Oxford students renew furious campaign against top Jewish barrister over role in gay marriage case - The Jewish Chronicle

Oxford students have renewed their furious campaign against Magdalen College’s president, Dinah Rose QC, for representing the Cayman Islands in their legal battle to uphold a ban on gay marriage.

The university’s LGBTQ+ society, which has claimed that the top Jewish barrister’s work representing the Caribbean British overseas territory was a “stain” on the college, has now urged her to donate her fees to charity.

The Cayman authorities are fighting a challenge brought by a British woman and her partner, who argue that their ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional.

Ms Rose represented the Cayman Islands in a hearing at the Privy Council in London earlier this year.

The Privy Council has yet to announce its decision – over whether same-sex couples already have the legal right to marry in Cayman Islands or, as its government argues, this should be a matter for its parliament to agree.

The Cayman Islands approved civil partnerships for same-sex couples last year.

In a statement posted on Facebook, Oxford’s LGBTQ+ society said it was “shocked and disappointed” to learn the amount she was being paid for the case.

“Ms. Rose is already receiving a substantial salary for her primary role as president and so we implore her to donate her fee to LGBTQ+ advocacy organisations and charities in the Cayman Islands who are working tirelessly to support vulnerable LGBTQ+ people in the area,” the society said.

It also claimed there was a conflict between her role in the legal case and “her primary and overriding responsibility to protect the LGBTQ+ members of Magdalen”.

According to The Times, it emerged that she was paid £134,000 for her work after a freedom of information request by an LGBT advocacy group in the Caribbean and the OULGBTQ+ Society.

Ms Rose, who became president of Magdalen a year ago, told the student newspaper Cherwell that the OULGBTQ+ Society’s presentation of her fee had been “inaccurate and misleading” since it related to her work over a two-year period; a “substantial majority” of the fee had been paid to her before she had become president of the college.

In a statement earlier this year, she said, “The allegation that my participation in this case conflicts with my role as president of Magdalen College is based on the very identification of a lawyer with their client’s cause which international human rights law prohibits.

“A barrister’s personal opinions or values cannot be inferred from their representation of a particular party.”

She added that “as it happens, I have argued a number of cases that have advanced LGBTQ+ rights, including some pioneering trans rights cases in the 1990s, and a recent case in the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, which won for gay couples the right to immigration visas on the same terms as mixed sex couples.”