An update from the Family Foundation of Virginia on the events we have been monitoring in Virginia:
The Virginia Board of Social Services [has] voted to delay the implementation of recently approved adoption regulations under the threat of costly litigation from the ACLU and Equality Virginia (see The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot). In a not unexpected decision, the vote will allow for 30 days of additional comment, beginning September 12. As we noted yesterday, however, with Governor Bob McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli opposing the old proposed regulations on several grounds, opponents will only succeed in dragging out the process longer and perhaps set the stage for a legal action challenging Virginia law.
... At yesterday’s meeting, a host of representatives from the homosexual lobby spoke in favor of the additional comment period (see Washington Post Virginia Politics Blog). Some of the speakers honestly stated that they believed allowing homosexuals to adopt should take precedence over the religious liberty rights of faith-based organizations.
9 Comments
VA will continue to ban adoption discrimination based on race, color or national origin. Do those restrictions also interfere with religious liberty? And no, I'm not comparing homosexuality to race. But doesn't a prohibition on racial discrimination interfere with the religious liberty of religious groups which uphold the biblical basis of segregation (such as the Dutch Reformed Church and the South Baptist Convention until comparatively recently)? All non-discrimination laws potentially limit the religious liberties of somebody. So why the opposition to anti-homosexual discrimination laws but not any other? Is this really a principled stand for religious liberty or simply an opposition to any law which would interfere with your desire to discriminate against homosexuals?
The answer, Joe, is that you *are* comparing, or rather equating, homosexuality to race, implicitly in your objection. Since it is wrong to discriminate based on race *therefore*, it is wrong to discriminate based upon "sexual preference".
First, there is no logical connection between the two assertions. Second, religion and race are protected classes, sexual preference is not.
Third, it was the Catholic Church, the largest religious organization in America, which sponsored the Perez case, and which provided the sound rational basis upon which the Court made the correct call concerning the anti-miscegenation laws.
So it will fall to the rest of us to reestablish at the SCOTUS level the proper balance between the competing claims of those who claim a right based on religious belief and those who claim a right based on sexual preference. If our civilization has not completely gone irretrievably bonkers, the so-called rights based on sexual preference will be properly assessed as a load of hooey, given it changeable, subjective, and emotional basis.
What if by the wave of a pen, you could not be with your family until someone else says so? http://tinyurl.com/3d6en2w
"religion and race are protected classes, sexual preference is not" Of course, if you pass a law that says sexual orientation is a protected class, well then it is a protected class, isn't it.
But more on religion. Why can't a Catholic Adoption agency discriminate on the basis of religion? If you take seriously the claim that there is no salvation outside the Church, why should a Christian adoption agency have to place children in non-christian, even pagan homes? Doing so places the souls of those adoption children in grave peril of eternal damnation. And yet, it does not seem to offend religious liberty to prohibit christian adoption agencies from discriminating on the basis of religion. Which seems odd.
Joe: If wishes were fishes we'd all have salmon for dinner. Should such an appallingly insane "class" be recognized, then the balance between the two competing classes would have to be addressed, just exactly as it was in Perez. A moment's reflection will disclose that the interest of the children is paramount in such instances, and since every child is, after all, the product of exactly one man and exactly one woman, there is certainly a far more than solely *religious* basis for preferentially seeking the best environment for the adopted child.
Your next questions are much more insightful, I think. There exists- has always existed- a tension between the Constitution's foundational assumption about liberty and the possibility that one religion would in fact be the True religion. Our Constitution consciously proceeds on the assumption that no such True Religion can be discerned, and thus enshrines the freedom of every religion, even false religions. The necessary palliative in this case is, of course, the expressed will of the majority- it is the duty of the Church to ceaselessly work to build up and strengthen a majority of citizens of good will in support of the rational principles of the common good, which are knowable even apart from the Catholic religion.
Speaking strictly for myself, it is likely the United States' Achilles heel that it has allowed for the backdoor establishment of a secular humanist state religion, which advances itself precisely by denying itself to be a religion.
In any case, the Church will endure. Will the United States?
Courts have been declaring those afflicted by same-sex sexual attraction a "protected class" whose protection by legerdemain extends to their bad habit of same-sex sexual activity...it is therefore necessary to pass constitutional amendments denying them that undeserved,and harmful,protection of their harmful behavior.
Here is a great way to settle this easily, once and for all. The adoption rules are to be done for what is in the best interests of the children. Children do need a mother and a father. The law is equal to everybody. All adoptive parents must provide a mother and a father.
In this scenario there would be no discrimination based on sexual preference. Same sex couples are denied adoption not because of their sexual preferences but because they did not provide a mother and father equally like everybody else.
Now there is real equallity and puts the religious question to rest.
Finally, state adoption law is starting to recognize the best interest of children through the placement in homes with mothers and fathers. A very encouraging trend..
"Finally, state adoption law is starting to recognize the best interest of children through the placement in homes with mothers and fathers. A very encouraging trend.."
but of course, Virginia does not limit adoption to homes with mothers and fathers. And if it did, there would be substantially more children languishing in orphanages and shuttled from temporary foster home to temporary foster home. is being adopted by a single man, worse than living in foster care until 18? by a jew? a pagan? a lesbian? a lesbian couple?