Why are Churches Allowed to Discriminate (against Homosexuals)? Employment Equality and the Churches’ Role in Public Policy in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK

Although anti-discrimination regulations in employment law in Western countries refer both to public and private organizations, religious organizations are occasionally allowed to refuse job candidates or lay off employees that allegedly behave against the organization’s ‘ethos’ such as particularly homosexuals. However, whereas in some countries such as Germany and the UK churches have managed to defend these exemptions from anti-discrimination regulations, elsewhere like in the Netherlands, this possibility has increasingly been restricted. This paper discusses the role of religious organizations in public policy in these three countries in order to explain the different extent of exemptions these actors enjoy in employment equality regulations. Referring to assumptions of actor-centered institutionalism and veto player theory the paper argues that religious organizations have been more influential in Germany and the UK than in the Netherlands due to close cooperation patterns between religion and state (in welfare policy) in the former and stricter separation in the latter. Furthermore, churches in Germany and the UK benefit from rather strong collaborative actors (particularly Christian or conservative parties) and weak oppositional actor coalitions (above all secular parties and LGBT organizations) whereas in the Netherlands they suffer from a contrary actor constellation.