LABOUR MP Jim Dobbin has described as “a tragedy” the decision by a Catholic adoption agency to stop finding new homes for children because of the Government’s new gay equality laws.
According to the Telegraph, the “faith-based” Catholic Children’s Rescue Service is to stop doing work it has carried out since 1886, and has accused ministers of discriminating against Roman Catholics.
The Catholic MP in Manchester, whose proudest moment was “becoming chairman of the all-party pro-life group in parliament”, said:
I don’t think there was any need for this legislation at all. It was forced through and was all done to avoid discrimination but all it has done is to introduce discrimination against agencies that operate according to the principles of a religious faith.
The Government will rue the day when it pursued this line of action. It smacks of a secular attack on the Catholic Church.
He added:
It is a tragedy. There is a shortage of people willing to adopt generally in the country and there is something very wrong when some of the better and more efficient agencies feel they have to close because they can’t conform to what the Government is demanding.
Directors of the CCRS say they have been forced to stop recruiting, assessing or approving couples who want to adopt children because of new legislation which means they cannot follow their religious beliefs by turning away homosexual couples.
The CCRS website says:
We believe in the right of every child to live a full existence and experience the richness of life. We are particularly concerned to reach out to the marginalised and isolated.
Several other adoption agencies around the country have cut their ties with the Roman Catholic Church - which has ruled that gay adoption is morally wrong - in order to comply with the Equality Act.
But the CCRS said it could not do so because it is so closely linked to the Diocese of Salford, and will become the first Catholic adoption agency to stop offering the service.
It will now merge with local Catholic welfare groups to provide care homes for children, homeless shelters and support for parents of adopted children.
Under the terms of the Equality Act, which comes into effect on New Year’s Day, discrimination in the provision of goods and services on the basis of sexual orientation is outlawed.
The law was forced through Parliament last year even though Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister who has now converted to Catholicism, wanted Catholic adoption agencies to be exempted from the rules.
7 Comments
Those who complain of discrimination against religion always do so with a tongue most deplorably forked. Beyond that they see religion prioritised over sexual orientation, which is entirely illogical because [respectively] one is a school of thought based around superstition and vacuous conservatism, and the other is an in-built impulse, an instinctive attraction towards people who meet a certain criterion. Why anyone would seek to deprive anybody of the latter is beyond me.
You know what? Had the Abrahamic doctrine not enveloped the west and slowly catalysed oppression of homosexuality across huge portions its imperial territories we might not get so much BS from people like this unsavoury hack (who, for crying out loud, is a LABOUR MP; at what point did the party’s ethos embrace oppression of an already-oppressed group!? Is “New Labour” really this far removed from its original socialist roots?) and that idealist creature from that Northern Ireland broadcast who condoned through a public channel the hideous and nigh-impossible practise of “converting” people to heterosexuality.
I’m absolutely shocked that this MP is, quite openly, demanding to be allowed to be a bigot.
Let’s hope that decent-minded Mancunians vote this wingnut out at the next available opportunity.
I’d point out that this statement…
“Several other adoption agencies around the country have cut their ties with the Roman Catholic Church - which has ruled that gay adoption is morally wrong - in order to comply with the Equality Act.”
… gets it wrong. Agencies are cutting their ties because the RCC agency is morally wrong!
So this is where thier deluded “faith schools” idea comes from…
Let them stop providing services. Bigots are not needed. I’m sure there are plenty of agencies that can serve *all* families.
A small alarm gone off in my head here…
If they’re merging with ‘local Catholic welfare groups’might be worth checking if they get public funding, then at the group really behind the service.
Pro-Life groups have got good at setting up splinter charities ostensibly helping young mums with accomodation and so on, but in reality some money might be going into their usual campaigns. It’s one thing if the money just comes from church collections, but if they’re getting public funding to provide a social service and use small charity opt-outs on presenting accounts to hide money being creamed off to spend on anti-abortion campaigning and so on, that would be quite another matter.
The logical corollary to insisting that gay people can’t be adoptive parents is to insist that gays can’t be parents at all. Perhaps this unpleasant, smirking MP would share his views on that? Oh well, another reason not to vote Labour. That makes about 112 so far…
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