Professor Robert George at Princeton has been one of the most articulate spokesmen for the view of marriage as a union of one man and one woman. He has demonstrated the absurdity of liberal claims that there is no rational basis for objecting to same-sex marriage.
Today on Public Discourse he has an important reflection on the wishful thinking of some who imagine that we can strike a “grand bargain” with proponents of same-sex marriage. Here is the money paragraph.
The fundamental error made by some supporters of conjugal marriage was and is, I believe, to imagine that a grand bargain could be struck with their opponents: “We will accept the legal redefinition of marriage; you will respect our right to act on our consciences without penalty, discrimination, or civil disabilities of any type. Same-sex partners will get marriage licenses, but no one will be forced for any reason to recognize those marriages or suffer discrimination or disabilities for declining to recognize them.” There was never any hope of such a bargain being accepted. Perhaps parts of such a bargain would be accepted by liberal forces temporarily for strategic or tactical reasons, as part of the political project of getting marriage redefined; but guarantees of religious liberty and non-discrimination for people who cannot in conscience accept same-sex marriage could then be eroded and eventually removed. After all, “full equality” requires that no quarter be given to the “bigots” who want to engage in “discrimination” (people with a “separate but equal” mindset) in the name of their retrograde religious beliefs. “Dignitarian” harm must be opposed as resolutely as more palpable forms of harm.
George is certainly right. The arguments used by progressives have a “total war” and “unconditional surrender” logic (no rational basis for opposition to its goals!). This will not allow for bargains or compromises.
George is also right that progressive claims about inevitability need to be seen as part of a long history of claims to be on the side of “history.” It was said about abortion. It was said about socialism. It was said about secularization. It has been said about many things that modern liberals have deemed the obvious “rational” way of thinking about social and moral issues.
As I said, it’s an important discussion, one worth reading in full.
July 19th, 2012 | 10:57 am
This seems to be yet another application of Neuhaus’ Law: “Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.”
July 19th, 2012 | 11:44 am
I have been told by supporters of same-sex marriage that the belief that animated Catholic Charities’ adoption services — i.e. that the best thing for children is to have a mom and a dad — is no different that racism and must be opposed by the government with all of the same refusal to compromise with such bigoted hatred. This is why Catholic Charities must be driven out of adoption services.
I kid you not. Believing that a kid should be with a mom and a dad in preference to a dad and a dad is HATEFUL and cannot be tolerated.
Yet ask those same people whether they would be indifferent about placing their own children with a mom and dad or with a dad and a dad (all other things being equal), and see them backpedal. Haters.
July 19th, 2012 | 11:57 am
This is despite the fact that the conjugal conception has historically been embodied in our marriage laws, and explains their content (not just the requirement of spousal sexual complementarity, but also rules concerning consummation and annulability, norms of monogamy and sexual exclusivity, and the pledge of permanence of commitment) . . . .
Much of this is not in state laws in the United States:
I cannot find a compilation of data for all the states on non-consummation as grounds for an annulment, but in the individual states that I have checked, annulments on the grounds of permanent physical incapacity to consummate a marriage have time limits. In such states, after a certain period of time, a marriage is legally valid if it has not been consummated and can never be consummated.
As I read Robert George’s What Is Marriage? he takes conjugal marriage (which is the definition of marriage—and which is basically the Catholic understanding of marriage) to be permanent and indissoluble. Yet all 50 states in the United States have no fault divorce, and all countries in the world except the Philippines allow legal divorce under some circumstances. I think it is very difficult to maintain that Robert George’s understanding of conjugal marriage is enshrined in US law.
This is not the first essay claiming all kinds of assurances were given regarding same-sex marriage but now we see that they were all lies. I really don’t recall proponents of same-sex marriage promising no conflicts would arise if same-sex marriage were made legal, or offering to negotiate a “grand bargain.” Certainly same-sex marriage would not have passed in New York state if some safeguards for religious institutions had not been written into the laws. But when civil rights legislation is written, there is bound to be conflict with those who have vigorously opposed it and intend to continue opposing it after it is law.
July 19th, 2012 | 1:19 pm
David Nickol
“Most states consider a couple to be married when the ceremony ends…”
No, all states presume it, until the contrary is proved; a very different proposition
Likewise, all legal systems impose a personal bar on suitors, based on the lapse of time or on mora and taciturnity. But this results in a refusal to consider the complaint and dismissal of the action. It says nothing about what is or is not a valid marriage
July 19th, 2012 | 1:39 pm
Yet ask those same people whether they would be indifferent about placing their own children with a mom and dad or with a dad and a dad (all other things being equal), and see them backpedal. Haters.
Sally Rogers,
I would say that it is prejudice for Catholic Charities (or any other adoption service) to operate on the assumption that a same-sex couple will never be the best available adoptive parents for any child. The principle on which the Catholic Charities adoptions services that have voluntarily closed because of nondiscrimination laws wanted to operate under was not that a married mother and father, all things being equal, are always the best adoptive parents for a child. Rather, it was that a same-sex couple could never be the best choice as adoptive parents under any circumstances. In about a third of all cases, children from foster care are placed with single parents. All of the Catholic Charities that I have checked place children with single parents. So it is not always a choice between married heterosexual couples and same-sex couples. It is a choice among married heterosexual couples, same-sex couples, and single individuals.
You yourself added the phrase “all other things being equal” to your comment about placing a child with a mother and father instead of a father and father. Catholic Charities does not include the phrase “all other things being equal.” Suppose a special-needs child were up for adoption and the choice was between a perfectly ordinary married couple (or even a single individual) with a modest income, or a well-off same-sex couple one of whom was a pediatrician and the other a special-needs teacher. The same-sex couple would not even be considered.
Catholic Charities did not say, “We will interview all applicants and handle adoptions by placing children in the best homes we can find.” They basically said, “No same-sex couples need apply.” That is, by any definition, discrimination.
Take out the “all things being equal” from your question about placing children with a mother and father versus a father and father, and I doubt that few of the people you talk about would backpedal.
July 19th, 2012 | 1:59 pm
John V – It would seem Neuhaus was writing specifically about intra-church struggles. I don’t think everyone in the U.S. belongs to the same church.
July 19th, 2012 | 2:15 pm
David Nickol,
Airtight reasoning in support of nonsense…
July 19th, 2012 | 2:37 pm
No one would disagree that it is discriminatory to say, ahead of time, that as a matter of policy we won’t engage in adoptions with same sex couples. Obviously, this is to discriminate — ie. use a criteria to choose between available options.
The question is whether they are using a rational and justifiable criteria in reaching their judgment about the criteria being deployed. I think they are.
Be that as it may, I was asking about what people think would be best for their own children.
And deep down in their hearts everyone in the world knows that all things being equal a married husband and wife is best for a child. But this is what must be stamped out if we are to believe those who say this is hateful. Hateful – not just prejudiced or ignorant.
July 19th, 2012 | 2:58 pm
If that is “by any definition, discrimination,” then in some cases discrimination is entirely appropriate.
What if two members of NAMBLA (The North American Man/Boy Love Association) which is a pedophile and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States that works to abolish age of consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with children, who were married to each other, wanted to adopt a little boy?
Morally, it would not only be entirely appropriate, but absolutely obligatory to “discriminate” against them. Do you agree, or do you think such people should be able to adopt little boys after openly advocating the legalization of their sexual activity with them?
July 19th, 2012 | 3:09 pm
“The principle on which the Catholic Charities adoptions services that have voluntarily closed because of nondiscrimination laws wanted to operate under was not that a married mother and father, all things being equal, are always the best adoptive parents for a child. Rather, it was that a same-sex couple could never be the best choice as adoptive parents under any circumstances. In about a third of all cases, children from foster care are placed with single parents”
I want to address this issue because I see it keeps coming up. I know that supporters of same-sex relationships don’t readily agree with the following, but at least it may clarify the Catholic position:
There’s nothing mean, or extraordinary about the following statement: If one holds the belief that a male of the human race is clearly made to be complimentary – in all ways – to a female of the human race, then in a same-sex household it follows that something is wrongly ordered about the affections and the human interaction in that household.
This is not the case with a single-parent household – there are different struggles to be sure, (not always money or stability struggles, by the way,) but they do not begin with a basic issue of human interaction. And the door is ‘wide open’ for a father or mother figure from outside the home to at least partially fill the role of the ‘missing’ parent.
Supporters of same-sex parenting often respond to this point by saying that an outside-the-home father figure can ‘step up’ to help out a lesbian couple, for example – but then that person by their very presence reinforces one of two positions, neither easy to defend: Either a) that he or she is filling a necessary gap in the child’s development that the parents simply cannot fill by the very nature of their relationship, or b) there’s nothing wrong or lacking in the parents’ relationship, in which case why is the surrogate there again?
In the case of the single-parent household, nothing must be redefined or explained differently for an outside father- or mother-figure to fill a role. In a same-sex-couple household, something central to the household must first be either ignored or stepped on.
That is why, “all things being equal,” the Catholic position is that a single-parent household is, (no phrase will be completely acceptable here so I’ll just pick one,) “more favorable” than a same-sex couple household.
This says nothing about the persons’ parenting skills, or personal dignity. It goes back to the fact that a man cannot teach a young girl certain intrinsic things about being a woman, and a woman cannot teach a young boy certain intrinsic things about becoming a man. And neither same-sex-relationship person can pass on a whole category of intrinsic things about human interaction between two complimentary genders of the human race.
July 19th, 2012 | 3:15 pm
And deep down in their hearts everyone in the world knows that all things being equal a married husband and wife is best for a child.
Sally Rogers,
I tend to agree that, all things being equal, the best parents are a mother and father rather than two men or two women. Actually, if I could dictate things, I would have every child raised in an extended family, with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and so on. But I would say it’s rarely the case that all things are equal. I think the people who should make the decisions about placing adoptive children are those who actually work with the parents and children face to face. It should be rare for anyone to try to second-guess them.
July 19th, 2012 | 3:19 pm
Steve Billingsley,
Thanks! I will use “Airtight reasoning . . . ” as a blurb on my next book.
July 19th, 2012 | 4:04 pm
Morally, it would not only be entirely appropriate, but absolutely obligatory to “discriminate” against them. Do you agree, or do you think such people should be able to adopt little boys after openly advocating the legalization of their sexual activity with them?
harry,
It would not be discrimination based on the fact that they were a same-sex couple to refuse to place an adoptive child with a same-sex couple who advocated pedophilia any more than it would be discrimination against married people to refuse to place an adoptive child with an opposite-sex married couple who advocated pedophilia.
Nondiscrimination laws do not protect everything a person in a protected class does. If a married Catholic opposite-sex couple wanted to adopt a child and were known to advocate pedophilia, they couldn’t claim anti-Catholic discrimination if they were turned down when they tried to adopt a child.
This is simple common sense.
July 19th, 2012 | 4:12 pm
@David Nickol:
A very minor point, but surely there are two countries in the world that disallow divorce: the Philipines and Vatican City. (Or am I wrong? I don’t actually know how the Vatican is run, civilly speaking.)
July 19th, 2012 | 4:20 pm
That is why, “all things being equal,” the Catholic position is that a single-parent household is, (no phrase will be completely acceptable here so I’ll just pick one,) “more favorable” than a same-sex couple household.
JDD,
But the Catholic Charities position leaves out “all things being equal.” If, all things not being equal, a single parent and a same-sex couple are the only two prospects for a child up from adoption, and the same-sex couple is the superior of the two based on income, education, background, experience with children, and all other criteria one can think of, the child either is placed with the less-well-qualified single parent or stays in foster care.
“All things being equal” has nothing to do with the Catholic Charities position, which is that no children will be placed with a same-sex couple under any circumstances whatsoever. Same-sex couples will not be considered at all.
If one holds the belief that a male of the human race is clearly made to be complimentary – in all ways – to a female of the human race, then in a same-sex household it follows that something is wrongly ordered about the affections and the human interaction in that household.
