Thursday, March 18, 2010

Religious Exemptions

When the government decided to allow children to be adopted by gay couples, I thought it was a good idea. Almost anything that increases the number of adoptions is good given the outcomes that children in care have.

However Labour being Labour decided that anything that wasn't banned must be compulsory, so adoption agencies were banned from not allowing gay couples to adopt. Forcing adoption agencies to close demonstrated that the interests of the children were far from the minds of whoever drafted the legislation.

So I should welcome the outcome of this court case which has decided that they can choose who they allow to adopt. However I would be interested in seeing the reasoning behind the decision, which none of the newspapers seem to be going into. If it were made on freedom of association and civil liberties grounds then fine, I support it.

However that isn't the impression I am getting from how the reports are worded. If they have been granted an exemption from the law purely because of their religion then this is not a good thing, making different laws for different people depending on their religious beliefs is a dangerous precedent.

8 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

Ha! I thought you were going to write something funny, but that one was actually deadly serious and absolutely spot on.

JuliaM said...

"However that isn't the impression I am getting from how the reports are worded. "

Me neither...

Letters From A Tory said...

"If they have been granted an exemption from the law purely because of their religion then this is not a good thing, making different laws for different people depending on their religious beliefs is a dangerous precedent."

I disagree. It depends entirely on the context. Equality and freedom of expression clash on a regular basis, but the need to protect freedom of expression should never be sacrificed for political aims, as it was in this instance.

Senior said...

I believe the adoption agency has been given an exemption because it is a Roman Catholic organisation. The Roman Catholic Church has a lot of power, and is able to use that power to bully the courts and the government into doing what the Roman Catholic Church wants them to do, by threatening to stop helping children if it doesn't get its way.. The problem is that nobody has created an organisation with the same amount of resources to take the place of the Roman Catholic Church irf it chooses to put Roman Catholic doctrine before the welfare of children.

tolkein said...

I thought adoption was about the best interests of the children, not the rights of potential adopters.

Where is the evidence that placing children with gay or lesbian couples is as good as placing with married couples?

Until we have that, isn't this playing social games with children's welfare?

Ross said...

Tolkien, I think you have to compare gay parents with the care system rather than straight parents when deciding whether to allow it.

Mark- Yes I am sometimes serious.

Senior- Are Catholic adoption agencies really that dominant?

Ross said...

LfaT- I'm not sure I et where you're coming from.

banned said...

Sadly the Church Of England Childrens Cociety has already given up on childrens homes and adoptions, from the mission statement on its website it is impossible to tell what it actually does do these days.