarded to the appropriate minister.