No Special Rights for Catholic Church
I admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude at reading the lead of this article from the Guardian*
The Catholic church is almost certain to lose its battle for special treatment over gay adoption rules….
How shocking for me, a gay man, to hear that the Catholic Church is being denied special rights when it comes to discriminating against gays and lesbians.
This is part of the "debate" swirling around the new British law, soon to come into force, that establishes a fair amount of gay and lesbian equality in consideration of social services. As has been their hallmark, the Catholic and Anglican churches (at least) have demanded exemption so that they may continue to discriminate as suits their taste.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor wrote to the prime minister [Tony Blair] demanding an exemption for Catholic agencies on the grounds that to "oblige our agencies in law to consider adoption applications from homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents would require them to act against the principles of Catholic teaching". His stand was endorsed by the Anglican archbishops of Canterbury and York.
I remember hearing a spokespriest arguing that "matters of conscience cannot be denied", but I agree with the stance that such an argument to continue promoting inequality and hatred is well past its use-by date.
Catholic adoption agencies, in a less-than-surprising move, are threatening to shut their doors over the "controversy". I can't say I see this as a bad thing, despite the short-term inconvenience to some looking to adopt. Should one religious sect (or "faith group", as mentioned in the article) be deciding on behalf of the entire country who should be eligible to adopt children?
[Update: Seen just after I posted the above, this quotation from cabinet minister Alan Johnson, with its concise summary against the case for exemption, was too good to leave out (bold mine):
But on Thursday Education Minister Alan Johnson, who has responsibility for adoption, said the government, including Blair, saw no case for special treatment.
"I don't see a case for exemption and I don't think the prime minister does," he told BBC radio.
"The case for no exemption has been made very eloquently. The strength of that argument suggests that we cannot introduce legislation to protect gays and lesbians against discrimination and at the same time allow that discrimination to continue."
Jeremy Lovell, "Churches set to lose appeal on UK gay adoption law", Reuters, 25 January 2007.]
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*Will Woodward and Severin Carrell, "Cabinet rejects exemption on gay adoptions", The Guardian [UK], 25 January 2007.
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Friday, 26 January 2007 at 00.09
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I hesitate to comment on this because I don't know anything about the relationship of Catholic or any other social-service agencies with the government in Britain. For example, does it go beyond licensing to include funding or providing services in kind?
I don't like it that the Catholic and Anglican churches take this position. But I recognize their right to hold to their beliefs.
Unless I'm missing something, the churches aren't trying to keep gay or lesbian couples from being able to adopt anywhere, just from Catholic (and Anglican?) agencies. I assume here that they're not the only agencies to handle adoptions.