Catholic adoption agency loses five year legal battle over its refusal to accept gay couples

• Catholic Care said it would lose its funding through Church collections and other voluntary donations if it allowed same-sex couples to adopt children
• Charity Commission insisted charity's stance is 'divisive, capricious and arbitrary' and 'demeaning' to dignity of homosexual couples
• Judge was told that charity's stance was in clear violation of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights
• Charity says it might close its adoption services after landmark court ruling

Roman Catholics who  support traditional marriage and oppose gay rights are not bigots, a High Court judge declared yesterday.
Mr Justice Sales said those who follow religious beliefs long established across Europe ‘cannot be equated with racist bigots’.
Rather, he said, these Christian views ‘have a legitimate place in a pluralist, tolerant and broadminded society’.

Defeated: A Catholic adoption agency has been told it cannot turn away gay couples if its wants to keep its charitable status (file photo)

His comments came at the end of a four-year legal battle by the adoption society Catholic Care against equality laws making it place children with gay couples.
Despite his call for tolerance, Mr Justice Sales rejected the claims of the Leeds-based agency.

His ruling means it will now abandon its 100-year-old adoption service, which found families for ten children every year.
The judge told the Upper Tribunal that Parliament has made  discrimination against gay  couples against the law.
He added that the agency could not show weighty reasons why it should be an exception to this.

The Charity Commission fought the case every inch of the way, insisting that the charity's stance is 'divisive, capricious and arbitrary'

However, he rebuked the Charity Commission, which described the service as being run on behalf of bigots that helped children only of one race.
The declaration that traditional Christian views are not bigotry came amid a continuing row over gay rights and if opposition to these is prejudiced and ignorant.
It has led to clashes between pressure group Stonewall and Scottish Catholics after Cardinal Keith O’Brien was dubbed ‘bigot of the year’.
He was given the insult after describing same-sex marriage as a ‘grotesque subversion’ of marriage rights.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was also caught up in the debate after the draft of a speech used ‘bigot’ to describe opponents of same-sex marriage.
Catholic Care said it will now be forced to close its adoption service. Ten other Catholic adoption societies have already stopped all their adoption work.
Labour’s Sexual Orientation Regulations came into force in 2008 and became part of the Equality Act passed in 2010.