Gay Adoption and Religious Liberty

Chilling story in the Weekly Standard today, regarding the decision by Catholic Charities of Boston to get out of the adoption business because of Massachusetts law that would tolerate no discrimination for same-sex couples seeking to adopt. The story, by Maggie Gallagher explains that Massachusetts law has prohibited "orientation discrimination" for about a decade. But more recently, beginning in November 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court insisted on sanctioning gay marriage. As a result, Catholic Charities faced a conflict between official church teaching and state mandate. The church lost.

Gallagher spends more than a few collumn inches seeking the viewpoints of legal experts on the issue. A couple of key quotes stand out, such as this from Anthony Picarello, president and general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

"In times of relative peace, says Picarello, people don't even notice that "the church is surrounded on all sides by the state; that church and state butt up against each other. The boundaries are usually peaceful, so it's easy sometimes to forget they are there. But because marriage affects just about every area of the law, gay marriage is going to create a point of conflict at every point around the perimeter."



Then there are comments from general counsel for the American Jewish Congress, Marc Stern:

"Same-sex marriage will affect religious educational institutions, he argues, in at least four ways: admissions, employment, housing, and regulation of clubs. One of Stern's big worries right now is a case in California where a private Christian high school expelled two girls who (the school says) announced they were in a lesbian relationship. Stern is not optimistic. And if the high school loses, he tells me, 'then religious schools are out of business.' Or at least the government will force religious schools to tolerate both conduct and proclamations by students they believe to be sinful.

And Stern believes freedom of speech will in time be interpreted by courts to be a lesser right than same-sex freedoms.

"Will speech against gay marriage be allowed to continue unfettered? 'Under the American regime of freedom of speech, the answer ought to be easy,' according to Stern. But it is not entirely certain, he writes, 'because sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace principles will likely migrate to suppress any expression of anti-same-sex-marriage views.'"

It is difficult for conservative Christians to win battles like these, because the cards are stacked against them in the halls of power. But I dare say we may have contributed to our own predicament. In the next couple of months, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Methodists will wage major battles within their denominations over same sex marriage and gay ordinations. Meanwhile many prominent leaders in independent evangelicalism, influenced in part by postmodern though patterns regarding oppression and power, speak in increasingly accepting tones toward the demands of the gay lobby. I fear hard times are ahead.