The adoption mess in the UK

From here:

A leading children’s charity complained yesterday that too many people think gays make inferior parents.

A survey by Barnardo’s said nearly a third of the public think heterosexual couples make better parents than same-sex couples.

The charity’s new chief said that prejudice against gays is harming the chances for young people in the care system winning new homes through adoption.

In 2008, a Christian couple were turned down as foster parents – even though they had already fostered 15 children – by the Derby city council because the couple would not “agree to tell any children in their care that homosexual lifestyles were acceptable” and the children would have to attend church. Pretty sinister.

From here:

Lawyers are to seek a judicial review of a decision by social workers to ban a Christian couple from fostering young children because they refused to sign up to new gay equality laws.

The action against Labour-controlled Derby City Council is likely to become a test case for the Government’s Sexual Orientation Regulations. Social workers rejected an application by Eunice and Owen Johns, who have four grown-up children, to be foster parents because they refused to agree to tell any children in their care that homosexual lifestyles were acceptable.

The couple, who have been married for 39 years, had applied to offer weekend respite care for foster children under the age of 10.

But the adoption panel was also unhappy that the couple was adamant that any child in their home would have to go to church with them on Sundays. Mrs Johns, a retired nurse, is a Sunday school teacher.

The rejection is being challenged in court, but it’s hard to be optimistic for the couple: as of 2010 in the UK, Christian adoption agencies in the UK have been forced to close for much the same reason.

From here:

Nearly every Christian adoption agency in the United Kingdom has been forced to close after resisting the government’s equality laws.

The legislation prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, and requires adoption agencies to consider same-sex couples as potential parents.

However, Christian agencies say they can’t comply because homosexuality goes against their beliefs.

Since the U.K. equality bill was passed in April, the number of adopted foster care children has dropped by 30 percent, and it’s estimated there are 4,000 children still awaiting adoption.

Clearly, the UK’s adoption strategy is not one of finding enough caring people to adopt children, but of finding enough people who are either in or approve of same-sex relationships to adopt children. And all the better if they are anti-Christian.

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