The devil you know

摘要

Something has changed in Northern Ireland when the historically Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (Dup)-found-ed by the late Ian Paisley-goes in to bat for the province's Catholic bishops. Could it be that sectarian rivals, taking their cue from Catholics and evangelicals in America in the 1990s, now find common cause on moral issues that trump old divisions? The issue resurfaced on December 4th when the Catholic bishops withdrew support for a church-rooted adoption agency, the Family Care Society, which claims to be the region's leading finder of homes for hard-to-place children. The decision followed a series of judicial rulings saying the agency, like its counterparts elsewhere in Britain, must consider same-sex couples as adoptive parents on the same basis as heterosexual ones.