A Catholic adoption agency has lost a two-year battle to be excluded from laws that ban discrimination against homosexuals.
Leeds-based
Catholic Care wanted exemption from the 2007 Sexual Orientation
Regulations, which require it to consider gay and lesbian couples as
prospective parents.
But a ruling on Tuesday by the Charity
Tribunal upheld an earlier decision from the Charity Commission.
The
bishop of Leeds, the Right Rev Arthur Roche, said he was disappointed
with the tribunal's ruling.
He said: "It is unfortunate that those who
will suffer as a consequence of this ruling will be the most vulnerable children,
for whom Catholic Care has provided an excellent service for many
years.It is an important point of principle that the charity should be
able to prepare potential adoptive parents according to the tenets of
the Catholic faith."
Roche had told the Charity Tribunal the
agency would suffer financially if it was forced to accept applications
from homosexual couples because donations would dry up.
But the
tribunal said it was "impossible" to conclude that Catholic Care's
income would suffer it were to operate an open adoption service.
It
said: "There was evidence before the tribunal that some Catholics do
offer financial support to adoption agencies which provide services to
same-sex adopters but no evidence from the charity that it had
considered how it might attract alternative financial supporters if it
did not discriminate."
It conceded there would be "a loss to
society if the charity's skilled staff were no longer engaged in the
task of preparing potential adopters to offer families to children
awaiting an adoption placement", but said it had to balance the risk of
closure of the charity's adoption service against the "detriment to
same-sex couples and the detriment to society generally of permitting
the discrimination proposed".
Gay rights
group Stonewall welcomed the tribunal's decision, saying there should
be "no question" of publicly funded services being allowed to "pick and
choose their service users on the basis of individual prejudice".
The
row over exemptions for faith-based adoption agencies dates back to
2007, when the regulations were introduced.
At the time, the then
Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, warned that
the 11 Catholic adoption agencies would close rather than place children
with gay couples.
But the then prime minister, Tony Blair, said there was "no place" for discrimination in British society.
The
Tory leader David Cameron called for a compromise solution because
Catholic adoption agencies did a "fantastic job in placing hard-to-place
children".
While some agencies have closed, others have severed their links with the church in order to stay open.