[Mb-civic] Kids take back seat to gay agenda - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Kids take back seat to gay agenda

By Jeff Jacoby  |  March 15, 2006  |   The Boston Globe

IN PSYCHOLOGY, ''projection" occurs when someone attributes to others 
his own unpleasant beliefs or motivations. It is projection, for 
instance, when a liar assumes that everyone he deals with is dishonest, 
or when a man tempted by adultery accuses his spouse of planning to 
deceive him. Projection occurs in the public arena as well, as when 
supporters of racial preferences label ''racist" those who believe the 
law should be strictly colorblind.

A fresh example of projection arrived the other day by way of a news 
release from the Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation's largest gay 
and lesbian political organizations.

On March 10, Catholic Charities of Boston had announced that it was 
being forced to shut down its highly regarded adoption services, since 
it could not in good conscience comply with the government's demand that 
it place children for adoption with homosexual couples. Caught between 
the rock of Catholic teaching, which regards such adoptions as ''gravely 
immoral," and Massachusetts regulations, which bar adoption agencies 
from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, the Boston 
Archdiocese had hoped to obtain a waiver on religious-freedom grounds. 
But when legislative leaders refused to consider the request, the 
archdiocese was left with no option but to end a ministry it had been 
performing for a century.

Whereupon the Human Rights Campaign issued its news release. It was 
headlined ''Boston Catholic Charities Puts Ugly Political Agenda Before 
Child Welfare," and a more perfect illustration of psychological 
projection would be hard to imagine.

For the political agenda driving this affair is the one favored by the 
Human Rights Campaign and its many allies in the media and state 
government: the normalization of homosexual adoption. So important is 
that agenda to its supporters that they will allow nothing to stand in 
its way -- not even the well-being of children in dire need of safe and 
loving families. Catholic Charities excels at arranging adoptions for 
children in foster care, particularly those who are older or 
handicapped, or who bear the scars of abuse or addiction. Yet the Human 
Rights Campaign and its friends would rather see this invaluable work 
come to an end than allow Catholic Charities to decline gay adoptions.

Note well: Catholic Charities made no effort to block same-sex couples 
from adopting. It asked no one to endorse its belief that homosexual 
adoption is wrong. It wanted only to go on finding loving parents for 
troubled children, without having to place any of those children in 
homes it deemed unsuitable. Gay or lesbian couples seeking to adopt 
would have remained free to do so through any other agency. In at least 
one Massachusetts diocese, in fact, the standing Catholic Charities 
policy had been to refer same-sex couples to other adoption agencies.

The church's request for a conscience clause should have been 
unobjectionable, at least to anyone whose priority is rescuing kids from 
foster care. Those who spurned that request out of hand must believe 
that adoption is designed primarily for the benefit of adults, not 
children. The end of Catholic Charities' involvement in adoption may 
suit the Human Rights Campaign. But it can only hurt the interests of 
the damaged and vulnerable children for whom Catholic Charities has long 
been a source of hope.

Is this a sign of things to come? In the name of nondiscrimination, will 
more states force religious organizations to swallow their principles or 
go out of business? Same-sex adoption is becoming increasingly common, 
but it is still highly controversial. Millions of Americans would 
readily agree that gay and lesbian couples can make loving parents, yet 
insist nevertheless that kids are better off with loving parents of both 
sexes. That is neither a radical view nor an intolerant one, but if the 
kneecapping of Catholic Charities is any indication, it may soon be 
forbidden.

''As much as one may wish to live and let live," Harvard Law professor 
Mary Ann Glendon wrote in 2004, during the same-sex marriage debate in 
Massachusetts, ''the experience in other countries reveals that once 
these arrangements become law, there will be no live-and-let-live policy 
for those who differ. Gay-marriage proponents use the language of 
openness, tolerance, and diversity, yet one foreseeable effect of their 
success will be to usher in an era of intolerance and discrimination . . 
. Every person and every religion that disagrees will be labeled as 
bigoted and openly discriminated against. The ax will fall most heavily 
on religious persons and groups that don't go along. Religious 
institutions will be hit with lawsuits if they refuse to compromise 
their principles."

The ax fell on Catholic Charities just two years after those words were 
written. Where will it have fallen two years hence?

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/15/kids_take_back_seat_to_gay_agenda/
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