Social workers have become the new moral arbiters

You’d never think the country’s short of foster parents, would you, though we’re 9,000-odd short at the last count.  I wouldn’t qualify myself, even if I were solvent. Because if you open your trap in the presence of a social worker to say that a child is best off with a father and a mother, viz, probably the view of most actual parents, you can kiss goodbye to your chances of looking after a child unless it’s one you have given birth to.

I refer, obviously, to the case of the Catholic couple who’ve been told they can’t adopt a couple of children they’ve been fostering since the start of the year – warm and loving is how they were described – because when they were told that a gay couple was looking to adopt the children, their reaction was along the lines of – you are joking, aren’t you?

Bad mistake.