Thought criminals make bad parents, part 2

Last October, I wrote about Vincent and Pauline Matherick, the Christian couple removed from the register of foster parents in Somerset, after they said that they would not be happy discussing homosexual relationships with eleven year-olds.

Thankfully, the Mathericks were subsequently reinstated. However, now a similar case has arisen, up in Derby:

Lawyers are to seek a judicial review of a decision by social workers to ban a Christian couple from fostering young children because they refused to sign up to new gay equality laws.

The action against Labour-controlled Derby City Council is likely to become a test case for the Government's Sexual Orientation Regulations. Social workers rejected an application by Eunice and Owen Johns, who have four grown-up children, to be foster parents because they refused to agree to tell any children in their care that homosexual lifestyles were acceptable.

The couple, who have been married for 39 years, had applied to offer weekend respite care for foster children under the age of 10.

Okay, so far, so bad. But there's more:

But the adoption panel was also unhappy that the couple was adamant that any child in their home would have to go to church with them on Sundays. Mrs Johns, a retired nurse, is a Sunday school teacher.

The adoption panel has admitted in internal documents that Mr and Mrs Johns could feel that they had been "discriminated against on religious grounds".

Now why on Earth would they think that?

Mrs Johns said: "I would love any child, black or white, gay or straight. But I cannot understand why sexuality is an issue when we are talking about boys and girls under the age of 10."

Clearly the words of an unfit parent, and all round ne'er-do-well.

As I wrote back in October, regarding the Mathericks:

Is there even any suggestion that, were a child with homosexual tendencies to be placed with them, they would do him any harm? No - simply because a (foster) parent might disapprove strongly of some of their (foster) child's lifestyle choices does not mean that they cannot raise them in a loving and appropriate manner. I would add that I find it very unlikely that foster parents - or, indeed, legal parents, whether by birth or by adoption - commonly sit their eleven year-olds down and lecture them on the wonders of homosexual relationships, or that they take their teenagers to "gay association meetings" (whatever those are). Yet, somehow, children do not seem to be growing up permanently scarred by the absence of these formative experiences. I would therefore suggest that they are, at best, completely unnecessary.

And as for banning foster parents from taking children in their care to church: well, I think that just illustrates the extent to which far-left, anti-Christian, ideology dominates social services departments. It's fine, it seems, to sit children down and force them to hear about homosexuality, but raising them in the religion which is still adhered to by the majority of Britons - well, that's just beyond the pale!

This case is particularly ridiculous, when one considers that we have for some time had a nationwide shortage of foster parents. Banning couples like the Mathericks, or the Johns, from fostering is not going to solve that situation, and will not help any children. But for the social workers, helping children evidently comes a poor second to promoting leftist ideology.

Hat-tip: Cranmer