Ruth Gledhill Blog: a justification for gay adoption?

[...] I'll end with the moving story of Martin Reynolds, 53, the gay Anglican clergyman from Wales who is spokesman for the Lesbian and Gay Christian movement. He and his partner foster a boy under a long-term arrangement. When he rang a Catholic adoption agency to offer himself and his male partner as prospective parents, they "didn’t get past the receptionist". The couple, from Newport, have been together for 27 years and became civil partners last year. Their 19-year-old son has severe learning difficulties and behavioural problems. Without Fr Martin and his partner, the boy would almost certainly have remained in an institution all his life. They became respite carers for him when he was just four, and became long-term foster carers when he was 14 - undergoing a vetting process almost identical to adoption. He said social workers had asked them if they could become long-term foster carers to the boy after a national trawl of potential adopters or long-term fosterers had failed. Martin's partner, Chris Iles, 47, a shopkeeper, is a practising Catholic and they have raised their son as a Catholic, taking him to mass regularly.

Fr Martin described the decision to take the child into their home for long-term fostering as the "best decision we ever made in our lives." He said: "It is extremely hard to find long-term fosterers or adoptive parents for children with special needs, and all the Catholics are doing is closing down possibilities and reducing the options that could mean those children were placed in the most appropriate care." The couple have now offered themselves as prospective adoptive parents or long-term fosterers to a number of agencies, highlighting their experience with severe learning difficulties.

The phone call to, and subsequent rejection by, the Catholic agency was made as part of this effort, he said, and left him with a sense of desperate sadness. Fr Martin said he believed the stance being taken by the Catholic Church in England and Wales was being driven by a hard-line Vatican approach. Read more