During a Bloggingheads discussion between Maggie Gallagher and E.J. Graff, Maggie attempted to make the case that same-sex marriage turns some religious Americans into second-class citizens, or at least has given them good reason to fear they will become second-class citizens. The main example Maggie used to illustrate this was the closing of Catholic Charities in Illinois.
So what happened in Illinois? From The New York Times:
The controversy in Illinois began when the state legislature voted in November 2010 to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples, which the state’s Catholic bishops lobbied against.[…]
Catholic Charities affiliates received a total of nearly $2.9 billion a year from the government in 2010, about 62 percent of its annual revenue of $4.67 billion. Only 3 percent came from churches in the diocese (the rest came from in-kind contributions, investments, program fees and community donations).
In Illinois, Catholic Charities in five of the six state dioceses had grown dependent on foster care contracts, receiving 60 percent to 92 percent of their revenues from the state, according to affidavits by the charities’ directors. […]
When the contracts came up for renewal in June, the state attorney general, along with the legal staff in the governor’s office and the Department of Children and Family Services, decided that the religious providers on state contracts would no longer be able to reject same-sex couples[…].
After losing a lawsuit against the state, the Church decided to get out of the foster care business rather than place foster children with same-sex parents. “The Dioceses of Peoria and Belleville are spinning off their state-financed social services, with the caseworkers, top executives and foster children all moving to new nonprofits that will no longer be affiliated with either diocese.” In the other areas, Illinois will contract with other private agencies to take over.
Six thoughts on this:
1) This is exactly like the case of City Clerks who refuse to help same-sex couples.
In their private lives, religious Catholics are free to snub gay and lesbian people all they want (although most Catholics would do no such thing! But my point is, they’re free to). They can refuse to go to dinner with a lesbian couple, refuse to drink Starbucks coffee, refuse to see the touring company of “Chicago,” and write blogs arguing that Ellen and Portia aren’t really married – whatever.
But Catholic Charities, in its dealings with foster children, is a paid agent acting on behalf of the state. Just as a city clerk is not free to refuse services to lgbt taxpayers, Catholic Charities, when acting for the government, cannot refuse services to same-sex couples. Just as the government isn’t allowed to discriminate, the government’s paid agents aren’t allowed to discriminate.
If a government agent, be it a city clerk or Catholic Charities, refuses to perform their job duties, then they can’t reasonably expect to hold on to their position. As the judge in Illinois told Catholic Charities, “No citizen has a recognized legal right to a contract with the government.”
But – contra Maggie – just because state and local governments (and their agents) are not allowed to discriminate, it doesn’t follow that private citizens need to fear being fired en mass if they don’t like SSM. That’s just fearmongering.
2) Foster children have a legal right to have their best interests put first.
The question should always be, “who are the best parents available to take care of this foster child?” Catholic Charities was instead asking “who are the best heterosexuals available to take care of this foster child?”
Unless there is never an instance in which a particular same-sex couple would be the best available match for a particular foster child, then it’s irresponsible and harmful to children to ask the former question, rather than the latter question.
3) Anti-gay policies harm lgbt foster children.
Quoting Lambda Legal (written before the judge’s decision):
The dioceses’ refusal to license gay and lesbian prospective foster parents sends a message of exclusion, not only to the couples themselves, but to lesbian and gay youth in state care, who are particularly vulnerable. Gay, lesbian, transgender, and gender-nonconforming adolescents are disproportionately represented in foster care populations because they often experience rejection by their own families. If the dioceses’ lawsuit succeeds, these children would be told by the authorities caring for them and by their government that they are morally unworthy ever of forming families of their own, and that their future relationships in adulthood—no matter how loving, how committed, or how responsible—will be inferior to those in other families.
4) There was no bait-and-switch.
Both Maggie, in the Bloggingheads dialog, and Bishop Paprocki in the Times article, imply that they were “given the impression” that civil unions would have no effect on Catholic Charities in Illinois.
Yet two months before the civil unions bill was passed took effect, Catholic Charities lobbied hard for SB 1123, which would have amended the Illinois civil unions bill to exempt Catholic Charities and other religious child-care organizations from Illinois’ non-discrimination law. (The amendment died in committee). Clearly, Catholic Charities understood well ahead of time that the civil unions bill would put them in conflict with anti-discrimination law.
5) What about religious freedom for those who favor marriage equality?
The self-appointed spokespeople for religious freedom rarely, if ever, acknowledge the many religious people and leaders who favor marriage equality. The real threat to religious liberty is when more powerful religions force their religion’s rules on all of society, as happens when same-sex marriage is banned. Religious freedom is increased by legal recognition of SSM.
6) Does religious freedom require ending legal protections for LGBT people?
In their grasping at straws to argue that marriage equality is a threat to religious freedom, SSM opponents constantly invoke examples from states – like Illinois – that don’t even have marriage equality. What’s being discussed in Illinois, at heart, is a conflict between a religious group and anti-discrimination law. SSM opponents frequently cite similar cases from other states that don’t currently recognize same-sex marriage.
These arguments from SSM opponents logically amount to a claim that when lgbt people have rights – when anti-discrimination laws exist, when domestic partnership exist – that’s incompatible with religious freedom.
If we take arguments like Maggie’s seriously, SSM opponents don’t just require same-sex marriages to be banned in order to be free. For SSM opponents, freedom requires that lgbt people have no legal protections. For SSM opponents, freedom means government agents actively discriminating against lgbt people.
And if (as I suspect) that’s not what Maggie and other SSM opponents really intend to say, then they should change their arguments.
SSM opponents paint a vision of marriage equality and religious freedom as hopelessly opposed, like fire and water. Either lgbt people accept permanent second-class citizenship, or religious people do. I reject that narrow vision.
Compromise is not only possible, it’s commonplace. We can see that in marriage equality states like Massachusetts, millions of SSM opponents live in freedom; their churches have not been forced to shut down (or host gay weddings), their jobs haven’t been lost, etc.. Once the law treats people equally, mutual tolerance becomes much easier.
Every time Maggie brings up OMG WHAT ABOUT TEH CLERKS over at Family Scholars, I’ve asked whether she would be equally concerned about a government clerk who refused to license/register interracial marriages or interfaith marriages. To my complete nonsurprise, I’ve never gotten any sort of answer to this question.
Wow – nice entry, Amp. I’m impressed that Gallagher and Graff would have found this Illinois example to illustrate their argument. I’m more impressed with the thoroughness with which Amp dispatched their argument. It seems very clear that Illinois’s choice not to extend a contract with Catholic Charities had very little to do with state recognition of same-sex marriage.
Rather, Illinois’s choice seems to be based on a policy of letting same-sex couples adopt and raise kids on the same basis as male-female couples. I suspect that THIS policy is the real target of Gallagher’s/Graff’s concern. We can agree or disagree about the merits of this policy. But I hope we could ALL agree that a policy of extending marriage rights and a policy of extending adoption rights are DIFFERENT policies. I’m amazed that people who have been arguing about same-sex marriage for years still fail to recognize the distinction.
That said….
Let me turn to a broader theme: The Collective, the Individual – and Unbundling. Unbundling is a regulatory mechanism for chopping up policies into smaller pieces, thereby granting people greater autonomy to pick and choose.
Yes, as far as I can tell, government has the right to extend adoption rights to same-sex couples. But that does not mean that government must stop doing business with people who decline to offer adoption rights to same-sex couples. Instead, government could unbundle its adoption-services contract. For example, government could certify a list of qualified adoption service providers, and issue vouchers to couples seeking adoption services to pay for adoption services provided by any of the listed providers.
Would that facilitate private discrimination? Yup; that’s another way of saying it would facilitate private choice. And generally, I’m pro-choice. Assuming that there are enough adoption service providers willing to serve any segment of society, private choice would suit me fine.
In short, I can see a legitimate governmental purpose in extending adoption services to same-sex couples. I can’t see the legitimate governmental purpose in using this policy to discriminate against people opposed to extending adoption services to same-sex couples. I acknowledge that there may be administrative reasons why unbundling would not work in this situation, and the discrimination experienced by Catholic Charities may be simply an incidental effect of the pursuit of a legitimate governmental purpose. But I also acknowledge that the opposite possibility: perhaps government COULD unbundle its services, but chose not to due to indifference or hostility to a policy opposing adoption by same-sex couples.
Incidential governmental discrimination is regrettable and unavoidable. But in the interest of promoting autonomy, let’s try to keep it to a minimum.
