Couple Lose Foster Care Right Over Anti-Gay Stance

February 28, 2011
New york Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 1:35 p.m. EST

LONDON (AP) — A British court has ruled that a Christian couple cannot care for foster children because they disapprove of homosexuality.

Judges at London’s Royal Courts of Justice ruled that laws protecting gays from discrimination take precedence over the couple’s religious beliefs.

Eunice and Owen Johns, aged 62 and 65-years old, had previously fostered children in the 1990s, but what one social worker described as their “strong views” on homosexuality raised red flags with authorities in the English city of Derby when they were interviewed in 2007.

Eunice Johns said Monday that she was “extremely distressed” by the decision, which Christian groups also condemned.

But the judges ruled that Britain was “a secular state, not a theocracy.”

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Politicians refuse to act after churches win right to discriminate against gay foster parents

The Australian – December 27, 2010

BOTH the NSW government and opposition have ruled out any changes to the state’s anti-discrimination laws in the wake of a ruling that charities could bar gay couples as foster carers on religious grounds. In a decision that will open the way for other religious charities to refuse gay couples access to their services, the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal ruled that Wesley Mission’s foster care arm, Wesley Dalmar Services, had proved an exemption under the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act allowing it to discriminate against homosexual couples, reported The Australian. Wesley Mission, part of the Uniting Church assembly, argued that providing foster care services to gay couples would put at risk its financial and volunteer assistance from members of the mission who adhered to the doctrine that a monogamous heterosexual partnership was “the norm and ideal of the family”.

The decision overturned a ruling that ordered Wesley Mission to take steps to eliminate unlawful discrimination after refusing services to a gay couple.

NSW’s Anti-Discrimination Act – along with similar acts in most states – provides a series of exemptions for religious bodies. The exemptions apply specifically to the ordination and training of priests and ministers.

However, an extremely broad, non-specific exemption also applies to “any act or practice” of a religious body that conforms to that body’s doctrines.

The Administrative Decisions Tribunal described the ability of a religious group to prove an exemption to the act as “singularly undemanding” and noted that “this may be a matter which calls for the attention of parliament”.

However, a spokesman for NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos said yesterday that the legislation struck the right balance between protection from discrimination and the right to religious freedom.

“It is not envisaged that there will be changes to the current exemptions in relation to religious institutions,” the spokesman said.

NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell also ruled out yesterday any move to push for legislative change on the issue if the Liberals win government next March.

Religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws are also being tested in Victoria in an appeal before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which must decide whether it was lawful for the Christian Brethren to refuse to allow a gay youth suicide prevention group accommodation at the Christian Youth Camps’ Phillip Island Adventure Resort.

NSW passed laws earlier this year that allowed gay couples to legally adopt children, but allowed church adoption agencies the right to refuse to provide services to gay couples without breaching anti-discrimination laws.

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The Fight for Lesbian and Gay Adoption Rights

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Lesbian couple appeals order removing their foster child

Lesbian couple appeals order removing their foster child
By 365gay Newscenter Staff
03.11.2009 4:39pm EDT

(Charleston, West Virginia) The West Virginia Supreme Court was asked Wednesday to overturn a lower court ruling that removed a child they had reared from birth because the judge wanted the child placed with a married, opposite-sex couple.

Fayette Circuit Judge Paul Blake originally agreed to allow Kathyrn Kutil and Cheryl Hess be foster parents for the infant girl, following a positive assessment by the Department of Health and Human Resources.

Court records show that the little girl was born to a drug addicted mother and the baby had cocaine, opiates and benzodiazepines in her system. Shortly after birth, the baby went through drug withdrawal. The father was unknown.

The Department placed the child with Kutil and Hess, who had been approved as foster parents, when it could not find any blood relatives of the mother.

But nearly a year later, when the couple applied to adopt the little girl, both the Department and Judge Blake balked. Last year in his ruling, Blake ordered the child, removed saying the baby should be permanently placed in a home where the parents would be a married opposite-sex couple.

The ruling said that he had agreed to allow the women to foster the child because it was the best option at the time. But he never intended it to be permanent.

“I think I’ve indicated time and time again, this court’s opinion is that the best interest of a child is to be raised by a traditional family, mother and father,” Blake’s ruling said.

In their appeal to the sate Supreme Court, the women argue that Blake exceeded his authority and violated their constitutional rights. The appeal argues that Blake is “setting a dangerous precedent” for discriminatory treatment of non-traditional families.

A different judge recently approved Kutil’s adoption of a 12-year-old girl whom she’d been fostering for over two years, the appeal notes.

West Virginia law allows either single individuals or married couples to adopt. It says nothing about same-sex couples.

The Supreme Court, when the notice of appeal was filed, issued a stay on implementing Blake’s removal order and the child remains with the couple pending a final ruling by the high court.

The justices gave no indication when that might be.

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