Cardinal Cormac's Selective Discrimination

Writing at CiF relgious affairs reporter Andrew Brown sheds helpful light on the opportunism of Archbishop Murphy O'Connor's gay adoption exemption bid:

"The Roman Catholic church is making a simple, naked power political gesture. What it wants from this is a recognition that its view of morality should take precedence over that of a democratically elected parliament. What is more, the view of morality they are fighting for is particularly homophobic in a way that Vatican teaching more generally isn't. Catholic adoption agencies might consistently refuse to consider as parents unmarried couples, remarried couples, single parents, couples who practice contraception, supporters of the death penalty and anyone else who breaches Catholic moral teaching. That would be a consistent stand and one so wildly unpopular that no bishop would consider it. In all those cases, the church has managed to finesse the problem, and with a nod and a wink if necessary allowed humanity to triumph. But the homosexuals are different. They really are the victims of widespread popular prejudice...Are we to suppose that the Roman Catholic conscience, something even more flexible than Rowan Williams' backbone, could not work its way around these regulations if it wanted to?"

It's not hard to find evidence that it could. On yesterday's The World At One Kathy Batt of the Catholic Children's Rescue Society explained that her agency would certainly assess a single homosexual prospective adoptor "like anybody else." The problem would come, she said, if approached by a lesbian or gay couple. But: "That's no so much about being against homosexuality as about the church's teachings in the promotion of marriage."

So where does that leave us? If being homosexual isn't the problem but being unmarried is, presumably, as Brown suggests, unmarried heterosexual couples would be turned down on the same grounds. Ms Batt didn't say they are though and if such a policy were commonplace I think we would have heard about it. So I'm afraid that all roads still lead back to sex. The logic of the church's position does indeed seem to be that the ONLY people their adoption agencies automatically turn away are homosexual ones in stable relationships, including those who've signed a civil contract. The basis of this distinction between attached and unattached gays can only be the assumption that the former engage in homosexual acts with one another, which is against God's plan for procreation, whereas single lesbians and gays don't go in for homosexual acts at all. This is a strategy of don't ask, don't tell taken to a zany new extreme of self-delusion. It also confirms the cowardly selectiveness of Murphy O'Connor's intervention, picking on the one group at variance with Catholic teaching against whom he stood a chance of building a coalition of social fear. How terribly Christian of him.

P.S. The whole of Andrew Brown's article is here.

Comments

[Peter McBurney]

According to today's Guardian, Catholic adoption agencies WILL cosider as potential adopters parents who are atheists. Since there is a Commandment against atheism, but none against homosexuality, the moral depravity (I can find no better word) of the British Catholic Church's position is evident, and rank. Fortunately, one need not judge one's God on the basis of the despicable intolerance of His earthly representatives.

[BJ]

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