We have something of a hullabaloo here at the moment.
Catholic adoption agencies currently refuse to adopt out to gay couples. Soon, the Equality Act will come in in which deals with discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Anyone care to guess what the problem is?
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales and three times winner of the Most Irish Name award, has written to the PM saying that to hold the Church’s agencies to this Act would itself be discrimination of their religious beliefs. And here’s another problem; those in charge aren’t willing to abide by this new law, and so they’re saying they’ll be forced to close if not exempted. Thats potentially a good few kids who may not then be placed with a couple.
So, questions.
Should the Catholic adoption agencies be given an exemption from this law? Both in moral terms and in practical ones.
Is this discrimination on the basis of religious belief? If so, at what point do we make our compromises between two different types of discrimination?
If Catholic agencies are just serving as enablers, like dating services, then that’s one thing, and I think it would be wrong to force them to match up families if they disagree with them, even though I find their positions to be vile.
However, if they actually “own” the children and control the process of them getting adopted, then what right do they have to deny a child parents based on a bigotry the child doesn’t necessarily share?
No, I don’t think they should be exempt. I think they need to decide what their priorities are; to help children and couples build families or to hang on to antiquated ideas about who is worthy to express love in the same way the rest of society does.
Yes, it is discrimination. We discriminate against all kinds of stuipid religious ideology. Hiding your prejudices behind god doesn’t make it ok.
With regard to children not being placed, I don’t see this as a problem. Pregnant women will take their newborns to other agencies who actually want to help them find loving families.
I’m not entirely sure. According to the Cardinal, the agencies do refer gay couples to other agencies that may be willing to help (i’m not entirely sure how they fit that in with their beliefs, but that’s a matter for them). I can’t find anything definitive about whether they are merely go-betweens or if they’re the guardians of the children themselves, though there are things which suggest it could be either way.
I’d be happy if anyone with a more detailed understanding of the sitatuation could come and explain it.
And those who take them to the Catholic agencies will know the kid will get placed with a different-sex couple. Which may be important to the mother.
There should be options available to same-sex couples, but so long as they exist, why would the same-sex couples choose to go to an agency that indicates they won’t consider them, other than to look for war? Each and every agency (Catholic or otherwise) should indicate what will they consider before people get involved: is it ok if one or both partners are not Catholic, for example? Is it OK if one or both is a foreigner? Is it OK if one or both spends a lot of time away from home?
No. Why should bigotry be given a pass just because it’s in the name of religion ? And from a practical standpoint, if religious conviction exempts one from laws outlawing discrimination, you might as well just eliminate all such laws because they will become unenforcable; anyone who wants to indulge his bigotry will just say "God demands it ! " and get a pass.
Secular law should always override religious rules, as long as that law is not targeted at that religion, or imposing a religion. And outlawing discrimination is only discrimination in the the most nitpicking sense of the term anyway.
I mentioned this with regard to the catholic agencies being shut down because of their prejudice. While it may be important to the mother whether or not the adopting parents are gay, I don’t think the kids will not be adopted. They’ll be placed through agencies who do not discriminate. I’m sure mothers who care about who adopts can go the private adoption route; that is, I assume private arrangements are made there. I may be wrong in assuming that.
Uh, by private adoption you mean that the mother and family know each other? The whole point of giving your kid to an agency is that you don’t have to go through the problems of finding a family… many of the cases in Spain are kids whose parents don’t even know the kid isn’t just fat but pregnant. The last thing those kids want is to have to speak with anybody for more than the five minutes necessary to say “where do I put it?”
The Catholic agencies place about 4000 kids a year and the local council reimburses them the £20k per head they claim it costs. A third of these kids are categorised ‘hard to place’ special needs kids. The British Agency for Adopting and Fostering (who support gay adoption rights) say this would be hard to replace.
The Church is saying it will close the agencies down rather than comply and so this would impact on the lives of vulnerable children.
The issue is complicated by the fact that the Minister in charge is a member of Opus Dei and strongly supports an exemption. Rumour has it she will resign.
“Give in to our bigotry or the kids get it.”
That’s not how I would interpret ‘Suffer the little children…’ but I’m not a theologian so what do I know. :rolleyes:
I understand what the function of the agency is. I’m just saying that if discriminatory practices cause the agency to close, there is an option for a woman who wants to make sure a traditional mother/father couple adopts her baby. Does it make it more difficult? Sure. But no more difficult than the gay couple’s quest to adopt in a system that discriminates against them. The tables are turned…that’s all.
A religious adoption agency should get be exempt from adopting to gay couples. However, it should also be willing to not receive gov’t funds if public policy is to allow adoption to gay couples. However, IF the public sector needs the help of the religious agency more than the reverse, then it gets interesting.
Personally, I think religious social services should abide by their own convictions & if the state tries to pressure them, then the religious social services should pull an
Atlas Shrugged. Let’s see who needs who.
I think the parents who put a child for adoption have the right to chose an agency that will place their child in the hands of a new family that they approve of.
