Harmful

If the average person were to consider what qualities to look for in a prospective foster parent, they'd probably say; offering a stable, clean, loving home; having the patience and strength of character to nurture a child, especially one who may be difficult to handle; being reliable and experienced ...

But not if you're a High Court judge. If you're one of them, it's a case of:

"Never mind the welcoming home, never mind how many children you've raised and raised well. Forget all that, what we really want to know is; what do you think about sex? Can you be trusted to impart to your impressionable infant wards the correct opinions in matters sexual? Specifically matters homosexual?"

Thus by the High Court's latest ruling continues the state's struggle to impose its New Sexual Orthodoxy on dissenting Christians.

Not everyone disapproves:

"Stonewall today welcomed a High Court ruling in a case brought by a Derbyshire couple, who as foster parents believe that homosexuality is unacceptable. Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill said: ‘We’re delighted that the High Court’s landmark decision has favoured 21st-century decency above 19th-century prejudice. In any fostering case the interests of the 60,000 children in care should override the bias of any prospective parent."

‘Thankfully, Mr and Mrs Johns’s out-dated views aren’t just out of step with the majority of people in modern Britain but those of many Christians too. If you wish to be involved in the delivery of a public service, you should be prepared to provide it fairly to anyone.’

Firstly, Mr Summerskill provides me the opportunity to address something I've been meaning to address for a while: the word 'unacceptable'; how it is used to blur an area where distinction is most required: between thought, speech and action; between moral censure, social disapproval or criminal sanction. However, whenever you hear or read someone saying something is 'unacceptable' you can be sure they'll be jumping over moral censure and social disapproval and moving straight for the criminal sanction, or at least some kind of coercive legal restriction, as in the case above.

This is, you recall, a mere matter of opinion; that of the man and wife vis à vis teaching young children about the wholesomeness of homosexuality. Rather than being out-dated, or out-of-step, the majority of parents would take the same view on homosexuality, absent of any religious conviction, with regard to young children. Indeed few parents see it as their duty to actively promote the merits of gayness to their tender offspring.

Also note the term 'public service'. What is this public service, which they are made incapable of rendering by their recusant views? The couple in question most likely didn't see fostering as delivering a public service, but rather as helping particular, needy children, which no one denies they can do.

No. What we have here is a kind of loyalty oath, which the couple will not swear to, and without doing so, they are to be cut off from what Mr Summerskill calls 'public service', which probably encompasses pretty much everything.

As the Telegraph reports:

"Equality laws are supposed to uphold the rights to religious belief. Yet the High Court 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. Why has it been left to judges to decide whose rights trump those of others? "

Here we see the poison spring from whence many rivers run: a polluted concept of 'rights', based on nothing in particular, perhaps some kind of vague pantheistic impression, but no more than that. God has been dethroned. Natural law decried as nonsense. Our new rights-jockeys would squirm with spinsterish embarassment before admitting the providence of these rights of theirs. This alone does not damn them, but without the Rosetta Stone of property rights, properly understood, the rest of this rights rubbish is a mere jumbled stew of vested interests competing.

The real losers here are the abandoned children. Summerskill agrees; "the interests of the 60,000 children in care should override the bias of any prospective parent." Fine words, but he really means something quite different. Of paramount importance to him is ensuring that Christians like this couple be prohibited from fostering, and as for the children, let them eat cake.