Incidential governmental discrimination is regrettable and unavoidable. But in the interest of promoting autonomy, let’s try to keep it to a minimum.
No. Simply no. The law is the law. Discriminating against those that break the law is A-OK in my book.
If you want taxpayer money, you will play by the government rules. Whether those are good rules or bad rules is a different debate.
There’s already too much crap with which people get away by hiding behind religion.
On the other hand, I wish that it would be easier to thumb your nose at government regulations by NOT taking taxpayer money. But there’s this annoying voice in the back of my head that says ‘Your property rights devolve form the state, your safety is guaranteed by the state, you can only do business because the state makes it possible, and if you don’t like this, go live in Sudan’.
Meh. Most things are not simple. But this issue is. If they can’t provide the service the government wants, they won’t get the government contract.
I wish the Catholic church would behave differently. Since they won’t has there been any success in finding other providers for foster care services? My limited understanding is that it’s not a high profit activity and part of it was ‘subsidized’ by the churches desire to help children.
In Illinois, two of the Catholic agencies were “spun off” from the Catholic Church, and are now self-standing agencies providing the same services (but without regard to sexual orientation), with the same staff, as they did before. So in a lot of Illinois, there was no need to replace anyone.
There doesn’t seem to have been a problem replacing Catholic Charities in the rest of Illinois. Catholic Charities in Illinois were largely supported by what the State paid them for foster care, and only about 2% of their funding came from the Church. (There are some numbers quoted in the post.)
Well, I’m broadly in support of the concept that if you take the government’s nickel, you dance to the government’s tune. Based on what I read here I am in sympathy with the Catholic Charities’ moral stance but not with their legal one.
This, however, is a different story:
Oh, no. Hell, no. My property rights devolve from God. The State’s legitimacy devolves from it’s effectiveness in helping me preserve those rights. The legitimacy of my property rights do not come from the State.
Tell that to the relatives of the hundreds of people who have been murdered so far in the City of Chicago this year, never mind how many people have sustained violence at the hands of others (including rape) that fell short of death. My safety is guaranteed by my right to self-defense and my willingness and ability to use it. The State is a tool in that, which is why I pay it money to recruit, arm , train and deploy the police, fire and military forces. But through my willingness to support those State structures and in exercising my personal rights to self-defense (including but not limited to taking advantage of the Second Amendment) I am the final guarantor of my safety. If the State is the guarantor, why can’t I sue the State if it fails?
Actually, Catholic Charities are asking “who are the best parents available to take care of this foster child”. But they also believe that the answer includes “not a pair of homosexuals”.
Or, they had in fact been told that civil unions would have no effect on them but figured that the people who told them that were lying. Or mistaken. Not having researched the issue, I”m not going to say what the actual situation was – just pointing out that there are alternatives to your scenario.
But as agents of the government, they’re not allowed to answer the question that way, just like they’re not allowed to answer the question with “not a pair of Jews.”
Regarding the bait and switch, I agree, that’s possible. But in any case, this turn of events was not something Catholic Charities had failed to anticipate.
Yes – as long as they take government money you’re right. At least in Illinois.
My late father ran a Boy Scout camp in the ’60’s. I spent my entire summers at camp from the ages of 9 through 15. I can remember listening to him talk about turning down some Federal money for the camp. I asked him why and he said “Because if we take their money we have to do things they way they want them done.”
Thank you!
See, nobody appreciates me.
Yeah, I’m not surprised by that, either. I have to admit, I’m also a bit disappointed that Maggie hasn’t responded to this post at all.
The problem with the religious freedom argument is that when most of the people on this board say “religious freedom,” we mean freedom both of and from religion for everyone, no matter their religion, if any. When the anti-SSM crowd says “religious freedom,” they mean that if they have a religious reason for anything, any laws that would prevent them from doing it should not apply, and any expectation that they follow the rules everyone else follows is morally equivalent to throwing them to the lions.
(Yeah, I know, that was harsh. Amp is much more measured and logical. I’m just sick of the double standard.)
People who think religious freedom includes “freedom from” are in general going to be way off base. Do you think sexual freedom includes “freedom from”? Freedom of speech includes “freedom from”? “Freedom from” construction, other than in some very marginal cases, implies positive control over OTHER PEOPLE, in a way that “freedom of” generally does not.
Your “freedom from” religion means that you walk into a Catholic hospital and demand that they follow your beliefs, not theirs, when it comes to family planning or abortion. It means expecting people to not wear the emblems or symbols of their faith in public places. “Freedom from” sexuality means expecting gay people to not show PDA in ways that would be accepted from heterosexual people. It means expecting that “my children don’t need to hear about that in school”.
And so forth.
In general, when someone talks about their “freedom from”, what it means is that they are not satisfied with “freedom of” because “freedom of” doesn’t compel other people to act as though the first person’s preferences ought to automatically control.
Or that you walk into the public sphere and demand that it conform to Catholic beliefs, rather than secular ones.
Which is what’s happening.
This isn’t about what Catholic hospitals or Catholic charities are ‘allowed to do’ as a matter of law. It’s about what they’re able to do while still expecting public funding.
Do whatever the heck you like on your own dime. There’s no law against opposing racial integration, but if you declare loudly that you’ll never let an interracial couple adopt, we won’t fund you, and probably won’t let you be in charge of adoption.
—Myca
Like hell it does. You’re seriously mischaracterizing my argument based on one word, and I’d appreciate if you’d knock it off. When I say “freedom from” religion, I don’t mean I should never have to encounter religious beliefs I don’t like. It means that people should not get religion as a “get out of jail free” card to do things *to others* that in other situations would not be acceptable. That is, freedom from having other people’s religious beliefs *imposed on me* in a way I didn’t agree to and that violate other rights.
It means not having anti-bullying policies written specifically to exclude gay kids or religious bullying in general. It means not having what’s normally medical malpractice suddenly become okay because of the doctor’s religious beliefs. (See, for example, Arizona, where a doctor is legally entitled to *lie* to a pregnant woman about birth defects in order to keep her from having an abortion.) It means not using my tax money to prevent my gay friends from adopting a kid.
Yes, if I’m having a miscarriage, and the ambulance *takes me* to a Catholic hospital, you’re damn right that I’d like to actually receive medical care. If the Catholic hospital doesn’t wish to provide me with life-saving care until the fetal heartbeat stops, then it’s *their* job to either tell the ambulance driver to go somewhere else or verify that I as a patient am okay with having my life risked in that fashion. Having an ER implies that you actually intend to provide emergency treatment. If you aren’t willing to do that, the onus is on you to make that clear, not on the woman bleeding and having a panic attack in the back of an ambulance to ascertain that based on the fact that the hospital has “Saint” in its name.
And yes, if I die because of their religious beliefs, my husband should get the same compensation that he would if I died because the doctor screwed up my care and let me die for a non-religious reason (gross incompetence, sleep deprivation, whatever).
To go back to the actual topic, Catholic Charities, in this particular case wanted the freedom to impose their religious beliefs on gay couples and on foster kids at the taxpayers’ expense. They wanted to use their religious definition of marriage and have it override the legal definition of marriages and civil unions. It’s no different than if they wanted to refuse to adopt to a couple because they weren’t Catholic.
But because they define “freedom of religion” as “our religion means we should get to do whatever we want,” they think that’s acceptable.
@KellyK Agreed on all points (maybe Catholic hospitals should just not have ER’s?). As well as being completely baseless from a legal standpoint, I find the ‘religious freedom’ arguments against, for example, marriage equality to be offensive on religious grounds as well as constitutional and sexual freedom ones. That is, nearly all of the strongly religious people in my life have a deep and broad commitment to equality and freedom, and those convictions are rooted in their religious faith and teachings. So when some religious people to insist that their religious desire to deny equality to a group trumps other religious people’s religious desire to have a free and equal society, it really gets my fracking goat.
Amp @13: You have a much more optimistic view of her integrity and intellectual honesty than I do.
Is it just gay marriage they object to? I mean, would they offer a single gay man a license or a pair of heterosexuals who were the same sex.
To go back to the actual topic, Catholic Charities, in this particular case wanted the freedom to impose their religious beliefs on gay couples and on foster kids at the taxpayers’ expense. They wanted to use their religious definition of marriage and have it override the legal definition of marriages and civil unions.
