Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Adoption and the culture war

This week’s TAE Online column deals with the close nexus between the arguments over gay adoption and same-sex marriage, developing points I began to make here.

I’m increasingly convinced that adoption is in some ways the pivotal issue, with political ramifications for our conflicts over abortion and marriage, as I argued here.

Update: While I’m at it, this Get Religion post is crucial for making sense of the numbers often cited by advocates of gay adoptions and gay marriage. By Mollie Ziegler’s reckoning, every gay household with children must "care for an average of 36 to 84 kids."

Update #2:
Jennifer Roback Morse writes knowledgeably about the foster care system, arguing that it "has not yet recovered from the sexual revolution." Another choice nugget:

In other words, the child welfare law has institutionalized the least defensible features of the sexual revolution. Sex is an entitlement. The consequences of sex are all negotiable. Kids are an afterthought.


This is why the question of what gays do or don’t do is beside the point. The most enthusiastic advocate of gay parenting has to admit that it is an untried social experiment whose full ramifications are unknown.

Jeff Jacoby is characteristically eloquent on the Catholic Charities of Boston case, which I discussed here. A snippet:

The church’s request for a conscience clause should have been unobjectionable, at least to anyone whose priority is rescuing kids from foster care. Those who spurned that request out of hand must believe that adoption is designed primarily for the benefit of adults, not children. The end of Catholic Charities’ involvement in adoption may suit the Human Rights Campaign. But it can only hurt the interests of the damaged and vulnerable children for whom Catholic Charities has long been a source of hope.


Is this a sign of things to come? In the name of nondiscrimination, will more states force religious organizations to swallow their principles or go out of business? Same-sex adoption is becoming increasingly common, but it is still highly controversial. Millions of Americans would readily agree that gay and lesbian couples can make loving parents, yet insist nevertheless that kids are better off with loving parents of both sexes. That is neither a radical view nor an intolerant one, but if the kneecapping of Catholic Charities is any indication, it may soon be forbidden.

Read the whole thing.

 

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