LONDON — Two senior judges have banned a Christian couple
from any further foster care because they oppose homosexuality, a stance that the
judges said has no place in the laws of a “largely secular” Britain.
Owen and Eunice Johns, of Derby, England, have already
fostered 15 children, but the High Court in London ruled that they can no
longer continue the practice because their anti-gay views are legally wrong.
In their decision delivered Feb. 28, Lord Justice James Lawrence
Munby and Justice Jack Beeston said that under 21st-century British law, the
rights of homosexuals “should take precedence” over the rights of religious
faiths, including Christians.
The two judges decreed that Britain had evolved into a “largely
secular,” multicultural society whose laws “do not include Christianity.”
Eunice Johns, a retired nurse, called it “a sad day for Christianity.”
The judges said that “although historically this country is
part of the Christian West, and although it has an established church … which
is Christian, there has been enormous changes to the social and religious life
of our country over the last century.”
The Pentecostal couple had fostered children since 1992
until taking a break. When they reapplied in 2007 to resume fostering, they
were told that their attitudes toward gays violated Britain’s new sexual
equality laws.
Eunice Johns argued that “all we were not willing to do was
to tell a small child that the practice of homosexuality was a good thing.”
Gay-rights campaigners applauded the court’s decision to put
“21st-century decency above 19th-century prejudice.”
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