Kelly, are you under the impression that the state of Illinois was providing adoption services for hundreds of years on a secular basis, treating gay couples and straight couples the exact same, and then one day in 2010 the Catholic Church showed up and said “hey, we’d like to do some of that too”?
Because in fact it was the other way around. Long before the state of Illinois was an entity, Catholic ministries were putting adoptions together, and doing so in conformance with their own values. And *absolutely nothing* was stopping any other church or secular group from doing the same thing in accordance with THEIR values.
Along comes the state of Illinois, which for a long time did nothing about adoptions whatsoever, but which eventually decided that IT needed to get in on this. And it said, hey Catholics (and others) who have been doing this for millennia, how about if we partner up and we hand you guys some cash and you guys provide the expertise, and we end up doing more adoptions and providing more service? And the Catholics (and others) said “k”.
And then a hundred years later, the state of Illinois decides that gay couples are just peachy and that everyone it does business with has to feel the same way. And the Catholics, who have had a different view of things for their two millennia of existence and who had that same different view back when the state of Illinois came knocking and asking to partner up, said “uh, we have a different view”. And ended up dropping the service.
This is not the Catholics expecting everyone to follow their values. It’s them following their own values, and expecting that they’ll be allowed to keep doing so as they have for centuries. There was nobody standing in the way of the Rainbow Coalition from opening its own adoption services (unless maybe it was the state of Illinois back when that entity was strongly anti-gay in policy), and there’s nobody standing in the way of Kelly’s Secular Adoptions, Inc. today. The only people having their way stood in, is the Catholics.
Aren’t the Catholics free to go back to offering private adoption services, with their own money, using whatever rules they want? It’s just that they’re not allowed to take the state’s money and not follow the state’s rules.
Ruchama, I honestly don’t know.
And the Catholics (and others) said “k”.
….instead of saying “Thank you, but no thank you, because if we take your money you might start telling us how we can use it”?
I mean, for two millenia the Church has preached that Jews killed the Christ and are the bad guys. I doubt anyone would be busting their ass to make excuses for Catholic Charities if it had a policy of prohibiting adoptions to Jewish couples.
Yes, I expect it’s very upsetting that people expect them to treat child rape as a criminal mater too. “We’ve done this for a long time” is no excuse or argument.
Civil society evolves and changes. There was a time, not that long ago, when refusing to place a child with a Jewish couple, or an interracial couple, or oh shit a Catholic couple wouldn’t be seen as unseemly.
Just what exactly is your argument, Robert? That the Catholic Charity somehow has a right to spend public money on discrimination? Or is it that the tradition of Catholic-controlled adoption is so precious that we ought to make an exception here? Or maybe that discrimination against gay people ought not count as discrimination under the law, despite the fact that in Illinois it clearly does?
Contra your earlier claim, this is clearly a case of Catholic Charities expecting the public sphere to conform to their religious values. It expects that because the public sphere used to. But time moves on. George Wallace was elected on a segregation forever platform. That shit hasn’t aged well either.
—Myca
I just can’t muster a whole lot of sympathy for the poor Catholic church expected to actually abide by state law if they wish to take state money to perform a state service. The fact that it wasn’t always a state service, or that the conditions have changed, isn’t particularly relevant. “We were here first” is not a valid argument.
No, I’m under the impression that once you contract with the state to provide a service, you need to actually follow state laws as they are when you make the agreement, not as they were 100 or 300 years ago.
That’s like saying that, since feeding the poor was done by the church long before the government got in on it, it should be okay for Catholic Charities to take a government grant for charitable work and refuse service to LGBT families.
Heck, since the Catholic Church is older than the US by hundreds of years, should they just be grandfathered out of any law they don’t want to follow?
So, then, here’s a question; does the State of Illinois license adoption agencies and require any adoption agency to adopt their policies regarding gay couples in order to have a license and provide such services?
Because if so, and if they are not only withholding money but the ability to provide such services at all, I part company with the State on that basis and accuse them of violating the Catholic Church’s religious freedom.
“Aren’t the Catholics free to go back to offering private adoption services, with their own money, using whatever rules they want?”
Let’s keep it simpler. Everyone around here ok with Catholics going back to offering private adoption services, with their own money, using whatever rules they want? Or do you think it would be better to have a law saying that they can’t place adoptions with respect to SSM or other marital status?
Amp?
Sebastian, even that isn’t simple. I see at least six possibilities that would include what you’re talking about.
1) Are we saying that ANY private citizen can hang up a shingle and declare themselves a private adoption agency, with no regulations at all? That seems extreme, and unsafe.
2) Are we saying that only religious organizations get an out from the rules? That seems like an awful idea in practice. Plus, why should religious organizations not have to follow the same rules as everyone else?
3) Are we saying that all private adoption agencies have to follow all regulations, except that if they want to ignore anti-discrimination rules and refuse to give kids to Black parents, however well qualified, that’s okay?
4) Or are we saying that all private adoption agencies have to follow all regulations, including following all anti-discrimination rules, except for anti-discrimination rules regarding sexual orientation, which they can ignore?
5) and 6) Are we saying the same as 3) and 4), except that only religious agencies get the exemptions from anti-discrimination law, rather than all private adoption agencies?
It would be helpful if people saying that the Catholic Church should be able to discriminate against lgbt adoptive parents, as long as they don’t take government money, could specify exactly which law they’re arguing for.
* * *
As for me, I think the “best interest of the child” argument prevails. It is not in the best interest of foster children to have “no faggots” be an absolute rule about who can foster or adopt them. And it’s especially not in the interest of lgbt children to be in the custody of institutions which tell them that they are less worthy human beings.
So no, even if they were willing to do it on their own dime (and they’re not), I do not think Catholic Charities, under its current rules, should be allowed to have custody of foster kids, or to be the exclusive representative of any children when looking for foster or adoptive parents. (There’s also the issue of the Catholic Church’s poor record of protecting children from sexual abuse.)
However, I don’t have any objection to them being a nonexclusive agency (i.e., they have case files and look for parents for kids in state custody, and act as a facilitator, but other agencies are also free to do the same for those same kids), even if they refuse to consider same-sex couples.
“2) Are we saying that only religious organizations get an out from the rules? That seems like an awful idea in practice. Plus, why should religious organizations not have to follow the same rules as everyone else?”
Because religious belief and behavior rooted in religious belief is specifically privileged and partially immunized from state control in the US Constitution. Religious organizations don’t follow the same tax rules as everyone else, among many many many other exemptions and privileges.
You don’t have to like this, but I think you do have to recognize that it’s true and that suddenly changing it up is not a return to status quo ante, but a bona fide incursion on a long-standing Constitutionally-based privilege.
The first amendment is not a “churches get out of all laws free” card, Robert. Priests and Rabbis aren’t allowed to run red lights, Synagogues aren’t allowed to ignore building codes, Mosques can’t be built without permits.
Churches don’t have a constitutional right to a tax break, any more than non-profits do. It’s something the state offers, not something the constitution calls for.
There is a constitutional right to non-interference – for instance, if a town bans all candles, probably the local Churches and synagogues could get that overturned as unfair interference in a bone fide religious ceremony, especially since whatever interest the town has in banning candles is probably not very strong, or if strong (fire prevention?) is not narrowly constructed enough.
But running a foster child agency is not a religious ritual, and non-interference doesn’t always take precedence over all other needs. The state has a very strong interest in protecting the well-being of children (especially those lacking parents), and those children have a constitutional right to equal protection of the law.
I didn’t say it was a get-out-of-all-laws-free card; I said it was an enumerated Constitutional protection. You asked why churches don’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else; I said why. They have to follow many of the same rules, but they start out with an affirmative defense to any law that has to be struck down or turned down or taken away first.
Synagogues do get to ignore building codes and mosques do get skip permitting, by the way, if there’s a finding that the building code and permitting process were intended to stop synagogue and mosque construction. Rabbis don’t get to run red lights, but they do get to opt out of Social Security. (Lucky.)
“I don’t have any objection to them being a nonexclusive agency (i.e., they have case files and look for parents for kids in state custody, and act as a facilitator, but other agencies are also free to do the same for those same kids), even if they refuse to consider same-sex couples.”
Check the NY Times article you linked to; they made just that offer (referring same-sex couples to other agencies) but the state said no.
Heck, since the Catholic Church is older than the US by hundreds of years, should they just be grandfathered out of any law they don’t want to follow?
KellyK, that’s really unfair.
It’s really wrong of you to broadcast what you find in the Bishops’ Super-Seekrit Diary Of How To Take Over The World Just Like Jeebus Totally Would.
