"How Could Adam and Steve's Marriage Hurt Anyone Else?"

Maggie Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, writes about the unforseen effects of gay marriage in Massachusetts on adoption and other things.  We've seen the effect on Catholic Charities in Boston, which is no longer in the adoption business, since CC would not place children with gay couples.  Although CC would refer gay couples to other adoption agencies, this wasn't good enough.  Under Massachusetts law, this amounted to "orientation discrimination," and it's against the law. 

"...a mere two years after the introduction of gay marriage in America, a number of latent concerns about the impact of this innovation on religious freedom ceased to be theoretical. How could Adam and Steve's marriage possibly hurt anyone else? When religious-right leaders prophesy negative consequences from gay marriage, they are often seen as overwrought. The First Amendment, we are told, will protect religious groups from persecution for their views about marriage."

There is much more lititgation on the horizon for faith-based organizations, in the areas of college student groups, religious summer camps, the right to preach, and tax exempt status, to preach, to name a few.  We can expect a legal trajectory similar to what followed Roe V. Wade: 

"The post-Roe litigation also provides fair warning about the limits of First Amendment protection. The lever used to force hospitals and doctors to perform abortions and sterilizations was the receipt of any public money....Churches that oppose same-sex marriage today may perceive a credible, palpable threat to their tax-exempt status, the benefits of which are substantial."

Read the whole thing for a primer on what's likely to lie ahead in the conflict between gay rights and religious freedom.

Update: Thoughtful commentary from Dust in the Light on the notion of sexual liberty trumping religious liberty (as stated by a gay rights activist in Gallagher's article). An excerpt:

"Just so, the sexual liberationists are bound by the dictates of their driving motivation, which isn't the sex itself, but the rationalization and justification of it and absolution of those who engage in it. Theology, politics, civil philosophy, economics — all — must accommodate the sexual behavior. If that means undermining the Constitution for the formless benefit of affirming "the dignity of gay people," so be it. If it means tripping up and forcing out those people and practices that carry a dwindling torch of authority from our ancestors, so much the better."

Comments

[sarah]

You are clearly misinformed about the Catholic Charities action in closing down their adoption services in Boston.

Their closing was not the result of gay activists.

Obviously, if they were placing children with qualified gay and lesbian parents for the last two decades, common sense would tell anyone that gay and lesbian parents were not the ones challenging anything. Though if common sense did not flick that switch, a google search would.

Of approximately 700 children adopted through Boston CC, 13 were placed with gay and lesbian parents. As small as that number is, it was too large for CC, even though ALL 13, according to Catholic Charities own records, were labeled "hard to place."

This means none of these children may have found a home had gay and lesbian families not opened their hearts and homes.

Furthermore, Catholic Charities closing was not actually the decision of Catholic Charities. A significant point you miss in your posting.

All 42 members of the CC board (child welfare experts) voted to continue under their current policy (i.e. take each case as they come and determine qualification). This was a unanimous decision by the CC board.

It was the four bishops of Massachusetts overrode the decision of the CC board (again, who are experts), after the state refused to grant the Bishops request to allow CC, as a tax-exempt organization, to break the states equal protection laws.

Your post is quite colorful, and will certainly raise passion, however, this decision had little to do with Catholic Charities, OR gays and lesbians - neither of whom pushed for its closing.

Please publish true facts.

A simple google search will turn ALL of these points up, quite easily.

[misskelly]

The Catholic bishops did announce that they would no longer allow CC to place children with gay parents, in accordance with the teaching of the Catholic faith (each child deserves a mother and a father). That decision led to halting CC from doing ANY adoptions, because of the conflict with the Mass regs banning discrimination against gays and lesbians. If CC continued with adoptions and stopped placing kids with gay couples, they would certainly have been sued. People were lining up to do so. I wish CC was up for a legal battle here, I would've liked to see this go to the courts and wrestle with it there. But CC elected not to risk litigation, and they stopped doing adoptions altogether. They would have been sued, and at risk of losing corporate donations for all their other social services programs too.

All of the 720 kids that CC has placed in good homes for the past 20 years have been special needs kids, not just the 13. CC has placed more than special needs kids (medical/emotional problems, sibling groups, minority children) than all the other state-approved adoption agencies combined.

This regrettable decision was not directly caused by gay activists. But it arises from the conflict that Maggie Gallagher talks about in that article, religious freedom versus gay rights. How can it be that our society cannot find a middle ground that allows CC to continue with adoptions and allows gay parents to adopt through other channels? (As they already do!) Nothing short of a pretty radical gay agenda will do nowadays. The rainbow flag includes everybody except religious people.