Adoption: No Place For Homophobia

"A Roman Catholic adoption charity's appeal to be allowed to discriminate against gay people wanting it to place children with them has been rejected," BBC News reports.
"Catholic Care wanted exemption from new anti-discrimination laws so it could limit services provided to homosexual couples on religious grounds. The Charity Commission said gay people were suitable parents and religious views did not justify discrimination."
Andrew Hind, chief executive of The Charity Commission said; "In certain circumstances, it is not against the law for charities to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation. However, because the prohibition on such discrimination is a fundamental principle of human rights law, such discrimination can only be permitted in the most compelling circumstances."
"We have concluded that in this case the reasons Catholic Care have set out do not justify their wish to discriminate."
A news report on Radio 4's Today programme pointed out that Catholic Care place around 10 children a year, and that if the Commission felt that the new legislation had led to children not being placed with adoptive couples they might be compelled to allow an exemption.
The Commission's Final Decision can be read here.
Its - quite reasonable - conclusions are:

"The evidence did not provide sufficiently convincing and weighty reasons to justify the charity’s wish to restrict its service to heterosexual prospective adoptive parents. This is because:

* The interests of children are paramount - the courts have found that it is in the interests of children waiting to be adopted that the pool from which prospective parents are drawn is as wide as possible.
* Discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation is a serious matter because it departs from the principle of treating people equally.
* Local authority evidence suggests that even if the charity were to close its adoption service, children who would have been placed through the charity are likely to be placed through other channels.
* Local authority evidence suggests that they consider gay and lesbian people as suitable prospective parents for hard to place children and that such adoptions have been successful.
* The High Court judgment had found that respect for religious views could not be a justification for discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation in this case, because of the essentially public nature of adoption services."

The announcement was made at midnight, and the news was broken by the Press Association.
The story has appeared in some online versions of newspapers - check the hilarious "Picture posed by models" in The Daily Mail's [The illustration on the right does not show today's paper - and I don't think the Nazis would have been staunch defenders of gay adoption, but anyway...] - so we'll have to wait for the usual fright-wing commentators to descend.
This really should be the end of this matter - which may not have dragged on so long if the then prime minister and closeted Catholic nutter Tony Blair hadn't vacillated over Catholic adoption agencies "right" to discriminate ('Cabinet Split Over New Rights For Gays', The Observer, 15 October 2006).
Fagburn will keep you updated on the predictable responses, but expect much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and a few more metaphorical last cries of the dinosaur before it falls down dead.