Robert, you either read the article carelessly, or you read what I wrote carelessly. But in either case, no, they didn’t make the same offer as what I described, at all.
This seems to be more about outright mockery than about, you know, really adding to the discussion. Especially since the church-going folks here are probably a minority on this thread, I’d prefer to avoid stuff like this. Thanks for being understanding. :-)
Apologies, Amp; after being whacked in the forehead (literally) with a Bible by a Catholic priest screaming about how important it is to respect life and peace, in the OppRess assault on Buffalo’s abortion clinic back in the day, I’ve had rather a strong dislike for the upper echelons of their church. Throw in several decades during my life of those same bishops preaching actively and explicitly, in their tax-exempt buildings, to restrict my rights as a queer person…well, anyway, I’ll step out of this thread.
I hope you won’t step out of this thread, but if you feel you need to, I understand.
I do think that Christianity is big and powerful enough so it’s okay (and more than okay, beneficial) to make fun of it, I just don’t think this particular thread is the right context.
I find it appalling that the Catholic church — who until recently were actively involved in kidnapping Jewish children — are running adoption at all.
“As for me, I think the “best interest of the child” argument prevails. It is not in the best interest of foster children to have “no faggots” be an absolute rule about who can foster or adopt them. And it’s especially not in the interest of lgbt children to be in the custody of institutions which tell them that they are less worthy human beings.”
I’ll agree with you about the second sentence. Sort of. I’d prefer that LGBT kids have lots better options than to be in a Catholic foster home or service. And maybe we can make that easily happen in Chicago. I doubt we can easily make that happen if we were to try to the extend a similar rule to the whole nation.
As to your first sentence, they clearly disagree with us about whether or not kids should be placed in gay or lesbian homes. If the government pays, fine the government makes the rules. But I don’t like where you’re going with the rest of that posted comment.
We don’t really need to get into some generalized argument about whether or not ‘churches’ should be exempt from ‘rules’. The question is whether or not forcing people to go against their own better judgment by placing kids in a home that they believe a kid shouldn’t be placed in is a good idea on the LGBT parent issue. That is a pretty narrow question. I don’t see why the government needs to make a rule on that at all for private actors. So I don’t see why we need to discuss whether or not their should be a religious exemption to that rule.
I do, by way of contrast, see why there should be a “no sexual abuse of the kids” rule and a “you have to feed and clothe the kids” rule. I don’t see why there has to be a “you must include LGBT parents” rule [for private organizations not taking funds from the government]. It seems to me that such a rule is a lot more separated from a concrete “best interests of the child” concept than sex abuse or feeding and clothing rules.
Just to step into tangent-land, I’m curious about how that works and how you mean that. Because I can see it in the vague and general sense that everything you have comes from God, but not in any concrete, specific one that would provide any information about who has rights to what property. I mean, I know my house is mine (and my husband’s) because we made an arrangement with the people who owned it and the bank to let us borrow the money to pay for it. I know, or assume, that it was actually theirs to sell because the local government keeps records of that sort of thing.
In this particular situation, though, the kids aren’t in the custody of the people who are arranging for their placement or adoption. I think it’s reasonable to have non-discrimination rules regarding children who are wards of the state. Privately arranged adoptions might be a whole different matter.
Robert, is this what you’re referring to in #36? Because it sounds as though Catholic Charities was referring *adopters* to other agencies, not allowing kids to be placed through other agencies. It’s not quite the same thing.
I’m curious, though, about how they treated unmarried couples, and whether they used the legal or religious definition of “unmarried.” If divorcees were also referred to other agencies, then I can see why they expected to be able to do the same with same-sex couples. But if they were expected to treat someone who was on their second or third marriage the same as a Catholic couple who was married in the church, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that same-sex couples would have to be treated the same.
Ouch (both literally and figuratively). Definitely don’t blame you for the hostility.
I mean, I know my house is mine (and my husband’s) because we made an arrangement with the people who owned it and the bank to let us borrow the money to pay for it. I know, or assume, that it was actually theirs to sell because the local government keeps records of that sort of thing.
Rights-from-God don’t mean that heaven operates a property register, and when you have squatters on your lawn you can open your hands in supplication to the divine and have an angel come down and burn them out with holy fire. Although that would be kind of cool.
Rights-from-God mean that when the commies take over and tell you that the state has decided you no longer have a property right to your house because private ownership is bad, or when the Galtists seize power and tell you that your title is void because a local business person will derive more profit from the property and is thus both a) superior to you, you troglodyte and b) the rightful owner, you can double-cock your shotgun at them and say “I don’t think so, punk.”
For natural rights to be effectively realized, other than in the most Hobbesian of environments, they have to be administered by the state (or some collective, legitimate entity) – so the STATE can show up, note that you haven’t paid property taxes in 329 years, bat your shotgun away, and take away your house. But they have to follow due process and be right, and stuff. When someone like Ron (or me for that matter) says that our right comes from God, what it means in the pragmatic sense is that we don’t accept, generally, the state taking it away (other than in cases like the no-property-tax scenario, where we accept the legitimacy of the rule and acknowledge we didn’t follow it).
I have a right to free speech. I’d have a right to free speech if I lived in Cuba, and I’d be scribbling manifestos on the back of copies of Granma and spitting whenever Castro came on TV. I’m waaaay better off in the US, where the state at least rubberstamps my free speech right instead of trying to shoot me for insisting on it, but it’s a natural (i.e., god-given) right for both Cuba Bob and America Bob.
I think Amp sums it up pretty well when he calls natural rights the rights that don’t really exist (i.e., you can’t point to them) but that become very important when enough people believe that they have them.
As for the Illinois thing, I have realized that I do not know what the situation on the ground is, what the status quo was, how the charities operated, how other agencies operated, etc., so I’m deferring comment on the issue until such time as I either do a lot of research or someone presents a nice 101 that ties it up in a bow for me. I’ll make an exception for the conceptual argument; if someone wants to discuss why/whether religions should have privilege, that’s civics rather than What Things Are Like In Illinois.
I just think it’s important to recognize that what you’re arguing is “religions should have special privileges to ignore the nondiscrimination laws that all other government contractors are bound by.” Now, you do make an argument for why that is … I disagree of course, but it’s not like you ignore it.
My point is just that within that context, it’s disingenuous to argue that what’s happening is that secularists are entering a Catholic sphere and demanding that it conform to their shitty secular preferences (like “there’s nothing wrong with Jewish people” and “stop raping children”). What’s happening is that, as you have already acknowledged, the Church is operating within the public sphere and insisting that it be allowed to operate by its own rules.
So, assuming that you acknowledge that, how do we distinguish between “same sex couples are never acceptable parents” and “interracial couples (or Jewish couples, etc) are never acceptable parents”? It seems clear to me that any adoption agency engaging in the latter would be quickly drummed out of the business by even the most partisan and devout of Republican Catholics. This has been asked about a bajillion times here and elsewhere, and I seriously have yet to read a single defender of the church address it.
Moreover, how do we distinguish between “we should be allowed to ignore the government’s rules about adoption” and “we should be allowed to ignore the government’s rules about reporting of sex crimes?” This isn’t a ‘gotcha.’ This isn’t just me being shitty about the Catholic Church. This is: The Catholic Church’s attitude about both is nearly identical. It’s about the desires of the hierarchy taking precedence over the best interests of the child. And it’s about (like you said back in comment #21) “we’ve been around longer than your nation, so we don’t have to play by your rules.”
It’s about being above the law.
Considering how well the Catholic Church considering itself above the laws of the nation has worked out in the past, I think just maybe we shouldn’t give them a pass this time?
—Myca
So, assuming that you acknowledge that, how do we distinguish between “same sex couples are never acceptable parents” and “interracial couples (or Jewish couples, etc) are never acceptable parents”? It seems clear to me that any adoption agency engaging in the latter would be quickly drummed out of the business by even the most partisan and devout of Republican Catholics.
That seems to be sufficient distinction. The Church, even its hard-line right-wingers, has come around on the question of interracial marriage and on whether them there Jews is OK folk. Like the larger society itself, however, it has not come to a consensus on the question of whether same-sex couples should adopt. (The government is not the society; there may well be a burgeoning popular majority on the side of ‘gay parents are a-ok’ and I’m reasonably sure that the trend of opinion is in that direction, but it is far from the near-consensus that exists on other types of couples.)
