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Equality Bill

My Lords, I think I have an experience that the noble and learned Lord does not have. My elder child is gay and came out many years ago. I do not think he would agree that the prejudice that gay people feel from homophobic people is the careful distinction between being gay and practising homosexuality in the bedroom. The problem is that homophobic discrimination is not so sophisticated. The mere fact that you are known to be gay gives rise to a lot of discriminatory treatment. When the noble and learned Lord says his remark about this being a very wide loophole shows that there are terrible cases, many of them about conscientious objection, that is not what I said. If this were to be in statute, it would create a gaping loophole that would authorise a form of discrimination that we would all deplore.