“The [Charity Tribunal] ruled that a ‘heterosexuals only’ policy in the adoption field of the Catholic Church in England and Wales would fall foul of the ban on discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation brought in two years ago. The Tribunal’s ruling leaves leading charity Catholic Care (Diocese of Leeds) facing a deep religious impasse and creates a fundamental conflict between the tenets of the Catholic Church and the law of the land. If the charity now sticks to Church policy and continues to follow its ‘heterosexuals only’ policy it could lose its charity status and public funding. It might also face discrimination claims by same-sex couples it has turned away in the past.” [Telegraph]
Not Allowed: England’s Catholic Church ‘Straights Only’ Adoption Policy
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Steff
Many of the Catholic churches in the UK who were faced with this decided that they would rather the kids went to awful care homes than go to a dreaded gay.
Niiiice.
Steff
And oh, perfect timing:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8081829.stm
yeson8won
How sad that hateful homosexuals would try to make churches renounce their doctrine and leave orphans in homes just to make a political point.
Children deserve a mummy and daddy in a stable loving home. Anything less is detrimental to the child.
alan brickman
gays can give alot of kids good homes studys say so…so grow up already!!
Xantharius
@yeson8won: “Hateful homosexuals”? In all seriousness, do you think that that British government is run by gays and lesbians?
The British law states that charities may not discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation. No-one is forcing the Catholic Church to renounce its doctrine, OR to stop acting as an adoption agency. But it must not continue to do either if it wants to maintain its status as a charity; yet nothing prevents it from doing so as a private organization; it just loses its tax-exempt status for deliberately discriminating against a sexual minority.
Additionally, I do not find that your logic is at all sound: I think it is not the British government or gay people who would rather that children go unadopted; it is the policy of the Catholic Church which would rather children go unadopted than be welcomed into a loving, stable home provided by a gay or lesbian couple.
schlukitz
@alan brickman:
“Homosexuality is nothing unusual among animals,” Bremerhaven zoo said on Wednesday.
“Sex and coupling up in our world do not necessarily have anything to do with reproduction.”
You know, it’s absolutely amazing that these zoo officials would go shooting their mouths off like this when yeson8won has already made it quite clear to us us on another thread that homosexuality does not exist in the animal world.
Who do these zoo people think they are in trying to make people think that god would ever have created such an abomination in the animal world, just so hateful homosexual of the human variety can give themselves a degree of validation? It just goes to show you what disingenuous, people homosexuals really are. How sad that homosexuals will lie, cheat and twist the truch in a vain effort to make decent, Christian, heterosexual mummies and daddies and their kiddies believe that homosexuality is a viable lifetyle when we all know that they choose to live this immoral, sinful, perverted and disgusting lifestyle.
Two “gay” male penguins obviously stole the egg from it’s biological parents and have hatched a chick and are now rearing it as its adoptive parents and the zoo owners are trying to cover up for these two penguins. This sick masquerade is not only sinful and defies god’s laws, that baby penguin chick should be snatched away from those two homo impersonators and placed with their natural mummy and daddy penguin in a stable loving home. Anything less is detrimental to the chick.
And if by some odd chance, the biological parents reject the chick, perhaps yeson8won and his hausfrau might want to give some consideration to adopting the chick themselves so that they can raise it to become bigoted, hateful homophobes just mummy and daddy.
I so love stories with a happy ending.
schlukitz
Sorry Alan. That comment was meant to have been directed @Steff. I don’t know I happened to click on your name?
Tom
This isn’t about doctrine, or religious rite, it’s about charity status and public funding. if the church wants to continue to be bigots and hand pick their clientele, then they are welcome to set up the adoption agency as a private business, self funded through the church, and just like any other private company can refuse service to whomever they like. The Catholic Church wants to have it’s cake and eat it too. Charities are by definition ‘an organization set up to provide help and raise money for those in need’ not an organization to help the people we determine to be deserving, and not to tell children (orphans) that they know what is best for them, particularly when there is no informed consent, and few i would imagine would turn up at an adoption center by choice. Charity status, legally, is an acknowledgment that the work being done is not for profit or personal gain (fiscal or ideologically) but for the greater good of the community, and as such tax payments on the funds used to support this are reduced, heavily. finally public funds are taxes taken from all working citizens to assist the community as a whole, once again the audacity to demand money, a decent chunk of which is from gay or gay-rights friendly individuals, to be used for their discrimination is plain outrageous. the church needs to get a f*&^ing grip. make a choice, private and exclusive, or public and nondiscriminatory, and stop bitching. Jesus (literally), the shear gall of the Catholic Church to play the victim, when history (now ever more accessible via the net) shows the church to be anything but. doctrine, and consensus among a religious body is not global (or even national) consensus, nor is it a carte blanch to dictate how those not of the faith live their lives. then again the English are control freaks who still can’t come to terms with the fact they no longer control half the world. hell even Americans are realizing this sooner, and they came to power after the fall of the British Empire.
