Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, President of Catholic Charities of Boston, said that the organization would end all adoptions rather than comply with anti-discrimination laws regarding adoption. But the number of children in need of adoption is not going to diminish. This is a problem, and it has two solutions.
The first solution is to respect Catholic Charities of Boston's right to offer or not offer any service they want, because they are a private agency made up of consenting adults. If they want to discriminate, that should be their business; they just shouldn't be supported by tax dollars (collected from all) if they want to discriminate (serve less than all). This is the solution that the authors of the United States Constitution preferred when they forbade the establishment of a state-sponsored religion.
The second solution is the one proposed by Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: make discrimination legal if it is done in the name of religion. You know, religion, that thing the Supreme Court ruled need not be need not be 'acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others' - in short, anything you can make up. Solution number two is 'make discrimination protected by law as long as the discriminating party talks about invisible monsters that live in the sky in the process.' This is the solution that the Bush administration prefers, having provided $2.15 billion in tax dollars to sky-monster agencies that need not be acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others, or be required to demonstrate they did anything at all for anyone much less what they were paid to do.
Which solution do you prefer?
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