Agencies run by churches in the UK can no longer practice what they preach.
Roman Catholic adoptions agencies yesterday lost their battle to opt out of new laws banning discrimination against homosexual couples when Tony Blair announced that there would be “no exemptions” for faith-based groups.
The Prime Minister said in a statement that the new rules would not come into force until the end of 2008. Until then there would be a “statutory duty” for religious agencies to refer gay couples to other agencies.
Why can’t that “statutory duty” be good enough? Why is government coercion trumping religious freedom? Predictably, the results of an attempt at “fairness” will chase off the principled.
Last week the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, warned that the agencies would close rather than accept rules that required them to hand over babies to gay couples.
One wonders if, in some quarters, that’s the whole objective. I mean, given a situation where there are choices, and there usually are, why would a gay couple seek out the Catholic Church for an adoption agency when there are others that have no qualms about it. It’s kind of like the standard answer you hear when folks complain about the content of TV programming. “Just change the channel”, the Left dismissively says. But when it comes to their preferences, they won’t “change the channel” themselves–choose a different agency–and instead insist that government sanction their choices and force it upon everyone to accommodate it.
Doug Payton blogs at Considerettes.
4 users commented in " Religious Freedom Diminished in the UK "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThis is a very interesting issue, and I’m not sure I disagree with you, even though I think the position taken here by many Catholics is absurd (what exactly is so bad about children being raised by gay parents?). My brother-in-law wrote his dissertation (‘Cultural Rights for Minorities within Minorities’) on essentially this subject, and though I haven’t read it yet I have been thinking about the issue for some time (http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/workshoppapers/preiss.pdf). In this case, if there indeed are other adoption agencies available for homosexual couples, then it is hard to see how homosexuals are denied their rights by the refusal of certain agencies to serve them (it should be noted, however, that homosexuals probably are negatively effected by the Catholic churches staunch and prejudicial positions, because they legitimize hatred and even violence, but this is a different issue). Putting the legal matter aside, however, it is hard to see how refusing adoptions to homosexual couples is practicing what the Church preaches. I would bet that in other cases, children are given to couples who use birth control, or have extra-marital sexual intercourse, or engage in many harmless activities that are often condemned for various reasons by the Church. Now I am just speculating here, but I would guess that precautions are taken to assure that children do not end up in abusive homes, that the adoption would not cause the children harm. So do the agencies take the position, implicitly or explicitly, that being raised by gay parents causes a child harm? Well that’s something that could be settled by a sober analysis of the facts, which as far as I can tell support no such conclusion.
I don’t want to get into the why’s and the wherefore’s of theology, but I do want to say this; The Catholic Church does not legitimize nor encourage hatred or violence against homosexuals any more than they do so for thieves or cheaters (or indeed people who use birth control). To say something is morally wrong according to your religious beliefs does not do this. I say this as an evangelical Protestant.
I don’t know that I would claim that the Catholic Church officially legitimizes or encourages hatred or violence against homosexuals; of course they don’t. But I would argue that many parts of the church and people within the church contribute in their own way to the tragic culture of violence and discrimination against homosexuals. If one believes passionately that homosexuality is an ‘abomination to God’, as more than a couple young Christians have put it to me recently, and that God Almighty thinks this behavior is despicable, then I would guess that this will negatively effect their treatment of homosexuals (though I know many Christians who defend the church’s position but whose behaviors towards the homosexuals in their lives seems to be reasonably tolerant and friendly). Also, and I don’t know if this is avoidable or not, their prejudicial or dogma-based objections to homosexuality (which I really don’t think are based solely on theological consideration, but on personal disgust, which I would argue shaped conceptions of God and ethics to begin with…) certainly can provide legitimacy to those who would want in some situations to commit hate crimes; it does not, at least, provide compelling discouragement.
Anyway, it is a delicate issue in the political and moral spheres. I do not really consider myself a Christian, but I was pretty happily raised in what some might call a ‘conservative’ or ‘evangelical’ Christian home and a Lutheran church with what some might call ‘liberal’ tendencies (I kind of think these terms are confusing, and would rather address the specifics). Certainly there are aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and figures in historical and contemporary Christianity, that I find almost wholly admirable. I am somewhat of a ‘secular Christian’ in that I enjoy church and even religious practice, but am fairly ambivalent towards the theology, especially when that theology is used to support otherwise unsupportable ethical propositions, as I think is the case in the wholesale condemnation of homosexual behavior. There are major problems, as philosophers have long realized, with a religious-based ethic, by which I mean an ethic that is based solely on individual subjective experience and not the shared experiences of human moral agents (note that this is not a critique of all religious ethics, but only of religion-based ethics, or versions of what is often called “divine command” or “natural law” ethics). One can make a case, on pretty basic ethical grounds, against theivery and cheating, at least in the vast majority of cases. In the case of a loving and responsible homosexual couple, or even casual homosexual relationships and safe sexual intercourse, this is much harder, if not absolutely impossible without question-begging appeals to religious authority or implicit prejudice.
That’s my take…I’m not sure how politically or legally relevant it is…I pretty much agree with the gist of what you said in the post, which I liked better than others I have read of yours and others. Thanks for the response, Doug.
Thanks, I appreciate your candor. I would point out again that the idea that religion “can provide legitimacy to those who would want in some situations to commit hate crimes; it does not, at least, provide compelling discouragement” could just as easily apply to thieves and cheaters. Additionally, there is plenty in the Bible that discourages such behavior, regardless of how compelling you might find it. (Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s from a high a position of authority you can get.) That there is a regrettable few who choose to ignore those proscriptions doesn’t mean that those proscriptions aren’t there, nor that the church tacitly allows it.
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