Gay Adoption: Catholic Care Still Don't

"A Catholic charity which wants exemption from equality laws which would force it to provide its adoption services to gay couples has had its latest appeal rejected.
"Catholic Care, which is based in the Diocese of Leeds, has spent more than two years arguing it will have to give up its work finding homes for children if it has to comply with recent equality regulations which prohibit discrimination against same-sex couples wanting to adopt.
"The complex legal debate ended up in the High Court last year before it was referred back to the Charity Commission which again refused to back Catholic Care's stance.
"A tribunal [The Charity Tribunal] dismissed the charity's appeal, supporting the Charity Commission's ruling.
"...the panel said it had to balance the risk of closure of the charity's adoption service - which it said was 'by no means certain' - against the 'detriment to same-sex couples and the detriment to society generally of permitting the discrimination proposed'..."

Press Association.
According to the report on Third Sector Catholic Care can appeal again.
Fagburn on the myths and maths of adoption agency closures here.

Adoption Agency Closures: Doing The Math/s

Here's The Daily Mail today, returning to a favourite riff;
'Mixed-race adoption rules must be changed say ministers... but they duck fears over Christian discrimination'
"...the Coalition was silent about the rules that appear to be doing most to push down the number of children finding parents – the bar on adoption through Christian agencies that do not approve of gay rights."
"The number of children in care adopted by parents has dropped by 30 per cent since Labour’s Sexual Orientation Regulations brought homosexual equality rules into adoption law in 2007."
That's terrible.
But this drop clearly can not be blamed on the closure of Catholic adoption agencies.
Before the Sexual Orientation Regulations were passed it was estimated that; "The Catholic Church's agencies are said to handle 4%, or about 200, of all adoptions a year." (BBC News, January 23 2007))
On the day the law was introduced, five out of 11 of the Catholic-run agencies announced they were staying open and would comply with the law. (BBC News, January 1 2009)
In actual fact, only two agencies abandoned their adoption work - in addition, Catholic Care went to the courts to fight for its right to discriminate. (The Guardian, March 3 2010).
They lost in August and announced they are reconsidering their position. (The Guardian, August 19 2010). (Update: They say they are appealing the decision)
So two, perhaps three, out of the 11 Catholic agencies have stopped work on adoption.
As Catholic agencies were previously responsible for 4% of adoptions (200), a rough calculation would say these two/three agencies were probably responsible for less than 1% of UK adoptions.
Fagburn has the feeling the other 99% of adoption agencies may have been able to take up the shortfall.
Not to mention all the lesbian and gay couples who are now coming forward to adopt knowing they will no longer be discriminated against.

Daily Telegraph: The War Against Equality

In a leader today The Telegraph welcomes Theresa May's dropping of the duty to equality, and her potentially seismic semantic shift from talking about "equality" to "fairness".
It is worth quoting at length - not least because it sounds to Fagburn like an opening salvo.
"Speaking in a south London community centre this week, Theresa May argued that equality has become not a noble goal, but "a dirty word… associated with the worst forms of pointless political correctness and social engineering". Harriet Harman, take a bow.
"The Home Secretary was announcing her decision to scrap the clause in Miss Harman's Equality Act that placed a duty on all public bodies to take account of "the inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage" at all times – so sweeping a requirement that it was labelled "socialism in one clause". This is welcome news: as Lynne Featherstone, a Lib Dem Home Office minister, told Parliament yesterday, "all the policy would have been was a bureaucratic box to tick… another form to fill in".
"We urge Mrs May to be similarly ruthless towards the other clauses that await her approval. These include the need for the public sector workforce, across 27,000 separate bodies, to be monitored in terms of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality and disability, and the lifting of a ban on positive discrimination in recruitment."
And do you think the demands for overturning equality laws will stop there?
It looks like there is a new front opening in the Tories' war against equality - gay adoption...

Chris Bryant vs Kay Burley: "You seem to be a bit dim..."

Poor old Chris Bryant.
He could single-handedly pay off the national debt and bring peace to the Middle East, and the news story would still begin; "Chris Bryant, the Labour MP who once posted a photo himself on the gay dating website Gaydar wearing nothing but a pair of old y-fronts..."
He's a funny old thing; an out Labour MP who trained for the priesthood and used to be a member of the Conservative Party.
But he did play a key role in getting Tony Blair to back down over the exemption for Catholic adoption agencies, so clearly he can't be all bad.
Anyway, Mr Bryant now has another claim to infamy.
He's had a live on air spat with Sky News presenter Kay Burley.
Bryant was being interviewed about the News of the World phone hacking story - he said it was "endemic" in the newspaper industry, citing a report by the Information Commissioner that identified 1,000 cases.
Burley asked him: "So you are in a position to have listened to the debate and read the report and as a result you are content to say that on telly."
Chris Bryant's reply: "I have just said that. You seem to be a bit dim, if you don't mind me saying so."

The whole thing is great fun to watch.
And through the magic of Sky Plus someone has managed to record it for posterity here.

Amanda Platell: You Can Say That Again...

"Britain's last Catholic adoption agency has been forced to close its doors after half a century, due to Harriet Harman's equality laws.
"Under the new legislation, they would have been obliged to place children with gay couples as well as straight, against the teachings of their faith.
"We all know the Catholic Church does not have an unblemished record when it comes to caring for children..."

Amanda Platell, on the Catholic Care case, The Daily Mail.

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.

Fostering: Ban The Daily Mail!

"A former vicar and his wife have been barred from becoming foster parents after saying they did not want gay couples who are considering adopting to meet them in their own home," reports a mortified Daily Mail.
"John and Colette Yallop told the local council that, if approved as foster parents, they would be ready to help same-sex couples adopt children and would be happy for a gay person to visit on their own.
"But they said they would rather meet such couples at a children’s centre than in their family home to avoid awkward questions from their own young son and daughter."
Fagburn hopes that this bigoted nutcase does not allow The Daily Mail into his home, it runs a story mentioning a "gay couple" or "gay couples" on average about twice a week, which must cause rather a lot of awkward questions from their young son and daughter.

Pink Pound: Big Pink Bollocks

An article in The Observer wins this week's award for 'The Biggest Load of Tosh a Journalist Could Get Away With Writing About Gay Men'.

Its headline provides a handy summary of the piece; 'Pink pound loses its glow as more gay couples become parents'.

But it's hard to see what is news-worthy in its "findings"; gay couples who become parents will spend money on their children, and so will have less money to spend on other things that they used to spend money on.

Wow!

Wait, there's more. The Observer states that "gay market research company Out Now Consulting" (no, me neither) "has already found signs that becoming a parent has a big impact on gay men's attitudes to spending."

Really? Do tell.

"'The introduction of children into gay men's lives does impact on their lifestyle and expenditure habits,'" says the company's founder and CEO, Ian Johnson. "'This is likely to become part of the lifestyle impacts affecting gay men.'"

Amazing! If only we were giving out awards for stating the obvious, too.

Out Now Consulting has already done some research - stop laughing - which they claim shows "homosexual men and women earned upwards of £81bn in 2007".

Oh, come on Out Now. If you're going to pick a fantastically large figure out of the ether to try and dupe big businesses into investing in some mythical gay market filled with millions of rich gay men who don't actually exist - which is what all this big pink bollocks is actually all about - then why stop there?

The article also says that the number of children adopted by same-sex couples in the UK is between 80-90 a year.

Which according to research by my gay market research company, Made-up - Gay Statistics, means the potential amount spent on each child adopted by homosexual men and women could be upwards of £1bn.

I know, it's hard to believe, isn't it?

Which should always serve as a warning sign that a statistic has been made-up.