Retreat on adoption and the Equality Act will crumble

The standoff over gay couples' rights is unlikely to be easily resolved. The churches' moral authority is fatally compromised
    • The Guardian,
    • Jump to comments ()
It's hard to see how Tony Blair is going to wriggle out of this one: can the Catholic Adoption Agency get an exemption from the Equality Act's requirement that it consider gay couples as parents? Ranged up on one side of the argument is the Catholic church, emboldened by the recent success of its lobbying power over this government after it forced Alan Johnson into a humiliating retreat over faith schools last autumn.

The ambitious Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Birmingham, sees adoption as round two. That would be bad enough given the capacity of the Catholic church to reach constituency postbags, but powerful allies are lining up behind Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Catholic leader. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have come out in defence of the "rights of conscience"; it can only be a matter of time before the Muslim Council of Britain voices its support; and there is likely to be sympathy for the cardinal's stand among Jewish religious groups - some of which run adoption agencies. The irony is that one of the most religious prime ministers of recent decades has antagonised all the main faith institutions in the country.

Blair's problem is that whatever compromise he's minded to hatch to appease the faithful, it is likely to prompt an unholy dispute in his own party. Normally loyal figures such as Lord Falconer have already argued that "it is extremely difficult to see how you can be excused from anti-discrimination law on grounds of religion". Other cabinet figures such as Alan Johnson and Jack Straw oppose any exemption, while powerful figures in the parliamentary Labour party, such as Angela Eagle, have declared that the churches' position "is close to blackmail".

At this stage of his career, has Blair got the authority to force an unpopular concession through a party for whom this Equality Act is not just any piece of legislation, but an expression of its most cherished political ideals? Blair has form on this issue - 200-odd new faith schools, Christian evangelicals setting up academies - believe some in the cabinet and parliamentary Labour party, and now is the time to take a stand.

So all sides are limbering up for a fight - and it's a fight over principles not practicalities. In reality, gay couples are extremely unlikely to approach the Catholic Adoption Agency, which only deals with 4% of all adoptions every year anyway. This was an area where the Equality Act's requirements were unlikely ever to reach. But that's not the point; both sides of this argument are agreed on one thing: they want to clarify the role of faith in public life and who has jurisdiction over it. Do faith institutions have a legitimate role in public life in a largely secular country? Are faith institutions subject to the laws of the land even when those are contrary to their own beliefs and doctrine? Does the state recognise the "rights of conscience" in the phrase used by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his letter to the prime minister?

There are other issues at stake in this confrontation. How does a culture of immense diversity find accommodation between very different sets of values - what kind of tolerance do we allow and what values are allowed to trump others' cherished values? And when values are changing so rapidly - from illegality to gay rights in little more than a generation - how do you ensure that a new consensus is given time to develop, or are you entitled to steam ahead, confident of your moral superiority?

In this case, the key issue is that the Catholic Adoption Agency is a body in receipt of public money that provides a public service, taking children from local authority care and placing them with adoptive parents of any or no religion; this activity is not intrinsic to its religious belief or practice. Therefore the state is entitled to insist that the activity is in accordance with the laws of the land. Allow exemption over this, and all manner of comparable exemptions might be claimed; it could make a gruyere cheese out of the Equality Act.

The Catholic church wants a compromise - the subject of discreet negotiations between churches and government for months - in which the Catholic Adoption Agency refers gay couples on to other adoption agencies. This is the sort of compromise achieved before in clashes between church and state; the closest parallel is the Abortion Act of 1967 and the provision it offered for Catholic doctors, nurses and other health professionals to opt out of involvement in abortions despite being employees of the NHS.

But it's indicative of how the public mood has hardened since the 60s against the claims of faith and its assertion of the "rights of conscience" that the kind of compromise achieved over abortion looks fraught with political fallout for Tony Blair in 2007. The moral authority of the churches has been decisively compromised over the past 30 years - a combination of declining numbers and issues such as convictions for paedophilia - with the result that there is less public inclination to cut them some slack and accommodate their scruples: to sample the levels of hostility towards the Catholic church, and the cardinal in particular, just take a look at the vociferous blogs focusing on this row in the past few days.

Meanwhile, it looks as if once more the churches have picked the wrong fight for the wrong reasons. It does them no favours to be back in the headlines - yet again - over the sexual behaviour of a minority of the population.

Latest posts

Today's best video

Today in pictures