SHOULD we sack Christian teachers because of their beliefs? It seems like a strange question. After all, we all know or have known Christian teachers. In fact, at least in my day, Christianity was part of the furniture of schools.

Today, things are different, but nevertheless, despite our general lack of interest or disagreements about Christianity, we don’t, not yet at least, have any campaigns to get the “God-squad” thrown out of our schools.

But what if they’re homophobic, oppose gay marriage and see homosexuality as a sin? Does this mean they are unfit to be in a school teaching impressionable youngster?

I ask these questions because the case of Richard Lucas is coming to “court” – the court in this case coming in the form of the General Teaching Council of Scotland.

Lucas, the leader of the Scottish Family Party, posted an “allegedly offensive video” about the then pregnant Ruth Davidson while working as a maths teacher in Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh. He argued that, in the case of the Conservative leader, “this is a deliberate production of a fatherless child”, and that, “children have got a right to a mum and dad”.

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Lucas went on to use a sociological study to note that individuals in gay families were more prone to suicidal thoughts than parents where the mother and father are married. And argued that, “statistics always show worse outcomes for children from lesbian and gay parent households”.

The hearing that investigated the case raised concerns about the content, the offensive tone and inflammatory language that was felt to be intolerant, prejudiced and discriminatory or potentially so, to a reasonable and properly informed member of the public, who would conclude that Lucas would consequently, “discriminate against them and their parents in the course of their duties”.

One of the interesting aspects of this case is that there does not appear to be any evidence that Mr Lucas actually discriminated against gay children or those with gay parents. If he or any other teacher were discriminating in this way that would seem like a solid ground to challenge their professional competence. But this is not what we are looking at here.

The essence of the point being made by the Teaching Council is that a reasonable person would presume that Richard Lucas was not capable of teaching maths in an indiscriminate manner. But that is a presumption not a fact. Indeed, unless there is any other evidence to the contrary one would have to assume that it was untrue.

I may disagree with many of Lucas’ beliefs and conclusions about gay families, but this appears to be a case of a Christian teacher expressing his beliefs about homosexuality and being 'cancelled' because he expressed these views.

Based on this logic, could we not take things one step further and argue that any teacher with strong Christian beliefs and negative views about gay people should be rounded up, ejected from the teaching profession, and indeed from many other professions?

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If not, why not? Because the same logic could apply, that a reasonable person could conclude that someone with these beliefs is going to “discriminate against them and their parents in the course of their duties”.

You could argue that there is a difference between holding a belief and expressing it. But there are two problems with this argument.

Firstly, just because you do not express your beliefs doesn’t mean that you don’t hold them, and if we know that some teachers hold these views, the presumption of discrimination would be the same. Logically, they too should be sacked.

More particularly, in terms of freedom of speech and conscience, if we are saying that you can have views but cannot express them, we must at least accept that we are moving backwards, to pre-modern times when people with certain religious beliefs were forced to keep their opinions to themselves or face being cast out from their profession and shunned by society.

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