January 28, 2007: My American readers may not have been following this, but there’s a huge row brewing in England, where Catholic Church leaders have threatened to stop providing adoption services if they aren’t allowed to merrily discriminate against homosexual parents.
The Church, which thankfully has never suffered any gay abuse scandals or anything, has sensibly decided not to look inward but to project their homophobia outwards. Maybe they figure that since their own repressed priests have so much trouble resisting the charms children, and that since their own leadership has been so comfortable turning a blind eye to it for so long, that all adults are unable to keep their hands off of little kids. How else to explain their extreme refusal to accept the law of the land in the country in which they are based?
This is from a Canadian newsource, CBC news, which sums up the troubles thusly:
Catholic adoption agencies should feel free to reject gay couples who apply for children, without fear of punishment from Britain’s anti-discrimination laws, the church has said.
With backing from the Anglican Church, Britain’s Roman Catholic leaders repeated their call Wednesday for Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration to exempt the Catholic church from Britain’s new Equality Act, due to take effect in April.
Otherwise, the Catholic Church threatened it would shut down its adoption services — which process 32 per cent of all voluntary sector adoptions across Wales and England — shutting out some 4,000 children still awaiting placements.
After all, what are the lives of 4,000 children worth when put against the Church’s right to defame and attack LGBT people? Screw the kids (not literally, of course, although this is the Catholic church we’re talking about…) they figure - let’s screw the gays.
Thankfully, there are some reasonable voices in the debate:
Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer told the BBC Tuesday he did not wish to see Catholic churches close their adoption agencies, but argued that if society disapproves of discrimination against homosexuals, “you cannot give exclusions to people on the grounds that their religion or their race says, ‘We don’t agree with that.’”
Sadly, word is that Tony Blair is leaning towards the church’s side. Another stunningly bad choice from the man who, alone among the world’s leaders, continues to support George Bush’s actions in Iraq.
God save the children from those who act in your name…
January 29th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Gay couples should be allowed to adopt from Catholic adoption agencies. To deny them that is to deny the child the best suitable parents for that child. Sexual orientation does not come into it.
Please bear in mind that the children in these Catholic agencies are not allowed to be transferred to another agency even if there is a better, more suitable person there for the child in question.
If you are looking for a legal precedent in this matter, then you only have to look at the “T Petitioner” case which ruled that if the most suitable parents were gay as opposed to other, less suited straight people, then the gay couple MUST be allowed to adopt as it was in the BEST interest of the child. Religion comes second.
In the Scottish case known to lawyers as “T Petitioner” 10 years ago, a child was adopted by a gay man who was in a long-term relationship. The child was severely disabled, and the adopter, a nurse, had matching skills in caring for disabled children. The Court of Session granted the adoption on the basis that the man would provide the best family for the particular child. That was the paramount consideration, not the adopter’s sexual orientation. This case shows that if any adoption agency applies a blanket ban on lesbian,
gay and bisexual adopters, that agency will in some cases fail to match the child with the best available adoptive family. That is not in the best interests of the child.
Thanks to Tim Hopkins, Equality Network, for this info.
Also, professionals say that straight couples are not always the best option for children either. One professional, Kate Hilpern, in the Independent said one such case that she dealt with was a victim of abuse by men.
The very thought of being placed with any man would be too much for her. This ruled out straight couples.
The professionals found that this girl, who was terrified of men, was best to be placed with a lesbian couple, so that her contact with men was controlled and limited. This was done, not for the benefit of the lesbian couple but for the sake of this abuse victim. This girl is now thriving.
How could the Catholic church deny abuse victims the most suitable family for these most vulnerable of people? This girl would have been stuck in the system with a second rate solution had the Catholic church imposed its dogma over the welfare of this abuse victim.
It would seem that this prejudice against gays extends to the adoptees of Catholic adoption. The story below only goes to prove that you can still be gay even when you are adopted out of a Catholic agency - and then treated badly for it.
A Catholic lesbian who was so afraid that the Catholic adoption agency would
refuse to release non-identifying details to her that she was forced to lie about her sexual orientation. The Catholic adoption agency even asked very intrusive questions which she feels would not have been asked if the agency had been secular.
The adoptee here says that she wished that she had been adopted out by a
secular agency as her experience with the Catholic agency has been an unhappy one.
By the way, Catholic agencies ALREADY allow single gay people to adopt - so why the fuss now about gay couples. Being gay has obviously not presented a problem in the past and the Catholic stance is being very inconsistent indeed.
Discrimination must not be allowed to win. Asking for the
right to discriminate against others is not just or right, especially when it comes to children, many of whom are abuse victims who CANNOT be placed with straight couples.