Vicars could be sued if they refuse to carry out gay marriages

By Martin Beckford and Heidi Blake Published: 7:00AM GMT 04 March 2010

Labour counterpart Lord Alli due the legislative addition to the Equality Bill Photo: UPPA

Traditionalists fright vicars could be taken to justice and indicted of taste if they deserted requests to hold polite partnership ceremonies on eremite premises. The notice follows a turning point opinion by peers that would concede the ceremonies to be hold in places of worship.

It is additionally feared that the changes would fuzz the line serve in in between marriage, that churches contend contingency be in in between a man and a woman, and polite partnerships.

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Until now, polite partnership ceremonies, that give same-sex couples the same authorised rights as tied together spouses, have been limited to register offices and venues such as hotels and noble homes.

However, the anathema on the events receiving place on eremite premises will be carried underneath an legislative addition to the Equality Bill tabled by Lord Alli, a homosexual Labour peer, that was upheld late on Monday.

The legislative addition states that inhabitant conviction groups will not be forced to lift out polite partnerships. However, it is feared that same-sex couples could make use of the Equality Bill or the Human Rights Act to take movement opposite particular preaching if they exclude to "marry" them in a church.

The Bishop of Bradford, the Rt Rev David James, warned during the discuss of the "unintended consequences". He pronounced that nonetheless it was being presented to "simply be an accessible option" to a little eremite groups, he was "not so confident" that it would sojourn so.

The Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, the Bishop of Winchester, added: "I hold it will open, not the Church of England, but particular clergy, to charges of discrimination."

Lord Waddington, the former Home Secretary, pronounced a minister "prepared to register marriages but not to register polite partnerships would be indicted of taste on drift of passionate course in the sustenance of services".

The amendment, upheld on a free opinion in the Lords by 95 to 21, has to be authorized by MPs. Baroness Royall, the personality of the Lords, warned it would "not work in practice", nonetheless she upheld the intention.

Don Horrocks, the head of open affairs for the Evangelical Alliance, warned that eremite groups contingency not be "forced to misuse their consciences".

Mike Judge, of the Christian Institute, said: "The Government has unsuccessful to assimilate the inlet of eremite autocracy and has treated with colour conviction as zero some-more than a make a difference of personal devotion."

The opinion was welcomed by equivalence campaigners. Rabbi Aaron Goldstein, the corner authority of the Rabbinic Conference of Liberal Judaism, pronounced his village was "looking brazen to being means to applaud the initial ever Jewish devout good fortune together with the English authorised ceremony". Quakers and Unitarians additionally goal to hold the ceremonies on their premises.

Keith Porteous Wood, of the National Secular Society, claimed bishops against the move since they feared it would wear the order inside of the Church of England over homosexuality. A orator for the Equalities Office said: "Baroness Royall done the Governments on all sides transparent during the debate. Were deliberation the position."