For canceling an event featuring Evangelist Franklin Graham, a venue in Scotland must pay more than $100,000 in compensation.
A Scottish court has decided that an event venue must pay more than $111,000 (£97,000) for cancelling an evangelistic outreach in 2020 with American evangelist Franklin Graham because of his views on homosexuality and Islam.
Sheriff John N. McCormick of Glasgow ruled on Monday that Scottish Event Campus Limited broke the United Kingdom’s Equality Act by canceling a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association event scheduled for January 2020.
“Everyone agrees that the event was a legal way for evangelicals to reach out to people. So, I’ll start with a separate problem that, in my opinion, is a breach of the Equality Act 2010. ” McCormick was a judge.
“In short, if it’s true that the event was evangelistic or based on religious or philosophical beliefs, then the decision to cancel it was a violation of the Equality Act of 2010 because it was done to make money off of people who didn’t like it.”
The venue “discriminated against the BGEA based on a protected characteristic,” and he put the cost of the cancellation at $111,503.19 (£97,325.32)
“In short, the defender’s majority shareholder tried to get them to cancel the booking because it might upset other people. “Writing in such a way didn’t protect one group from another, but it did favor one point of view over another.” He kept going.
“I didn’t hear anything that made me think Franklin Graham wanted to use the event to push a harmful or dangerous agenda. On the other hand, no one questions that the event would have been a religious outreach event for up to 12,000 people. That doesn’t mean that some people in Glasgow or elsewhere don’t find his ideas offensive. But the law protects the pursuer’s right to invite a speaker to the evangelical event in order to further a religious or philosophical belief.
Graham, who is the son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, said on Tuesday that he is “thankful to God” for this choice. He says that the decision is “clearly a win for freedom of speech and religion in the UK.”
Graham said, “This case was never about money. It was about keeping religious freedom in the UK, especially the right of Christians to share the Gospel in the public square. “
“I want to thank Sheriff John McCormick for upholding the law and saying that Christians must be treated fairly and equally. This decision will give Christians and people of all faiths in the UK and many other places around the world a lot of hope. “
A representative for the Scottish Event Campus told the BBC that the group is “obviously disappointed” with how the case turned out.
“We are currently looking over the large amount of paperwork to see if we need to do anything else,” the spokesperson said.
Before the pandemic lockdowns started in 2020, several venues in the U.K. canceled BGEA’s “God Loves You” tour shows. BGEA says that those contracts were legal and could not be broken. The events on the tour, which took place earlier this year, were moved to a different time.
The problem was that Graham didn’t like gay people and didn’t like Islam, which some British activists and groups saw as hateful.
Last December, the Scottish charity The Robertson Trust apologized for breaking the Equality Act by canceling bookings made for 2019 by a local church and the BGEA. The cancellations were made because The Robertson Trust didn’t have enough money. As part of a settlement, the group paid £20,000 (about $26,500) to cover the costs of their lawyers.
In a statement last year, Mark Batho, chair of the board of trustees at The Robertson Trust, said in a statement that his organization had “inadvertently broken the Equality Act 2010.”
“The Trust’s long-standing funding policy (1) says that we do not fund or support the promotion of any particular religious or political beliefs,” Batho said.
“We know that we broke the Equality Act 2010 by applying our funding policy to the hiring of our facilities, which are available to charities and community groups at heavily discounted rates.”
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