Christians are wrong to think that they should be exempt from equality legislation, the chairman of the Equalities Commission has declared.
Trevor Phillips said that Christians seeking an exemption from equality legislation were no different from Muslims trying to impose sharia on Britain.
Speaking at a debate in London on diverse societies, Mr Phillips said that religious rules should end “at the door of the temple” and that “public law” should take precedence.
According to The Telegraph, he spoke of his support for equality legislation that has led to the closure of Catholic adoption agencies.
He argued that Catholic adoption agencies should cater for homosexuals even if it goes against their beliefs because they are providing a public service.
“You can’t say because we decide we’re different then we need a different set of laws,” he said.
“To me there’s nothing different in principle with a Catholic adoption agency, or indeed Methodist adoption agency, saying the rules in our community are different and therefore shouldn’t apply to us. Why not then say sharia can be applied to different parts of the country? It doesn’t work.”
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, criticised the comparison with sharia.
“I have argued in the past that there can be only one law to which all should be accountable. But we are not starting with a blank sheet of paper as far as religion is concerned,” he said.
“We are a democracy in which Christianity is established in the Church of England and a nation profoundly influenced by this faith in its Catholic and Anglican heritage. We need lawmakers to respect this heritage and seek accommodation wherever a strongly held faith seems to clash with new legislation.”
Mr Phillips was blasted by the Evangelical Alliance last year after he accused Christians of being more militant than Muslims because of their complaints about discrimination.
The Evangelical Alliance said Christians were feeling under siege not so much because of secular humanists but because of “governments and bodies like the Commission that buy in their narrow secularising agenda by pursuing policies that directly and indirectly marginalise people of faith”.