New anti-discrimination legislation in the UK places Catholic adoption agencies in an impossible position, writes Kathrine Murphy.
So the British Labour Party has forged full steam ahead with its anti-discrimination law and as a result the Catholic Church's adoption agencies will be forced to consider homosexual couples as adoptive parents or close their doors.
For years the church has helped as many as 200 children per year to find good and loving homes. Children - often with special needs - who would otherwise be difficult to place. The shibboleth was that children generally fared better with a mother and a father. In our new "Orwellian" world the gay parent dynamic experiment hasn't been tried and tested.
Alan Johnson, the secretary of state for education, along with the rest of the cabinet says "there can be no exceptions". Alistair Campbell famously told us, "we don't do religion", in spite of Tony Blair being a closet Catholic and going hell for leather to get his children into one of the best Catholic schools even though he didn't live in the catchment area. The Catholic Church will just have to fall in line.
The last time Alan Johnson put on his "Postman Pat hat" he came up with the "brilliant" idea that Jewish, Catholic and Muslim children would be forced to attend schools of different faiths so as to promote inclusion. Instead of reading the Bible, one week your child might find itself struggling with Arabic or trying to read the Torah Scrolls. The Catholic lobby were the most vociferous complainers, flanked by the elders of the synagogues and mosques. The normally diffident Anglicans even added a supportive voice.
Alan Johnson was comprehensively trounced into a U-turn but was not going to be bested by the church again.
On the BBC current affairs programme, Newsnight, Jeremy Paxman treated the Very Rev Archbishop Vincent Nicholls as though Nicholls represented an undesirable sect. Paxman's sneering tone resonated in the patronising and pejorative use of the words "Rowman" Catholic Church, which he elongated with a withering contempt. Everyone knows that there is an unholy marriage between not-so-new Labour and the BBC. That said, Bishop Nicholls - who was by contrast both patient and polite - should not have received such a subjective and suspicious line of questioning.
Catholic adoption agencies are being accused of discrimination. In the past they gently directed gay couples to other agencies. Other adoption agencies have been practising discrimination with impunity for years - too middle class; too posh; too white; too overweight; too old; too religious; too black; not black enough; mixed race.
No concerned government voice was raised too volubly about the real issue here - the best interests of the child. Instead, the politically correct who policed the process exerted their petty authority, often turning the lives of putative adoptive parents into a living hell through the breadth of their intrusion into their lives.
The Catholic Church should be allowed to continue to do the brilliant job that it has done for so long. A fudged compromise is hoped for. Geoff Hoon suggested a way forward, saying "not everyone who works for the Catholic agencies is Catholic", ie continue to employ the expertise of the church but if a gay couple come in, get the non-Catholic to deal with it.
Now the edict has been issued, the church will be given a period of time to "adjust". What to, exactly? Matters of faith and conscience are just that. A moratorium will not make the matter go away. Can there really be that many gay couples wanting to adopt? Do they wake up one morning and decide to knock on the local parish priest's door for a referral to a Catholic adoption agency?
But guess what! The new anti-discrimination bill hasn't gone down that well with all the Gay community. Just ask "Mr Hurst" who runs a "Gay Hotel" in Blackpool. He does not want heterosexuals "cluttering up his lounge", as it would inhibit his homosexual all-male clientele from having a little kiss and cuddle. Well-known gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell says that he "doesn't think too many heterosexual couples will be banging on the doors of gay hotels". He is probably right. Let's just hope that when The Sexual Orientation Regulations Act comes into effect in April, this will be the view taken by homosexuals wanting to adopt and hopefully they will go to other agencies.
I would rather see the Catholic adoption agencies close altogether than capitulate because they will be tested and found wanting. A gay couple that wouldn't be given a goldfish to care for will turn up to adopt and when they don't get their baby they will cry discrimination and take the church to the cleaners. Let's prevent that happening, for the sake of both groupings and above all - in the best interests of the child.
Kathrine Murphyis a senior magistrate in the Family Courts in Birmingham