I reserve the right to come back to this and analyze it more deeply, but at first glance you seem to be saying that homosexuals are unfit parents because they are “disordered.”
July 19th, 2012 | 4:48 pm
Let’s say their policy is as you say it is – in each and every case, this adoption agency believes that it will never be the case that a same-sex couple will be the best placement for a child. No additional kinds of goods that they can bring to the table will ever out-weigh this one factor.
May an adoption agency be allowed to function with this policy? My understanding is that even if the agency is run completely with private funds, it may not legally operate in states where same-sex marriage is legal.
Does this seem right to you?
July 19th, 2012 | 4:57 pm
“…but guarantees of religious liberty and non-discrimination for people who cannot in conscience accept same-sex marriage could then be eroded and eventually removed. After all, “full equality” requires that no quarter be given to the “bigots” who want to engage in “discrimination”
yes. It will also one day probably be illegal to refuse same-sex marriages in churches, too, because it will be considered illegal to discriminate. The assault might not be direct at first—it might be like the attack on the Archdiocese of Washington DC’s adoption service, which was not closed down because of its refusal to place children with gay couples, but because its insurance coverage did not extend to homosexual partners. They got what they wanted.
July 19th, 2012 | 4:59 pm
Carson,
You are right. Vatican City is considered a country, and it has no divorce, so that makes two countries without divorce. Vatican City is a city state, but city states meet the criteria for being countries. According to Wikipedia—I had to look all this up, since my geography is terrible—there are three sovereign city states in the world: Monaco, Singapore, and Vatican City. I might have guessed Monaco, but never Singapore.
The one advantage to being terrible at geography is that it is always fascinating to look at maps, since they are filled with information I don’t know because I can’t remember any of it.
July 19th, 2012 | 5:05 pm
So you concede that
was putting it too strongly.
Here is some more common sense. Adult sex with children isn’t natural. It is illegal because it is unnatural and harmful to children, just as children being raised within a same-sex union is unnatural and harmful to children, as nature’s way is for Mom and Dad to raise children, not Mom and Mom or Dad and Dad.
If adult sex with children became politically correct and was made legal, I assume you would fight for the repeal of such a law. But why would you? On what basis would you do that? It is just as obvious that adult sex with children is unnatural and harmful to children as it is that same sex unions are unnatural and therefore harmful to children being raised in one, yet you are an advocate of state recognition of same sex marriage and of such unions having adoption rights. (And if you want to insist that raising children in a same-sex union is not harmful to children, you won’t be able to really verify that until a generation of them have been raised that way. How can you advocate that which is obviously contrary to nature and heading way, way off into uncharted waters, and which amounts to using innocent children in a grand social experiment? What if you are completely wrong? We know the “Mom and Dad” way works. What excuse is there for experimenting with something else? What kind of callousness must one have towards children to use them as guinea pigs like that?)
How would you answer the charge that you were just attempting to impose your religious beliefs on others regarding adult/child sex being unnatural and harmful to children?
Or answer the charge that since many professional organizations of psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors had approved of adult/child sex (in our imaginary scenario adult/child sex has become politically correct), you obviously just weren’t sophisticated enough, being trapped in an anachronistic value system as you were, to comprehend the views of modern professionals? How would you answer that?
What if the federal government mandated that you support with your money and involvement agencies that matched children with adults who wanted to have sex with them? On what basis would you object to that? Or would you?
July 19th, 2012 | 5:42 pm
to social conservatives who would take the “grand bargain”: if you were indeed a “bigot” before legal redefinition, why would you not be a “bigot” after legal redefinition? of course you’d still be a “bigot.”
the “grand bargain” reduces to the following: support legal redefinition and you’ll still be a bigot.
July 19th, 2012 | 5:49 pm
attack on the Archdiocese of Washington DC’s adoption service, which was not closed down because of its refusal to place children with gay couples, but because its insurance coverage did not extend to homosexual partners.
peg,
That is incorrect. In response to the Washington same-sex marriage law, the Archdiocese did two things: transferred its adoptions services to another provider, and altered insurance coverage for all remaining social-service workers:
Adoption services:
July 19th, 2012 | 6:03 pm
My understanding is that even if the agency is run completely with private funds, it may not legally operate in states where same-sex marriage is legal.
Sally Rogers,
I believe your facts are incorrect. What we are talking about in the case of the various branches of Catholic Charities is adoption from foster care. As I explained foster care is run by the government at the state level. The government contracts with various organizations to oversee placement of children in foster care. An agency running completely on private funds would not be working in the foster care system.
There is absolutely nothing to stop Catholic Charities from working in private adoptions. In private adoptions, the biological parents always have the final say on the choice of adoptive parents. If Catholic Charities wanted to arrange private adoptions for Catholics giving children up for adoption, there is no legal way to stop them from placing children solely with opposite-sex married couples or even solely with opposite-sex married couples who are Catholic. When working for the foster care system, Catholic Charities is not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, national origin, and so on. Adoption through Catholic Charities, when they are working through the foster care system, is not a matter of Catholics dealing with Catholics. It is a matter of Catholics working for the government and being required to deal with all comers. Once a jurisdiction has nondiscrimination laws for a particular group, as a contractor for the government, Catholic Charities may not discriminate against that group.
July 19th, 2012 | 6:36 pm
It is just as obvious that adult sex with children is unnatural and harmful to children as it is that same sex unions are unnatural and therefore harmful to children being raised in one, yet you are an advocate of state recognition of same sex marriage and of such unions having adoption rights.
harry,
No it is not obvious “that same sex unions are unnatural and therefore harmful to children being raised in one.” Your argument seems to be that adult-child sexual relationships are “obviously” wrong, and same-sex sexual relationships are “obviously” wrong. Consequently, anyone who believes pedophilia is wrong must necessarily believe that homosexuality is wrong as well. I suppose you would also argue that contraception is obviously wrong, and anyone who maintains that contraception is not immoral has, as a consequence, no argument against pedophilia, since pedophilia and contraception are both obviously wrong, and if you accept one thing that is obviously wrong, you have no good reason for not accepting anything else that is obviously wrong.
July 19th, 2012 | 6:42 pm
Hello,
David Nickol said earlier that we have no faul divorce in 50 states. I used to think so too. However, I was recently listening to a lecture from a family law professor and apparently we don’t have it in Arkansas. It does not exist in a few other states apparently. That does not mean it is too hard to get a divorce here. You can get divorced over general indignities-basically insulting comments. Just wanted to chime in. As for the rest of the discussion, I believe Prof. George is right about how likely a bargain is. This sort of thing is already happening in Canada.
July 19th, 2012 | 7:12 pm
There is absolutely nothing to stop Catholic Charities from working in private adoptions.
David, I believe you are wrong. In the state of Illinois the civil union law says that in all instances of statutory, administrative, and governmental practice, “civil unions” must be treated identically as “marriages”. Illinois has a statutory ban on discrimination based on “marital status” which under the civil union statute includes “civil union” status.
Therefore, if a private charity refuses to provide adoption services to a same-sex couple in a “civil union” they have violated the state’s anti-discrimination law. Makes no difference whose money they are spending – public, private, etc. Anti-discrimination laws apply to everyone — private, public, makes no difference. Unless there is a statutory exemption, which there is not, then all adoption agencies are bound by this law.
The fact that a particular governmental contract was withdrawn, as it was in the state of Illinois, is an additional issue, but it is not the only issue.
Do you think there should be a statutory exemption to permit Catholic Charities to continue their adoption work, regardless of the fact that they won’t place kids with homosexual couples?
July 19th, 2012 | 7:15 pm
Another thought, David Nickol,
What if our homosexual NAMBLA couple insisted that even though they openly advocate adult/child sex, they were law abiding citizens, and wouldn’t think of engaging in sex with the little boy they adopted until it was legal, and insisted that the adoption agency had no right to assume they were “guilty” before they were accused of a crime, as the state would presumed they were innocent even after they had been accused of a crime, until they were found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
On what basis would you refuse to adopt out the little boy to them? Or would you? After all, according to your many statements on this forum, it seems as though you believe there is no authority higher than the state, and so whatever depravity the state sanctions, is “moral” according to you. And if you do believe there is an authority higher than the state, what do you think it is? If not, if the state mandated law abiding NAMBLA members must have adoption rights, on what basis would you object? Or would you?
There is no such thing as perverse depravity anymore, just that which isn’t yet politically correct.
July 19th, 2012 | 7:51 pm
David Nickol,
How can you verify that children are not harmed by being raised in a same-sex union until a generation of them has been raised that way? And what right do you have to experiment with the lives of innocent children to find out? Again, those with the slightest respect for children aren’t willing to use them as guinea pigs in a social experiment, and those who have so little respect for children that they are willing to do that have thereby disqualified themselves as fit parents. Just holding the unfounded opinion that children raised in same-sex unions will be unharmed isn’t good enough.
And it is blatantly obvious considering the “plumbing” of human beings of both genders what is natural and what isn’t. Get real.
July 19th, 2012 | 9:07 pm
The bigotry, if there is any, is revealed in comments such as references to NAMBLA. There is always a diversity of ideas and attitudes on each side of an issue. No doubt people lacking respect for religion will always seek to cast religious beliefs as bigotry, on marriage equality and many other issues as well. (Don’t need to look hard to find the the “anti-woman” arguments hurled against the Church.)
But George is overwrought on the inability to reach compromise on marriage equality. The vast majority of proponents of marriage equality just want to see the people whom they know–family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and nice people they see and read about in various media–treated with equality and dignity. They feel the same way about their family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors and nice people they see and read about in various media of different faiths, whom they also want to see treated with equality and dignity. (That is why the widespread acceptance of half-black Obama in 2008 and LDS-professing Romney in 2012 as presidential nominees is so heartening about this country.) These people of good will are not going to accept the arguments of people who go from marriage equality to equating all religions as bastions of bigotry.
What it really comes down to is that many people have come to see gay men and lesbians as fundamentally being like themselves, except that the nature of their sexual attraction is different. Other people still see gay men and lesbians as fundamentally different because of the nature of their sexual attraction. It’s in the latter group that too many then allow themselves to get twisted up in fantasies of what came happen growing up with single-sex adoptive parents, NAMBLA, polygamy, necrophilia, bestiality and the rest.
July 19th, 2012 | 10:31 pm
I’d give all these “two parent” adoption comments some weight except I know way too many Catholic priests who have adopted children.
Who are single parents.
But two people living in the same location can’t adopt because of some sense of “right.” The wheels just come off the wagon.
July 20th, 2012 | 12:51 am
[JDD] If one holds the belief that a male of the human race is clearly made to be complimentary – in all ways – to a female of the human race, then in a same-sex household it follows that something is wrongly ordered about the affections and the human interaction in that household.
[David Nickol] I reserve the right to come back to this and analyze it more deeply, but at first glance you seem to be saying that homosexuals are unfit parents because they are “disordered.”
I would not word it the way you have, and in fact have worded it differently in the rest of my post. Do you still feel this way after reading the whole thing? Mr. Nickol, if I say that a male just can’t teach a female child about femininity, is that the same thing as saying you are an ‘unfit parent’?
If I say that a male of the human species seems to be complimentary to a female, would you say that that seems true, or false?
July 20th, 2012 | 1:06 am
[David Nickol] “But the Catholic Charities position leaves out “all things being equal.” If, all things not being equal, a single parent and a same-sex couple are the only two prospects for a child up from adoption, and the same-sex couple is the superior of the two based on income, education, background, experience with children, and all other criteria one can think of, the child either is placed with the less-well-qualified single parent or stays in foster care.”
Which, if you believe that sexual orientation doesn’t matter, seems ludicrous.
But if you believe that this is the fundamental core intrinsic-to-the-human-person thing that one must get right in order to raise another member of the human species, then it makes sense. Because “what gender am I, really?” profoundly impacts every aspect and every second of a person’s life more than transient questions like, “am I earning enough,” “am I smart enough”,… It’s because of your worldview that you’ve left out some ‘criteria one can think of.’
