Should the state take a position against certain religious beliefs?

In America, despite what wackjobs like Christine O'Donnell would have you believe, our first amendment assures us that the state can "make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This is a great foundation of law that basically says: you do what you want, I'll do what I want, and the government will leave us both alone.

The problem comes in when what you believe infringes upon what I believe, or vice versa. Sometimes, not everybody gets what they want. Either you infringe directly on the other person, or the government infringes on you to stop you infringing upon them. So how do we decide who wins and who loses?

I don't know what the laws in the United Kingdom are, but this is an issue they are dealing with now that I wouldn't be surprised to see in the States. A Christian couple want to be foster parents, but they are being denied because:

Mrs Johns said her Christian beliefs would not allow her to tell foster children that being gay is acceptable.

Their lawyer is quoted at guardian.co.uk in regard to the couple:

[T]hey will take any child. Valuing diversity does not mean that you cannot have a disagreement or do not respect a person while not valuing certain lifestyles.

So Mr. and Mrs. Johns could be placed with a budding homosexual child. And Mrs. Johns, because of her religion, would tell that child that his/her feelings are unacceptable. It is very likely that she would share her religious belief that the child was destined for never-ending torment in hell.

Mrs. Johns beliefs regarding homosexuality are wrong. Disgustingly, laughably wrong. We have freedom of religion in America, and people like her are free to believe whatever they want about how their sky fairy views what people decide to do with their genitalia. But that does not give them the freedom to push those beliefs onto others.

Foster care is closely associated in people's minds with adoption. People are allowed to pass their beliefs to their children whether these are biological or adopted. But I think foster care is more closely related to child care (commonly referred to as "day care"). In child care and school settings--environments where, like foster care, the adults in question are not intended to be the child's primary or permanent spiritual/moral teachers--you are not allowed to share your negative attitudes toward marginalized groups. In fact, you are required to teach tolerance toward such groups. And not the "I don't like them but I won't beat the crap out of them" kind of tolerance, but real "These people should be treated with respect just like everyone else" tolerance.

The Johns are going to court over their rights to force other people's children to be subject to their nasty beliefs in exchange for having a roof over their heads and, to no one's surprise, leading bishops in the Church of England are backing them. According to the senior clerics' letter: 

“This ‘equality’, however, privileges homosexual rights over those of others, even though the Office for National Statistics has subsequently shown homosexuals to be just one in 66 of the population.”

What an irrelevant factoid to present. As if the size of the minority has anything whatsoever to do with the morality of the situation. That's akin to assuming that, since whites outnumbered blacks in America, slavery should have continued. Why buckle to a minority? Especially since most whites' religious creeds at the time included the belief that they were masters of the earth and all other peoples in it and that slavery was just aces.

This statement, from the lawyer, is baffling in its stupidity: 

"The promotion of values is something that the court should be protecting, especially when these religious values are recognised as giving a moral framework to values in our country."

Condemning homosexuality has nothing in common with moral values. It is a piece of dogma. A vile one, that many Christians, among other religions, reject. Society should absolutely protect and encourage the promotion of values, but valueless dogma doesn't fall under that heading. And if the values you're trying to promote are tangled up in harmful dogma, you need to untangle that mess before you can expect anyone else to accept it.

Again from the bishops: 

“Research clearly establishes that children flourish best in a family with both a mother and father in a committed relationship."

Let's put this colicky baby to bed already. As Religious Tolerance.org points out: 

Those opposed to same-sex marriage (SSM) often point to studies which show that children raised in families headed by a father and mother fare much better, both in childhood and later as adults. But further examination shows that most of these studies are not applicable here, because they  compare families with opposite-sex parents to single-parent families, not with those headed by same-sex parents.

Research into, you know, actual gay families has shown that the only difference between kids of gay parents, as opposed to straight parents, is that the former are more likely to be teased because of their family situation. Who are they teased by? Probably by the kids of parents like the Johns who teach children that homosexuality is so horrendously awful that gays deserve to be tortured for eternity.

So let me get out my tiny, tiny violin for the Johns and others like them whose rights are being infringed upon. Because if somebody's gotta lose here, I hope to FSM it's the haters.