If the Catholic Church has proven anything over the past few years, it's that their number one priority is protecting children. They're, like, really good at it – much in the same way Tommy, your high school dropout neighbor, is, like, a really good tattoo artist. I mean, he doesn't have his license or anything and he works out of his garage, but he's almost professional.
And just like I wouldn't trust a kid who considers marijuana brownies a major food group to ink a snake on my bicep, neither would I trust the Catholic Church to say who should and who shouldn't be adoptive parents.
And yet, under pressure from the state's four bishops, the Boston Archdiocese's Catholic Charities said March 10 it would stop providing adoption services so that they didn't have to place children with gays. That's right. Because Massachusetts has a law allowing gays and lesbians to adopt, Catholic Charities, after providing adoption services for two decades, is halting ALL adoption services to keep kids out of the hands of homos.
"The world was very different when Charities began this ministry at the threshold of the 20th century," President of Catholic Charities Rev. J. Bryan Hehir said in a statement. "The world changed often and we adapted the ministry to meet changing times and needs. At all times we sought to place the welfare of children at the heart of our work."
Until now, that is.
The kicker is that Catholic Charities specialized in finding homes for kids with "severe emotional and physical needs." You know, the kids that have the hardest time finding adoptive parents.
Gov. Mitt Romney, who is seeking to exempt religious organizations from the state's anti-discrimination laws, had an especially inspired take on the situation. "This is a sad day for neglected and abandoned children," he said. "It's a mistake for our laws to put the rights of adults over the needs of children."
Uh, excuse me? What about putting the prejudices of adults over the needs of children?
But hey, according to the state's four Catholic bishops, this law threatens their religious freedom to discriminate. And you can't expect them to do something immoral.
So let me get this straight: placing at-risk kids in the stable homes of carefully screened same-sex couples who will love and take care of them is immoral, but telling those same kids to suck it up in the foster care system isn't. Maybe Tommy's been selling the bishops some of his brownies…
Leave it to Dan Savage to point out "the ultimate irony" of this whole situation. "This is the Catholic Church in freaking Boston, epicenter of the sex-abuse scandal," he wrote in a March 10 blog posting at TheStranger.com. "The same bishops who refused to protect children from rampaging pedophile priests are now 'protecting' children from qualified, screened, and thoroughly vetted adoptive parents who happen to be gay."
Creep update
In other Creep news, former Bush administration domestic policy adviser and anti-gay stalwart Claude Allen, who was featured as BTL's first ever Creep of the Week, was arrested March 9 for shoplifting. Allen abruptly resigned his post in the Bush League last month. He said he wanted to spend more time with his family. Really he was under investigation for ripping off retailers such as Target in suburban Maryland.
Tony Perkins of the rabidly anti-gay Family Research Council lamented the loss of Allen and called on Bush to appoint an ideological copy of Allen, according to the National Stonewall Democrats. "We hope the President chooses another stalwart defender of family values," Perkins said. "We need such an appointment. More importantly, George W. Bush needs one."
If only Winona Ryder was a right-wing nut…
