Conservative leader David Cameron has been accused of contributing to the closure of Roman Catholic adoption agencies in order to win homosexual voters.
In 2007 Mr Cameron voted for new ‘gay rights’ laws forcing adoption groups to consider gay couples as potential adopters without any protection for religious agencies.
Newspaper columnist Gerald Warner says the Conservative leader had “calculated that it was worthwhile insulting Catholics (8 per cent of the electorate) to please homosexuals (0.8 per cent) because he believed (correctly) that the former do not constitute a bloc vote and imagined (incorrectly) that the latter do”.
The new laws have now seen most of these agencies – known for their work with ‘hard to place’ children – either cut ties with the Roman Catholic Church or drop out of adoption work.
Mr Warner was responding to an article in The Catholic Times by Christopher Graffius commenting on the impact the closure of the agencies will have on children.
Mr Graffius encourages readers to “drop a line to David Cameron and ask him – in the context of the public spending freeze to come – why he felt it so necessary to destroy a third of the capacity of the voluntary adoption sector”.
He warns that “some of the most needy, disadvantaged and desperate children will be denied a chance of an adoption into a stable, loving family” as a result of the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs).
The SORs make it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services, including adoption services.
The decision to pass the SORs with no protection for religious groups “goes against the available evidence”, writes Mr Graffius.
“This suggests that same-sex co-habiting couples are more likely to suffer relationship breakdown than co-habiting heterosexual couples, where 52 per cent will have moved out of their relationship within five years.
“It does no favours to ‘difficult to place’ children, many of whom may have been physically or sexually abused, to place them with couples who will, in the majority of cases, suffer relationship breakdown.
“In these cases the interests of the child have always come first, except in parliament.”
Mr Graffius writes: “The irony is that Catholic Children’s Societies help people whom the state would turn away.
“The public services are so stretched that they will not seek to help anyone whose situation is not deemed to be ‘critical’.”
The two major parties have continued to compete for the ‘gay vote’ this week, with Labour Minister Chris Bryant pointing to a Conservative MP’s support for a free speech protection in the offence of inciting homophobic hatred as evidence of a “poor voting record” on these issues.
Last week David Cameron said he was sorry for supporting a law preventing local authorites from promoting homosexuality in schools, and reiterated his support for ‘gay marriage’.