Adam
Just have to say, there are a number of Catholic adoption charities that have done the right thing in this instance – depressingly, the Church’s reaction in the diocese of southwark has been to withdraw all support from the Cabrini Children’s Society (formerly the Catholic Children’s Society) and sending a letter to all parish churches instructing the faithful to cease donations. This is itself appalling – the notion that the rehousing of children should be trumped by the sexuality of the adoptive parents shows clearly that the Church is less concerned with children’s welfare than obsessed with ultimately trivial questions of sexuality. Trivial, that is, when compared to a child’s need for housing and loving parents – because it’s abundantly clear that the option of loving parents is infinitely better than a care home. This is graceless, stupid and monstrously shameful on the part of the Church, but who’s surprised?
Tallskin
What we need is a test case, in which the UK govt sues/ prosecutes a cult of religious nutjobs and the Katlick church would do to start!
Followed by a mosque somewhere in England.
Jennifer
It’s about time we started calling churches on their political meddling. No more charity status for the Mormons, either. They’re both cut out of the same cloth. Let them pay their taxes, or shut the fuck up.
Ken
Cross posted
Just ask the christians and catholics about the 31 married popes. Or ask them how some of the popes children also became popes.
Where are the christian bigots out protesting red lobster? humm?
Where are the christian bigots out making sure rapists that rape virgin women get married as per bible law? humm?
Where are the christian bigots making sure that anyplace that serves meat during lent on friday are burned down? humm?
Where are the christian bigots stopping any divorce? humm?
Where are the christian bigots ensuring that no lame, infirm, blind, or flat nosed *direct quote* approach the church or alter of god? humm?
Until you answer that one christian bigots, stay the hell out. You pick and choose, and modify your rules to protect your hate and bigotry.
Go back to spending all your tax free money on protecting the child molesters, and embezzlers.
12 years catholic skewl here
hummmmmmmm
Robert, NYC
@yeson8won:
You’re a fucking moron. Your retarded view of life would suggest that widows and widowers with children aren’t suitable parents either. You’d rather a child live in an abusive straight family where one or both parents inflict physical harm or sexually abuse their children, but that’s ok of course in your world because they happen to be straight. What an idiot!
Robert, NYC
@Jennifer:
Jennifer, exactly what I’ve been advocating for years. About time we formed a movement to abolish tax-exemption of all religious cults who advocate for hate legislation, let them go out and find real jobs instead of living as parasites on the taxpayers. Stay out of politics or face paying their share of taxes like the rest of us and as you so aptly put it, STFU.
schlukitz
@Robert, NYC:
Yeson8won appears not to have posted on this since since June 3rd.
I hope we have not awoken the sleeping giant by responding to him. Bad enough we have SM to contend with. LOL
I agree with you fully. The cults are parasites and they are violating their tax-exempt status by interfering in the political process.
The problem is, no one in Washington, DC will call them on it, because it is the votes of the cults they are counting on for re-election in 2012. 🙁
Until some tells them to mind their own business, and i do not expect that to happen anytime soon, I am afraid that they are not about to STFU, much less, STFD!
As Walter Cronkite, the veteran newscaster who passed away this weekend would have said “And that’s the way it is.”
Sucks…doesn’t it? 🙁
youcanthandlethetruth
@Robert, NYC: Wrong. Not just wrong but the usual homosexual melodrama.
The fact is widows and widowers don’t deprive their children of either a father or a mother WILLINGLY.
However adoption by homosexuals does.
And where did I say I approve of children living with abusive parents just because they are homosexual?
Try cleaning your mascara before reading petal
youcanthandlethetruth
And the reason I didn’t post since early June as Yeson8won is because your ever-so-tolerant mods or whoever runs this site closed my account.
Apparently you just want a place where you can all agree and feel sanctimonious together.
Yet another example of how homosexuals demand tolerance from everyone else but are utterly intolerant themselves.
schlukitz
@youcanthandlethetruth:
Well, with any degree of luck, they will do it again! ;o)