Jeff Jacoby Opposes Equal Humanity & Citizenship of Gays?
Jeff Jacoby writes in the Boston Globe:
Catholic Charities ... wanted only to go on finding loving parents for troubled children, without having to place any of those children in homes it deemed unsuitable.
What Jeff Jacoby conveniently fails to mention here is that Catholic Charities wanted to do this with government funding. Why does Jeff Jacoby oppose the authority of the government to set basic standards about who is and is not suitable? Would Jacoby be OK if a group wanted to use government funds to set up adoptions while excluding Jewish or interracial couples? His argument demands it, if he’s the least bit consistent and honest in his beliefs.
Religious bigots love to talk about religious exemptions to laws they don’t like — almost invariably laws which uphold the civic equality of all citizens — but not all exemptions are valid. If an exemption is contrary to the public good and undermines the government’s duty to protect and promote civic equality, then it shouldn’t be granted. Government funding for adoption services that discriminate against gay couples would be every bit as contrary to the public good as funding adoption services that discriminate against Jewish or interracial couples.
The church’s request for a conscience clause should have been unobjectionable, at least to anyone whose priority is rescuing kids from foster care.
Right, because reducing the number of parents who are even going to be considered for adoptions will increase the number of kids who are helped. The fact that such “reasoning” makes sense to bigots may provide some insight into how they could be bigoted in the first place.
Those who spurned that request out of hand must believe that adoption is designed primarily for the benefit of adults, not children.
This is only true if adopting kids out to gays hurts rather than helps children. It may seem contrary to the interests of children to not fund Catholic Charities’ adoption services, but would anyone say that kids are being harmed if the government refused to fund the adoption services of the KKK? Of course not — and while Catholic Charities isn’t the equivalent of the KKK, the principle remains the same.
Same-sex adoption is becoming increasingly common, but it is still highly controversial. Millions of Americans would readily agree that gay and lesbian couples can make loving parents, yet insist nevertheless that kids are better off with loving parents of both sexes.
What if we said:
Interracial adoption is becoming increasingly common, but it is still highly controversial. Millions of Americans would readily agree that interracial couples can make loving parents, yet insist nevertheless that kids are better off with loving parents of the same race.
This second statement is no less valid than the first. Jeff Jacoby insists that his view is not “intolerant,” but in fact intolerant is a rather mild description of it. If Jeff Jacoby had written the second, he’s be rightly condemned as a racial bigot; for writing the first, he should be equally condemned as a homophobic bigot.
Jacoby expresses concern that those who disagree with the civic and human equality of gays will be labeled bigots — well, why not? Racists and segregationists had to fear the same thing when it became clear that racial bigotry would soon go the way of the dodo. Those same winds are blowing now for homophobic bigotry and the dodos today know it.
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Comments
What Jacoby was trying to point out was that Massachussettes law on adoption doesn’t account for an agency’s religious beliefs on gay marriage. Hello! It was a CATHOLIC adoption agency. I think his point was that if an adoption agency’s religious beliefs aren’t protected, how long will it be until other religious freedoms are attacked?
Hello! This Catholic agency was using public funds. Do you think that that the public should be forced to pay for faith-based homophobic bigotry and discrimination?
If that was his point, then he was lying to his readers because this wasn’t a case of religious beliefs being protected — it was a case of the state protecting the equality of all citizens by not funding discrimination.
I notice you don’t address the fact that there wouldn’t have been any debate here had the discrimination been against interracial couples.