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ADOPTION-COURT Mar-18-2010 (480 words) xxxi
British court rules in favor of Catholic adoption agency's practices
By Simon Caldwell
Catholic News Service
LONDON (CNS) -- A Catholic adoption agency prevailed in a legal battle to continue its policy of assessing only married couples and single people as potential adopters and foster parents.
The ruling in the High Court in London means that the adoption agency, Catholic Care, is exempt from dealing with same-sex and cohabiting couples who present themselves as prospective parents.
The charity, which covers the northern English dioceses of Leeds, Middlesbrough and Hallam, is the only one of 11 English and Welsh Catholic adoption agencies to fight the country's 2007 sexual orientation regulations through the courts.
Unable to comply both with Catholic teaching that gay adoption is "gravely immoral" and the regulations compelling them to assess gay couples who may apply to care for children, the other agencies have either closed their adoption services or established them as secular charities with no church control.
Leeds-based Catholic Care, however, challenged a ruling by the Charity Commission, the body which regulates the activities of charities in England and Wales. The commission ruled that Catholic Care could not use one of the regulations -- Regulation 18 -- to continue to offer its services.
Overall, the regulations ban discrimination against gays in the provision of goods and services, but Regulation 18 allows a charity to practice limited discrimination in the course of its work.
Justice Michael Briggs published his ruling in favor of the agency March 17, two weeks after hearing arguments.
Briggs said the Charity Commission misinterpreted Regulation 18 and criticized its thinking as "neither logical, rational, purposive nor responsive to any reasonable linguistic interpretation."
He said Catholic Care found "suitable adoptive parents for a significant number of children who would otherwise go unprovided for."
The judge wrote: "Same-sex couples would therefore neither be deprived of any significant benefit, not least since the only alternative of closure would make that benefit unavailable anyway."
He ordered the commission to reconsider its position and to pay the costs of the case, estimated at $152,000.
Before the sexual orientation regulations went into effect in 2009 the Catholic adoption agencies annually found new homes for about 250 children, many of them categorized as "difficult to place." Catholic Care deals with about 20 children a year.
It was revealed in the House of Lords earlier in March that there was one recorded instance of a gay couple approaching a Catholic agency in the last three years. The couple was referred elsewhere.
Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds welcomed the judgment in a March 17 statement.
"We look forward to producing evidence to the Charity Commission to support the position that we have consistently taken through this process that without being able to use this exemption children without families would be seriously disadvantaged," he said.
"The judgment today will help in our determination to continue to provide this invaluable service to benefit children, families and communities," Bishop Roche added.
END
Copyright (c) 2010 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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