A Christian magistrate will sue the justice secretary Michael Gove after he was sacked for opposing gay adoption.

Richard Page was removed from the bench after 15 years after Gove accused him of being "biased and prejudiced against single sex adopters". In a TV interview Page had stated it was better for a child to be brought up by a mother and father than a gay couple.

"It does annoy me that people who say they have Christian views are getting at me for my Christian views, and that includes Michael Gove," he said, according to The Mail on Sunday.

"I am horrified by the way things are going," he said.

"Christianity is being marginalised. Christians are finding it very difficult to discuss their views because they fear they will be ostracised.

"Magistrates should be allowed to represent a range of views in society. You can't not bring your political and social background, your education, to the way that you think."

In an interview for a BBC programme in March 2015, 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."

He was sacked for the remarks and a spokesperson for the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office said his comments "would have caused a reasonable person to conclude he was biased and prejudiced against single sex adopters".

Page said the decision was "intolerant" and accused Gove of "pandering to the new political orthodoxy".

"As a magistrate, I have to act on the evidence before me and quite simply, I believe that there is not sufficient evidence to convince me that placing a child in the care of a same-sex couple can be as holistically beneficial to a child as placing them with a mum and dad as God and Nature intended."

He added: "To punish me and to seek to silence me for expressing a dissenting view is deeply worrying. I shall challenge this decision as it is deeply illiberal and intolerant."