Catholic Church in Adoption Rumpus

[mirrorshard]

There's two things I really don't get about this business. First, the Church are claiming that complying with anti-discrimination regulations (binding on organizations accepting government money) and placing children with gay couples is against their principles.

If you'll excuse my language - bollocks it is. Their religious principles, even the bad, wrong, counterproductive ones that say homosexuality is a sin (and if I recall correctly, that's from Leviticus. The same book of the Torah Bible that prohibits the wearing of mixed fibres, advocates the death penalty for witches and women taken in adultery, and lays down the Jewish dietary laws) have nothing whatsoever to say about accepting government funding. With the option of going it alone freely available, suggesting that their religious principles are being compromised is complete nonsense.

Secondly, the Church are claiming that if they don't get an exemption, they'll have to scream and scream until they're sick close their four adoption agencies, which between them place 200 children a year. "Oh, no," they say. "It's not a matter of sulking at all. We'll just have to close for lack of funding if we can't accept the conditions attached to your dirty dirty government money."

If you'll excuse my language - bollocks they will. This is, let me remind you, the Catholic Church we're talking about. The same millennia-old incomprehensibly rich organisation that spent most of its existence running a substantial fraction of the globe. The same guys who, for a long time, more or less defined civilised Western society... we used to call it 'Christendom' for a reason.

And they're telling us they can't afford to run four adoption agencies, in the faith-based charitable sector, with all the cheap labour costs that that implies? My heart goes out to them, really it does.

Whoever's using the World's Smallest Violin, please pass it back, the Catholic Church needs YOU.

Comments

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Adoption agencies, whatever their faith background, should obey state law and should not discriminate unlawfully against prospective parents. They also shouldn't discriminate against children. Around 10% of these children will turn out to be queer. If the agency is homophobic and the parents are buying into that, then there is a strong chance that such children will have a wretched time of it and experience homophobia from their adoptive parents. The consequences of this are serious: suicide rates are particularly high amongst young gay men in particular (http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Factsheets/Diversity/Factsheetlgb.htm), along with incidence of bullying and so forth. Many young queer people are rejected by their families, even thrown out into the street. Because of this, I feel that no child should be placed with an avowedly homophobic family for risk of ill-treatment. How would we react if the Catholic Church dragged out some biblical quotation that was supposedly against disability or mixed-race, and claimed their right to reject all disabled or mixed-race parents (or children, come to that)?