UK Catholics and Adoption
This story (from NPR) pissed me off on my way to work today. The Catholic Archbishop of the UK is threatening to take his toys and go home if the government forces them to allow gay couples to adopt. I'm sorry, but I thought adoption agencies were supposed to act as the children's agents. Since when is it better to leave a kid with a foster parent or orphanage rather than allowing a stable, loving couple to adopt them? Wake up and smell reality, folks. Gay parents do not make children gay. Gay men are less likely to molest children than straight men. If sexual orientation were a matter of contamination, we'd all be straight. As it is, one in ten of the children these Catholic adoption agencies are placing are likely to be other-than-straight themselves. What message are you sending them? "You could have been adopted by someone who would understand you, but we don't like them, so you lose." What's next? Miscegenation is icky, so the Catholic Church is going to go back to not letting interracial couples adopt? Not letting non-Catholic couples adopt?
Some of my students have rotten, unstable home lives. They've been in foster homes. I've talked to social workers. Plenty of foster parents (though not all) are in it for the pittance they're paid. We can't even find enough suitable foster homes for dogs put up for adoption, much less children who aren't perfect, but the Catholic Church thinks it's more important that couples wanting to adopt have a mixed set of genitalia than that the children get a stable, loving family.
Some of my students have rotten, unstable home lives. They've been in foster homes. I've talked to social workers. Plenty of foster parents (though not all) are in it for the pittance they're paid. We can't even find enough suitable foster homes for dogs put up for adoption, much less children who aren't perfect, but the Catholic Church thinks it's more important that couples wanting to adopt have a mixed set of genitalia than that the children get a stable, loving family.