Wholly irrational crossness

I should be hammering away at the 50,000 word rock face.

I'm not because of Andrew McClintock, a 63 year old magistrate doesn't want to handle cases that might give rise to adoption placement with a same-sex couple and so has had to remove himself entirely from family court panels. He has made me a bit cross, because of this. He thinks it wrong, in conflict with his christian beliefs, to be a position where he might be required to place a child or children with an adoptive couple who happen to be of the same sex.

McClintock is using as a central plank of his claim for discrimination and unfair dismisal the work of an american academic who has produced a research paper suggesting that there is some if not conclusive evidence that placement with same sex couples is not absolutely always totally successful. Wow.

I can't find the identity of this particular academic in anything being published today on this case and McClintock's appeal, but it does occur to me that it cannot have been terribly difficult to find, among all the academics working in American in the field, one who had produced a paper containing data useful to anyone arguing the line against adoption by same-sex couples.

Whether McClintock is wrong or right to be opposed to such adoption is, however, a bit of a red herring. Since when have those sworn to uphold the law pick and choose which bits of the law are convenient to them and their conscience, and which are a trifle discomforting and therefore to be discarded? To wish for the freedom so to do is however in keeping with being a biblical fundamentalist, spouting Leviticus at the drop when convenient, but happily scoffing roast pork for Sunday lunch and keeping spare cash in an interest bearing bank account.

What I'm really cross about, however, is that this awful little man has got in the way of me doing other things this morning.