It’s not just the Archdiocese of Washington fuming over recognizing homosexuals as human beings. The United Kingdom’s Roman Catholic Church, which has 11 adoption agencies, is still in the fight against having to consider gay couples as fit parents for kids.

Only one of those agencies is still fighting the 2007 law that prohibited discrimination against gays in such matters.

Three Catholic bishops told worshippers that they were taking the case of the Catholic Care adoption agency to the High Court on Wednesday because they were fighting for the rights of vulnerable children to a loving family. They said that the closure of the adoption agency, which finds new homes for about 20 ‘difficult-to-place’ children each year, would represent the loss of an ‘effective and well-respected resource’. The agency, which serves the dioceses of Leeds, Middlesbrough and Hallam in South Yorkshire, is the only one of 11 Catholic adoption agencies in the country to continue to fight the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs). The law outlawed discrimination against gay couples in the provision of goods and services and was pushed through Parliament in 2007 in spite of protests from leaders of all the mainstream religious faiths. It meant that Catholics adoption agencies – which together found new homes for about 250 children in care each year – were obliged to assess same-sex couples as potential adopters or foster parents.

Naturally, you’ve got the Church calling gay adoption “gravely immoral” and all those wonderful superlatives. And you’ve got British lawmakers reminding everyone that, hey, government is a secular institution, people.

The appeal to the High Court will be heard on the same day that the Catholic bishops of England and Wales publishes a pre-General Election document in which they say it is ‘essential’ for politicians to support marriage and the family. While the main political parties disagree on the importance of heterosexual marriage, with Labour arguing that it was simply a lifestyle choice, they share support for civil partnerships and gay adoption.

[Daily Mail]