9:48pm Saturday 3rd April 2010
THE Conservative shadow home secretary has suggested B&B owners should “have the right” to turn away homosexual couples, a national newspaper has reported.
Secret tapes obtained by the Observer newspaper suggest Tory Chris Grayling backs people who run B&Bs in turning away guests from their properties.
The news comes weeks after a Cookham couple hit the headlines after refusing to allow a gay couple to stay at their B&B.
Mike and Susanne Wilkinson turned away John Morgan and Michael Black as they felt letting a homosexual couple stay was against their religious beliefs.
The Wilkinsons, who run the Swiss B&B, were reported to the police.
Mrs Wilkinson told the couple it was “against her convictions”.
Today the Observer website quotes Mr Grayling at a meeting of the Centre for Policy Studies.
He is quoted as saying: "I think we need to allow people to have their own consciences. I personally always took the view that, if you look at the case of should a Christian hotel owner have the right to exclude a gay couple from a hotel, I took the view that if it's a question of somebody who's doing a B&B in their own home, that individual should have the right to decide who does and who doesn't come into their own home."
But he added: "If they are running a hotel on the high street, I really don't think that it is right in this day and age that a gay couple should walk into a hotel and be turned away because they are a gay couple, and I think that is where the dividing line comes."
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