So that’s the distinction: Catholics agree with the larger society that one class of parents are OK and shouldn’t be discriminated against, but (like the larger society) are split about gay parents. The Church’s discriminatory stance towards gays will, I think, soften over a (considerable) amount of time as the laity become more tolerant, and eventually the institution may flip on the subject.
Moreover, how do we distinguish between “we should be allowed to ignore the government’s rules about adoption” and “we should be allowed to ignore the government’s rules about reporting of sex crimes?” This isn’t a ‘gotcha.’
It isn’t a “gotcha” but it is based on an incorrect factual premise. The Church does not hold as a matter of doctrine that it should be able to ignore government rules about reporting of sex crimes; to the contrary, it explicitly says we are supposed to follow the temporal authority on reporting such crimes. Now, as an institution, it is true that many leadership figures in the church *have tried to avoid reporting sex crimes* – and that is a shameful thing indeed for the church and for those people – but it is also true that many leadership figures outside the church have tried to avoid reporting sex crimes. People at Penn State walked in on the fellow raping little boys, and turned around and went home and wrung their hands and said “dearie me, what should I do”.
So there’s my suggestion for THAT distinction: on the one issue, the Church (like most institutions in society) talks the talk but (like many, tragically too many, institutions in society) fails to always walk the walk. On the other issue, they claim a moral high ground or at least a moral right to be all hoity and adopt to whomever they like, never mind what a bunch of Illinois yokels think. “We accept your law, though there are people in our organization who will try to get away with breaking it if they think they can” versus “fuck you, buddy.” Seems pretty clear-cut to me.
It’s about the desires of the hierarchy taking precedence over the best interests of the child.
No. You are not God, and you are not in a position to determine “the best interests of the child”. You are a decent person, and you will take a stab at “the best interest” that I have no doubt will be considerate, loving, and as full of as much wisdom as you can manage to bring to bear on the topic – but neither courts nor bloggers nor churches know for a fact what the best interest of the child (which child, for one complicating factor among millions) consists of. We all do our best.
So it is about the best interests of the child as the hierarchy conceives of it, versus the best interests of the child as you (or PFLAG, or the state of Illinois, or John Smith) see it. You are absolutely entitled to the view that the hierarchy’s view of what is best is misguided, wrong about its factual basis, rooted in evil, or the tool of Satan, and that your view is *better* – but there are people who are just as decent as you are who think the exact opposite.
The state’s view of “best interest” has more law-enforcement power behind it, and (for the moment) the state’s view and your view overlap – which means that in the realm of policy your view is likely to be victorious. But power and right are not identities; you may claim moral certainty about the rightness of your view but you may not assert it as an objective truth and thus end debate.
Myca,
Here are some thoughts (not really arguments, per se) that address some of the points you brought up, as well as addressing some of the other lines of thoughts in these comments.
We do allow for discriminatory tendencies in adoption law. My understanding is that the Indian Child Welfare Act tries to prevent (even prohibit?) the adoption of Indian children by non-Indians.
Okay, U.S. law usually treats Indian tribes as “special” cases. Maybe we do not have a problem with that.
However, there is (or was) some opposition in the black community to adopting out black children to white people (Different Strokes, notwithstanding). Nothing set in stone (or the law), but there was a concern about ethnic identity (and probably predatory practices, just as was the concern, I believe, behind the Indian Child Welfare Act).
So, we can talk about the “scary Jews,” or worse, “Lutherans,” but the idea of discrimination in adoption is not entirely foreign.
Also, in my experience (albeit, limited), these sorts of groups serve their own kind, so to speak. That is, Catholic Charities get children from Catholics and try to place them with Catholic families; same thing with Lutheran Social Services (I think that is what they are called). Yes, anecdata, but anecdata that supports my point, so it’s good.
And, to be blunt, you and Amp are just dumping on the Catholic Church. What rule about reporting sex crimes are you talking about? The Church had a very defensible argument about Priest-Penitent privilege; they were barred from disclosing that privileged information, just as a lawyer can’t be required to dsisclose the crimes of the client. Granted, there are weaknesses to that argument, but I do not think mandatory reporter laws is one of them.
And, since I brought up Amp, I should explain why. I do not think you quite understand the Church’s position on homosexuality, by which I mean my understanding of the Church’s position on homosexuality (you should’ve asked), referring to your “less than human” being remark in #30. In fact, they probably think they have a much higher view of homosexuals than you do, being that they are created in the image of God, and all that. But, being created in the image of God does not mean they have to agree that, all other things being equal, a same sex couple is equal to a male-female married couple. So, all other things being equal, it IS in the best interests of the child to be placed with an opposite-sex married couple. You can disagree with that, if you want, but that just means you agree with the Church about the goal, just not the means to it.
-Jut
There’s some other stuff I want to respond to, but I wanted to get two things out while they’re fresh in my mind:
First, you do acknowledge that the Catholic Church is seeking special exemption from the rules that govern operation within the public sphere, and that your comment #21 was incorrect in terms of its discussion of this?
Second, no, the Catholic hierarchy is simply not explicitly concerned with the best interests of the child. They’re concerned with adherence to Catholic moral doctrine in all circumstances, and they believe that adherence to Catholic moral doctrine largely overlaps with the best interests of the child, but I doubt that even they believe that they’re identical in all circumstances.
The job of the church hierarchy is to sell doctrine. That’s cool. It’s not a criticism, but that’s what they’re there for. We are not bound to pretend that that’s the same thing as “primarily concerned with the best interests of the child,” any more than we’re bound to pretend that “McDonald’s wants you to eat hamburgers” is the same thing as “primarily concerned with the nutrition of the child.”
The difference has to do with whether you can conceptualize situations in which the needs of the child would be better met by diverging from Catholic moral doctrine as regards placement with a same-sex couple. I can. I’m sure you can. The Catholic hierarchy can too.
Even a deeply homophobic social services employee might recognize that a home headed by a same-sex couple would be a better option for a child than living to adulthood in a group home. Sub-optimal from their perspective, sure, but still better-than. When your primary concern is adherence to doctrine, though, the best interests of the child get left behind.
—Myca
You’re confused on a number of points, Myca.
The hierarchy believe that Catholic moral doctrine leads to the best possible outcome for all people, children included. And I am sure that on an individual basis, they can conceptualize cases where going outside the doctrine would at least appear to produce a better outcome on the surface of the things; I couldn’t speak to the larger theological cases.
But that’s not them not caring about the best interest of the child; it’s them having a definition of best interest of the child that, again, doesn’t entirely jibe with yours. You can play word games to put them in the dogma business, but to the extent that they are in the dogma business, it is because they are honestly convinced that the dogma business produces the best outcomes for the customers. Example: Father Brown believes that children have souls, and the fate of their soul is of tremendous importance. The course of their life here on earth is also important, but secondary to the hereafter. You do not believe in souls, and the fate of the soul is superstitious twaddle; the course of their life here on earth is of paramount importance.
Surely you can recognize that Father Brown may be deeply and sincerely invested in the best interest of a child from his point of view – he wants it to spend eternity in paradise listening to unreleased Pink Floyd tracks and eating catfish! – to the point even of sacrificing some of the child’s temporal happiness in pursuit of that goal. You, on the other hand, want that kid eating catfish and listening to Pink Floyd NOW, and refuse even to consider what impact the kid’s life choices may have on his immortal outcome. From Father Brown’s perspective, you’re an asshole who doesn’t care about the best interest of the child. From your perspective, Father Brown is a lunatic who, ditto. But from your own perspectives, you each care very, very much. And an open-minded Father Brown is going to recognize that Myca cares and is just wrong about some critical facts, and an open-minded Myca is going to recognize that Father Brown cares and is just laboring under some false pretenses.
I could argue in parallel that the courts don’t REALLY care about the best interest of the child, that they’re in the handing-down-rulings business, on the (quite legitimate) grounds that courts routinely stop taking new information and just get to a conclusion, so that they can rule and move on to the next case. But they do that because it is their view (as experts on their particular form of process) that allocating a certain amount of time per case and trying all the cases, produces more justice (more “best interest”) than would going to infinity on each particular case to try to maximize the per-case best-interest-produced. The church operates on a different type of process, but has a similar heuristic in mind; they don’t flog dogma for the sheer joy of making people feel guilty about whackin’ it, they flog dogma because they perceive that as maximizing outcomes.
