Apparently, Prime Minister Tony Blair isn't just Bush's bitch. Judging by a recent about-face concerning new government legislation seeking to outlaw gay bias in the workplace, his bum is available to the right bidder… extreme right, that is.

Just as UK gays had reason to rejoice in The 2003 Employment Equality Regulations, originally drafted by ministers with the aim of achieving a historic breakthrough in combating religious-and sexuality-based harassment and bias in the workplace, Blair has pulled a fast one at the urging of evangelical conservatives.

These regulations were written in an effort to comply with a European Union directive on workers' right, granting protection to UK homosexuals for the first time. It denied employers the ability to base decisions on hiring, firing and promotion based on bias against religion or sexuality.

But now The Independent is reporting that a certain provision in the law has been diluted following direct intervention by Downing Street. According to the paper, a Whitehall source said the decision was made "at the highest level" and that Barbara Roche, the equalities minister, had been overruled.

Advocates of gay rights are furious that regulations intended to combat discrimination in the workplace would carry wide-ranging exemptions for any employer "with an ethos based on religion or belief."

Even certain progressive religious groups have decried the exemptions. The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement stated the exemptions would institutionalize homophobia in a way that "makes Section 28 look like a tea party."

What has these groups so worried is a key clause which states that an exemption applies when employers act "so as to comply with the doctrines of the religion—or so as to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion's followers."

One huge problem here is that there is no delineation between purely church-based operations and any employer who is able to assert that the running of their business is "based on religion or belief."

And one of the most nefarious loopholes would allow an employer to dismiss or fail to hire an individual if the employer is "not satisfied" that the individual fit his own "ethos based on religion or belief."

The bitter irony of Blair's cowardly exemption, pointed out by a spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, is that the post-exemption regulations would actually erode the present employment rights of gay men and lesbians by institutionally justifying homophobia.

Blair's behavior is especially disappointing to gay advocates who celebrated his repealing of the infamous Thatcher-era Section 28 law earlier this year. Section 28 had barred local authorities and councils from participating in "the promotion of homosexuality."

In the wake of the news, trade union Unison has also spoken out against the last-minute inclusion of the clause.

"Betrayal is the only word to describe the way the Government has backtracked on this aspect of the new law," Dave Prentis, Unison General Secretary, said. "Every time we have raised the issue of a possible exemption for religious employers, we have been given assurances there would be no wide-ranging provision to permit discrimination.

"What could have been a genuinely positive piece of legislation to protect lesbians and gay men at work has had the heart ripped out of it by the introduction of a clause to mollify bigots."