What is probably being refered to by the unnamed ‘gay groups’ is that there is no legislation referring specifically to homosexuality, but that it has simply been incorporated into sex discrimination through case law - a situation which many people (such as the B&B owner in question) are ignorant of. Essentially, there won’t be true equality in the eyes of the law until gay marriages are fully recognised.
Do you have a link to the relevant case law?
Everything I’ve been able to find seems to suggest this is no longer the case:
Scottish court overturns gay discrimination ruling.
Who is protected from discrimination…?
Has there been a more recent, less Kafka-esque decision?
What’s to prevent anyone from getting a twin room and pushing the beds together?
Larry Mudd questions this w.r.t. Scotland. For comparison purposes and interest’s sake, I should point out that what’s described above is more or less how sexual orientation is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Section 15 of the Charter guarantees “equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin,”…, etc., but without specifically mentioning sexual orientation.
In Egan v. Canada, the Supreme Court found that sexual orientation was analogous to the enumerated grounds, and that the Charter therefore banned discrimination based on it (even though it didn’t happen to be one of the grounds that was specifically enumerated).
Charter cases surrounding gay rights have since been based on Egan v. Canada, and the case is said to have “read in” sexual orientation into the Charter.
I should point out that a couple of provincial and territorial non-discrimination statutes ban sexual orientation discrimination explicitly, including Quebec’s Civil Code and the relevant act in the Northwest Territories. (Nunavut is trying to do likewise, which is causing some controversy.)
What a prompt response: