Cabinet rejects exemption on gay adoptions

Cabinet rejects exemption on gay adoptions
Compromise means Catholic church will not be given special treatment

Will Woodward and Severin Carrell
Thursday January 25, 2007

Guardian

The Catholic church is almost certain to lose its battle for special
treatment over gay adoption rules under a deal agreed by the cabinet
to heal damaging divisions between senior ministers. Cabinet sources
said the new proposals would require Catholic adoption agencies to
consider gay couples - or close down - after a reasonable delay that
would allow them to ensure that the children in their care are
properly dealt with.
The transitional period could be up to three years, but ministers
concede that some agencies may prefer to close rather than consider
gay couples. The compromise is far from the complete exemption
demanded by Catholic and Anglican leaders, who wrote to members of
the cabinet. Their concerns were raised by Ruth Kelly, the
communities secretary, who is a staunch Catholic.

Though Downing Street insists the prime minister was not calling for
an exemption but merely trying to broker a solution, cabinet
colleagues strongly criticised his sympathy for the church's view.
Mr Blair's critics will also seize upon the compromise as a sign of
his political weakness in the last months of his premiership.

Yesterday Mr Blair held a meeting with a delegation of Labour MPs,
including Angela Eagle, Chris Bryant and David Borrows, and a number
of Catholic MPs, all of whom argued for no exemption.

Ms Eagle said: "Transition is certainly possible so long as it is
sensible and doesn't have to go on forever. We are not being the
dogmatic ones in this argument. We are not demanding that gay
couples absolutely in all circumstances have to be approved. We are
saying they should not be ruled out as a priority."

The regulations requiring all adoption agencies to consider gay
couples are due to be laid in April and sources said the government
intended to meet the target.

The Department for Education and Skills believes that if the
Catholic agencies pull out it can cover the shortfall, which amounts
to around 200 of the 2,900 children placed in adoption every year.

The gay adoption issue has caused deep divisions in cabinet, with
the lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, among those insisting that no
faith group can be exempted from the new gay rights laws.

In today's New Statesman Harriet Harman, constitutional affairs
minister and a candidate for Labour's deputy leadership, says: "You
can either be against discrimination or you can allow for it. You
can't be a little bit against discrimination."

Alan Johnson, the education secretary, also made clear his
opposition to exempting the Catholic church.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor wrote to the prime minister
demanding an exemption for Catholic agencies on the grounds that
to "oblige our agencies in law to consider adoption applications
from homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents would require
them to act against the principles of Catholic teaching". His stand
was endorsed by the Anglican archbishops of Canterbury and York.

Ministers in Scotland are now bracing themselves for a clash with
the Catholic church over a long-standing arrangement between the
Scottish executive and the church over the adoption rights of gay
couples. The church, which runs two adoption services in Scotland,
has had an open agreement from ministers in Edinburgh that they will
not be forced to give gay couples the right to adopt suitable
children.