Paganization, Adoption and Discrimination

Paganization

The Paganizing or the anti-Christianizing of our society has been in the headlines during February. There was the Government's desire in the new Local Government Bill to allow local authorities, at Council Tax-Payers' expense, 'intentionally to promote homosexuality' and 'promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.' This they are wanting to achieve through a clause in the Bill that repeals 'Section 28'. They improperly said that Section 28 was a cause of bullying. That was quite contrary to the evidence of the survey they cited, as Kevin Glazebrook, Professor of Statistics at Newcastle, has pointed out. Section 28 is simply a necessary protection against the sexual subversion of children. It was a great answer to many prayers when Baroness Young's amendment secured the defeat of the Government at the Committee stage of the new Bill on 7 February in the House of Lords. But, of course, the battle is not over yet.

Baroness Young was not helped in the debate by the official line of the Church of England - represented by the Bishop of Blackburn (other bishops, however, were supportive). The Bishop of Blackburn was wanting to substitute Section 28 with a new clause on guidelines about marriage. Of course it would be good to strengthen teaching in our schools about the importance of heterosexual marriage. But it is vital at the same time to continue to prohibit 'the intentional promotion of homosexuality'. This would seem to be the majority public opinion. 76 percent nation-wide voted 'No!' in an ITV poll to the question 'should children be taught that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle?' on 10 February.


Counselling Out

The focus of Section 28 is children and young people. Children were also the focus of the second piece of evidence for the Paganizing and the anti-Christianizing of our culture. Channel 4 TV is currently running an Adoption on Trial series of programmes. On 10 February (the same night as the poll) one of the Dispatches programmes was entitled 'The Fight for a Child'. It dealt with Britain's current adoption crisis and how certain perfectly good prospective parents are 'counselled out' by adoption agencies and so prevented from adopting. I first came across counselling out in the case of a fine Christian man I know through the Christian Institute who together with his wife were excluded from fostering because of their views over this very issue of homosexuality. When questioned about their beliefs and attitudes they gently said they would be 'uncomfortable' with a child who wanted to be homosexually active. For holding such views they were deemed unsuitable by the agency - and the agency was Barnardo's!

Knowing that this sort of thing was going on, I was not surprised by revelations in the Dispatches programme. But they were shocking nonetheless. At one point in the programme the narrator was dealing with people being excluded and she referred to the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF). Here is a transcript of what followed - after a woman from BAAF had spoken, the picture cut to a woman whose face was never revealed but who was called 'Linda'.


'The Fight for a Child'

Narrator: BAAF discovered another surprising group was also being ruled out.

BAAF official: A very interesting one we have begun to notice - people who have a religious affiliation that is not absolutely mainstream C of E, and where they practise that religion.

A Parent [Linda]: There was one particular local authority - I contacted them about a little boy; and I was saying, 'Look are we the appropriate age? We are Christians. This is what our life is like. What do you think?' And she said, 'Not only do I think that the child is not suitable for your lifestyle, I don't think any child from the care system can fit into your lifestyle.'

Narrator: Linda and her husband are active members of their local Baptist church and read the Bible every day at home. They are now in the process of adopting a six year old boy; but it has taken two years to persuade a local authority their strong Christian faith is something positive.

Linda: We feel that as Christians we have received from God unconditional love and it's something that we can give these children; and you know children are just missing out; and it's so sad.

Narrator: They were prepared to adopt one child who might have been sexually abused, but the social worker rejected them. One of the reasons given is quite extraordinary.

Linda: She said, 'You and your husband haven't lived with anybody else before you got married.' And I said to her, 'Well, you know why - you know that's because we're Christians.' And so she said, 'We feel you're not sexually mature enough for this child.'

The final piece of evidence for the Paganizing and anti-Christianizing of our culture relates both to adoption and homosexuality. This time it concerns my own wife of whom I have never written before in a Coloured Supplement; but this needs to be reported.


Dr Joy Holloway

There have been two doctors who are the Medical Advisers to the Newcastle upon Tyne Social Services Adoption Panel. One, a GP, has dealt with the adult prospective adopters. The other, a Paediatrician, has dealt with the children, many of whom, as we know, will be highly vulnerable and damaged for a range of reasons. The Paediatrician has been my wife, Joy, an Associate Specialist Community Paediatrician, who specializes in Adoption and Fostering. As a committed Christian she is also one of the few medical doctors that has the courage nationally to speak out on the wrongness of placing children with practising lesbian or male homosexual adopters - both for moral reasons and for not being in the best interests of the children from the point of view of the healthy development of the child. She reports that after she has spoken out people regularly say in private they are in agreement with her, but they are unwilling to say so publicly.

On 18 January she was called to see two senior social work managers at the Civic Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne, and was told that there was no criticism of her work but that Social Services wanted her and the other medical doctor to cease to be Medical Advisers to the Adoption Agency and to cease to attend the Adoption Panel from 1 March 2000. However, Social Services would like her to continue to see the children for their medicals. They said they wanted another doctor to be the Medical Adviser to the adoption agency and only this new person would attend the Adoption Panel and so be party to the decisions on the children. The other current Medical Adviser, however, would continue to be on the Fostering Panel.

Joy said first that she thought it would not work with one doctor seeing the children and another one presenting information to the Panel on children they had not seen. She did not think this was in the best interests of the children. Secondly, she asked if the new arrangements were because she had expressed her views very clearly that it is morally wrong and not in the best interests of children to place them with practising lesbian or male homosexual carers. She was told this was not the primary reason for demoting her. However, she is concerned that this is discrimination on religious grounds.


History and Conclusion

In 1985 Joy was appointed to be a Medical Adviser to the Adoption and Fostering Unit and she was a voting member of the Panel for both Adoption and Fostering. In 1990 she spoke out against lesbian adoption in a case that had a national profile and where the court later reversed the Social Services' decision which she had all along opposed - this is documented in my new book Church and State in the New Millennium, (HarperCollins, London, 2000), pp. 19-26. She was then demoted to being a non-voting member of the Adoption and Fostering Panel.

In summer 1999 she had a correspondence with Margaret Asquith, the new Head of Children's Services, Newcastle Social Services Directorate, again saying she thought it wrong to place children with practising homosexuals. In Autumn 1999 she was excluded from the Fostering Panel. In January 2000 they wanted to remove her from the Adoption Panel and set up a system which is likely to be unworkable. A different senior Community Paediatrician, who is not a young person and who has not specialized in Adoption and Fostering, has now been asked by Social Services to be the new Medical Adviser from 1 March.

Newcastle Social Services do not have a good record. The 1990 case was quite disgraceful. It appears, under Margaret Asquith, to be accepting of homosexual parenting and of placing vulnerable children in such 'pretended family relationships' (Section 28). In terms of morality (and the clear teaching of the Bible) this is wicked. But ignoring morality, the evidence is that children can suffer developmentally. In a well reported study one quarter of the young adults from lesbian households became involved 'in same-gender sexual relationships' themselves, whereas none of the participants from the heterosexual single-parent control group did. That compares with only 2 percent of this age group in the general population who have ever had a homosexual relationship. Homosexual adoption and fostering, like the repeal of Section 28, has to be opposed.