July 20th, 2012 | 7:26 am
Dear Chuck
As the eminent psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Pierre Lévy-Soussan, told the Pércresse commission of 2006: “It is in the child’s best interests to join a nuclear family that is already socially accepted so that he or she does not have to take on the additional task, following a history of abandonment, of adapting to a family that is, for whatever reason, ‘non-standard’.” He believes that in order to be successful, adoption must lead to a psychological filiation that “allows for a nexus of the three elements that are basic to any society: the biological, the social and the subjective dimensions specific to human beings. The psychological strength of this construction exceeds the purely biological connection of filiation and provides it with security. The security and ‘truth’ of this filiation are based on childbirth, on a potential or actual procreative relationship between a man and a woman, allowing the fictional filiation through the encounter with the other sex, alive and of the same generation. The fictional filiation can then be experienced as true, consistent and reasonable.”The difference in sex between the two members of the parental couple thus seems to him indispensable if the adoption “graft” is to take.”
Obviously, in examining outcomes, we cannot conflate adoption with cases of children raised by a biological parent and his or her same-sex partner, or, especially in the case of older children, an existing carer.
As to adoption by single persons, the commission noted that out of some 1,857 adoptions audited, there were only 5 applications by single persons and all of them were women, related by blood, or marriage to the child or had been in a relationship with the child’s father. Since 1966, no case could be found of “stranger adoption” by a single person.
July 20th, 2012 | 9:16 am
Ray Ingles,
It seems to me the principle applies outside the context of the church, and this is what Mr. George has done. The following quote from Neuhaus is hardlylimited to intra-church disputes: “Orthodoxy, no matter how politely expressed, suggests that there is a right and a wrong, a true and a false, about things. When orthodoxy is optional, it is admitted under a rule of liberal tolerance that cannot help but be intolerant of talk about right and wrong, true and false. It is therefore a conditional admission, depending upon orthodoxy’s good behavior. The orthodox may be permitted to believe this or that and to do this or that as a matter of sufferance, allowing them to indulge their inclination, preference, or personal taste. But it is an intolerable violation of the etiquette by which one is tolerated if one has the effrontery to propose that this or that is normative for others.” The “orthodox” understanding of marriage is as being between one man and one woman. Once that definition was opened to change, in Neuhaus’ word became “optional”, there might be an interim where both the old and new definitions co-exist, but inevitably the “orthodox” understanding can no longer be tolerated and will be proscribed.
July 20th, 2012 | 10:19 am
@Sally Rodgers
Here is the Chicago Tribune article about the state of Illinois severing foster care ties with the Catholic Charities. But check out the money paragraph’s below:
Well, well, well. From Illinois’ admission to the Union in 1818 up until last year, the best care and welfare of children allowed the church to place children with mothers and fathers. And then, after the passage of a IL civil unions bill–that didn’t even mention children–what was best for children changed overnight. I’m imagining a little conversation I’d like to have:
July 20th, 2012 | 10:25 am
David, I believe you are wrong. In the state of Illinois the civil union law says that in all instances of statutory, administrative, and governmental practice, “civil unions” must be treated identically as “marriages”.
Sally Rogers,
I don’t want to pretend to be an expert on adoption law, but there is such a thing as private (or independent) adoption, which takes place outside the foster care system. Families seeking to adopt privately (something my niece did about eight years ago) generally work with a lawyer and with people who try to find a pregnant woman who wants to give her child up for adoption. It is entirely up to the birth mother to accept the new parents, and she may reject candidates for any reason or no reason. So my assumption is that if Catholic Charities wished to involve itself in independent adoptions for Catholic women who wished to give up babies only to Catholic (heterosexual) married couples, they would not be bound in any way by antidiscrimination laws.
Do you think there should be a statutory exemption to permit Catholic Charities to continue their adoption work, regardless of the fact that they won’t place kids with homosexual couples?
In states or localities with anti-discrimination laws? No. It seems to me reasonable to discuss whether there should be civill unions, same-sex marriage, and antidiscrimination laws, but once a state passes an antidiscrimination law, it seems unreasonable for that same state to pay service providers who declare they don’t want to follow the law. This is not like the case of the New Mexico wedding photographer which we have discussed before, in which a person in a private business was sued for refusing to photograph a lesbian couple’s commitment ceremony. All the cases of Catholic Charities that have come up have been instances where the state was paying Catholic Charities to provide services to all comers, antidiscrimination laws were passed, and Catholic Charities said, in effect, “We want you to continue to give us contracts to serve the general public, only we reserve the right to ignore state law and discriminate against same-sex couples.” Gay people are taxpayers, too, and how do you expect gay people (and their friends and families) to react to having their tax dollars go to organizations that insist on the right to ignore the laws and discriminate?
July 20th, 2012 | 10:41 am
Because “what gender am I, really?” profoundly impacts every aspect and every second of a person’s life more than transient questions like, “am I earning enough,” “am I smart enough”,…
JDD,
Gay men know they are men, and lesbians know they are women. Transexual, transgender, and GID individuals are another story and not under discussion here.
July 20th, 2012 | 10:52 am
Ah, so nothing has changed in terms of what’s best for children; it’s just that the previous law allowing the Catholic Church to participate in adoption services was actually bad for children.
Douglas Johnson,
Don’t you think it gives you an unfair advantage to write an interview and put words in other people’s mouths? What Catholic Charities did before antidiscrimination laws was not “bad for children.” There has been no 180-degree turn in the law that implies the older laws were “bad” and the new law is “good.” Ziegler could perfectly well have argued that the antidiscrimination laws made a very good system even better, by increasing the number of potential homes for those in foster care.
July 20th, 2012 | 11:08 am
“it seems unreasonable for that same state to pay service providers who declare they don’t want to follow the law. This is not like the case of the New Mexico wedding photographer which we have discussed before, in which a person in a private business was sued for refusing to photograph a lesbian couple’s commitment ceremony.”
David – are you so naive as to assume that this reasoning will be confined to those who have contracts with the government and not extended to all those who provide services without government dollars?
If I run an adoption service, Sally Rogers Adoption Agency, with my own money, are you saying I can have a policy of not placing children with homosexual couples?
So a gay married couple (we call it civil union for now in Illinois, but it is identical in all respects to marriage) can come and ask to be included in my files of those whom expectant moms will consider as appropriate parents, and I can refuse to put their information in my data base because I don’t think gay couples are appropriate parents? Good luck defending that case in Illinois with its anti-discrimination statutes.
People are so focused on this idea that only “government funded” agencies are affected that they simply can’t hear the evidence that this is not the limit of what is being restricted.
July 20th, 2012 | 11:30 am
If I say that a male of the human species seems to be complimentary to a female, would you say that that seems true, or false?
JDD,
Aside from the obvious biological differences related to reproduction, it is somewhat of a mystery to me what the complementarity of the sexes mans in a 21st-century context. It certainly doesn’t mean that men are meant to be leaders and women followers. It doesn’t mean that women are homemakers and men breadwinners. It doesn’t mean that men are doctors and women nurses. That’s the kind of thing it used to mean, but that is a sadly outdated view of the relationship between the sexes.
True complementarity, it seems to me, would require that there were some characteristics that all men lacked, that all women had, and that combining each pair was essential for a couple’s success and wellbeing. Kind of like Jack Sprat and his wife. Clearly unassisted human reproduction requires a male and a female. It does not follow that anything else necessarily does, including the raising of children. Our idea of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family"nuclear family (father-mother-kids) as a unit is really quite a modern idea. I think it is almost certainly to the advantage of children to be raised in an extended family, with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and so on all present to be caregivers and role models.
July 20th, 2012 | 11:38 am
David Nickol writes:
Except she didn’t say that. Oh, I imagine someone offered some kind of similar spin as you write after that fact (although I haven’t seen it), so let’s go with your spin for a moment. You are suggesting that Illinois cut ties with CC to increase the number of potential homes. If that was the state’s intent then why not just green light more adoption agencies? Why shut down the organization that was providing more homes than any other organization in the state?
David, not a single story relating to Madigan’s actions even suggested that the state severed ties with CC because CC was failing to get enough kids with adoptive families.
July 20th, 2012 | 11:49 am
David – are you so naive as to assume that this reasoning will be confined to those who have contracts with the government and not extended to all those who provide services without government dollars?
If I run an adoption service, Sally Rogers Adoption Agency, with my own money, are you saying I can have a policy of not placing children with homosexual couples?
Sally Rogers,
If you run a private adoption agency without government funds, you are nevertheless licensed by the state and working with the government-run foster care system. If the government that licenses you and runs the foster care system you work within has antidiscrimination laws, I don’t see why you should not be bound by them any more than you should be free to discriminate on the basis of race or religion. The final authority in all adoptions is the state. I judge finalizes any adoption. As I said, running an adoption agency is not like running a photographic studio. You are not a private business. You are finding potential parents for children in state custody (foster care) who will then, if all goes well, be legally adopted, with the approval of the state, by your clients. It makes no sense to me that anyone should think that, working with the government in this way, they should be exempted from government rules. If a government passes antidiscrimination legislation, it is because it wants to prevent people from being discriminated against. Why should the government then grant some people exemptions from following the law? Things would be different, I think, for activities carried on by religious organizations who were neither taking government funds nor dealing directly with the government. But when you run an adoption agency, you are doing business with the government itself. In the eyes of the government, you may have rejected the best available adoptive parents for a child on the ground that your religion disapproves of homosexuality. Why should the state, or a judge, be willing to sign off on an adoption when they feel the best interests of the child were a secondary consideration?
July 20th, 2012 | 11:50 am
“The arguments used by progressives have a “total war” and “unconditional surrender” logic (no rational basis for opposition to its goals!). This will not allow for bargains or compromises. George is also right that progressive claims about inevitability need to be seen as part of a long history of claims to be on the side of “history.” It was said about abortion. It was said about socialism. It was said about secularization.”
Progressives also thought inevitable civil rights for blacks, Jews, American Indians, Muslims, and, for whites, regardless of whether they were Protestant or Catholic, voting rights, workplace protections, better pay, etc.
But let’s take the one the really bears thinking about in this context—women’s rights. Is there anything that progressives have succeeded so well at? Feminists are everywhere, and feminist groups are the best funded student groups at any college—from the elite universities that keep Reno awake at night to Podunk state universities.
The contraceptive mandate seems like such an odd stunt for Obama to pull that I can’t help but think he did it in order to secure his feminist base.
Despite all of these feminist successes and despite the importance of feminism to the Democratic Party, have many calls have you seen for government enforced ordination of women? Have hospitals been shuttered because there are no female bishops?
It’s time to put aside all the paranoia about a liberal leviathan that has come to swallow what remains of religious liberty.
“He has demonstrated the absurdity of liberal claims that there is no rational basis for objecting to same-sex marriage”
I always wonder what statements like this mean. There are several rational arguments against gay marriage and lots of irrational ones, but the same is true about lots of subjects. I’d love to know whether Reno thinks there are rational arguments for gay marriage.
July 20th, 2012 | 12:00 pm
You are suggesting that Illinois cut ties with CC to increase the number of potential homes. If that was the state’s intent then why not just green light more adoption agencies? Why shut down the organization that was providing more homes than any other organization in the state?
Douglas Johnson,
Illinois didn’t “cut ties” with Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities ceased providing adoption services because it refused even to entertain the possibility that in any real-world case they would encounter, the best available adoptive parents might be a same-sex couple. That is simply prejudice in the sense of prejudging. Declaring, in effect, that no same-sex couples are fit to be parents is prejudice, and it would have been in violation of state law. As I said, it can be debated whether civil union laws and antidiscrimination laws ought to be passed in the first place. But once they are passed, the state has declared that discrimination is wrong (and illegal), so how can you then expect the state to say, “Discrimination is morally wrong and illegal, but we’ll let Catholic Charities do it anyway . . . and we will pay them to do it”?
