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Gays, Catholics and adoptions again

A number of people have expressed surprise at my disagreement with the Roman Catholic church for its stand against the Sexual Orientation Regs. Thinking Anglicans have today published an open letter from Savi Hensman, vice chair of the LGCM, to NT Wright which puts it well (text here):

Roman Catholic adoption agencies already consider as adoptive parents people whose views and lifestyles are not in accord with its teachings, and rightly so. If, for instance, an atheist is able and willing to offer a loving home which is likely to meet the often extensive needs of a particular child, her offer may be taken up without any change in fundamental Church doctrines.

The point is, the RC church already recognises the point that Roman Catholics do not have a monopoly on the ability to bring children up well - and therefore they are happy to place children with parents who they can be sure will bring them up well even though in an ideal world they would not place them with such parents. So for example they would presumably prefer to place all children with married Roman Catholic parents. But they recognise that since this is not possible, it's better to place them with stable, good non-married non-Catholic parents than for them not to be placed at all.

I see no reason why adoption by gay couples should be any different. I have no doubt that it would be better for all children to have one male and one female parent who are committed Christians, married to one another, and very good parents to boot. But we have established that this is not always possible. The question is, therefore, given that we have accepted the principle of realism (not to let the impossible best be the enemy of the relatively good) why should it be any different with respect to couples where both partners are of the opposite sex rather than where the partners are not married or not Christians?

'Gay' Adoption and the Roman Catholic Church

I do not believe that the Roman Catholic Church (unfortunately supported last week in a small flurry of publicity by the Archbishops of the Church of England) are right to seek exemption for their adoption agencies from the so-called Sexual Orientation Regulations (see previous post for link to the text of the regulations).

The most important reason for this is as follows. The regulations are opposed to relative and not absolute discrimination. That is, they forbid only that one treat gay individuals and couples differently to the way one treat non-married straight individuals and couples. So, for example, a hotelier who wishes to prohibit gay couples from staying in her establishment is perfectly free to do so - if and only if she also turns away unmarried straight couples.

This makes excellent sense. It prevents the hypocrisy of claiming one is trying to uphold certain (purportedly Christian) standards whilst doing so selectively.

The reason that the Roman Catholic adoption agencies are caught in a bind is therefore very simple. They are willing to authorise in certain circumstances the adoption of children by unmarried straight couples - but not gay couples, even if they are in the commitment of a civil partnership. Thus they are guilty of discrimination according to the regulations which they would not be if they were genuinely upholding marriage as the only legitimate context for the raising of children. So in effect they are claiming that unmarried but straight relationships with absolutely no formal public lifelong commitment are better contexts for raising children than committed gay relationships. That is, any straight relationship is by definition better than any gay relationship as a context for raising children.

It is extremely difficult to see this as anything other than a selective and hypocritical position.

(Below the fold is a short comment on why I think that gay adoption as such is not necessarily wrong.)

Dilemma

Hat tip to Mike for this link to a Telegraph article concerning a fascinating but deeply tragic situation. Summary of the article: a man was convicted after admitting he committed indecent acts with a four-year-old girl. The day after the court hearing, he was sacked by his employers - a publishing firm called Kevin Mayhew, which is owned by a Christian and produces church music and hymnbooks. He worked as a music setter, so to continue in his job would not have placed any children in danger - his job had absolutely nothing to do with working with children. He is therefore suing his former employers for unfair dismissal.

Two quotes from the article. The first is from the owner of the firm, Kevin Mayhew:

"It beggars belief that he has the cheek to try and claim compensation after what he did to this little girl."

And the second is from Michelle Elliot, who is the director of a children's charity called Kidscape:

"If abusing a four-year-old girl is not grounds for dismissal, I do not know what is."

But is it? On one level it is easy to see the invidious position the firm is placed in, especially since it works within the church - if they had knowingly allowed a convicted paedophile to continue in his job would it have left them open to charges of sheltering and covering up? The church's reputation in this area is distinctly sullied at the moment - and with reason.

