Christian printer 'refuses to make business cards for transwoman'

A Christian printer reportedly refused to make a transgender diversity consultant’s business cards.

Joan Lockwood, 52, ordered the cards for her business SEE Change Happen, which helps employers promote transequality in the workplace.

Ms Lockwood emailed Southampton-based printer Nigel Williams to ask him to print the cards for her after meeting him at a business conference.

But Mr Williams apparently refused her order. In a letter seen by The Sunday Times he wrote that printing the cards would be supporting a business that marginalises Christians.

“The new model of diversity is used (or misused) to marginalise (or indeed discriminate against) Christians in their workplaces and other parts of society if they do not subscribe to it," he said.

“Although I’m quite sure you have no intention of marginalising Christians it would weigh heavily upon me if through my own work I was to make pressure worse for fellow Christians.”

Ms Lockwood, who was the LGBTQ+ officer for Portsmouth Conservatives, has been living as a transwoman since January and changed her name in July.

She told The Sunday Times she was “gobsmacked” by the response, adding: “I was not expecting a lecture. I disbelieved this could happen in 2017. I have been distraught and cried and my wife consoled me.”

Mr Williams’ decision was defended by the Christian Institute, a pressure group which backed a Northern Ireland bakery when it refused to bake a cake for a gay customer bearing a same-sex marriage slogan.

The Institute told The Sunday Times: “It is a fundamental tenet of free speech and freedom of belief that people should not be forced to help promote causes flatly contrary to their own deeply held views.”