July 20th, 2012 | 12:15 pm
David Nickol writes:
For reference, here is the headline from the Chicago Tribune:
Here is the first paragraph:
I hope that helps.
July 20th, 2012 | 12:16 pm
David – By Jove, I think you’ve almost got it! Crucially, you incorrectly state that all adoptions involve the state foster care system, and thus everyone must agree to state control over gay couple’s inclusion. This is the very move that those who oppose gay parenting fear — the state is somehow active in every private interaction, and therefore it is appropriate to enforce the government’s view of what is permissible in all transactions.
But this is not true. If I get pregnant and go to a private adoption agency to arrange for an adoption, my unborn child (or even born child) is not thereby a ward of the state. That a court approves the final adoption has nothing to do with a governmental judgment about the criteria the private agency used in bringing about the transaction. They judge the parents who are adopting the child, not the criteria (eg, in our hypothetical – no gay parents) used to select those parents.
Regardless, your argument that the state is ALWAYS involved in some way in every private adoption and therefore everyone must always accept what the state says about gay marriage is the nub of this whole argument — There is no ground to disagree anywhere if the state is always a part of every public service.
Then you say: “Things would be different, I think, for activities carried on by religious organizations who were neither taking government funds nor dealing directly with the government.” – On what grounds do you make this statement? This is the whole point of this dispute — where do you get the idea that there religious organizations have an exemption from the anti-discrimination statutes? Have you been reading about how “religious organizations” are defined by the HHS mandate to exclude virtually all charitable, service, health care and educational institutions?
But even aside from the question of religious exemptions the anti-discrimination statutes apply to everyone in every possible service, transaction, or business. No one who believes that “gay parents are not the best thing for children” will be permitted to exercise any role in caring for the needs of children. And if you think that this same argument will simply be confined to adoption services, you are incorrect.
It will continue to “state licensed” education services, counseling services, housing services, health care services, and on and on and on. The very same argument you make about why the state is inevitably party to every private adoption apply just as well to all these other services.
Meaning there is no ground to operate any child oriented services for those who disagree regarding whether gay parenting is a good thing for kids. They will be forced out of public services , private services, religious services and the same arguments will also force acquiescence in their provision of private business transactions.
July 20th, 2012 | 12:24 pm
David Nickol writes:
Here’s the link to the IL Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act. If you search on the word “discriminate” you’ll get zero hits. The law says nothing like what you wrote.
I hope that helps.
July 20th, 2012 | 12:56 pm
Crucially, you incorrectly state that all adoptions involve the state foster care system, and thus everyone must agree to state control over gay couple’s inclusion. . . .
Sally Rogers,
More later, if time permits, but I am incredulous that you have so clearly overlooked or misunderstood what I have been saying. I did not say all adoptions involve the foster care system. See my message of July 20th, 2012 | 10:25 am, in which I began as follows:
July 20th, 2012 | 1:42 pm
Sally Rogers
I do not know how the American courts would view it, but in France, the Court of Cassation has held it is illegal for any private person to act as an intermediary between a person desiring to adopt a child and a parent desiring to abandon its born or unborn child. Even when this is done gratuitously, it infringes the principle (which is one of public order) of the indisponability of the human person and the indisponibility of civil status. This rest on the article of the Civil Code that only things in commerce may be the subject of a transaction.
Of course, if any gifts, promises, threats or abuse of authority are involved, it would constitute Human Trafficking under the Penal Code.
July 20th, 2012 | 1:44 pm
By the way – in case I wasn’t clear in my 12:16 posting, I should make it clear that the argument about whether there could be a “private” adoption” in which a private agency is simply working on its own and not as an adjunct to the state is only important with regard to how one justifies state intrusion via the anti-discrimination statutes.
In the end, my Sally Rogers Adoption Agency must agree to provide adoption services to gay couples or face liability under the anti-discrimination statutes regardless of how one justifies that intrusion. The fact that David thinks this is justified by an argument that the I am somehow an “arm of the state” in conducting private adoptions (which I dispute) does not affect my liability or lack thereof.
Whether I am an arm of the state / “working in the closely state” or not, this dispute is not relevant to whether I must offer adoption services to gay couples. It’s just that David seems to suggest that the government intrusion in my private charity is justified because of this (allegedly) close nexus to the government.
The question of whether a religious organization can run such a private (not funded by the state) adoption agency while declining to place children with gay parents seems pretty unlikely to me. The trend toward defining “religious organizations” very narrowly (as done by several states and the HHS mandate’s definition) and the reasoning that is pressing that definition forward are viewed as the writing on the wall by many on both sides of the dispute. I doubt there are any court cases dealing with the question as yet, particularly since gay marriage is a relatively new phenomenon.
July 20th, 2012 | 3:17 pm
Ok, I’m not going to keep arguing about this. I posited a “Sally Rogers Adoption Agency” that helps adoptive parents connect to prospective adoptive parents using no government funds and not connected to the state’s foster care agency and David said:
“If you run a private adoption agency without government funds, you are nevertheless licensed by the state and working with the government-run foster care system.” and “The final authority in all adoptions is the state. A judge finalizes any adoption. As I said, running an adoption agency is not like running a photographic studio. You are not a private business. You are finding potential parents for children in state custody (foster care) who will then, if all goes well, be legally adopted, with the approval of the state, by your clients.”
I said that my Sally Rogers Adoption Agency was not working with any state foster care agency, nor accepting government funds, and yet the state will require me to place children with gay couples through the anti-discrimination laws. If I maintain an agency with a policy that “we don’t place kids with gay couples” I will be liable to the anti-discrimination laws, no matter how “private” my agency is.
You seem to say that this is proper, because the state is inevitably involved in all adoptions no matter what I do to stay away from the government’s involvement. IF this this the case, as you say it is, why should religious organizations be free to flout the anti-discrimination laws? Are you supporting an exemption for these religious organizations?
If my agency is called “St. Sally’s Adoption Agency” and I am a nun running my agency because the Gospel tells me to help orphans, do I get the exemption that my non-religious organization does not get? I think not under your reasoning. I would have to place children with gay couples, regardless of the fact that I believe this will never be in their best interest. Therefore, I must close my “St. Sally’s Adoption Agency” – and this apparently will help kids somehow.
In response, you seem to be saying there is a different category of Catholic agencies connecting exclusively Catholic moms giving up their Catholic babies to Catholic adoptive parents. This is an extremely narrow understanding of the acceptable functioning of a Catholic service organization — but even still, it is still broader than the HHS definition present in the contraceptive mandate. Under that definition, even your dispensation would not be allowed (it limits “religious organizations” to only include those that predominantly employ Catholics in the organization and are predominantly involved in inculcating Catholic values, for instance).
I don’t intend to respond any further, because it seems like no matter how well I try to express myself, we are somehow talking past each other. Perhaps this is part of the fallout of this dispute.
July 20th, 2012 | 4:52 pm
I think David Nickol misses Robert George’s overall point & indeed ends up reinforcing it.
When this argument began there was an overall tone set that same-sex “marriage” was simply a matter of including a small subset (homosexuals) within the larger insitution of marriage.
It was accompanied by a general attitude that its consequences would not be far reaching or intrusive or authoritarian.
Now we are shown that adoption agencies that privelage married opposite sex couples cannot opporate unless they surrender this principle…and indeed, this has to ultimently be a nationwide standard.
July 20th, 2012 | 6:33 pm
[...] on the article, R. R. Reno at First Things agrees, saying: George is certainly right. The arguments used by progressives have a “total war” and [...]
July 21st, 2012 | 12:32 am
My state Senator (who is also a UCC clergyman here in Peoria) was the chief sponsor of the bill for civil unions that passed the 2010 lame-duck session of the Illinois legislature. During the debate, he (and others) insisted that, if approved, the legislation would absolutely not impact foster/adoptive parent care by faith-based agencies that refused to place children in homes headed by a civil unioned gay couple. This bill had nothing whatsoever to do adoptive/foster care, and we give you our word on that.
After the Governor signed the bill (which had passed with the votes of lame-duck “conservative” Republicans), the state’s Dept. of Children and Family Services quickly wrote regulations to declare the exact opposite.
To his credit, Sen. Koehler — perhaps the most “progressive” member of the Illinois Senate since a then-obscure Chicago member was elected to the US Senate in 2004 in an election where the Illinois Republican Party gleefully torpedoed its own candidate — quickly crafted legislation to enact the earlier promise, enabling faith-based agencies that opposed gay civil unions on religious grounds to be exempted from the new DCFS regulations. Illinois liberals and gay advocates were shocked and appalled by his abandonment of LGBTQ citizens!
“Nonsense,” he replied, “I gave my word.” Alas, that meant nothing to the rest of the Legislature’s leaders, who could not kill his bill fast enough and it died in committee. And thus, within a year after being promised that civil unions would have no impact on foster care and adoptions in Illinois, Catholic Charities and other agencies that, indeed, discriminated against gay couples, were no longer able to provide for any foster care or adoptive services in the state of Illinois.
July 21st, 2012 | 5:49 am
I would say that it is prejudice for Catholic Charities (or any other adoption service) to operate on the assumption that a same-sex couple will never be the best available adoptive parents for any child.
Whether you’re gay or straight has nothing to do with whether you are willing to put the child’s needs first, vs. expecting the child to do without when his needs are in conflict with yours.
A “gay couple” is not as good as a mother and father. A gay person who is not willing nor able to arrange a stable coparenting arrangement with the opposite sex is demonstrating, by his actions, that he is not serious about meeting the childs’ needs. He is not fit to be seriously considered as a candidate, and it’s unfortunate that our current neglect of the children in our care is such that such candidates are considered despite being openly and unashamedly unwilling to behave as good prospective adoptive parents behave.
That he is gay is not an “excuse” – it does not provide him with a reason why he should be exempt from criticism. Some gays do establish coparenting relationships with members of the opposite sex. Gays who refuse to do so should be compared unfavorably and should be recognized as inferior; they choose of their own free will to put their own desires over their child’s well-being.
And that he is gay does not change the child’s needs.
It’s a simple matter of recognizing that in healthy families, the adults take care of the children. “Gay couples” use justifications, excuses, and “false dilemma” fallacies to invert that order – but there is no reason why we should encourage or even tolerate their doing so. It’s destructive, selfish, and childish.
July 21st, 2012 | 5:58 am
Any “family” where the parents deliberately deprive the child is an unhealthy social unit. Good parents do not do this.
Any “family” headed by a gay couple is a social unit where the parents deliberately chose to deprive the child.
It is not true that the deprivation does not matter. Children have reason to value mothers and fathers both.
It is not true that being gay makes it inevitable or necessary. Gays don’t reproduce accidentally; the only way a “gay couple” can end up with a child to raise “together” is if they deliberately create such a situation.
It is not true that gays “have to” raise children with members of the same sex. They have the option of coparenting with members of the opposite sex; those that prefer not to simply don’t care about their child’s well-being.
There is no reason why such parents should be compared to loving parents or healthy families. They are neither equal to hetero families (unless the hetero family is also dysfunctional), nor are they equal to the genuinely loving gay parents who take the trouble to arrange a coparenting relationship so that their child will be well cared for.
July 21st, 2012 | 2:06 pm
Blake,
What you are saying is not clear to me. Does every child have the “right” to be raised by his own biological mother and father? Or does every child have the “right” to be raised in a family where there is a male father figure and a female mother figure?
Suppose there is a family with four children and the father unexpectedly dies. Does his widow have an obligation to find a man (say, her brother, or her brother in law) to act as a father figure for her young children? Is every single parent obligated to find a person of the opposite sex to be a father figure or a mother figure for his or her children?
Suppose two gay males and two lesbians, both in same-sex marriages, agree to share a large house and raise children together. One of the men and one of the women will agree to be the father figure and mother figure for the children. (They could, in fact, be the biological parents as well.) Is that arrangement acceptable to you?
