Catholic Challenge on Adoption Fails

04 July 2011

The Charity Tribunal has rejected an application by the charity Catholic Care, which is the social care organisation of the Diocese of Leeds, to amend its objects regarding its adoption services in order to permit the charity to restrict its services to exclude homosexual couples.

The application was based on the argument that the charity’s voluntary income from contributors would be harmed if it did not restrict its objects and was forced to operate an ‘open adoption service’.

Other Catholic adoption agencies have changed their methods of operating in order to comply with equal treatment legislation, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Catholic Care ceased offering fostering services in 1995.

The Tribunal concluded that ‘religious conviction alone could not in law provide a justification’ for the policy of the charity and that the proposed discrimination could not therefore be justified as ‘a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’ within the meaning of article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.  

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