{"id":2541,"date":"2011-03-02T08:58:05","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T08:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2011\/03\/christians-banned-from-foster.php"},"modified":"2011-03-02T08:58:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T08:58:05","slug":"christians-banned-from-foster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/christians-banned-from-foster","title":{"rendered":"Christians Banned from Foster Care over Gay Views"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON (RNS) Two senior judges have banned a Christian couple from any further foster care because they oppose homosexuality, a stance that the judges said has no place in the laws of a &#8220;largely secular&#8221; Britain.<br \/>\nOwen and Eunice Johns, of Derby, England, have already fostered 15 children, but the High Court in London ruled that they can no longer continue the practice because their anti-gay views are legally wrong.<br \/>\nIn their decision delivered Monday (Feb. 28), Lord Justice James Lawrence Munby and Justice Jack Beeston said that under 21st-century British law, the rights of homosexuals &#8220;should take precedence&#8221; over the rights of religious faiths, including Christians.<br \/>\nThe two judges decreed that Britain had evolved into a &#8220;largely secular,&#8221; multicultural society whose laws &#8220;do not include Christianity.&#8221;<br \/>\nEunice Johns, a retired nurse, called it &#8220;a sad day for Christianity.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe judges said that &#8220;although historically this country is part of the Christian West, and although it has an established church &#8230; which is Christian, there has been enormous changes to the social and religious life of our country over the last century.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe Pentecostal couple had fostered children since 1992 until taking a break. When they reapplied in 2007 to resume fostering, they were told that their attitudes toward gays violated Britain&#8217;s new sexual equality laws.<br \/>\nEunice Johns argued that &#8220;all we were not willing to do was to tell a small child that the practice of homosexuality was a good thing.&#8221;<br \/>\nGay-rights campaigners applauded the court&#8217;s decision to put &#8220;21st-century decency above 19th-century prejudice.&#8221;<br \/>\n<strong>&#8211; Al Webb<\/strong>, <em>Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON (RNS) Two senior judges have banned a Christian couple from any further foster care because they oppose homosexuality, a stance that the judges said has no place in the laws of a &#8220;largely secular&#8221; Britain. Owen and Eunice Johns, of Derby, England, have already fostered 15 children, but the High Court in London ruled&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":264,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-news","category-rns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Christians Banned from Foster Care over Gay Views<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/christians-banned-from-foster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christians Banned from Foster Care over Gay Views\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"LONDON (RNS) Two senior judges have banned a Christian couple from any further foster care because they oppose homosexuality, a stance that the judges said has no place in the laws of a &#8220;largely secular&#8221; Britain. Owen and Eunice Johns, of Derby, England, have already fostered 15 children, but the High Court in London ruled&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/christians-banned-from-foster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-03-02T08:58:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"editor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Christians Banned from Foster Care over Gay Views","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/christians-banned-from-foster","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Christians Banned from Foster Care over Gay Views","og_description":"LONDON (RNS) Two senior judges have banned a Christian couple from any further foster care because they oppose homosexuality, a stance that the judges said has no place in the laws of a &#8220;largely secular&#8221; Britain. Owen and Eunice Johns, of Derby, England, have already fostered 15 children, but the High Court in London ruled&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/christians-banned-from-foster","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-03-02T08:58:05+00:00","author":"editor","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/christians-banned-from-foster","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/christians-banned-from-foster","name":"Christians Banned from Foster Care over Gay Views","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-03-02T08:58:05+00:00","dateModified":"2011-03-02T08:58:05+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/58d12601cbe230a61e6f2ea91d341249"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/christians-banned-from-foster#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/christians-banned-from-foster"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/christians-banned-from-foster#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Christians Banned from Foster Care over Gay Views"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/58d12601cbe230a61e6f2ea91d341249","name":"editor","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dfc\/dfcc0838a84dd70003db24678b13c234x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dfc\/dfcc0838a84dd70003db24678b13c234x96.jpg","caption":"editor"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/editor"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/264"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}