Suppose a widower with young children has a sister who has had children out of wedlock. They agree to share a house to that their children can have a father figure and a mother figure (who are not married, but brother and sister). Would you object to this arrangement, or welcome it?
July 22nd, 2012 | 7:01 am
David Nickol
I do not believe we can conflate the case of a child being brought up by a natural parent and that parent’s same-sex companion with “stranger adoption” by a same-sex couple.
Families do not exist in isolation. That is the force of Soussan’s remarks about “non-standard” families. As Janice Peyré observes “having homosexual parents would simply add to the sense of difference and the curiosity that adoption already engenders. In certain cases and in certain communities, it might even lead to rejection.” That is why the Hague Convention on International Adoption requires that that the child be received into pre-existing family structures, already recognized as such.
Even in so progressive a jurisdiction as the Netherlands, following representations from source countries, same-sex married couples are authorised to adopt only children who have been abandoned in the Netherlands.
July 22nd, 2012 | 7:22 am
The Rev Mr Tibbetts calls attention to the fact that it is fanciful to suppose that the issue of SSM can be divorced from those of adoption and assisted reproduction.
As Bertrand Russell, a staunch atheist, put it, “But for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex. it is through children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution.” He was speaking in the context of the divorce laws, but the argument is sound enough.
July 22nd, 2012 | 8:42 am
Dear The Rev. Steven P. Tibbetts, STS
Thank you for this comment, and the background you provided. There are two points I wish to make in response.
First, when something like this comes down the pike and advocates talk themselves blue in the face about what the law won’t do–rest assured that is what the advocates want to use the law to do. In short, they are lying, they know their opponents know it, but the hope is that the larger public won’t be able to figure it out.
But more importantly, our side needs to always be vigilant of making unnecessary concessions. In this particular thread, one poster is throwing his hands up in the air saying that you can’t expect the state to pass a discrimination law and then expect it to allow the Catholic Church to discriminate. The unnecessary concession happens when our side accepts the premise of those remarks without checking the facts.
In fact, this law never once mentions discrimination and specifically carves out a religious exemption. Often we can be too quick to concede the lie that the law is a anti-discrimination law with no protection for Catholic Charities.
Now that the law has passed it’s as if its former advocates are saying “oh come on…of course we were lying when we said this would have no impact on Catholic adoption services…the lie was the whole reason we wanted to pass the thing. You knew we were lying–that’s why you tried to stop us. The only people that were really fooled were the public at large, and they don’t care much anyway.”
No wonder the camp that sold everyone on a lie is preaching comity now.
(A much worse example of what I’m talking about with regard to unnecessary concessions is the Orwellian construction “gay marriage.” For the past three years most of my comments on this debate have gone to pointing out the concession our side makes when it uses that term. By using that phrase we concede that “gay marriage” is a type of marriage, but one we wish to exclude. That is precisely not what we are arguing or ever should argue. What we should argue is that marriage only exists because it takes a man and a woman to create new life, and that a person has the burden of same sex attraction has nothing to do with marriage. Nothing to do with it unless the state decides to redefine marriage. The redefinition of marriage is what we oppose.)
July 22nd, 2012 | 4:58 pm
In fact, this law never once mentions discrimination and specifically carves out a religious exemption. Often we can be too quick to concede the lie that the law is a anti-discrimination law with no protection for Catholic Charities.
Douglas Johnson,
Earlier you provided a link to the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, which states the following:
You are correct that the words discrimination or nondiscrimination can’t be found in the bill. However, effective January 2006, the Illinois legislature included protections for gays and lesbians in the Illinois Human Rights Act.
The religious exemption in the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act was not that religious groups don’t have to recognize those in civil unions as spouses. It was merely that members of religious groups who objected to same-sex marriage were exempt from officiating at same-sex union ceremonies.
Having said that, it is not at all clear to me that Catholic Charities, had they not been dependent on government contracts, could not have continued to operate private adoption agencies in Illinois. The Illinois Human Rights Act is not binding on sectarian adoption agencies. Religious adoption agencies are protected in Illinois if they want to discriminate against same-sex couples. They are not, however, guaranteed government contracts. This is slightly different than I thought earlier.
Back to a question raised by Sally Rogers:
If I run an adoption service, Sally Rogers Adoption Agency, with my own money, are you saying I can have a policy of not placing children with homosexual couples?
The answer would be no. However the Sally Rogers Catholic Adoption Agency, licensed by the state but run without state funding, could indeed have a policy of not placing children with homosexual couples.
So there is religious freedom on this issue in Illinois. Religious adoption agencies do not have to place children with same-sex couples. The problem for Catholic Charities was not that it declared it would refuse to place children with same-sex couples. The problem was that it was so dependent on government contracts, when the government contracts were not renewed, it could no longer afford to continue in the adoption business. It was not “shut down.” It lost government contracts and did not have sufficient private funding to continue in operation.
July 22nd, 2012 | 8:59 pm
David Nickol writes:
1) Please see Rev. Tibbets comment;
2) Read what I wrote about lies.
July 23rd, 2012 | 12:22 am
[JDD] If I say that a male of the human species seems to be complimentary to a female, would you say that that seems true, or false?
[David Nickol] Aside from the obvious biological differences related to reproduction, it is somewhat of a mystery to me what the complementarity of the sexes mans in a 21st-century context. It certainly doesn’t mean that men are meant to be leaders and women followers. It doesn’t mean that women are homemakers and men breadwinners. It doesn’t mean that men are doctors and women nurses. That’s the kind of thing it used to mean, but that is a sadly outdated view of the relationship between the sexes.
Mr. Nickol, my guess is that you have a caricature of myself – and of Catholics and Christians as a whole – which is unfortunate.
[David Nickol] True complementarity, it seems to me, would require that there were some characteristics that all men lacked, that all women had, and that combining each pair was essential for a couple’s success and wellbeing. Kind of like Jack Sprat and his wife. Clearly unassisted human reproduction requires a male and a female. It does not follow that anything else necessarily does, including the raising of children.
Well, I have to say that I’m a little bit at a loss as to how to respond to this. I mean – okay, if you don’t see any difference, then you don’t. But even our secular culture recognizes wide differences between the sexes that go beyond mere biological. ‘Men are From Mars, Women From Venus” and so forth. Marketing courses routinely differentiate the way they will approach both groups. Men tend to bond and pass on knowledge through common activity, while women tend to bond and pass on knowledge through discussion. Men tend to compartmentalize decisions, while women tend to make decisions more holistically. This is only the tip of the iceberg, but gives some hint to the complementarity of our species. It’s not hard to show the benefit to childraising.
But even that is a ballooning out this conversation thread. More back on track, you seem to be saying that sexual complementarity is really the *only* complimentary thing about the two genders. But then you advocate that even *that* it optional.
July 23rd, 2012 | 12:24 am
[David Nickol] “Gay men know they are men, and lesbians know they are women. Transexual, transgender, and GID individuals are another story and not under discussion here.”
Mr. Nickol, the stories of gay and lesbian persons reporting that they feel like ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or that they were ‘born in the wrong body’ are numerous and well documented.
The pre-emptive attempt to cordon off some other categories is surprising and, I think, telling. And I could help but notice that you left off ‘Bi’. Of course all of this is relevant to our discussion.
July 23rd, 2012 | 9:08 am
What you are saying is not clear to me. Does every child have the “right” to be raised by his own biological mother and father?
Every child has the right to be free from exploitation.
This means – among other things – that when an entity (whether a person or a government) has the guardianship of a child, that entity is obliged to make guardianship decisions (including custody decisions) based on the child’s best interests.
It is not in a child’s best interests to be raised by either single parents or same-sex couples. Such couplings should only be considered when parents who are able and willing to provide for the child’s needs are not only unavailable, but are not likely to be available in the foreseeable future.
Any person who wishes to adopt a child should be expected to be prepared to meet that child’s needs. Children are not things one has a right to purchase, like a luxury good. If you aren’t prepared to do what it takes to provide for a child, then you’re not fit to adopt. The fact that lots of other people mistreat, abuse, or neglect their kids does not make it okay.
If you can’t be bothered to actually meet the child’s needs, you aren’t ready to adopt a child.
Children need both a mother and a father. Having two of one and none of the other is not equivalent, and no child should be expected to pretend otherwise – adults should take care of children, not the other way around.
July 23rd, 2012 | 10:44 am
Men tend to bond and pass on knowledge through common activity, while women tend to bond and pass on knowledge through discussion. Men tend to compartmentalize decisions, while women tend to make decisions more holistically.
JDD,
This, it seems to me, is not true complementarity. Complementarity isn’t about tendencies. For purposes of reproduction, men and women are physiologically complementary. Men don’t “tend” to produce sperm and women don’t “tend” to produce eggs. In the kinds of examples you are giving, women may tend to have characteristic X and men may tend to have characteristic Y, but nevertheless there will be many women who have characteristic Y and men who have characteristic X. There is no guarantee that a man and woman who meet and wish to get married will be complementary. And of course a lot of the way women and men “tend” to be is cultural, not biological.
There’s an old concept that pops up here and there (in ancient Greek thought, for example) that men and women originated when one being was split in half, with one half making a male and the other half making a female, and they are now trying to reunite to become whole. That would be real complementarity, in which ever woman had the things men lacked, and every man had the things women lacked, and any two pairs would make up a whole. That doesn’t fit, in my opinion, with the idea that men tend to be one way and women tend to be another.
July 23rd, 2012 | 11:00 am
Mr. Nickol, the stories of gay and lesbian persons reporting that they feel like ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or that they were ‘born in the wrong body’ are numerous and well documented.
JDD,
You don’t seem to understand the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation. Gender identity is a separate issue from homosexuality. People who are physically one sex but convinced they are actually of the opposite sex but trapped in the wrong body are relatively rare and are not homosexuals. Homosexuality, on the other hand, is comparatively common, and homosexuals do not believe they are trapped in a body of the wrong gender.
In all my time in New York, I have run into only a few transgendered individuals (that I know of) but a huge number of gay men and lesbians, all of whom were well aware of their gender.
July 23rd, 2012 | 11:30 am
Blake,
I don’t believe you answered my question. Is it the right of all children to be raised by a mother figure and a father figure (with those ideally being the child’s biological parents)?
If a woman with children is widowed, is she obliged to find a man to act as a father-figure for her children? You have insisted it is the right of children to have both a mother and a father. Presumably you do not expect all widows and widowers to hastily secure a new spouse for the sake of the children, but certainly they can find a father figure or a mother figure.
Suppose a woman with a child is widowed, and in order to best take care of the baby, the woman’s mother moves in with her daughter to help raise the child. If “two mommies” are bad for a child, what about a mother and a grandmother? Certainly the grandmother can never fill in for a father or a father figure.
Suppose, purely out of love and a sense of duty, a single parent adopts a child. Is that single parent obliged to find another parent figure of the opposite sex? The child has a right to a mother and a father, doesn’t it?
And lastly, what about the 41% of children born out of wedlock in the United States, of course, some of them are living with a mother and a father who aren’t married, so they are not deprived of a mother and father. But what about all the women who have babies and raise them as single parents? Is every woman who has a child out of wedlock obliged to find a father figure for her child? (By the way, I think it would be a good thing.)
It seems to me you have declared children have rights, and you are very censorious of gay people who you feel would almost necessarily be violating those rights were they to have children, but it is very difficult to pin you down on what you would demand of widows and widowers, single parents by adoption, and single parents by reason of out of wedlock births. Are you willing to declare everyone responsible for the rights you insist children have, or do children some have lesser rights when same-sex marriage is not involved?
July 23rd, 2012 | 11:33 am
Dear JDD,
Thank you for highlighting some of David Nickol’s comments which I had not read on this thread (but I’ve seen him make that argument before).
When the threads go on long enough, David Nickol’s will argue that we should redefine marriage because, with the exception of genitalia, there are no differences between men and women.
