Sunderland Christian foster service ‘must allow gay carers’
from BBC News:
An evangelical Christian fostering service must allow gay parents to sign up as carers, a judge has ruled.
Cornerstone (North East) Adoption and Fostering Service launched a High Court challenge against Ofsted after inspectors deemed its policies discriminatory and lowered its rating.
The Sunderland-based agency was criticised for only welcoming married heterosexuals as foster carers.
Cornerstone said it would “prayerfully” consider the findings.
After an inspection in 2019, Ofsted downgraded Cornerstone from “good” to “requires improvement” because of the charity’s policy on recruiting carers.
Mr Justice Julian Knowles said the fostering service was legally allowed to recruit based on its religious ethos, but its policy of requiring “applicants to refrain from homosexual conduct” was unlawful.
“The law requires Cornerstone to accept gay men and lesbian women as potential foster carers,” the judge said.
“It hardly needs be said, but I categorically reject any suggestion that gay men and lesbians cannot make wonderfully loving foster and adoptive parents whether they are single or in same-sex partnerships.”
He concluded Cornerstone “must change its recruitment policy” to allow homosexual carers to become “prospective foster parents and it cannot lawfully refuse to do so”.
See also:
Christian Institute, representing Cornerstone, led in their report on the positive aspect of the ruling: High Court rejects Ofsted attempt to force UK’s only evangelical Christian fostering agency to abandon religious ethos
A view from across the Atlantic: Gay rights trump religious rights, British court rules, by George Conger, Anglican Ink
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