Gay adoption
court appeal
Former magistrate Richard Page, who was
sacked after stating his religious view in
an adoption case, has taken his case to the
Court of Appeal.
As a magistrate,
in 2014, he had been
considering a gay couple’s application
for
adoption. One of the applicants had been
previously rejected as an adoptive parent,
and Richard Page thought the couple were
adoption shopping in England with a view
to taking the child overseas. He told his two
fellow magistrates, whilst deliberating behind
closed doors, that he thought the child up for
adoption would do better with a heterosexual
couple. He was reprimanded and ordered to
undergo equality training. He repeated his
Christian belief in a TV interview, and he was
then dismissed in 2016 as a magistrate, and
suspended as an NHS Trust non-executive
director. In a legal first, Richard Page sued
the Lord Chancellor and the NHS Trust for
discrimination and lost.