A Christian judge in the United Kingdom has been sacked after he said on national television that it was better for a man-and-woman couple to adopt children rather than a gay couple.
Magistrate Richard Page, 68, was sacked from his position as a district judge in Maidstone and Sevenoaks courts, in Kent, after he was accused of “bias and prejudice” following the statement, which he made on a BBC programme in March 2015.
The judge had allegedly expressed the same sentiment in a private conversation in 2014 and was reprimanded for it, Daily Mail reports.
He made the initial remark in an adoption case, for which he was disciplined and warned never to repeat it.
“My responsibility as a magistrate, as I saw it, was to do what I considered best for the child, and my feeling was therefore that it would be better if it was a man and woman who were the adopted parents,” he told the BBC.
The judicial disciplinary committee which ordered his sacked accused the judge of allowing him be guided by “religious beliefs and not by the evidence.”
The committee also added that “Mr Page’s comments on national television would have caused a reasonable person to conclude he was biased and prejudiced against single sex adopters”.
They also said his comment was capable of “bringing the magistracy into disrepute”.