Can Christians run an adoption agency, based on a Christian vision of marriage and the family? Not in the state of Massachusetts. That’s the message from an extraordinary incident that took place in March in Boston.

Since 1903 Catholic Charities has a history of helping some of the most vulnerable, hard-to-place children in Boston. “Catholic Charities has really been a gold standard in providing adoption services to children in the welfare system for a long time,” Marylou Sudders, president of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children told the Boston Globe. So Sudders and others involved in adoption work were shocked and saddened by the news that as of June 30, 2006, Catholic Charities would be out of the adoption business. “This is a tragedy for kids,” said Sudders. Of ninety-one children adopted from the state Department of Social Services through private agencies last year, twenty-eight were helped by Catholic Charities, and many of these were the hard-to-place children: older children, sibling groups, and handicapped kids.

“It’s a shame,” Paula Wisnewski, director of adoption for Boston’s Home for Little Wanderers, told the Globe, “because it is certainly going to mean that fewer children from foster care are going to find permanent homes.”

KICKED OUT OF THE BUSINESS

How did this happen? In 2003 the Catholic Church clarified its principles on adoption: Catholic agencies may not place children with same-sex couples. This spring a Boston Globe story revealed that Catholic Charities in Boston had in the past placed a small number of children in foster care with gay couples. The Archbishop (now Cardinal) Sean O’Malley made it clear: This would not happen in the future. That put Catholic Charities in violation of state rules that require those applying for adoption licenses to pledge non-discrimination on orientation.

The result was a firestorm of negative local media, attacking the Catholic Church for its stand on gay adoption. The Catholic Church asked both the governor and the legislature for a religious exemption, so it could carry on its work of helping children find homes. Governor Mitt Romney regretfully told Catholic leaders that he had no authority to issue an exemption. Leaders of the state legislature flatly refused to countenance what they called “discrimination.”

The net result is, as the headline of a column by John Garvey, Dean of Boston College of Law, put it in the March 14 Boston Globe, “State Puts Church out of the Adoption Biz.” “It seems surprising that the state would want to put the Catholic Church out of the adoption business,” writes Dean Garvey. “Corporal works of mercy are no less important to the life of the Church than its sacramental ministry. Forbidding the Church to perform them is a serious blow to its religious liberty. Why would the government do that?”

One reason, according to Dean Garvey, is that “the Church refused to go along with the effort, enshrined in these regulations and blessed in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, to give gay families the same legal rights as straight families.”

Payback time? Other large national Christian adoption agencies may face similar legal pressures.

ATTACK ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

The question in Boston is not whether gays are going to be allowed legally to adopt. It is whether religious people who morally object to gay adoption will be allowed to help children find homes. This is not about gay adoption—it is about our fundamental commitment to religious liberty in this country.

It is a crime to run an adoption agency in Massachusetts without a license from the state. To get a license you have to agree to place children with same-sex couples. For the first time in America, Christians are being told by their government that they are not good citizens, not worthy enough to be permitted to help abandoned babies find good homes.

At least twenty other states have similar anti-discrimination laws on orientation. What makes Massachusetts unique, though, is same-sex “marriage.” In other states, marriage could provide a “safe harbor” for Christian and other religious organizations. Faith-based organizations could run adoption agencies that specialize in placing children in married homes. But, of course, in Massachusetts, that would also require Christian or other religious organizations to place children in same-sex homes.

And it is not just adoption licenses. What we are witnessing is the unfolding of the logic that gay “marriage” is a civil right. People who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife must (if courts rule this way) be treated like racists by their own government. The potential punishment the state could impose on faith groups is enormous: yanking radio broadcasting licenses, professional licenses (marriage counselors, social workers, psychologists), and the state accreditation of Christian (or other religious) schools and universities. And yes, the tax-exempt status of organizations of faithful Christians and other people of good will are at risk. Continued...