Difficulties first arose for Mr McClintock when he considered the implications of same-sex adoption, arising from the Civil Partnerships Act 2002. He became concerned that a tension existed between his Christian beliefs in the Biblical model of the family and his work as a Magistrate sitting on the Family Panel. In March 2004, Mr McClintock raised his difficulties with the Chairman of the Family Panel at Sheffield. Mr McClintock was not asking for a change in the law, rather he was requesting that his religious conscience should be accommodated, and that he should be “screened” from cases which might require him to adopt children in to same-sex households. He also expressed his concern that children could be put at risk by the untried social experiment of same-sex adoption, in which vulnerable children were being used as “guinea pigs”.
The Employment Tribunal rejected Mr McClintock’s claim that he...