And if there are no differences between men and women, then there is no reason whatsoever why a child should have a mother and a father. Pretty simple really. This is at the core of why David Nickol believes Western Civilization must redefine marriage. For obvious reasons, however, David Nickol spends a great deal of time doing everything he can to avoid stating his core beliefs.
Eventually the truth comes out as it did when Paula Ettelbrick, Executive Director of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, stated in her article “Since when is Marriage a Path to Liberation?” that:
In similar form gay activist and talk radio host Michelangelo Signorile argued that the best plan “might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, [to] redefine the institution of marriage completely”; that is, “to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society’s moral codes, but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution that as it now stands keeps us down.”
I don’t mean to demean David Nickol, or Ettlebrick or Signorile for making these arguments. On the contrary, they are rare moments of courageous honesty about why they want to redefine marriage. I just wish they didn’t waste so much time pretending it’s about something else.
July 23rd, 2012 | 1:20 pm
Same-sex marriage is an unnatural perversion of things, the other situations you mention are not.
The ideal situation for a child is to be raised by Mom and Dad. If that, for whatever reason, isn’t possible then being raised by just Mom or just Dad can work out just fine — I have known single parents who were truly heroic in their virtue and love for their child and who did a great job. Being raised by just Mom or just Dad is natural in that that situation just cannot be avoided sometimes and it is possible for Mom or Dad to do a great job.
Having two Moms in a sexual relationship or having two Dads in a sexual relationship is not natural — it is perverse, and it can be avoided if adoption agencies don’t put children in that perverse situation.
A little boy being raised by his Dad and his Grandpa, or his Mom and his Grandma is natural, as would be Dad and Uncle Joe raising the child or Mom and Aunt Sally doing so. All is fine and natural in those situations. The child is right when he learns that Dads and Grandpas, and Dads and Uncles, or Moms and Grandmas, or Moms and Aunts don’t sleep together. He learns that Aunt Sally is Mom’s sister and is helping Mom out, or that Uncle Joe is Dad’s brother and is helping Dad out. Those are good lessons to learn. Everything is natural in those situations. Not so with same-sex unions.
July 23rd, 2012 | 1:31 pm
George and Blankenhorn should explain what they think of the grand bargain I have been pushing for six years now, and which they have steadfastly refused to discuss. My idea is to define Civil Unions as “marriage minus conception rights” and prohibit attempts at creating people by any means other than joining a man and a woman’s natural gametes, and to affirm the effect of marriage as approving and allowing the couple to conceive offspring using their own genes. So it would preserve marriage as a conjugal union of a man and a woman, but also give all the other benefits and protections to same-sex couples in CU’s that were not “marriage in all but name” or “stepping stones to marriage.”
July 23rd, 2012 | 2:18 pm
This is at the core of why David Nickol believes Western Civilization must redefine marriage. For obvious reasons, however, David Nickol spends a great deal of time doing everything he can to avoid stating his core beliefs.
Douglas Johnson,
You are arguing against a position that is not mine. For example, a couple of weeks ago I said the following, and it went totally unremarked.
I have never agued that “Western Civilization must redefine marriage.” In fact, I have argued that for Catholics and other defenders of traditional marriage, it makes no sense to talk about “redefining marriage.” As I have argued, Catholics, who believe in the indissolubility of marriage, do not claim that marriage has been “redefined” because every country in the world has legal divorce (exceptions: Vatican City, the Philippines). I have never argued that same-sex marriage is a right, either human or civil. My argument is that state laws that regulate civil marriage do not change marriage itself. For those who have a (Christian) Biblical view of marriage, there is no way marriage can be “redefined.”
Lumping me, Paula Ettelbrick, and Michelangelo Signorile in the same category regarding same-sex marriage, as if there some monolithic approach, is like attributing Ron Paul’s or Michele Bachmann’s positions to Mitt Romney on the grounds that they are all Republicans. Or it’s akin to a foreign magazine calling up Rush Limbaugh to get the American view on an issue, because, after all, Rush Limbaugh is an American. I see things about as differently from Signorile as I do from you. It is just ludicrous to quote him as if he spoke for me. You seem to think that on same-sex marriage, there are only two positions, yours and that of those who disagree with you. Consequently, you don’t argue against what I say. You argue against what you believe is the (one and only) other side. If for some reason you can’t mesh what I say with “the other side,” then you assume I am hiding my core beliefs.
July 23rd, 2012 | 3:01 pm
harry,
So you are in disagreement with Blake. It is not that every child has a right to a mother and a father. A mother alone is fine. A father alone is fine. Two men (a father and a grandfather) are fine. Two women (a mother an an aunt) are fine. What is not fine is a same-sex couple in a sexual relationship. So you are in effect disagreeing with Blake and almost everyone else that what is important for a child is to have both a mother (or mother figure) and a father (or a father figure).
JDD said, “It goes back to the fact that a man cannot teach a young girl certain intrinsic things about being a woman, and a woman cannot teach a young boy certain intrinsic things about becoming a man.” So apparently there is some real disagreement here about children needing both a mother and a father.
July 23rd, 2012 | 4:26 pm
Hello David Nickol,
I think most agree that what is best for the child is to have a mother and a father. I think most agree that single parents can do a great job for the child in spite of the fact that having a Mom and a Dad is what is best. When a spouse dies or there is a separation and the extended family (Grandpa, Grandma, aunts, uncles) helps out with raising the child that can work out as well because the child is not being raised in the presence of people sleeping together who shouldn’t be, in other words, the child is not being raised by people in an unnatural relationship.
July 23rd, 2012 | 5:56 pm
harry,
Would you say that a Catholic parent who was married in the Church, gets a civil divorce, and civilly remarries is causing his or her children to be raised in an unnatural relationship? (Or does adultery not count as unnatural?) Say the mother divorces and remarries, and the father does not remarry. Should the mother (and her new husband) raise the kids, or should the single father?
July 23rd, 2012 | 6:09 pm
@David Nikol July 21 2:06 pm
“Suppose there is a family with four children and the father unexpectedly dies. Does his widow have an obligation to find a man (say, her brother, or her brother in law) to act as a father figure for her young children? Is every single parent obligated to find a person of the opposite sex to be a father figure or a mother figure for his or her children?”
I am the adult child of such a scenario. My father died leaving my mother with seven children under the age of ten. I was her fifth. Whether or not my mother felt “obligated to find a father figure” for us was beside the point. Each and every one of us did that for ourselves. We all attempted to fill that void in a variety of ways. The very least attempt involved keeping my father’s memory alive. We looked through family photographs, asked questions, were thrilled to meet friends of his from various parts of his life, etc. Our paternal grandfather spent more and more time at our house. Our godfathers stepped in. Various male authority figures mattered a great deal and included our teachers, scout leaders, fathers of our friends, some college professors, priests, etc. My mother paid attention to us, and was mindful of the possible pitfalls, so that none of us were harmed in our searches. She could not take away the pain or harm stemming from our father’s early death. In a matter of fact way she recognized our need for male attention and guidance.
July 23rd, 2012 | 7:39 pm
A heterosexual, civil marriage outside the Church is natural in terms of human sexuality.
Either case would be far better than having the child being raised by “married” homosexuals.
Once we pretend that what is blatantly unnatural is as good as what is natural then there is no basis for arguing that any deviation is harmful. What would be the basis of an argument that a group marriage consisting of two men and two women would be harmful to a child? Or a four man marriage? Or a four woman marriage? How about a group marriage consisting of bisexuals, homosexuals and heterosexuals?
Most can see the difference between a child’s Mom and Mom’s Dad, the child’s grandfather, raising the child — which would be natural — and the child’s Mom and Mom’s Dad sleeping together and raising the child, which would be unnatural.
It can’t be healthy for children to be raised in a home where the adults raising them are in an unnatural sexual relationship.
July 23rd, 2012 | 8:08 pm
Would you say that a Catholic parent who was married in the Church, gets a civil divorce, and civilly remarries is causing his or her children to be raised in an unnatural relationship?
Divorce is different from what gay couples do, because divorce law in the US explicitly recognizes that children still belong to their own natural parents even though the parents are not able to live together anymore.
In American divorce law, men and women who make babies together are expected to continue to share the “baby making benefits” of marriage even though they are not married, and even if one or both of them remarry. If the man remarries, his new wife will discover that she does not get to have all the benefits that a first wife could have – she retains benefits such as the right to be counted as next of kin, and the right to visit him in the hospital, but the first wife retains the rights that are related to procreation.
Exactly how extensively the first wife retains these benefits depends on a variety of factors – most importantly, how much “opportunity cost” and/or earning potential she sacrificed in order to fulfill the procreative role of marriage. If the first wife was the primary caregiver, and they were married for long enough for her career to be affected by her role in procreation, then at the very least she will have first claim on a share of the husband’s income.
There are two forms of claim in such a case. She (or he, in the case of a male homemaker spouse) could get money from the former breadwinner as compensation for what she sacrificed, in the form of spousal support, and she could get child support to help her care for the children of the union. The two of them remain joined through their children, even though they do not love each other, because children are not transferable goods, and the law explicitly protects children against parents who try to “give” them to a new stepparent.
It may be natural – “human nature” – for a parent to want to raise his or her children with the one he or she loves, but when the one s/he loves is not the child’s other parent, then what the parent wants is in conflict with the child’s recognized rights.
Gay rights advocates frequently try to compare their situation with divorce, but it’s a faulty comparison because what gays want is to explicitly avoid the restrictions and limitations that divorced people are expected to endure. Gays want to share all the benefits of marriage with their partners – not just the non-procreative benefits. They want to be recognized as the real and true parent of their partner’s child, even though they’re not (and even though doing so is not in the child’s best interest).
If gays were willing to accept the limitations that stepparents are expected to endure, then gay marriage would be a lot more defensible. If gays would accept that their unions are necessarily barren ones – and that any procreating they wish to do should rightfully be done with a member of the other sex (with the conflict acknowledged and dealt with responsibly) – it would be possible to defend the idea of gay marriage without having to resort to the cheap rhetorical dirty tricks that characterize the marriage debate. There would be no threat to religious liberty – because gays would have to accept that religious people are within their rights to define “real” marriage as a union that includes both life partner and procreative functions – and there would be no problem over benefits, because gays would recognize that they can only have true legitimacy if they let go of the need to covet what is not rightfully theirs.
July 23rd, 2012 | 8:11 pm
in other words, the child is not being raised by people in an unnatural relationship.
The easiest way to tell an unnatural relationship is to look for lies and taboos.
This is the easiest way to see what’s wrong with “gay marriage”.
July 23rd, 2012 | 8:19 pm
in other words, the child is not being raised by people in an unnatural relationship.
The easiest way to tell an unnatural relationship is to look for lies and taboos.
Oh – and the best way to look for these is to follow justifications and minimization.
Whenever you see gay rights advocates justifying something, or minimizing something (“the kids are all right”), if you follow it backwards, you will find both lies and taboos.
You will find narratives that were decided before the child was even born. The child is rammed into the narrative (that’s what the lies are for), and the child won’t dare say or do anything that questions or challenges the narrative (that’s what a taboo is, after all).
When some brilliant social scientist does a study of “the unspeakable” – what children don’t dare to say out loud – the myth that “the kids are all right” will absolutely dissolve.
July 23rd, 2012 | 9:08 pm
Blake,
“Whenever you see gay rights advocates justifying something, or minimizing something (“the kids are all right”), if you follow it backwards, you will find both lies and taboos.”
Oh, my. Is it all possible for you to argue your case without relying on the sophomoric analysis that everyone in the debate is lying?
Just a thought.
July 23rd, 2012 | 9:15 pm
Blake,
“Gays want to share all the benefits of marriage with their partners – not just the non-procreative benefits.”
As you know, some do and some don’t, but it makes your case easier to argue if you pretend that all gays want the same thing.
