This isn't becoming a gay rights blog - I promise - but these issues keep coming up, and they're well worth commenting on.
The Synopsis: New anti-discrimination laws mean that those who provide public services will no longer be allowed to discriminate against people on the basis of their sexuality. Therefore Catholic adoption agencies will not be allowed to turn away gay couples. The Catholics aren't pleased, and the Big Chief UK Catholic has written to the Cabinet asking for an exemption from the law.
Here's a thought. If you're a gay couple looking to adopt, then why on earth would you go to a Catholic adoption agency, of all places?! But it's the principle of the matter, I hear you cry, and you're right. So let's explore the principle of the matter. Listening to the radio article on this subject, I initially had one reaction but quickly moved to the opposite position. Here are those two positions:
My first thought when listening to the discussion was this: why should Catholics have to provide this service to gay people? After all, only 4% of adoption goes through Catholic agencies - there are obviously plenty of other places to choose from. More to the point, however, the law seems to say the following to Catholics: your beliefs about the morality of homosexuality don't matter. We don't see why you should be entitled to act according to them. In other words, it seems to me, the law is basically telling Catholics that their belief is wrong. And so it might be; but that doesn't seem to be the sort of thing that Government is employed to do. Liberalists seem only to be interested in allowing religious freedom when it doesn't contradict the opinions of the masses, and I can't see a justification for this. In fact, I think it has a name: tyrrany of the majority. I'm not sure if a case can be made that we should be suspicious of any religious doctrine that prescribes discrimination of any kind. So, at first, I was tentatively on the side of the Catholics.
However, I came to suspect that, actually, the Catholic position doesn't hold water. Here's why: I wonder if Catholic adoption agencies are prone to question couples about whether they lie, steal, have pre-marital sex or covet their neighbour's ass? Do they turn people away for those reasons? I suspect not. What's so special about homosexuality, then? Why should Catholics want to turn away gay couples but not lying and theiving couples? To me it's not clear that this makes sense.
Here's the crux of the matter. If you're going to be a Christian (Catholic or otherwise) in today's UK society - where most people aren't Christians - then you're going to have to put up with the fact that most people's moral beliefs do not match your own. You don't have to like it - but, sometimes, you do have to hold your tongue. When you're providing public services, this becomes a sticky issue. Unless there's independent evidence that adoption by gays is detrimental to children, there's no reason that Catholics shouldn't allow gays to adopt through their clinics - the same way they would allow those who take the name of the Lord in vain to adopt through their clinics. After all, if you're a Christian providing a public service, aren't you supposed to be expressing God's immense and unconditional love?
Last updated
35 minutes ago
3 comments:
I believe that in such cases it'd be pretty difficult to uphold such a law. Granted, the government could enforce some sort of equal opportunities survey, however this would be largely meaningless due to, as you pointed out, the very small number of gay couples looking to take the Catholic route.
If anyone did try, I am pretty sure that the agency could find / invent some other reason for rejection.
Good point about the plausability of defining a homosexual couple by their "sin". It begs, who would you rather adopt your child - two happily civil-ceremonied men or a wife and her husband who doesn't think twice about cheating on her a couple of times a year in exchange for some heated arguments and heightened tension
Maybe we need to start coordinating our blogs so we don't clash in future. I feel like we've come to a party wearing the same clothes :-P
Other than to say I think the latter part about the catholic position might possibly be better kept as an internal debate to the catholic church, not a place for the state to legislate, I very much agree with your views.
It's perhaps worth noting, as far as 'who has the right to say', this will be a little more complicated I'm sure.
A casual observer might believe the church are running a self funded project and it's up to them how they run it - as long as they're not actually harming anyone why offend them? But I imagine the Government funds much of the Catholic adoption services, which will fund the running of the church and definitely making them a (partially) publicly owned service... in which case the Government does have some place in the discussion.
But it's beneficial for the public to have groups like the church run these services on subsidies, as it's a lot cheaper than running them as council programs. Council workers get much better pay packets than Priests, the church covers most of the training already in general minister training. The Church already outright own a lot of the facilities they need to run such services, so there's little costs there.
I'm not always sure who's doing who the favour with this sort of thing, at least not with Army hostels.
Good post ... your last para is spot on.
in many ways I want the church to stand up for itself while the world apparently rund roughshod over it. But then again why does it need to act like the victim in all this? I'm pleased the Catholic (and Anglican) church is making a stand on this but I think they have gone over the top in trying to defend their stance by trying some emotional blackmail.
But the media have sniffed out a good story here and built it up. On Sky news last night they were really bigging up this huge split in the Cabinet. When they interviewed one Cabinet minister (cant rememebr who) he was being very diplomatic about the possible outcomes. The media would love a fight and stick the knife into Tony and twist a bit more.
Post a Comment