Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The vanishing Catholic adoption agency
The last Catholic adoption agency in the U.K. has closed after losing its legal challenge to anti-discrimination laws that require agencies to consider same-sex couples as adoptive parents:
Since Labour’s homosexual rights law came into effect in January 2009, all the other 11 Catholic adoption agencies in England have either had to close down or sever their ties with the church hierarchy. Catholic Care was the last to hold out as it launched its legal bid.
Apparently, in certain "compelling circumstances," discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is permitted, but the Catholic agencies have failed to establish such circumstances. Andrew Hind, the Chief Executive of the Charity Commission, explained:
“This has been a complex and sensitive decision which the Commission has reached carefully, following the principles set out by the High Court, case law and on the basis of the evidence before us. Clearly the interests of children are paramount."
Hmmm. . . I understand that there are other values motivating anti-discrimination laws, but I have a hard time figuring out how "the interests of the children are paramount" unless we are assuming that excluding same-sex couples from any single agency's pool of adoptive parents so compromises the pool's quality that it jeopardizes children's best interests. I haven't heard anyone make that argument, so I'm not sure what Hind means. I'd prefer if he said, "Look, we know we're losing an important service to children here, but our government has decided that equal treatment of same-sex and opposite-sex couples is so important that we're willing to make some hard trade-offs."
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/08/the-vanishing-catholic-adoption-agency.html
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I think, in context, it may be taken to mean something like, "We all can agree that the interests of the children are paramount. And indeed, if a charity can show that they have a case where discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation is in the best interest of the child, then of course they will be permitted to so discriminate. But Catholic Care hasn't made a convincing case, and consequently we cannot allow them to discriminate."
I take it that Catholic Care took the position that it simply would not consider same-sex couples as adoptive parents. It seems to me that puts the burden on them to make a case that never, ever could there be a same-sex couple who could be excellent parents to a child. What if the child were a special-needs child and the same-sex parents were both doctors, or child psychologists, or from some other profession that specialized in taking care of the problems the child had. Can one make a blanket case that heterosexual parents will always be better adoptive parents, in every single case? Apparently this is what Catholic Care believes. I am guessing that it would have been open to Catholic Care to say they would take things on a case-by-case basis. But apparently they took the position that same-sex couples were always unfit to be parents. That sounds a lot like discrimination to me.
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Andrew Hind, Charity Commission chief executive, said: "This has been a complex and sensitive decision which the Commission has reached carefully, following the principles set out by the High Court, case law and on the basis of the evidence before us.
'Clearly the interests of children are paramount.
'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.'
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1304333/Catholic-charity-loses-appeal-gay-adoption.html