Catholic adoption agency can turn away gay couples
Roman Catholic bishops have welcomed a high court ruling that will allow a Catholic adoption agency to reject gay couples as parents.
Catholic Care, which serves Leeds, Middlesbrough and Hallam in South Yorkshire, won its appeal for an exemption from sexual orientation regulations that say it must consider applications from gay couples. The agency warned it would abandon its work of finding homes for children, as many others have done, rather than comply with the law.
The bishop of Leeds, the Rt Rev Arthur Roche, insisted there was no homophobic element to the case and claimed that children would have been “seriously disadvantaged” had Catholic Care not won the appeal.
“Our case has not been brought on an anti-gay agenda of any sort. We respect, and would not want to diminish, the dignity of any person,” he said.
The judgment was condemned by the British Humanist Association and the gay rights charity Stonewall. Jonathan Finney, its head of external affairs, said: “It’s unthinkable that anyone engaged in delivering any kind of public or publicly funded service should be given licence to pick and choose service users on the basis of individual prejudice.”
Caritas Social Action Network, the umbrella group for Catholic care agencies, said an important principle had been upheld.
