Gay Adoption in Britain
Somewhat reminiscent of what happened in Massachusetts and here in San Francisco, as Great Britain passes it’s anti-discrimination act, there have been a few problems with religious adoption agencies refusing to accept gay couples.
It’s become quite a row…
First, the Catholic Church balked and said they’d shut down their agencies (which brought accusations of blackmail), a few magistrates quit over being required to do so, the Anglican Church then supported the Catholics, a government official suggested an exception for religious institutions, the government is split on the issue, the Prime Minister is going to weigh in… and it seems even his wife might be having some influence on this.
As with the problems the Catholic church had in San Francisco (btw, they still adopt out to gay couples, just don’t ‘publicize’ it) and Massachusetts, my view is simple. If an institution takes money from or contracts with the community (i.e. citizens through their duly elected government), it should be expected to follow the rules that the community sets in place. If it does not feel it can, no matter how deeply felt the conviction, then it should not be providing the service through community largess. On the otherhand, if it does without public funds or contract, than it can follow it’s own rules. If the Catholic church wanted to place children only with Catholics who are white, go to church weekly, profess a series of religious convictions and will do a dance in the streets in a dog suit, it can do so. But it should be required to follow the community rules if it wishes to work with the community.
THat said, I have _no_idea if in Great Britain, the religously sponsored adoption agencies are supported by the government or not. Britain does things differently. Perhaps they are private and don’t take public monies, but GB’s laws are more expansive than ours (the U.S. government often can only enforce some laws by cutting off funding).
It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. I’ll have to do a little more looking at this.
About The Author
I was musing the other day whether this story had made it over to the US.
I agree with you. If the agencies operated with just their own funds, then I suppose I could grudgingly accept their bigotry. I’m not sure about all adoption agencies but the Catholic agencies do receive public funds and as such, they should operate within legislation and within our society’s moral frame work.
In the UK we are fast approaching a very curious state of affairs whereby relious beliefs (which are protected by certain legislation) are coming into conflict with other protected (or hopefully soon to be protected) life choices. We are legislating ourselves into an impasse. Intellectually I find it very interesting but I know that we are entering a very challenging time.
Reply to rheaSupper Talk: short updates.. and faith
Today is crab cakes and hoppin john! Yippee! (some of my favorite foods). So, this is a short supper talk… some updates from previous posts or suppertalks… then we eat… This whole Donnie Davies and the hoax/not hoax hate video…
Reply to Daddy, Papa and Me