Guest Post by Joseph Harker

On the topic of that Anti-gay Christian couple lose foster care case, occasional CiF contributor Joseph Harker updates a piece he wrote last November:

I was appalled at the way the panel on last Thursday's Question Time ignored the elephant in the room when a member of the audience asked whether they would have allowed Eunice and Owen Johns to foster a child, even though their faith would not allow them to condone homosexuality.

Their flimsy fall back to justify the High Court's decision to prevent them from offering a child a loving foster home was that 'the interests of the child must come first' because there is an outside chance that a child they foster might be gay.

We have seen that public opinion towards gay couples adopting a child has softened in recent years, and even the normally homophobic press recently published pictures of Sir Elton John, his civil partner - both white - and their adopted child playing happy families.

We can also rule out the Johns' Christianity as having been counted against them - the race hate case brought by a devout Muslim woman against supposedly Christian B&B owners Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang was thrown out by an English court.

Let's also remember that Michael Gove, the ideologically motivated Education Secretary who has no responsibility for or experience of adoption now wants to encourage mixed-race adoption, provided of course that it's white parents adopting coloured children.

So the elephant in the room is... the fact that the Johns are black, and this is what really counted against them.

As I explained last November [link above], this government is determined to dilute black and ethnic culture in this country by social engineering which borders on ethnic cleansing. There are thousands of other black couples up and down the country who are keen to foster and adopt children of their own race and culture, but the Tory-Lib Dem coalition is determined to prevent this, as a result of which the number of children in care from black and ethnic minorities has rocketed to one fifth.

The other reason why there are so many black and ethnic minority children in care is of course the savage cuts to the welfare system, a resumption of Thatcher's 'war on single mothers'. Black and minority ethnic mothers are of course disproportionately among the most disadvantaged in society - in terms of jobs, housing or welfare - so it is unsurprising that so many of these are forced to give up their children - many of which have white fathers - for adoption.

Yes, stable homes are always better than living in care. But to deny the importance of race is not only insulting to minorities, it also risks causing unnecessary confusion and distress to those vulnerable children who look to the state to protect them. And it will not be until the savage welfare cuts are reversed and black foster parents given the same favourable treatment as white couples that black and minority ethnic children will have the same right to a stable upbringing in their own culture that white children can take for granted.