It’s a wingnut victim story, y’all!
Eunice and Owen Johns are a Pentecostal couple in the United Kingdom who are unwilling to care for all children equally, insisting that they would have to tell any foster children in their care that homosexuality is sinful. For this, they lost their rights to foster children, took their case to court, and have now lost:
A ruling from Britain’s high court found that a Pentecostal Christian couple’s belief that homosexuality is morally wrong could be used as a factor in deciding whether they can care for foster children.
Eunice and Owen Johns, aged 62 and 65 respectively, couldn’t convince judges at London’s Royal Courts of Justice that a British city discriminated against them after they expressed their views on homosexuality, the Guardian newspaper of London reported Monday.
The case stems from the Johns telling a Derby city social worker in 2007 that they couldn’t tell a child that a “homosexual lifestyle” was acceptable, the Guardian reported. The couple had cared for foster children in the past and wanted to take in children aged 5 to 10.
In their ruling, Lord Justice Munby and Justice Beatson noted they weren’t striking down the Johns’ beliefs but ruled instead on the discrimination stemming from those beliefs, the Guardian reported.
“No one is asserting that Christians (or, for that matter, Jews or Muslims) are not ‘fit and proper’ persons to foster or adopt,” the judges wrote in their ruling, according to the Guardian. “No one is seeking to de-legitimise Christianity or any other faith or belief. On the contrary, it is fundamental to our law and our way of life that everyone is equal before the law and equal as a human being … entitled to dignity and respect.
That last quote from the judges’ ruling is the key here. Fundamentalist Christians have a weird complex, in which they believe that most or all of their co-religionists are also flaming bigots like they are. This is simply not the case. There are members of every religious faith whose beliefs on sexuality have matured in light of science and experience. Moreover, there are members of every religious faith who are adult enough to care equally for the all children, even gay ones. What is at issue here is that Eunice and Owen Johns are using their backwards religious beliefs as a plea for an exception to that rule. The fact that they are anti-gay and cannot get past that makes them a danger to any foster child who happens to be gay.
In foster care, the children’s needs come first — not the fee fees of a Pentecostal couple unable to get past their discredited beliefs on sexuality and embrace the harsh light of reality.
