What is your opinion on the Catholic Church's view of not allowing homosexual couples to adopt?
I'd like to take a step back and come at this from a slightly different angle. What the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, said on Radio 4 the other day is that the law has no place regulating conscience, and this is a matter of conscience. Okay, so let's say for a moment that I am a member of the cult of the Pink Hippo, and that my religion requires me to shun green-eyed people. Indeed, so unclean are green-eyed people that if any one of them should ever touch me I must immediately and without hesitation, punch him or her on the nose. That is what my religion teaches me, and it is a matter of conscience. Or let us say that the religion of the Pink Hippo has a strict dress code, and that showing a female elbow is grossly offensive to me, every time I see it. Whenever I see such a disreputable display I am required to demonstrate my disapproval as strongly as I can, be that verbally, or by conducting a letter campaign against the offender, or by convening a meeting with placards & chanting outside her house, and so on. This is for me a matter of conscience, so according to John Sentamu the law has no right to intervene. This is plainly nonsense! The reason for law is to regulate behaviour that is unacceptable to the majority/lawgiver. Some authority decides, legislates, and from that point on I am not allowed to punch green-eyed people on the nose, or to organise demonstrations against behaviour that everyone else finds acceptable.
Now let's take it a step further. Let's say that according to my Pink Hippoism shellfish are an abomination, and I am absolutely forbidden to eat them. Provided I don't wreck fishmonger's shops who sell them, or assault or otherwise distress people who do eat them, and providing that the law does not force me to eat shellfish every 6th Wednesday after a new moon, then I am perfectly at liberty to exclude shellfish from my diet. That's the role of religious rules: they are for the regulation and guidance of the followers of the religion, not for anyone else. So long as following my religion remains a private matter, that's fine. I may even, if we meet in the park, sit on a bench together and chat peacefully over an ice cream, and I may gently try to persuade you to give up shellfish, provided I stay within the bounds of acceptable public behaviour. But I may not force you to stop eating them, or burn down fishmongers that sell them. I can follow my conscience to my heart's content, but not force it on others.
In the case of the ban on homosexual adoption, public policy, general opinion and the law of the land forbid discrimination against homosexual people. The law does not force anyone to enter into a homosexual relationship, it only forbids people in general from treating homosexuals in a different way to everyone else.
Let's say I excuse John Roberts from obeying the law, because he says it is against his religion. When Freda Smith says she should be excused from this law, or any other law, for the same reason, what grounds have I to refuse? Once I have conceded the point that someone can claim exemption from a particular law on grounds of religion, what is the reason I can give for not exempting someone else from any law they may claim offends their religious conscience?
I want to make one other point. What Cardinal Cormac Murphy - O'Connor said was that he'd be prepared to close down Catholic adoption agencies rather than place a single child (or even, it seems hypothetically face the possibility of placing a single child) with a gay couple. That implies, it seems to me, that he is prepared to withdraw the benefit of the good work Catholic adoption agencies were doing for a lot of children, making them all suffer as a result, rather than stain his conscience, or hypothetically do so. That means causing real damage to a lot, rather than suffer his own conscience to be stained. I think that is nothing short of evil.
Let's go back to my shellfish. Let's assume I live in a regime where eating shellfish is compulsory, and because of my religious refusal to do so I am in jail. In the background I can hear a faint murmur, not sure what it is. And every day I am brought a plate of shellfish, and every day I refuse it. Eventually I ask the guard what the background noise is, and he says he'll show me. I am taken to an observation window, and when I look in I see a deep pit, and round the side of the pit there are people hanging by their wrists, and at the bottom there is a fire, so they are slowly roasting. The murmur I can hear is their groaning. I ask the guard what these people have done. He tells me that they have done nothing, they are entirely innocent. They will be released from torture when I eat my shellfish. Do I now maintain my clean conscience? We have no right to a clear conscience when it is maintained at the expense of others.
