High Court ruling on Foster-Care parents
Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson, in the High Court February 28 2011 made the following statement on the case of the Derby Foster-Carers who were unwilling to give an undertaking to teach about gay sex to young children in their care.
“We cannot avoid the need to re-state what ought to be, but seemingly are not, well understood principles regulating the relationship of religion and law in our society.
“We live in this country in a democratic and pluralistic society, in a secular state not a theocracy.
“Although historically this country is part of the Christian west, and although it has an established church which is Christian, there have been enormous changes in the social and religious life of our country over the last century.
“Our society is now pluralistic and largely secular. We sit as secular judges serving a multi-cultural community of many faiths.
“The laws and usages of the realm do not include Christianity, in whatever form. The aphorism that 'Christianity is part of the common law of England' is mere rhetoric.
“Religion – whatever the particular believer's faith – is no doubt something to be encouraged but it is not the business of government or of the secular courts, though the courts will, of course, pay every respect and give great weight to the individual's religious principles.
“The present dispute is merely one of a number of recent cases where the tension has been between an individual's Christian beliefs and discrimination law as enacted by Parliament.
“While as between the protected rights concerning religion and sexual orientation there is no hierarchy of rights, there may, as this case shows, be a tension between equality provisions concerning religious discrimination and those concerning sexual orientation.
“Where this is so, Standard 7 of the National Minimum Standards for Fostering and the Statutory Guidance indicate that it must be taken into account and in this limited sense the equality provisions concerning sexual orientation should take precedence.”
“There is no right to foster. The claimants voluntarily applied for approval and, thus agreed to subject themselves to in particular the National Minimum Standards and Standard 7 of those Standards, which they do not question in these proceedings.
“The attitudes of potential foster carers to sexuality are relevant when considering an application for approval.”
For a first comment on this judgement, readers are referred to the following article in the Daily Telegraph in April 2010
The legal threat to our spiritual tradition
The McFarlane judgment raises fundamental questions about church and state, says Michael Nazir-Ali.
By Michael Nazir-Ali 6:28AM BST 30 Apr 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7655457/The-legal-threat-to-our-spiritual-tradition.html
Lord Justice Laws's judgment on the Gary McFarlane case in the Court of Appeal – that legislation for the protection of views held purely on religious ground cannot be justified – has driven a coach and horses through the ancient association of the Christian faith with the constitutional and legal basis of British society.
Everything from the Coronation Oath onwards suggests that there is an inextricable link between the Judaeo-Christian tradition of the Bible and the institutions, the values and the virtues of British society. If this judgment is allowed to stand, the aggressive secularists will have had their way.
It also raises a number of fundamental questions to which answers need to be provided. Will there be, once again, a religious bar to holding office? We have already had a rash of cases involving magistrates unable to serve on the bench because of their Christian beliefs, registrars losing their jobs because they cannot, in conscience, officiate at civil partnerships, paediatricians unable to serve on adoption panels… Will this trickle gradually become a flood, so that rather than conforming to the Church of England, the new discrimination tests will involve conforming to the secular religion as promoted by Lord Justice Laws? Read here
–
Chris Sugden
Anglican Mainstream
www.anglican-mainstream.net
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