All that said, the job of the church hierarchy is NOT to “sell doctrine”. Catholics have a dreadful evangelical arm and a fairly miserable rate of doctrinal acceptance within the laity. The job of the church hierarchy is to preserve the institutional church until the return of Jesus Christ. The church hierarchy doesn’t run the adoption service; that job is handled by bureaucrats. THOSE are the people who are in it to maximize outcomes for children, and – although they will salute the dogma with sincerity ranging from lip-service to total fanatical belief – their focus is on applying the dogma to get the kid into a loving home.
Fine, they are narrow-focused and are ignoring 10% of the total population of loving homes that are out there, and they are wrong to do so – but that doesn’t come from not wanting their best interest, that comes from having their own, parochial, view of what that interest is. Same as the state of Illinois. Same as me. Same as you.
To your direct question, Myca, yes. The church was (they’ve given up now) asking that they be able to continue doing business as they had before, in the face of a changed secular law. I am not sure whether I would call that “special treatment” since the same legal theory would apply to other churches and religious groups, but it’s differential treatment compared to a secular agency.
Not to be picky, but do the people at Catholic Charities regard themselves as guided by doctrine, or by the best interest of the child?
Imagine somebody at the Catholic Charities adoption agency explaining to her boss her choice to place a kid with a homosexual couple: “Yeah, their sexual orientation/diversity was definitely a negative factor. But the couple had other awesome qualities that completely outweighed this factor. So, on balance, the best interest of the child dictated that we place the kid with the same-sex couple.”
How would that go down, do you suppose?
And there is mounds of longitudinal social sciences research on the well-being of GLBT kids that shows that this is completely, totally, utterly wrong. There is also mounds of longitudinal social sciences research on the well-being of kids raised by same-sex parents (the absurd and ethically compromised Regenerus “study” notwithstanding) that, when placed next to the mounds of longitudinal social sciences research on the well-being of kids who age out of the foster care system without ever being adopted, would also show this is completely, totally, utterly wrong.
“You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts,” I believe is the quote.
Exactly.
Yes, it would be awesome. It would also have been awesome to have had a pillar of flame during the whole house-hunting process, but I guess God has better things to do.
Yeah, but rights-from-God or not, you can do that anyway, because you have a shotgun.
In all seriousness, that makes sense, and thank you for the explanation.
So your social science research that measures “well-being”, did you guys get a certificate from Zeus stating that the factors being measured constitute “well-being”?
Or did you maybe take a large group of factors that you considered to be a good cut at “well-being”, within the universe of factors that had the happy characteristic of being measurable, and call it “well-being”?
If the former, I’d like to see the certificate. (I bet Zeus has a really cool signature.) If the latter, then again it is a matter of opinion. OK, well-informed, well-educated, and certainly well-meaning opinion. But opinion. You can label your set of measured factors “Ability to defeat Godzilla in battle” but that doesn’t make it the case.
On the point about kids fostering out:
Kids who age out of foster care don’t need a study to demonstrate that they’d likely have been better off with a family. If that isn’t true a priori then the whole system is a giant war crime and we’re arguing over what color the morgue attendants’ uniforms ought to be.
Hard and consistent numbers are a little difficult to find, but reading a lot of different sources I am struck by two things in Illinois: one, the number of foster children is quite low compared to the public impression, and two, most of those kids end up being adopted. There is a constant need for more foster parents – and that same-sex couples can now fill that role is, I will acknowledge, good for the kids who end up getting a home. But there does not seem to be any compelling evidence that the fraction of kids who age out of the system without adoption (looks to be maybe 10%) are aging out because there are no foster homes; they’re aging out because they’re so radically troubled that nobody will take them. The majority of the kids who do get adopted, get adopted by their foster parents, and the majority of the remainder get adopted by family members. Only about a quarter end up going to a bona-fide third-party home. Kids who are emancipating are kids who had fosters, and those fosters didn’t want to keep them long-term. That sounds harsh – but there it is. A lot of the kids in this system are of course very troubled.
Now, would having another 10% or so added to the potential foster pool end up helping some of these kids? Absolutely, I am sure. Might not take the whole 10%, but even if helps just a few kids find a permanent home, I bet that does lead to better outcomes, as the research indicates.
But is there any reason to believe that having one set of foster administrators who will take gay couples, and another who won’t, is going to end up leaving gay couples unable to foster? It doesn’t seem like it would, if the gay-accepting administrators account for more than a small fraction of the foster kids available. The supply shortage is on the foster parent end; even if all the gay foster parents are going to Bureau A (with 20% of the caseload) and none are going to Bureau B (with 80% of the caseload), dollars to donuts both A and B are going to find a kid for every foster parent they can qualify.
The religious argument against this would be that the well-being of the soul is more important than the physical and mental health during life on earth, I’m sure.
That’s why there has to be a limit on how much religious opinion can override everything else, because there is no agreed-upon or provable way to measure spiritual well-being. I mean, most people in the Quaker meeting I attend would say my soul is in fine shape. But by Catholic standards, I’m totally going to hell. So, if my husband and I wanted to adopt a child, whose religious preferences would get to determine whether living with us would be in the kid’s spiritual best interest?
When kids are wards of the state, the state has to act in their best interest based on observable, not spiritual, measures. Neither the state nor its contractors are qualified to judge the spiritual best interests of the child once they deviate from what’s observable and verifiable.
So, if my husband and I wanted to adopt a child, whose religious preferences would get to determine whether living with us would be in the kid’s spiritual best interest?
Yours, and possibly the child’s, depending on their age and whether they have sincere religious beliefs of their own. (The Illinois DHS website says they try to place kids with people of compatible faith traditions, but they can’t guarantee it.)
The Catholics did not discriminate on a religious basis in the past, from what I gather (tentative statement alert! please do not flay poster alive if this is incorrect.) and the secular agencies do not and did not either.
When kids are wards of the state, the state has to act in their best interest based on observable, not spiritual, measures.
Children also have a right to religious freedom, increasing in weight as the child gets closer to being an adult. How do you propose that the state accommodate their Constitutional right without attempting the thorny task of acknowledging spiritual well-being?
But I thought your whole argument was that Catholic Charities was supposed to have the religious right to decide based on *their* religious beliefs. Admittedly, the odds that they’ll know or care that I’m a birth-control-using femslash-reading pro-choice scary feminist are slim (yay for presumably straight privilege?). But if, for whatever reason, I don’t measure up to the Catholic standard, isn’t it your assertion that they should be able to reject me on those grounds?
Having a home that matches your existing religious beliefs or the tradition you’ve grown up in so far is an observable benefit, not a purely spiritual one. A kid is going to adapt and adjust better to an environment with similar rituals and traditions and beliefs, regardless of which religion is objectively true. I mean, if this whole monotheism thing is bunk and the Greek pantheon is rolling its eyes at us right now, it would still be better–all things being equal–to put the Catholic kid with the Catholic family and the Quaker kid with us than vice versa.
Your snarky remarks about “Zeus” aside Robert, no “I” didn’t do anything in particular.
Here’s a place where you can spend a goodly chunk of time looking at the research done by the SF State Family Acceptance Project, which has extensive research into how GLBT kids in homes with parents who move even a little bit off of an “outright rejection” stance into a “moderate rejection” stance have significantly lower risks of drug use, dropping out of school, unsafe sex, homelessness, and suicide. Homes with low rejection (maybe parents who are “yay, gay is great!” and joining PFLAG, maybe homes where parents just swallow their discomfort out of some sense of duty to their kid) are the most beneficial, but the giant, yawning gap is between children in “high rejection” and “moderate rejection” families.
http://familyproject.sfsu.edu/publications
Hey look, here’s an easy to understand slide on suicide.
Here’s one on illegal drug use.
Here’s one on homelessness.
So yeah, not killing yourself, not using drugs, not dropping out of school, not contracting HIV, not becoming homeless – those are totally wishy-washy, meaningless descriptions of “well-being” that Caitlin Ryan and company totally pulled out of thin air and waved around to distract from the fact that they can’t really say for sure what makes a kid well off in life, and maybe it actually is “being told you’re going to hell and you’re choosing to defy God on a regular basis, which is an embarrassment to your family.” I mean, who can say?
But if, for whatever reason, I don’t measure up to the Catholic standard, isn’t it your assertion that they should be able to reject me on those grounds?
