Tory minister under fire for B&B gay ban gaffe

Tory Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling has come under fire after suggesting that people who run bed-and-breakfasts should have the right to turn away gay couples.

Grayling was recorded at a think-tank seminar last week saying that Christians should be able to refuse anyone who offended their faith from entering their homes, even if they ran a business there.

However he said that hotels should admit gay couples. ""If they are running a hotel on the high street, I really don't think that it is right in this day and age that a gay couple should walk into a hotel and be turned away because they are a gay couple, and I think that is where the dividing line comes," he said.

Grayling told the Centre for Policy Studies that he was happy with the law's current stance on the issue and that he did not want to see it changed. He added that people had to be "sensitive to the genuinely-held principles of faith groups in this country".

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the gay rights group Stonewall, told the Observer, which published Grayling's comments that they would be "very alarming to a lot of gay people who may have been thinking of voting Conservative".

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By Neil Gerrard

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