July 23rd, 2012 | 9:21 pm
Blake,
“If gays were willing to accept the limitations that stepparents are expected to endure, then gay marriage would be a lot more defensible. If gays would accept that their unions are necessarily barren ones – and that any procreating they wish to do should rightfully be done with a member of the other sex (with the conflict acknowledged and dealt with responsibly) – it would be possible to defend the idea of gay marriage without having to resort to the cheap rhetorical dirty tricks that characterize the marriage debate.”
Can you tell us exactly what you think a suitable arrangement would be? You seem to be accepting gay marriage as long as it is accompanied by particular conditions. What are those conditions?
July 23rd, 2012 | 9:40 pm
Harry,
“Either case would be far better than having the child being raised by “married” homosexuals”
Comments like this make me wonder whether you know any gay couples with children. There are some good parents out there. I’ve know a handful that have done great jobs raising their children, but there’s also this article about a gay couple that have adopted twelve children.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/azliving/articles/2011/05/02/20110502gay-dads-ham-family-12-adopted-kids.html
Would you still say that those children would better off elsewhere?
July 23rd, 2012 | 10:12 pm
Harry,
“What would be the basis of an argument that a group marriage consisting of two men and two women would be harmful to a child?”
I recommend that you ask Blake for an answer to this question. On another thread, he suggested this very solution for gays who wanted to respect the human rights of their children to have both a mother and a father.
It’s a shame, actually, that you and Blake don’t argue the finer details with each other. I suspect that he and I are closer on some points than you and he are, but both of you are so eager to participate in the culture war that choosing “sides” is important than understanding the issues.
July 23rd, 2012 | 10:28 pm
Elizabeth,
“I am the adult child of such a scenario. My mother paid attention to us, and was mindful of the possible pitfalls, so that none of us were harmed in our searches. She could not take away the pain or harm stemming from our father’s early death. In a matter of fact way she recognized our need for male attention and guidance”
Thanks for your story. Your mother and your extended family sound wonderful.
The handful of gay families I know behaves in similar ways. One gay male couple has kept their eldest child’s birth mother and grandmother in the picture as much as they can. The birth mother is a crack addict, and the grandmother is irresponsible but at least the boy knows them. Both men come from extended families who provide lots of aunts and grandmothers, and then lots of women in our church have given these children attention.
The same is true for the lesbian families I know. These have kept ex-husbands or birth fathers involved and have enlisted brothers, uncles, and grandfathers as well as men in the church.
It’s hard for me to see that the lives these children lead are terribly different from your own, except that they had two parents in the home supporting the children and each other and you had just the one parent who had lots of help but was nevertheless alone.
July 24th, 2012 | 12:03 am
David,
“You seem to think that on same-sex marriage, there are only two positions, yours and that of those who disagree with you. Consequently, you don’t argue against what I say. You argue against what you believe is the (one and only) other side. If for some reason you can’t mesh what I say with “the other side,” then you assume I am hiding my core beliefs”
“So you are in effect disagreeing with Blake and almost everyone else that what is important for a child is to have both a mother (or mother figure) and a father (or a father figure)”
The culture war has rules: There are only two sides. The other side is always lying. It doesn’t matter whether “we” disagree or are inconsistent; what matters is that “they” are wrong.
Intelligent conversation also has rules. There are never only two sides. Most people have good reasons for believing as they do. Those reasons might be inconsistent or poorly thought out, but at the end of the day no mere assumption trumps another, and so it pays to be humble. The fact that many different positions are reasonable doesn’t mean that most positions are well argued. At most, one position is right, but it’s more likely that all are wrong in some way.
In conversations, the noisiest people win and a culture war will always be louder than an intelligent conversation.
July 24th, 2012 | 9:53 am
A quick side note to the discussion…
Since converting to the Eastern Orthodox Church I feel blessed to understand marriage as a sacrament within the church, as Roman Catholics do as well. This isn’t to say you need to be EO or RC to share in the joy of this sacramental union, but I’m just saying I feel blessed, even though I’m not married.
I mention this because I have on occasion gotten so wrapped up in the silliest of arguments sometimes that I have lost hold of the pure joy of marriage as a sacrament.
I was re-reading some Chesterton today regarding the need to keep a clear eye on this joy, above all else. I thought I would pass it on:
July 24th, 2012 | 10:58 am
I would also like to paste a Chesterton quote from the William Doino FT post from last Friday, which speaks so well to the marriage debate:
…just in case anyone is thinking that Chesterton’s words in my previous comment could somehow be construed to say we should redefine marriage…
July 24th, 2012 | 4:27 pm
[David Nickol] [about all the stuff I mentioned - JDD] “This, it seems to me, is not true complementarity. Complementarity isn’t about tendencies. …
Well, fair enough, you’ve given your definition of complementarity. But it appears to include…nothing other than biological, and you’ve gone totally minimalist. Could *anything* possibly make the list? Here again:
[David Nickol] ” True complementarity, it seems to me, would require that there were some characteristics that all men lacked, that all women had, and that combining each pair was essential for a couple’s success and wellbeing….Clearly unassisted human reproduction requires a male and a female. It does not follow that anything else necessarily does, including the raising of children.”
I think you’re treating the whole thing as too much of a step-function, rather than a gradient. What if I say to you that combining each pair of *tendencies* was essential to raising children? Do we have more agreement then?
July 24th, 2012 | 4:52 pm
[David Nickol] “You don’t seem to understand the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation.”
Yes, I do. I understand that GID is a subdivision within the homosexual community into which people who admit to experiencing it are categorized by those who don’t want to present homosexuality as anything other than a lifestyle without troubles. It’s quickly become an accepted psychological term, but I’ll bet no two of those people you’ve met in New York would give you the same definition of it. I have real empathy for the person who experience it – and suffer from it. I hear of scarce happy stories relating to it.
You don’t seem that comfortable allowing it into the conversation yourself, along with the categories of Bi, Trans, etc, even though these are all clearly related topics. At least GBLT websites seem to think so. An interesting thing has happened in this conversation thread – You’ve tried to pre-empt twice now bringing other variations of sexual orientation into the conversation. Let me just ask the question: Would you be comfortable with a GID couple adopting a child?
July 24th, 2012 | 6:32 pm
Yes, I do. I understand that GID is a subdivision within the homosexual community . . .
JDD,
No, you don’t.
GID (gender identity disorder) is a psychiatric diagnosis, not an invented classification of the gay community. The criteria for making that diagnosis are to be found in the DSM-IV. I believe there is a controversy over GID for DSM-V, but I am not up on it. I believe people who feel they are physically one sex but mentally another do not like being classified as having a psychiatric disorder, and that may have something to do with it.
Gender identity isn’t a matter of whom you are sexually attracted to. It is a matter of whether you believe yourself to be a male or a female. A four-year-old boy (or girl) who is convince he (she) is a girl (boy) is not homosexual, gay, or lesbian.
Those with GID don’t form a subset of the gay community. They would no doubt be welcome in the LGBT community as transgendered, but that is not the same as being homosexual. The reason there are four letters in LGBT is that lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered persons are all different. Sometimes the abbreviation is LGBTI, with the I being for intersex. These are not all designations for homosexuality.
Sure, many LGBT(I) people believe they share something in common, but that doesn’t mean they are all comfortable with each other. Many gay men are just as unsettled by transvestites or transexuals as many straight men. Many lesbians don’t particularly want gay men or straight men around. LGBT represents somewhat of a political alliance and somewhat of a feeling of kinship of people society tends to lump together.
You’ve tried to pre-empt twice now bringing other variations of sexual orientation into the conversation. Let me just ask the question: Would you be comfortable with a GID couple adopting a child?
As I have said, the groups you want to lump together are distinct groups. As for a GID couple, I don’t think there are GID couples. If someone with GID wanted a partner, it wouldn’t be another person with GID. If you feel you are a woman in a man’s body, you would want a partner who was a man, not a woman who thinks she is a man in a woman’s body! I can’t even keep it all straight in my head. Also, someone can feel he is a woman in a man’s body and still be sexually attracted to women. That person is a heterosexual, but if he has sex-reassignment surgery, he becomes a lesbian.
So the question about a GID couple makes very little sense. But if someone truly is diagnosable with GID, that means the person has a psychiatric diagnosis and is in conflict. I wouldn’t consider people in conflict ideal adoptive parents, and I also wouldn’t consider someone contemplating sex-reassignment surgery as an ideal adoptive parent. It’s one thing having two mothers or two fathers. I don’t see a problem with that. But for a small child to cope with his mother becoming his father of vice versa is a bit more than a child should have to deal with. It is not even easy for adult children of transexuals to deal with. For children growing up, stability is needed.
July 24th, 2012 | 7:44 pm
The handful of gay families I know behaves in similar ways.
Yes, the gay families I have met behave the same way, too.
The children always feel the need to defend and protect their parents.
This is another aspect of gay parenting that is (a) consistent and (b) differs from intact families. It needs to be studied.
In what other situation do we recognize the adult children of alleged child abusers as reliable testimony?
They are raised with certain topics being taboo – literally “unspeakable” (or even “unthinkable”); what are the consequences of asking taboo questions or thinking taboo thoughts? What are the effects of such children in seeing their parents get angry, defensive, or “go into attack mode”, in defense of (and denial of the selfishness of) their parenting decisions?
It has been my observation that these kids are raised to not only hate but fear those who disagree with their parents. Is this a universal thing? And, if so, is it healthy? (And, yes, I think it is equally questionable to raise a child to hate and fear gay people – and might very well teeter into the realm of abuse if the parents actually raise their child to protect and defend them from the hated Other.) No child should be used as a meat shield; in my opinion, any child raised under situations where the parent’s political agenda is a higher priority than the child’s well-being is by definition an abused child.
Finally, I would also argue that the children of “alternative family structures” – including gay “families”, “single by choice”, and so on – should be compared against intact families with regard to how their familial ties stand up under disagreements. It is normal in our culture to rebel against one’s parents; this is because we place a premium on individual identity, and rebellion is part of making the emotional separation from one’s parent necessary for that individual identity. We know from other studies that less-healthy families have a hard time with this issue. In a healthy family, children feel absolute faith that they can dissent without breaking any crucial bonds. Do the children of “alternative family structures” feel the same faith to the same degree, or do concerns about protecting fragile bonds conflict or interfere with emotional development?
We know that in adoptive families, it is the child from the stronger family that will feel more free to voice a desire to know the truth about who he really is and where he comes from. The child from the weaker family is not free to voice such feelings, because his parents are needy and he must take care of them.
There is a word for children who feel emotionally pressured to “take care of” their parents: such children are said to be “parentified”. I believe that the fact that children raised by gays are described as “more mature” or “better adjusted” (another way of saying more mature)” is a sign of parentification – a short term advantage (preternatural maturity) but one that comes at a later (heavy) cost.
It is similar to a plant that is forced to bloom in time for a plant show. The plant has to draw upon resources to achieve this miracle – and then those resources aren’t there for later normal, healthy development.
July 25th, 2012 | 12:25 am
Blake, JDD, Sally Rogers, et. al.
I know writing these comments often takes considerable time and I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your taking that time. Your thoughts are always helpful and their reach certainly doesn’t stop on the FT comment page. Please keep up the good work.
And while I disagree with our detractors, I have to admit the comments I most admire would not have been written without them. So to folks on the other side, I hope you keep up the good work as well.
July 25th, 2012 | 12:25 am
David Nickol,
To revert to an earlier topic in this thread, suppose an opposite-sex couple wants to adopt a child from Catholic Charities, and the couple is turned down just because they belong to the Happy Polyamory Society. Would that be discrimination–and if not, why not? How is that case different from the case of a homosexual couple that is turned down?
What you *cannot* say is that it is “simple common sense” to turn down the polyamorous couple. And you cannot say that the polyamorous couple *is* being discriminated against by Catholic Charities unless you want to raise the specter of unintended consequences in a particularly acute way.
I think it’s a real dilemma for the supporters of SSM, because it shows how SSM, if legalized, will tend to make Leviathan rear its head. All kinds of unexpected things will follow the legalization of SSM, and the government will have to enter the fray heavily-handedly, the more so if its decisions are arbitrary. The government will end up EVERYWHERE.
