Comments

1
help! help! i'm being discriminated against for my discrimination!
2
Why is it that every time we hear the words "christian beliefs" it's always linked to something ugly, or bigoted, or hateful, or ignorant?

(Rhetorical question).
3
I am reminded of the Jersey couple who named their child Adolf Hitler and then couldn't figure out why CPS took a sudden interest in the conditions inside their home.
4
"the Church of England permits its clergy, so long as they remain celibate, to enter into civil partnerships"
Wait, what?
5
Yup, I can follow Dan's logic.

Momentarily, I was amazed that an American court would actually rule against anti-gay Christians.
6
I just don't get those two. They say they want to help children. The appropriate authorities say, "Great! We just have to make sure that you can demonstrate commitment to treating any child equally". Their response? "How dare you ask us to commit to equal treatment? RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION!" And then it's not about helping kids at all, just them and their persecution complex.
7
Normally I'd dismiss this as the usual failings of the British nanny state run amok (those Christians innkeepers should have had the right to refuse service to a gay couple). But subjecting any gay kid to a childhood full of hateful churches, disapproving parents and encouraged conversion therapy is tantamount to child abuse. Most of the time you can't tell if a kid is gay at a young age so the foster care system must the avoid the risk, no matter how small, of putting a gay kid into an abusive family. That's their job. Modern psychology hasn't been on the side of these foster parents for 40 years.
8
Amazing. But in the UK, not in the US. We have a long way to go before reaching that point.

And as for @4, yeah well. No wonder the church culture is so fucked up. But I'm puzzled anyway, since I'm pretty sure the Anglican church does not restrict marriage among its deacons, priests, etc. Perhaps the CoE is a more strict offshoot of the Anglican church...
9
What @8 said. While certain areas of Canada are hard to be black in, it's usually recent immigrants that have a hard time of it.

Remember, Jesus had a curly afro.
10
We would do well to follow England'd lead here, as they recently ruled against a B&B owner who refused service to a gay couple, as well. And Canada, who told it's bigoted marriage commissioners they had to do their job regardless of their "personal" feelings...it's just common sense. We would prohibit people from being being foster parents for many different reasons, and "probability of inducing suicide" should be pretty high on the list.
11
The witch hunters want children? No fucking way! You can't withhold medical care for a child because you think prayer will cure them. You can't withhold love from a child for the same reason.
12
My parents learned while taking classes to foster that there are a large number of older children in the system who are there because their parents kicked out them out because they are gay. So imagine if these 'phobes fostered a child, the child came out as gay and then kicked that child out into the street, putting them back into the system. Disgusting!

Also, uh... still waiting on that logical reason for homophobia other than "some dude said God said so forever ago."
13
This has been up for over an hour and still no "homosexuality causes mental illness/suicide/STD's in children and teens" post from the Period Troll? Weird.
14
Aren't foster parents effectively employees of the state? They receive state funding in order to raise foster kids-- that's the same in the UK as it is in the US, right? If so, I don't see why the government shouldn't be able to decide not to "hire" bigoted people for this job, since it may have a direct negligible effect on their ability to do it well.
16
@13 the Period Troll is busy with the Red Sea Flo.
17
@8: No, the Church of England is mainstream Anglican. The mother church of Anglicanism, no less. But what a stupid, unworkable, hypocritical, cowardly, satisfying-to-absolutely-no-one policy!
18
Oh, there's a poll here, http://tinyurl.com/46e8aoz about half way down... :D
19
It broke my little mind when I moved to Louisiana in '88 and saw how viciously homophobic some of my black co-workers were. They were probably among the 4% of blacks who voted for David Duke "for religious reasons." I know it's stupid to think that people who are discriminated against should be empathetic to other minorities, but it was so jarring to see nonetheless.

I'm glad they check for this kind of bigotry in Canada. I wonder if it happens here.
20
@18 Thanks. I took the poll. It was slightly in favor of the couple.
21
Haha, yeah, I aged out of the foster care system last year after having been placed with a fundamentalist Christian organization for eleven months. One of their rules was that you HAD to attend church, and so I was required to sit through innumerable hours (these were the kinds of sermons that take three hours at least) of people wailing passionately about the evils of Muslims, homosexuals, Hindus, other miscellaneous non-Christians, Jews, and so forth. They also wouldn't let me hang out with my friends because, as an out queer girl, it was assumed that I was having sex with them. Even though I'd been out and proud for months, it drove me up the wall to have to be constantly on the defensive about my sexuality and religious affiliation, and to be unable to interact with the people I was closest to outside of school--at a time when I was supposed to be cared for after having been removed from an abusive family environment, no less.
22
@21 Glad you're out now (of the foster system! no pun intended!) and able to spend time with whomever you please. The sad part is, those people actually think they're doing something good, like telling kids about the evils of crack, not possibly causing irreparable harm. The extent of their delusion is stunning.
23
@21. You go girl. I'm glad you made it through.
24
@21 - see? It does get better. Even if it sucks for a long time first. Glad to hear you made it.
25
Yeah, but it's a Daily Mail poll.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1…
26
Wasn't there an excellent feature in The Stranger recently about non-white adopted kids discovering as they grew up that their white parents had unexamined prejudices? I know it's not strictly pertinent to the analogy, I just got distracted.
27
As usual, we're behind the 8-ball. Thanks England for giving us a role model.... and apologies in advance on behalf of my bigot-shit countrymen, cause it's gonna take us awhile....
28
This is just a tangent, but:

Actually, Vince @11, in 39 states, you CAN withold medical care for a child because you think prayer will cure them. In fact, in 5 states (Oregon, Iowa, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Ohio), you can get away with manslaughter, murder, and/or homicide of your child if you use a religious defense.

I happen to know this because my parents were raised in Christian Science, one of the wealthier and more "respectable" faith-healing cults (I call it "the Scientology of 50 years ago" because so many rich folks and celebrities were members). She and my dad knew dozens of kids who died horrible, easily-preventable deaths. They knew even more people who were debilitated for the rest of their lives due to a childhood of abuse and medical neglect.

This continues today throughout the U.S., from children who go completely deaf during normal childhood ear infections, to a kid who died a few years ago of an intestinal blockage (after days of vomiting up his own feces while the church elders prayed for him). Children's Healthcare is a Legal Duty (CHILD), a small nonprofit, has documented some of these deaths and info on their website about the legal details: http://childrenshealthcare.org/?page_id=…
29
@22, 23, 24- Thanks! It should be mentioned that after I aged out, I was effectively adopted by a family for whom my orientation is so normal as to not be worth remarking upon beyond a "You know it's okay for you to take whoever you want to prom, don't you?" at the breakfast table. I love them to itty bitty pieces.
30
I didn't see the poll there. Maybe they took it down because it didn't show what they wanted it to any longer?

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