Equal Consideration In Adoption Laws

If homosexuals were already permitted to adopt from Catholic agencies, not jointly but as single individuals, why was there need for legislation? Well, the answer is obvious once you read closely what the new law requires:

"All adoption agencies must allow same-sex couples to adopt children with equal consideration, regardless of the sexual orientation of the adopting couple."

In other words, the new law prohibits any agency from taking into account the sexual orientation of an adopting couple. If two couples, one gay and one straight, want to adopt a child, an agency is prohibited by law from opting for the straight couple. In fact the law now puts pressure on agencies to give preference to gay couples, for fear of being accused of discrimination. This affects not only Catholic adoption agencies, but any agency that wants to secure both a mother and a father for a child. You don't have to be a homophobe to believe that it is good for children to have opposite-sex, heterosexual parents.

Keep that in mind next time you read that this law was needed in order to make it possible for gays to adopt. That very common characterization of the new legislation is very misleading: gays were already able to adopt, even from Catholic agencies. What the law does is deprive children the right to have a mother and a father. And there's another effect of the legislation, identified by Father Blake:

"I don't particularly want to discuss the sinfulness of homosexual genital activity, it is pretty obvious if you have a Catholic understanding of the nature of marriage as something open to the procreation and upbringing of children, that such relationships are at the least problematic and are indeed disordered, and sterile by their intrinsic nature.

My concerns are:

• The denial of parents right to discriminate against or in favour of any group for the sake of their children. Catholic adoption agencies do not pick up children off the streets but from people who want their children brought up in the Catholic faith. Nowadays the birth parents of a child are expected to continue there involvement with the child as far as is possible.

• This seems to place homosexual civil unions on the same level as marriage, it seems to be part of an agenda to force an acceptance of same sex relationships, increasingly we find the state agencies including the police are used to enforce this agenda.

• I do not feel it fair for a child who often has enough painful baggage because of the break up of his/her birth family which has led to being placed for adoption should also have to deal with his/her adoptive parents' sexuality as well."

This seems to place homosexual civil unions on the same level as marriage, it seems to be part of an agenda to force an acceptance of same sex relationships, increasingly we find the state agencies including the police are used to enforce this agenda.