The Cutting Edge Consortium, launched in November 2009, consists of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered groups, political and social justice activists, people of all faiths and none, trades unions and professional associations.

The CEC has been lobbying hard to prevent such exemptions from finding approval. From their press release (no link).

The Cutting Edge Consortium (CEC) deplores the tabling, yet again, of an amendment to the Equality Bill, this time by Baroness Williams of Crosby, designed to provide an explicit exemption for religious fostering and adoption agencies from anti-discrimination law. The aim of Equalities legislation should be that services targeted at various population groups are provided in the overall context of achieving a more equal society, not to institutionalize discrimination.

The gutting thing here, is not only that such amendments have wasted so much debate time already, but the Equality Bill is now more than likely to go to wash up, having been held up and not prioritised highly enough in the timetable.  Wash up is a dangerous place for such a Bill where the Tories will seek to remove some of the more progressive elements of the Bill.

CEC agrees with Baroness Murphy's comment at Committee stage:

"I would defend to the death the rights of religious groups and organisations to believe what they want to believe but, when it comes to how those religious groups behave in relation to the rest of society, they cannot exercise a right that so diminishes the rights of other groups. ... these amendments are deeply, offensively, homophobic."

CEC's Maria Exall said:

"Everyone committed to promoting equality and non-discrimination will be alarmed that charities providing key services in the public interest will be able to act in a prejudicial way to LGBT people if these amendments are passed."

CEC notes that claims are often made that this involves a matter of religious `doctrine' but, for example, Catholic teachings on sexual orientation are not to be considered as "core doctrine", and are officially recognised by the Vatican and  Catholic theologians world-wide as Third Level teachings and subject to development. As such they require "religious respect" from Catholics but are also capable of conscientious dissent. Such dissent does not excommunicate anyone from the Catholic Church. The avoidance of conflict "with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion's followers" ignores the reality that many people of faith exercise their right to dissent in this area of religious teachings across a number of faiths and denominations.

All peers in the Lords are being urged to reject the amendment.  

Following the Court case, Catholic Care will be revising its objectives to explicitly state that "The Charity would only provide adoption services to heterosexuals..."

The Charity Commission is being asked to consider whether whether the benefits of the charity operating in this discriminatory manner outweigh the disbenefits of it not operating at all. Given that children in care are under the legal care of the local authority, not the agencies themselves, would authorities really want to be placing children with agencies that willfully discriminate?

A minority of religious adoption agencies have chosen to discontinue adoption work while still providing other services. However, many of these agencies have never discriminated against either single homosexual people or, more recently, same-sex couples since legislative changes enabled such joint adoption. They do not propose to do so now.

The Catholic Care case continues to drive a wedge between people in asserting that the rights of faith groups over ride those of gay people and thus reinforcing negativity on both sides. Hopefully the Lords will see sense again and the bigots will not win.