Richard Page, a Christian family magistrate who was sacked after saying children do best when raised by a mother and father, has died. He was 74.
Page was a magistrate for 15 years and non-executive director of an NHS trust. In deliberations on an adoption case with two other magistrates, he said it was best for children to be placed with a mother and a father where possible. He also expressed this view publicly in the media.
Page was then removed as a magistrate by the then justice secretary Michael Gove and Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas for supposedly being “biased and prejudiced against single sex adopters” and bringing the magistrates’ courts into disrepute.
He was also let go from his position with the NHS trust.
He commenced legal proceedings against his sackings but lost at the Court of Appeal earlier this year.
In his judgment, Lord Justice Underhill said that “the freedom to express religious or any other beliefs cannot be unlimited”.
“In particular, so far as the present case is concerned, there are circumstances in which it is right to expect Christians (and others) who work for an institution, especially if they hold a high-profile position, to accept some limitations on how they express in public their beliefs on matters of particular sensitivity,” he stated.
At the time of his death, Page had been planning to take his case to the Supreme Court.
Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of the Christian Legal Centre, which was supporting Page, said his case may still go to the Supreme Court.
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