Retreat on adoption and the Equality Act will crumble  The
standoff over gay couples' rights is unlikely to be easily
resolved. The churches' moral authority is fatally compromised
• The Guardian,     • Jump to comments () It's hard to see how
Tony Blair is going to wriggle out of this one: can the Catholic
Adoption Agency get an exemption from the Equality Act's
requirement that it consider gay couples as parents? Ranged up
on one side of the argument is the Catholic church, emboldened
by the recent success of its lobbying power over this government
after it forced Alan Johnson into a humiliating retreat over
faith schools last autumn.  The ambitious Vincent Nichols,
Archbishop of Birmingham, sees adoption as round two. That would
be bad enough given the capacity of the Catholic church to reach
constituency postbags, but powerful allies are lining up behind
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Catholic leader. The
Archbishops of Canterbury and York have come out in defence of
the "rights of conscience";