Yes. But they don’t do that rejection, on the face of things anyway. There’s a difference between “we don’t reject people just because they’re Godless Quakers” and “we don’t reject people just because they’re Godless Quakers, because the law won’t let us”. You can believe “but secretly, if we wanted reject Quakers, we totally would be OK with God” in either scenario.
Elusis –
Yes, I don’t dispute that your measurements are good measurements of important things. I dispute that you get to give them the label of “well being” and act as though “case closed”. Leaving religion totally aside, are there not important measures of psychological well-being which would be difficult or impossible to capture in an objective assay? And that being the case, isn’t your well-being measure *automatically* incomplete, simply because (being an objective assay) it cannot capture certain facets of the data?
Doesn’t mean that you guys suck and should all go home and let the Little League coaches take over on all this psychobabbling stuff. Just means that you are not in fact laying down an objective truth, but rather, a (very good, very well-meaning, very well-informed) set of opinions.
If the standard we were looking at was “the foster care system should maximize HS graduation rate” then a comprehensive collection of HS graduation rates would suffice as a measure. But the standard is inchoate, inherently personal, and inherently subjective. You guys are associating a bunch of things that, not unreasonably, you associate with “well being”. That doesn’t suddenly make the standard objective and well-defined, just because your eponymous data collection is.
Minor completely tangential quibble. My husband is a Quaker. I’m a nondenominational Christian who thinks Quakers are pretty cool and attends meeting on occasion, but is unlikely to ever join because I don’t define myself as a pacifist. (There may very well be people who have similar views on war and self-defense that I do who *do* consider themselves pacifists, but in my mind the definition will just not stretch that far.)
As far as not doing that rejection, no, they probably don’t care that Matt and I aren’t Catholic. Which then makes it somewhat inconsistent that they *would* care if a same-sex couple with our religious background wanted to adopt. Yes, being in a same-sex relationship is considered a grave sin by the Catholic Church. So is the use of birth control. According to some bishops, so is voting for Obama. But if I show up with the Obama 2012 sticker on my car (and let’s say I slap a couple pro-choice ones on there too) , so long as I show up with a husband and not a wife, we’re cool. Which suggests to me that it’s much more animus against gay people than actual concern for the child’s well being as evidenced by the spiritual state of the adopting couple. The idea that they *should* get to discriminate on those other factors is messed up too, but since neither “Obama voter” nor “woman who doesn’t want 12 kids” are mistreated minorities, that’s actually less bad than discriminating on sexual orientation.
But my actual point is that as agents of the state, it’s inappropriate to use a measure of well-being that the state can’t actually acknowledge without ignoring the first amendment. **Especially** when it directly contradicts observable measures. Going back to #3, it’s really not okay to put an LGBT kid in a “good Christian” home with a Catholic-approved view of sexuality where they’ll be taught that they’re wrong and broken when there was a gay couple who would’ve understood what they were going through and loved them as they are.
KellyK,
I don’t intend to defend either the homophobia of the Catholic Church or Robert’s impressive trolling ([who can say what is in the best interests of a child, it is all so nebulous- therefore Catholic Charities should be allowed to impose hard rules rather than judging on a case by case basis- ’cause it just so nebulous]), but as far as I can tell the Catholic Church claims to oppose adoption by same sex couples not because they are unrepentant sinners but because they claim to believe that children need parents of both sexes. Presumably, they would refuse adoption to an asexual same sex couple. Unrepentant sinners they are apparently fine with, but they believe everyone needs a male parent and a female parent.
It sounds, though, like they also referred unmarried couples to a different agency. Which may not be inconsistent, it may be “need a married male and female parent.” Which makes me curious whether a single person could adopt through Catholic Charities.
I’d be very surprised if Catholic Charities would place a child with a single person. Does anyone do this?
I know plenty of single people who’ve become foster and adoptive parents.
I am having to try really hard not to roll my eyes so hard that they fall out of my head and roll right down the hallway.
Yes, Robert, psychological phenomena like “well-being” are complex, abstract concepts that we cannot measure directly, unlike something straightforward like “level of sodium in one’s bloodstream” or “pH of an unknown substance.” And therefore all social science can do is try to create reasonable proxies for concepts like “depression” and “attachment” and “well-being” that are actually observable and measurable. It’s particularly helpful when we can use behavioral proxies that themselves are known to link to specific outcomes. And the known outcomes of school drop-out, youth homelessness, drug abuse, HIV, and suicide are double plus ungood, so to speak, and connect pretty directly to ability/inability to meet one’s basic needs (education, shelter, health, going on living).
Which is pretty much the opposite of “inchoate, inherently personal, and inherently subjective.”
(Is there some lack of societal consensus around the idea that it’s a bad idea for a 15-year-old to drop out of school, shoot heroin, get HIV, live on the streets, and kill themselves? Did we really get that polarized during the election? Is there a “pro gay kids snuffing it” lobby I’m unaware of?)
Of course, you would know how the constructs were developed and tested if you bothered to read, oh, anything on the page I linked to that describes how the Family Acceptance project has refined its research over many, many years.
But hey, if we’re playing the “data won’t convince me” game, then have at it. I defy you to produce any data that suggest that being raised in rejecting, highly religious families is good for the well-being of GLBT youth. The floor is yours, Robert.
“First, you do acknowledge that the Catholic Church is seeking special exemption from the rules that govern operation within the public sphere”
What do you mean by ‘public sphere’? Are we talking about the Catholic Church taking public money and therefore being bound by public rules? Or are we talking the much more anti-Church stance of trying to legislate their adoption agency placements regarding same sex parents even if they are privately funded (seemingly Amp’s stance, and I *think* yours).
There seems to be a lot of whipsawing on which choices are permitted and which ones aren’t. This seems to be going way past ‘hands off my body’ into dictating the kind of choices that Catholics get to make for themselves. In a pluralistic society, we try to leave quite a bit of play for various moral choices and judgment calls. It seems (and maybe I’m misinterpreting) that we’re undermining that by trying to push well beyond the necessary rules and regulations about adoptions (don’t abuse the children, do provide for the children). We don’t actually have to have regulations about everything. Only the necessary things. And I don’t see any evidence that this is one of the necessary things (for adoptions). Maybe in your mind this is a necessary thing for general gay acceptance or some such, but that is a rather different argument than “good of the child”.
That’s not my position, and I don’t think it’s Ampersand’s. If you’re not accepting public money*, as far as I’m concerned you’re free to do what you like. It might make you an asshole, but that’s it.
ETA: Or public authority. That is, I don’t have a problem with a woman taking her child to a Catholic Charity for placement. I would have a major problem with the state giving children under their authority to a Catholic Charity for placement, even without funding them.
—Myca
Totally agree with Myca @ 70. What they do privately, with parents and adopters who have chosen them, is up to them as long as it isn’t blatantly abusive. (Putting a gay kid with a staunchly anti-gay family would be blatantly abusive.) What they do with wards of the state or public money is a totally different thing.
I really don’t understand enough about how adoption and foster care placement works.
For instance, if you come to me and say “I wanna adopt!,” and I open up my binder o’ orphans, are the orphans in my binder my exclusive cases – my agency is the only agency trying to place them – or are they in a nonexclusive situation, where a bunch of agencies have the same orphans in their binders?
If it’s an exclusive situation, then no, I don’t think that Catholic Charities should be able to do that, not even if they’re spending their own money. But if it’s a nonexclusive situation, then sure.
Sebastian writes:
Okay, here’s an example that the Illinois ACLU brings up. A child is taken away from abusive or neglectful parents. The child has a pre-existing relationship with a beloved uncle, who is responsible, financially secure, non-abusive, loves the child, and in a committed gay relationship. The child wants to be placed with the uncle.
Catholic Charities, if they were in charge of this case, would refuse to let the uncle adopt the child, instead leaving the child in foster care until they can find heterosexual parents that the child doesn’t know and doesn’t want to go with. Is that in the best interest of the child?
There’s also the matter of getting lgbt children into homes that accept them (see the many links Elusis provided). You may not be convinced that’s in the best interest of children, but the evidence seems pretty strong. (I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve been told that there are a disproportionate number of lgbt children in foster care, presumably because they are more likely to be rejected by their families.)
I think that non-babies are basically never placed in foster care or made available for adoption except through the intervention of the state. While there is a purely private market in babies, placement of children is almost never a purely private transaction. Even if the state is not paying for the services of the adoption or foster care agency, it is still choosing which organizations to work with, and should do so based on the best interests of the children.