However, it is hard for me to see why it can be right to dismiss someone from their job because they have committed a crime of this nature. It is right that such an individual should be publicly prosecuted and punished by the lawful authorities. Furthermore, if his job had given him access to children in any way, clearly he could not be allowed to remain in such a post since the protection of children would be paramount. But I can't see what legitimate grounds there are here for such a dismissal. Mayhew and Elliot's comments seem to suggest that if someone commits a crime of this nature they have so placed themselves outside the pale of humanity that they no longer deserve to be treated as a fellow human being, whom one is not at liberty to fire simply because they have done something wrong. This doesn't seem right to me - yes there must be punishment for someone who commits a crime of this nature, but that is for the law courts to decide, which makes Mayhew a vigilante. Perhaps I am being incredibly naive. Let me know what you think, especially you legal eagles out there - I'd be interested to know what you think about the legal ins and outs of the situation.

The London Bombings

Just a couple of provocative thoughts;

1. Let's not, for goodness's sake, start referring to the terrorist bombing in London as "7/7" or anything similar. This is for a number of reasons. First, it's my mother's birthday. Second, labelling such an event instead of describing it denudes it in our minds of actual concrete detail. When somebody mentiones "9/11" I very rarely anymore think of two planes crashing into and destroying the World Trade Center with the resulting loss of thousands of lives. Instead it has become a code, a symbol of an epoch-shaping event, a justification of all means necessary for American self-defense and a totem of patriotic fervour - rather than stimulating a rational and public consideration of whether such responses are appropriate ones to the precise historical circumstances of the event. Ironically, given that it uses a historical date, it is ultimately a dehistoricising move, placing somehow the events of that day outside the sphere of what needs to be described. The event becomes mythical (i.e. a reality-constituting narrative) rather than historic. Thus, it is (again ironically) a trivialising move. Whilst on the one hand such labelling elevates the importance of the event itself, on the other it downplays the significance of what actually happened, if you follow the distinction. Thirdly, it claims a privileged position for Britain and America as victims, capitulating to the cultural whim of the day in which victimhood is seem as equivalent to the moral high ground. There have been al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in Spain, Kenya, Tanzania and even countries which are majority Muslim such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Morocco.
2. Let's not blame this on the military action in Iraq. Personally I was opposed to this conflict but it is not credible to suppose that it directly gave rise to this terrorist attack. The goal of al-Qaeda and extremeist Islam is not simply a military withdrawal from Iraq, nor is it even the liberation of Palestine. It is the establishment of a global caliphate (i.e. theocratic Islamic government) under sharia law. One could certainly say is that the oppression of Palestine and military action in Afghanistan and Iraq has fuelled hatred of the West in certain quarters - but it has not created an Islamist threat de novo. Britain has been on al-Qaeda's hit list for years.
3. We have been brought face to face with the truth that the terrorist threat on British soil has little or nothing to do with immigration, and everything to do with a certain form of Islamism. Nor is this restricted to Britain. Other countries which have 'produced' suicide bombers include Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. This group of countries of which Britain has now become a member are not part of an axis of evil nor are they rogue states. The issue is the ideological and theological soul of Islam.
4. Connected with this, let's not automatically assume that more legislation is the answer. It could well be that there is room to introduce a charge of incitement to terrorism or whatever. But this is addressing the sympton (terrorism) not the cause (certain forms of Islam) and it is clear that we need to reflect on 'what is to be done' about the latter if we are to prevent the former.

Black churches and exorcism

The heinous misreporting on the supposed link between black majority churches in London and the sickening physical abuse practicsed by 'exorcists' on children to supposedly drive out evil spirits from them continues. Worryingly, much of the Christian press seems every bit as ill-informed as the secular media.

The fact of the matter is that the the people who carry out these terrible practices are not from mainstream black churches but from spiritualist churches which are a syncretistic mix of Christianity and African folk religion. They simply are not Christian churches - even fundamentalist churches. These practices have been uniformly and routinely condemned by black Christian leaders in London.

But blurring these crucial and major distinctions is seen as perfectly acceptable. I wonder if it would be so readily accepted if the attendees of these churches were white.