As long as the Catholic agency is not receiving government funding and the parents are in no way coerced into placing their children there, they should be free to set whatever restrictions they see fit.
If I want to open an adoption agency that only takes zoroastrian asian diabetic girls with one black tooth to give to lesbian redheaded democrats, nothing should go against me (other than market forces, that is)
“The Catholic Church’s agencies are said to handle 4%, or about 200, of all adoptions a year. However they handle about a third of those children judged difficult to place.”
I have no opinion, given the Church’s established stance, I just don’t see why they should take that stance in the first place.
Okay, the only rational objection I can think of is that, in theory, being exposed to two parents of different gender could acclimate a child to a variety of life’s idiosyncracies. But given that the variety of human psychologies inside a given gender is greater than the average difference between genders, I don’t think that holds water.
The only other rational objection would be if they came out and asked the prospective parents if they had sex, which, while I don’t agree with the objection, is against the Church’s morality. If they didn’t have an active sex life I see no moral objection to it at all, and poking into a couples’ sex life for purposes of vetting them for adoption is mega-icky.
I have thought long and hard about this issue, since adoption is a pet cause of mine, and I am all for laws that make it easier for people to adopt if they are fit parents. I think that adoption agencies should generally be open to considering as many parents as there are who are willing to adopt…especially for hard-to-place children
That being said, I don’t think an agency should be forced to do so. As others have pointed out, the bottom line is that the birth parents have a right to choose what kind of parents their child will be placed with. Some may not want to have to pick a specific person/couple, and they should be able to be ensured that the agency will place the baby with someone they feel comfortable with. It certainly is discriminatory, but all private adoptions are, too. A birth parent has to choose which set of parents they think is best suited to raise their child…whatever reasons they have for picking one set of parents over another is discrimination against someone for some reason. To not allow the parents and the agency to pick who they want for whatever reason is religious discrimination, IMO.
Of course, this all does hinge on whether or not the agency is playing the role of a state agency vs. a private agency. If the state is placing the children with the agency to act as a go-between, then they need to follow all anti-discrimination laws that are in effect. If they don’t, then the state needs to figure out a different way to get these kids placed.
Here is an article about Catholic Charities shutting down adoption operations in Massachussetts, for this exact reason.
Before I launch into my opinion, I should point out that I am both atheist and gay, so declare a one-sided view of this.
Firstly, I believe this is a long overdue anti-discrimination law. It covers not just adoption but all areas where discrimination on the basis of sexual discrimination might come into place.
If you believe that sexual orientation is not a choice (as I do) then it is the government’s duty to fight discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the same way that they should fight other forms of discrimination (such as gender and race).
I think it is unnaceptable for the Church OR the mother to be allowed to discriminate in this way, just as I think it would unnaceptable for, say, a white mother to say ‘I don’t want my baby going to a black family’.
The longer we allow legal sanction for organisations to practice discrimination that engenders hatred against a minority, then the longer this prejudice is deemed to be acceptable. It is not acceptable.
Acceptable how, though? Morally or legally? Do you seriously want to take the birth parent’s right to pick a parents for their children, according to whatever criteria they want to use? What about people who deliberately pick gay people (Dan Savage wrote a book about adopting his son, and the birth mother picked him & his boyfriend because they were gay)…is this unacceptable as well? It is discrimination just as surely as deliberately picking a straight couple. Should all placements legally have to be done at random, so no one gets to have any say in where their child is placed? I think if this was the law, you could expect to see a lot fewer adoptions taking place.
That excludes the council adoption agencies, all of whom produce their own figures. The 4000 figure I quoted may be in total or just plain wrong.
But I guess it’s not about the numbers it’s about the principle. And for me the principle is no Discrimination. I can’t refuse to let a room to Catholics, refuse to serve Catholics or otherwise discriminate against them. Rasta’s can’t smoke weed. Open the door to religious excuses for discrimination and you open a whole can of worms.
Well, the American policy – and from what I know of the legal standards in the two countries, I don’t see why this is not appropriate for England and Wales as well – is that a “private” (i.e., non-governmental) agency is free to act in accord with its own beliefs as to what is most appropriate (presuming it does not violate law in doing so). However, if it accepts government money to underwrite the doing of its work, then it is obliged to abide by government standards.
In other words, if a Catholic agency, funded by the Catholic Church, chooses not to place adoptive children with gay families, that’s their business. Deplorable, IMO, but their beliefs. But if they want reimbursement of the “£20k per head” (an absurdly high figure, again IMO), then they comply with the law of the land.
I don’t see where the birth mother’s rights have anything to do with it. She’s giving up her parental rights by choice. Unless she can prove that harm would be done (for example, I don’t think she should be forced to give her child to people who were known child abusers), why would she have any say-so? If she wants to do a private adoption, she should pursue that. But we’re talking publicly-funded adoption, aren’t we? Aren’t gay couples paying into that system?