UPDATE: Be sure to read this thorough reading of the verdict from Peter Ould.
Wow. It’s a bad time to be a Christian in England.
A couple in England. A Christian couple. Who have fostered a bunch of kids. Have lost the right to do so in the future because the believe homosexuality is wrong and will tell the children they foster that this is the case.
This is like reverse gay-adoption. Now Christians can’t adopt. Essentially. Wow.
“At the High Court, they asked judges to rule that their faith should not be a bar to them becoming carers, and the law should protect their Christian values.
But Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson ruled that laws protecting people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation “should take precedence” over the right not to be discriminated against on religious grounds.
They said that if children were placed with carers who objected to homosexuality and same-sex relationships, “there may well be a conflict with the local authority’s duty to ‘safeguard and promote the welfare’ of looked-after children”.”
Here’s the response from the Derby City Council. Bolding mine.
A spokesman said the authority “valued diversity and promoted equality” and “encouraged and supported children in a non judgmental way, regardless of their sexual orientation or preference”.
He added: “The court confirmed that the local authority is properly entitled to consider a prospective foster carer’s views on sexuality when considering their application to become a foster parent and in fact, failure to do so would potentially leave it in breach of its own guidance as well as the National Minimum Standards.”
This is why I think we need to move the goalposts on the debate surrounding homosexual marriage. Here’s a good post (and discussion) from Michael Jensen on SydAng. Here are some thoughts of mine on the homosexual debate from Venn Theology. Here’s a similar story coming out of the UK from a little while ago. And here is a post where Mark Baddeley and I thrashed out the question. This is really an issue we need to get our heads around for the sake of our freedom to proclaim the gospel and call sin “sin”…