Impartiality

 I don't share the righteous indignation of the Daily Mail et all regarding the Family Court Magistrate who, it is reported, has been sent for 'equality training' after supposedly making adverse comments regarding same-sex parents adopting a child while adjudicating on that adoption.
Nor do I accept that this is an attack on freedom of speech or Christian values, as some Christian groups, including Michael Nazir-Ali, former Bishop of Rochester have claimed, it is simply discriminatory prejudice and as such has no place on the bench. Whatever your personal feelings and beliefs if you can't leave them at home then you have no business being in a courtroom.
What you can't do, as the former Bishop says you once could (you couldn't - ever) is to allow the teaching of the Book of Common Prayer to be taken into account in reaching a legal decision.

Incidentally, to those fixated on the mistaken idea that this is some form of attack on the Christian faith, nor can the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita form part of the reaching of a judicial decision, it's the law, just the law and only the law that counts.

I've been a Magistrate for over 24 years, including 10 years as a Family Court chairman, and over that time I've been faced with many laws; rules; guidance etc which I personally do not agree with but my job is not to make, bend or twist the law, it is to enforce it whether I like it or not, and that includes the Equality Act which this particular Magistrate seems to have problems with.

On the, thankfully, few occasions when I've been faced with a situation in court that I felt unable to deal with on the evidence alone, without any personal motivation, then I've announced the same in open court and recused myself, despite that causing in one case the collapse of a trial, with all the attendant difficulties for both court staff and those in appearing before the court. It is the only right and proper course of action, and the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice are quite right in saying that this Magistrate should have done just that.

The Judicial Oath is worth repeating, I'll use the old form as that's what I took:
To do right by all manner of folk, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.