Christian magistrate Richard Page was removed from office by Michael Gove, the Lord Chancellor, after sharing his personal convictions in a BBC interview on 12 March 2015. Richard Page said, ‘My responsibility as a magistrate, as I saw it, was to do what I considered best for the child, and my feeling was therefore that it would be better if it was a man and woman who were the adopted parents.’ For fifteen years he has been a magistrate, sitting on the family panel of Kent’s Central Magistrates Court. Then, when he had less than a month to run as a Justice of the Peace, Michael Gove has used his case to make a political statement. Ironically, the interview for which Richard has been dismissed was part of a TV debate about Christians being squeezed out of public life, following the Equality and Human Rights Commission research about challenges to freedom of religion and belief in the UK.