A worrying blindspot in our much-vaunted freedom of speech

Stories of Christians being disciplined for expressing their views in the workplace are depressingly commonplace. But news of magistrate Richard Page being reported to the judicial watchdog for voicing reservations about gay adoption came just a week after 1.5 million people, including our Prime Minister, marched in Paris in defence of freedom of speech.

Mr Page, 68, a lay judge, told colleagues privately during an adoption case that he thought it would be better for a child to be brought up by a mother and a father rather than by a gay couple.

So does freedom of speech mean that satirists can drag Muhammad into the public forum even if it offends 1.6bn Muslims, but issues around gay adoption are somehow above being questioned?

Apparently, yes. Reported without his knowledge to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office for alleged prejudice, Mr Page was found guilty of serious misconduct by the Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling. His views had fallen foul of the 2010 Equality Act (he wasn’t told which part), as well as the oath sworn by all Justices of the Peace to do right “to all manner of people” (It continues: “So help me God.”) Judges must be impartial, but how is insisting that they not hold a particular view more impartial than any other position?

Mr Page has been ordered to go on an equality course before he can return to the courtroom. The former bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali pointed out for the Mail on Sunday’s story, that there’s something totalitarian about being sent on a course to re-educate your thinking.

Not that concerns around gay adoption are necessarily limited to people of faith. In essence it’s a human issue – do you want to be raised by two parents of the same sex, regardless what faith you are?

I’m going to make the following case because of my human experience. After my mother died, “home” comprised my father, my elder brother and myself. My father and brother would have been the first to say she was irreplaceable.

I am not saying there’s total parity between a gay couple who have opted to raise a child and a (straight) father and brother. But I’m not sure I could ever fully list the things I didn’t learn, didn’t have, from not finishing my childhood with a mum.

I was shown how to mend a puncture, how to pour a good pint. I quickly taught myself to cook and sew, wishing I’d paid more attention when she was alive. But I felt ashamed, lost and bereft because of not having a mum. I felt rudderless as a hormonal teenager looking to a now absent role model. I didn’t particularly delight in being a young woman, in new clothes, new styles, new looks; as far as I could see, men were better off because they seemed to have fewer complicated emotions.

I have hated seeing friends with their mums, smiling into each other’s eyes, sharing a joke, draping an arm around each other, sharing clothes. So many things I have had to learn second-hand from female friends or gossipy magazines because I had lost her before I got to know her as friend to share ideas with, an example to observe more closely to see how men and women related; how a woman should understand a man, or herself?

Gay parenting already goes on in many countries around the world. And it may be a better option for the child than a truly abusive parent or a care home. My plea is simply that someone, in their professional capacity, be allowed to say that they think it isn’t the ideal. We also need more studies on the subject. A few in the US measure children’s behaviour and performance at school and have produced varying and contested results. But to do the best by the children we need thorough and objective research carried out here, beyond A-levels, into how they fare in forming their own relationships and marriages.

Otherwise, to say that a same-sex upbringing leaves a child no worse off than a heterosexual one is speculation, and at worst could be a damaging lie.

As has been much discussed in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, freedom of speech can and sometimes should cause offence. But the issue around gay adoption after all is not about offending gay adults – surely it has to be about the flourishing of the child.

Kate Baldwin