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

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

I don't think we fundamentally disagree. I'm uncomfortable with the identification of children as 'Catholic children' rather than 'children from a Catholic family' or the like, but I'm not sure it isn't a moot point in these circumstances.

Can you compel a church or a religious individual to act against their professed beliefs?

You and I both know, some of these professed beliefs are as nutty as weasel-free fruitcake. Some are actively harmful - this one is, given the suicide rate amongst young gay men, largely due to familial and social rejection. It's not like some extremes, though, which condone or even preach murder on religious grounds.

I really don't see a meaningful distinction between professed religious beliefs and other kinds of professed belief. They can hold any belief they want, as far as I'm concerned, but if they try to put it on a privileged pedestal because it's Religious, we get to point and laugh. They just can't put dangerous or harmful ones into effect. We can't legislate against beliefs, but we can legislate against behaviour, if we're willing to call it wrong or bad, or (as in this case) if we're willing to decide that it breaks the terms and conditions of continued funding.

I also don't see a problem with giving them a grace period in which to adjust to a new legislatory or regulatory climate - this just seems normal. At the very least, they should be allowed to carry on as before until the end of the current funding period.

Of course, what will actually happen is that they'll identify some related factors and start turning prospective gay couples down on the basis of that instead.

For that matter, how many gay couples actually go to Catholic adoption agencies in any case? Given that the agencies place 200 children a year between them, which almost certainly means rather fewer than 200 families adopting children, the number of prospective adopters can't be that vast, and I'd suspect that a rather lower proportion of them than in the general population will be gay.

The tragedy is, gay Catholic couples would probably be ideal for a gay teenage adoptee from a Catholic background, but this is pretty much the exact scenario the adoption management probably want to forestall.

As regards an overall lessening of our freedoms, to be honest I'd far rather the state (involving elected and accountable officials) managed this particular aspect than that a religious body with a top-down appointed hierarchy and an appallingly bad record on children's rights did. But yes, they do have the complete right to withdraw themselves from state oversight and continue as they have been, and I wouldn't try to take that away from them.

Much as I'd like to.