Are religious organisations still exempt from all the rules on sexuality discrimination?

The law allows employers to discriminate if the employment “is for the purposes of organised religion” and a particular sexual orientation is necessary in order to comply with “the doctrines of the religion” or to avoid conflict “with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion's followers”.

This means that a religious organisation is not exempt from the law, but can continue to discriminate when recruiting for clearly defined jobs where the work itself is for the purposes of the religion. The limits of this will be tested in court, but the Government has advised that the exemption is limited in practice to positions like ministers of religion.