Rockford Diocese is to shut down its adoption services, rather than comply with state law on equal treatment for prospective same – sex couples. The National Catholic Register has a headline suggesting that the withdrawal of public funding for these agencies that would follow non-compliance with the law amounts to Catholics being “Penalized for Putting ‘Best Interest of the Child’ First”. This is nonsense.
The best interests of the child demand that each one be places with the most suitable parents available. There is absolutely no empirical evidence to support the bishops’ standard claim that the most suitable parents are necessarily opposite sex married couples, and a great deal of evidence to contradict it. Even if it were true in general, it is certainly not true in all individual cases. Some biological, opposite sex parent couples are demonstrably not good parents, or there would not be so many kids requiring adoption. Conversely, adoption professionals know of countless same sex couples who have made superb parents. The evidence is that for some specific classes of children, gay parents may sometimes be the better option, or sometimes only the only parents available. To restrict artificially the pool of potential parents to married, opposite sex couples is to place a fundamentally flawed religious ideology ahead of the best interests of the child.
Among the standard, prejudiced responses to the NCR article, is this superb rejoinder:
Boston Catholic Charities was already allowing gay adoption a few years ago before gay marriage became this much of a debate and the Bishops decided it didn’t make the case against gay marriage look good.
“The implementation of the new civil-union law in Illinois is leading to a showdown between Catholic Charities as a provider of adoption services for children and a state law that places the private interest of adults over the human rights of children. Catholic Charities will actually be put in jeopardy of lawsuits and losing public funds to serve the poor if they refuse to deprive children they serve of married mothers and fathers. How crazy is that?”
Catholic Charities sought an exemption from the law for religious organizations as a matter of conscience, but the bill is bottled up in committee and not likely to pass before June 1, when the civil-union law takes effect. As the clock ticks down, the question remains as to whether Catholic Charities will be forced out of the adoption business in Illinois, as has been the case in Boston, San Francisco, Washington and other places.
To understand the issue, one must first consider who the client is when there is a child in need of adoption or foster care. Is this a service for the child or is it a service to adults seeking to acquire a child? The qualifications for the adoptive parents can be quite different depending on the answer to that question.
If the clients are the adults, the child then becomes a precious commodity. The qualification for the adoptive parent(s) is merely competence in parenting. However, if the client is the child, the process for qualifying the prospective parent is quite different, taking into account the human rights and dignity of the child.
First, let us consider the state of the child up for adoption — deprived of his or her mother and father who for some reason were not able to fulfill their responsibilities to the child. Nevertheless, the child carries the flesh of these people and is a witness to their union for all of eternity. The child has not only lost a very real primordial connection associated with his or her identity, but something that is common to every person without exception and important to human flourishing.
As the child grows in age, the awareness of loss increases. Not only the connection with the persons from whom the child originated is missing, but there are also questions about siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, medical history, sense of family history and ethnic and cultural heritage. The ability, as far as possible, for a child to know and be cared for by his or her mother and father is so precious that it is an internationally recognized human right specified in the “U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
Considering the child’s status, adoption is really an accommodation for this privation. It is an act of charity in which strangers make an irrevocable promise to love, to stand in for and to represent the man and woman who gave the child life and who were not able to fulfill their responsibilities. In this sense, they are not only taking on responsibility to the child, but also to the parents of the child.
It is therefore common sense that only a man can stand in for the father and only a woman can stand in for the mother of which the child was deprived.”
This point is actually never argued. Where is it every proven that two parents of opposite genders are the only people who can step in for an adoptive child?
Certainly not in any social science, this has been proven over and over, there are plenty of single people who have raised healthy children as there are gay couples. This is backed up with numerous studies.
“matter of common sense and justice for the child to expect the adoptive man and woman to first make themselves irreplaceable to each other through marriage?”
How are civil unions not two people making themselves irreplaceable to each other? How are two civilly unioned people adoption a child not making a permanent irreplaceable family with the child?
To compare gays to people looking for pets is not realistic. If there are facts or reasoning to this conclusion, it is not stated.
““best interest of the child” in the abstract, the perceptions of that can be skewed by the interest and experience of the adults making the argument.”
With the lack of any substantive arguments, facts or logic provided, this entire article is based on perceptions skewed by the person writing it.
“Reflecting on the desire we have for connection with our own mother and father and recognizing that this is a common human experience”
And gays can’t do this? And again, there is not supportive data or logic to this conclusion. I will say that very few, if any, Catholics have done a good job in raising homosexual children. To tell a child for his/her entire childhood that what s/he would grow up to be is an “objectively disordered” individual who will never be able to gratify one of his/her most powerful drives, can never have children or know what romantic love is is not “in the best interest of the child” because that drive is aimed nontraditionally. Letting such child choose based in modern family structures and biblical teachings in reference to the time has shown to be a much more humane way of facing homosexuality.
Boston Catholic Charities was already allowing gay adoption a few years ago before gay marriage became this much of a debate and the Bishops decided it didn’t make the case against gay marriage look good.
“It is therefore common sense that only a man can stand in for the father and only a woman can stand in for the mother of which the child was deprived.”
This point is actually never argued in the article. Where is it every proven that two parents of opposite genders are the only people who can step in for an adoptive child?
Certainly not proven in any social science, this has been disproven over and over. There are plenty of single people who have raised healthy children as there are gay couples. This is backed up with numerous studies.
“matter of common sense and justice for the child to expect the adoptive man and woman to first make themselves irreplaceable to each other through marriage?”
How are civil unions not two people making themselves irreplaceable to each other? How are two civilly unioned people adopting a child not making a permanent irreplaceable family first with each other and then with the child?
To compare gays to people looking for pets is not realistic. If there are facts or reasoning to this conclusion, it is not stated.
““best interest of the child” in the abstract, the perceptions of that can be skewed by the interest and experience of the adults making the argument.”
With the lack of any substantive arguments, facts or logic provided, this entire article is based on skewed perceptions of the person writing it.
“Reflecting on the desire we have for connection with our own mother and father and recognizing that this is a common human experience”
And gays can’t do this? Again, there is not supportive data or logic to this conclusion. I will say that very few, if any, Catholics have done a good job in raising homosexual children. To tell a child throughout his/her entire childhood that who s/he would grow up to be is an “objectively disordered” individual who will never be able to gratify one of his/her most powerful drives, can never have children or know what romantic love is is not “in the best interest of the child” because that drive is aimed nontraditionally and any pursuit, even contemplation would be a sin. The child then has to walk around with stygma for his entire life while being deprived of his own family potential. Letting such child choose based on modern family structures and biblical teachings with reference to the time has shown to be a much more humane way of facing homosexuality. Contrary to the above article, there is overwhelming data making it very clear that this leads to severe emotional problems.
Have any readers here every known a stable gay couple or empathized with what a gay child goes through?
Joe Providence, at
NCRegister.com.
