Gay Adoption

The Catholic Church has a curious definition of "family values," said Joyce Kauffman in The Boston Globe. For 103 years, the welfare agency Catholic Charities has been placing "abused, neglected," and handicapped children with loving families that want them. In the last couple of decades, the agency’s social workers have quietly placed some kids with gay and lesbian parents. But this month, the church hierarchy ordered Catholic Charities in both Boston and San Francisco to get out of adoptions altogether, rather than accept state mandates barring discrimination against gay couples. Placing children with gays, the church said, was "gravely immoral."

The way gays are carrying on, said John Leo in the Richmond, Va., Times-Dispatch, you’d think they could no longer adopt. But under the new rules, they simply can’t "adopt through a particular church." That’s entirely justifiable; the government has no business telling the Catholic Church that it must violate its own moral teachings by handing children to two daddies, or two mommies. That’s just the tip of the issue, said Sara Butler Nardo in The Weekly Standard. Through adoption, gays are quietly changing the definition of parenthood—and without the public debate that greeted their attempts to change the definition of marriage. Thanks to these activists’ efforts, at least 10 states have adopted "de facto parenthood," whereby a judge can award custody if the relationship to the child "appears sufficiently ’parent-like.’" In this brave new world, terms such as "mother," "father," and "marriage" are no longer relevant, and gays and single people can create families out of any group of individuals they wish.

Welcome to the real world, said Ellen Goodman in The Boston Globe. In this country, there are 500,000 children "adrift," many of them black, Hispanic, and handicapped. For them, the alternative to gay parents is not straight parents, but the revolving door of permanent foster care. Yet "wedge-drivers" in 16 states are now militating to make gay adoptions illegal. That’s certainly not in the best interest of children, said Dahlia Lithwick in The Washington Post. Numerous studies show that kids raised by gay parents are just as healthy as those raised by straight ones. Social conservatives simply refuse to accept this, preferring the simplicity of their "sweeping moral judgments" and their dark suspicion that courts and gays are conspiring to change the definition of "family." The reality, though, is that the only families available to some kids are headed by gay parents. And kids who’ve spent much of their lives in institutions and foster homes "usually have more urgent concerns than what their parents do in bed."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up