But the real point is the polyamorous couple. What about them?
July 25th, 2012 | 7:01 am
Blake,
“I believe that the fact that children raised by gays are described as “more mature” or “better adjusted” (another way of saying more mature)” is a sign of parentification – a short term advantage (preternatural maturity) but one that comes at a later (heavy) cost”
This argument is elegant in the heads-I-win , tails-you-lose way. If the kids are unhealthy, then gay parents are at fault, and if the kids are healthy, then gay parents are at fault for making them too healthy.
July 25th, 2012 | 10:32 am
But the real point is the polyamorous couple. What about them?
Ken Z.,
What I disagree with is the stance of Catholic Charities that they will not even consider a same-sex couple (in a civil union) as potential adoptive parents. Every single individual and couple seeking to adopt should be considered on their merits. You did not say whether your polyamorous couple actually practiced polyamory. If they do, if those who evaluate them believe their relationship is not stable enough to provide a good environment in which to raise a child, then it is not discrimination to rule them out as adoptive parents.
Also, remember that the dispute between Illinois and Catholic Charities was not about whether a religious adoption agency could refuse to place children with same-sex couples. It seems that under Illinois law it can. It was about whether the Illinois could refuse state contracts to fund Catholic Charities because of their stated position. Catholic Charities was working for the state, with the state’s money.
July 25th, 2012 | 11:47 am
[David Nickol] “GID (gender identity disorder) is a psychiatric diagnosis, not an invented classification of the gay community…. The criteria for making that diagnosis are to be found…”
David, for pete’s sake, I have access to the same internet that you do! I’m aware of the definitions and the distinctions, and I’m not saying that GID only exists because the gay community ‘invented’ it, (though I can see where you would get that from my previous post.) What I’m saying is what I believe it actually is – namely a subset, an expected derivative, of the notion championed by the gay community that sexual orientation has no norm in human nature. And further that it is subset kept – along with others – somewhat at arm’s length by the ‘mainline’ gay community, so as not to cloud the message or the movement. You hint at this yourself when you say:
“Those with GID don’t form a subset of the gay community. They would no doubt be welcome in the LGBT community as transgendered…”
Would they be welcomed if, while not denying their own experience, they refused to condone it? Because it’s one thing to say, “I feel trapped in the wrong body.” It’s quite another to say, “My path is clear – surgery will make everything right.” It’s an heroic act to instead conclude, “I clearly and objectively see who I am on the outside, I see what gender I actually am and I can verify it scientifically; something is going on with my persona, something has happened to cause this, and I must find out what it is.”
Once sexuality is decoupled from the actual genetic truth, it’s unclear exactly why there is cause to disaprove of *any* form of sexual expression or activity whatsoever – as has been expanded upon on these boards in the past. And that is not a position that the gay community would like to have to defend all at once in the public sphere. The letters GBLTI (where did Q go?) are somewhat of an enigma to me. I’ve watched the number of consonants increase, it seems about one per every two or three years over the past decade.
Once all of these letters are accepted as mainline, it’s difficult to see how any of them would be eventually denied adoption rights. How are you with that?
[David Nickol] “Gender identity isn’t a matter of whom you are sexually attracted to. It is a matter of whether you believe yourself to be a male or a female. A four-year-old boy (or girl) who is convince he (she) is a girl (boy) is not homosexual, gay, or lesbian.”
There is a clear connection between someone who concludes, “I am attracted to boys, even though I am myself a boy,” and that person then beginning to conclude, “perhaps I am not a boy.”
[David Nickol] “So the question about a GID couple makes very little sense. But if someone truly is diagnosable with GID, that means the person has a psychiatric diagnosis and is in conflict. I wouldn’t consider people in conflict ideal adoptive parents, and I also wouldn’t consider someone contemplating sex-reassignment surgery as an ideal adoptive parent. It’s one thing having two mothers or two fathers. I don’t see a problem with that. But for a small child to cope with his mother becoming his father of vice versa is a bit more than a child should have to deal with. It is not even easy for adult children of transexuals to deal with. For children growing up, stability is needed.”
I think you’re making the case that a State can and even should decide certain categories of relationships can be ineligible for adopting children. The Church agrees. The Church wants the freedom to do this. Your disagreement is with the categories, not the practice itself.
July 25th, 2012 | 2:15 pm
JDD,
I don’t see any point in discussing your theories of gender and sexuality any further, since they seem to me very much based on your own opinions rather than psychological or psychiatric evidence.
I think you’re making the case that a State can and even should decide certain categories of relationships can be ineligible for adopting children. The Church agrees. The Church wants the freedom to do this. Your disagreement is with the categories, not the practice itself.
Yes, this is exactly correct. There is no quarrel over the state or the Church deciding that some situations make for unsuitable situations in which to raise a child. No one is requiring Catholic Charities or anyone else in the adoption field to choose adoptive parents at random.
And, as I have said a number of times, it appears clear to me under Illinois law that a privately financed religious adoption agency is free to discriminate against same-sex couples. The question in Illinois was whether Catholic Charities could be denied state contracts. The courts decided they could. If Catholic Charities had been using their own money rather than the state’s money, they would not have found it necessary to go out of business. I will try to find the quote somewhere (I don’t have time now), but a spokesperson from the Thomas More Society, the group that provided legal representation for Catholic Charities in Illinois, urged other religiously run adoption services not to go out of business the way Catholic Charities did, because he believed religiously run adoption services were not obligated to place children with same-sex couples.
July 25th, 2012 | 2:40 pm
David Nickol,
My point was that Catholic Charities, whether or not it is “working” for the State, is entitled on grounds of conscience to ban *all* polyamorous couples from adoption–and this includes people who, because of their formal affiliations, are only presumed to be polyamorous. And therefore that Catholic Charities is also entitled to ban all homosexual couples from adoption.
When the government disallows that for any reason, it is saying that something is wrong with those religious beliefs–and the State is not ever supposed to say that.
When you draw a sharp distinction between the state and civil society (here, Catholic Charities), you are suggesting that the two have different standards of morality. But that is impossible. Even if you are a value-pluralist, it makes no sense to apply one standard of morality, and hence of what constitutes discrimination, to the state and a different standard of morality to civil society.
July 25th, 2012 | 7:03 pm
Ken Z.,
Catholic Charities was not “working” for the state of Illinois. It was working for the state of Illinois. It was operating with a state contract, doing work the state was paying it to do. If the state makes a contract with a construction company to build roads, the construction company doesn’t get to say, “We’ll build the roads the way we want. Don’t try to tell us how to build roads!”
When you draw a sharp distinction between the state and civil society (here, Catholic Charities), you are suggesting that the two have different standards of morality.
Very often they do, and that is why we have the First Amendment. So that people with different values from those of the state can live with reasonable freedom in the state. Illinois has laws that bar discrimination against gay people. The Catholic Church opposes laws that bar discrimination against gay people. That creates a problem. And the solution in this case (under Illinois law, as I understand it) is that Catholic Charities, when it is using its own money, can discriminate against same sex couples. But when Catholic Charities is using the state’s money, it can’t. No religious group is entitled to state contracts. That was the finding of the courts.
July 26th, 2012 | 9:39 am
[David Nickol] “I don’t see any point in discussing your theories of gender and sexuality any further, since they seem to me very much based on your own opinions rather than psychological or psychiatric evidence.”
Although you yourself did the very same thing just a few posts back – declared yourself on one side of an argument over psychological definitions; dissented from the current definition of a term and advocated for a different view:
“I believe there is a controversy over GID for DSM-V, but I am not up on it. I believe people who feel they are physically one sex but mentally another do not like being classified as having a psychiatric disorder, and that may have something to do with it.”
And a little further back, when I mentioned some points which are unequivocally part of the body of psychological knowledge: “Men tend to bond and pass on knowledge through common activity, while women tend to bond and pass on knowledge through discussion. Men tend to compartmentalize decisions, while women tend to make decisions more holistically.”
You gave your opinion, and started by way of disputing the terms: “This, it seems to me, is not true complementarity. Complementarity isn’t about tendencies.” Dismissed, as far as you were concerned.
As you know, this whole blog is about (hopefully) intelligent and serious persons, commenting and giving their opinions based on various issues – some within their field of expertise and some not – using nothing more than the three pounds of grey matter between our ears. I’ve built up my positions. Feel free to engage the arguments on their merits.
July 26th, 2012 | 2:56 pm
David Nickol,
“The Catholic Church opposes laws that bar discrimination against gay people.”
But what constitutes discrimination? When is an act discriminatory? Whatever answer you give, in this case it seems clear that the state (actually two states, Massachusetts and Illinois) defines discrimination in an inconsistent and arbitrary way. The state is merely selecting some forms of “discrimination” as politically incorrect, and ignoring other forms of discrimination. That is the point of my hypo about the polyamorous couple. The hypo is meant to show that there cannot be different standards of morality about what constitutes discrimination. Whenever there is serious doubt, or substantial disagreement, about whether a religious group is discriminating, the First Amendment surely gives the benefit of the doubt to the religious group. But that is just the beginning of the problem I have with what the state did with Catholic Charities.
My hypo did not quite indicate the sheer arbitrariness of the state’s action. It mainly showed the state’s inconsistency (inconsistency may or may not involve arbitrariness, and arbitrariness is worse than inconsistency). The hypo only shows the inconsistency of allowing Catholic Charities to discriminate against polyamorous couples (as I assume it is allowed to do) but not against homosexual couples. But there is arbitrariness in the state’s decision as well. For the Church regards homosexuality and not polyamory as “intrinsically disordered,” and so if Catholic Charities can discriminate against polyamorous couples, then *a fortiori* it can discriminate (“discriminate”) against gay couples. To not allow Catholic Charities to do so is pure arbitrariness (a.k.a. tyranny). The state, in effect, is saying that discrimination is not okay only if it is politically incorrect. Discrimination that is politically correct is okay. Discrimination is what “we good liberals don’t like.”
Belong to the Happy Polyamory Society if you like (liberals are saying), but you can’t adopt children if Catholic Charities doesn’t want you to; but if you are a gay couple that wants to adopt, we will be sure to tell Catholic Charities that they must give you the child or be forced to go out of business.
The state is perhaps entitled to privilege homosexual couples over polyamorous couples–we can at least argue about that. But it is not entitled to say that Catholic Charities, in its adoption policies, can discriminate against polyamorous couples but not against homosexual couples. Why not? The reason is pretty obvious. Such inconsistent and arbitrary behavior by the government is the hallmark of tyranny. The Constitution forbids such behavior by the government–that is the whole point of the Constitution. The state would have to show that there is a difference between homosexual couples and polyamorous couples that Catholic Charities must acknowledge or else be guilty of irrationality and anti-republicanism. But the government is not able to do that because there is no morally relevant difference between discrimination, for purposes of adoption, with respect to homosexual couples and with respect to polyamorous couples.
Actually, as mentioned above, there is a difference: Homosexuality but not polyamory is regarded by the Church as intrinsically disordered. This difference works against the state, however. It makes the state unable to say, “Look, you regard polyamory as morally worse than homosexuality, in a sense, and so even by your lights our policy is justified and is not inconsistent and arbitrary. We are not singling you out. We are not a self-dealing liberal government–we are a *principled* liberal government.” The state (of Massachusetts or Illinois) can’t say this for the simple reason that the Church in fact regards homosexuality as morally worse in the sense of being intrinsically disordered. And yet the state allows Catholic Charities to discriminate (“discriminate”) against polyamorous couples who want to adopt, but not against homosexual couples who also want to adopt.
Pardon me for saying this makes no sense whatsoever and is the harbinger of tyranny. The solution is not to forbid discrimination against polyamorous couples. The solution is to give sufficiently ample leeway, in deciding what constitutes discrimination, to religious conscience and religious reasons. The states of Massachusetts and Illinois–like most liberals today–are disastrously clueless about the importance of that.
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