Britain is in dire need of more foster parents. Fostering has been in the news a lot lately, and much of it has been discouraging, but the Government's announcement a couple of weeks ago that there will be a new charter for fostering provided a glimmer of light among all the darkness. Tim Loughton, the minister for children, said: "This charter makes it clear that these foster parents should be able to play the role of any parent looking after his or her own children, and they should have the back up of the local authority to be able to do that."
Loughton mentioned things like haircuts and sleepovers - things that some local authorities make foster parents seek permission for - as "things that we would take for granted with our own children", that foster parents should also be able to do freely. The Department for Education also weighed in according to the BBC report on the matter, saying "the charter was designed to make it clear that a foster child should be treated as part of the family, and their views taken seriously".
Great stuff, especially when you consider that one of the things any parent has to do is to talk frankly with their kids, to answer their questions honestly. It's the role of the parent to let their children find their own way, but not without guidance and advice. Inevitably, children won't always do what the parents want them to do, and the parents don't love them any the less for that. Yet it would be completely wrong for those parents to say "I think what you're doing is fine" if they thought it was morally wrong.
Therefore if the fostering charter is to work, it should reverse the stupid decisions made around Eunice and Owen Johns. The Johns are an ordinary couple with ordinary mainstream views. They applied to be foster parents, willing to take on any children and love them as their own, accepting them as they are, nurturing them, protecting them... in a word, parenting them. The Johns are Christians but that doesn't mean they would be pushing their beliefs onto the foster children - it just means that if someone asked them about their beliefs, they would explain their views.
The mainstream Christian belief that sex belongs only inside a marital relationship does not stop those that hold that belief from loving those that have sex outside of marriage - from accepting them, protecting them, nurturing them, loving them. But the Johns were not allowed to be foster parents simply because they hold that belief. It's not something they would have ever raised with their foster children, unless the foster children asked them for advice or their opinions on sexuality. Whatever the children's beliefs and actions, the Johns would have treated them the same way. No discrimination, no lack of acceptance, no inequality, no undervaluing of diversity. Yet just because they held that view - even without the intention of ever expressing it unless explicitly asked - the Johns' application was rejected and a court disgracefully upheld that decision.
Somewhat bizarrely, the judges said "No one is asserting that Christians - or, for that matter, Jews or Muslims - are not fit and proper persons to foster or adopt. No-one is contending for a blanket ban." Yet Christianity, Judaism and Islam all teach that sex outside of marriage is morally incorrect. If that wasn't the reason for refusing the Johns' application, then what was?
There are lots of Christian parents in this country. Not all of us are good parents, but the vast majority are - and certainly being a Christian does not make you a bad parent. Yet, apparently, it does make you a bad foster parent. If the Government are genuine about making sure foster parents can treat their foster children the way they would treat their own children, they must be allowed to have, and to express, views on sexuality - including that they believe some practices to be morally wrong. Is that really so much to ask?