On the other hand, the market for healthy babies is sufficiently favorable that a private baby placement service probably does no harm to any babies by engaging in bigoted practices in placing babies it exclusively controls. Additionally, babies do not have identifiable sexual orientation or personal preferences for relatives. So it seems possible that Catholic Charities could run a purely private Catholic only baby distribution service without engaging in activities that were against the best interests of the children.
Good point. I hadn’t thought about that.
Particularly in open adoption, where the birth parent(s) are going to get to apply their personal bigotries to whom they select as adoptive parents, it probably makes sense that they also get to select an intermediary who can apply whatever filter they choose.
Of course, this only works if we assume that basically everywhere has a sufficient number of adoption agencies that some of them are not run by horrible bigots. If there are towns where the local church runs the only adoption agency, then suddenly the bisexual birth mother who would be happy to have her child go to a gay or lesbian couple is out of luck, and the church adoption agent is only letting her see applications from good bible believing folks, and we are back to recognizing that we can’t let people run discriminatory public accommodations, that the phony freedom of employees to serve as the agents of their employers bigotry is no freedom worth saving and a severe impediment on the freedom of the people they interact with (or refuse to interact with).
Robert:
As a matter of fact they do declare themselves above any State Laws, from the lips of Pope Ratzinger.
I suggest you read this speech (the full text is provided in the article while you listen to the video. It was shocking to me, but here is the quotation that gave my heart a leap I’ll tell ya,
and
Video
http://youtu.be/mo5MXrqbDeA
Text
http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0720/cloyne1.html
This information should inform our discussion. It is never the Best Interest of the Child whenever Catholics are involved, it is always the Best Interest of our Catholic Church and adherence to our dogma, and everything else is second.
We don’t actually have to have regulations about everything
Indeed not. We have the tort system for everything else.
@Robert, presumably a private adoption agency would need some minimal health-and-safety regulation to be sure they weren’t actually stealing and selling babies, say. (We don’t tell churches they have to allow gay people to attend, but we don’t let them practice human sacrifice, either.). Other than that, if they’re not contracted by the state or receiving state funding, I doubt many people would be opposed to an agency that, say, limits itself to serving only married Catholic couples.
But the real issue is that everybody wants to give a special exemption because it’s the freaking Catholic Church. If this were a splinter sect of some White Supremacist church wanting the government to pay them to make sure blond, blue-eyed babies only went to married “Aryan” couples nobody would be wringing their hands about how we should avoid hurting their fee-fees.
Babies do not have “identifiable” sexual orientation, but they will grow up to be kids and adolescents and adults who do. And as you know, Bob, being raised by bigots is not actually influential over what one’s sexual orientation turns out to be, whether one was born to or adopted as an infant by said bigots.
Elusis, props.
Elusis,
On the other hand, I’m not willing to say that conservatives should be absolutely excluded from being allowed to adopt, so no matter what some LGBT infants will end up being adopted by bigots. That sucks for those kids, but if we allow exclusion of adoptive parents based on ideology, that actually means more LGBT infants being placed with bigots in many areas of the country, since bigots run much of the country and set their bigoted policies there.
I’m not sure why you scare quoted “identifiable.” As you say, infants have a largely predetermined orientation, but it is not possible to identify what it will be. Thus they do not have an identifiable sexual orientation, no scare quotes required.
Also, my name is Charles, not Bob. Perhaps you mistook my comment as being written by Robert?
“And as you know, Bob, being raised by bigots is not actually influential over what one’s sexual orientation turns out to be, whether one was born to or adopted as an infant by said bigots.”
Ahh, so perhaps we need to go further. We should probably pass laws specifically prohibiting kids from being adopted by Evangelicals and Catholics. I bet that will be great “for the best interests” of children.
“the bisexual birth mother who would be happy to have her child go to a gay or lesbian couple is out of luck, and the church adoption agent is only letting her see applications from good bible believing folks, and we are back to recognizing that we can’t let people run discriminatory public accommodations”
Couching it as a public accommodation makes it sound like the rules ought to be focusing on the best interests of the hopeful parents? Is that your intention?
“We don’t actually have to have regulations about everything
Indeed not. We have the tort system for everything else.”
Mythago, I was actually suggesting that there might be a few things that shouldn’t be in legal system at all. But your mileage clearly varies.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope that you have found something to be grateful for today and people close to you to express it with.
Infant adoption should be run as open adoption, not closed adoption, so what is being created is a complex relationship between 2 to 4 adults and 1 infant. The first priority should be the best interests of the infant. The second priority should be the best interests of the birth parent(s) and the best interests of the adoptive parent(s), and indeed, these best interestes are part of the best interests of the child. The opinions of the adoption agent are necessarily involved in the process since the adoption agent is responsible for trying to manage those best interests. A resounding absolute last place priority should be the personal preferences of the management of the organization that employs the adoption agent. Management’s religious dogma is tangential to the best interests of the child.
If a private organization provides one of many adoption services in an area, then there is probably little harm to the best interests of all involved if Homophobe Adoptions gets to provide a homophobic filter to prospective adoptive parents so that homophobic birth parents can be saved the difficulty of expressing their homophobia to non-homophobic adoption agents. Adoption is something that can be done with very little official involvement (if you want to give an infant up for adoption, and I know someone who would like to adopt, we can probably arrange that adoption without my being an officially licensed adoption agent- we will need to bring in someone official at some point, but not in a way that would ensure that you have to consider having your infant adopted by someone I don’t approve of), so Homophobic Adoptions is an organization that is probably difficult to squash in any case.
If there is only one adoption service in an area, then it should probably not be allowed to be Homophobe Adoptions. Since the state is an active participant in the adoption business, it is appropriate for the state to refuse to use Homophobe Adoptions. This ensures that, in any area, there will almost always be the state used adoption agency that is not Homophobe Adoptions.
Happy Thanksgiving, Ron. Hope you had a wonderful holiday.
Ri-ight. Because that’s even remotely close to anything anyone has said.
Notice, now, that it is not me making the assumption that (Evangelical or Catholic) = bigoted*.
Just saying. To paraphrase something I’ve heard about a kajillionty times from churchy folk, it ain’t the religion or the religious we hate. It’s the behaviour. If we could just have the religion taking part in society, and leaving the bigotry out, that’d be a lot easier for at least this atheist to take.
* Though granted it is one I agree with.
Put another way, I know there is a significant population who live in the intersections of the sets “Religious” and “Not Bigoted”, because anecdata by the bucketload.
Which says to me, it’s perfectly possible to live a religious life without the bigotry bit. Which further says, the bigotry bit is something those religious people who have it are choosing to have.
Which, of course, leads me to feel that there is little value in my being “respectful” or “polite” to such people, as they’ve no interest in doing so to me, by virtue of their chosen bigotry. Mostly, I ignore them, unless they get in my face either literally or governmentally. But I do feel that there is a line that should be drawn with respect to situations where the common good has an interest, and drawing it at “I think people should be treated like lesser citizens/inferior humans if they have my pet-peeve $INNOCUOUS_CHARACTERISTIC because my invisible friend said so, and the proof for that is that I said so” seems like a good place to me.
Charles – I used quotes because I was quoting you.
As you know, Bob…
@Sebastian H, there certainly are. Adoption doesn’t strike me as one of those things that’s wise to simply entrust to people’s better nature and desire to do the right thing.
CaitieCat,
” It’s the behaviour. If we could just have the religion taking part in society, and leaving the bigotry out, that’d be a lot easier for at least this atheist to take.”
And, indeed, in IL when the state told the religious charities they needed to leave the bigotry out of their adoption services if they wanted a state contract, Lutheran Social Services (or rather, the Lutheran Synode) decided it was more important to help children than to enforce bigotry. Sadly, Catholic Charities (and the Catholic Chuch) decided the opposite.
It seems to me that:
How would you feel if your adopted child came out to you as gay or lesbian or transgendered? How would you react? Would you be able to support them in being who they are? Would you be able to love them and be a good parent to them after that? Would you think you had failed as a parent? Would you think that they needed to change to being cis and straight and that it was your responsibility to make them change?
are all questions that should be asked of prospective adoptive parents during the adoption interviews, and that parents whose answers suggest that they would be strongly rejecting of a LGBT child should be denied adoption. It is perfectly possible to be an obedient Catholic (or any other doctrinally bigoted faith) and not be strongly rejecting of your LGBT child, and subjecting LGBT infants to eventual rejection by their adoptive parents is obviously not in the best interests of the child.