On January 30, 2011 the governor of Illinois signed “The Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act” into law, thereby enacting same-sex civil unions that are equal in rights and responsibilities to marriage in the state. While religious organizations who did social service work were specifically exempted from the non-discrimination elements of the law, the State of Illinois moved to cancel more than $30 million dollars worth of contracts with Catholic charities who worked with the state to provide foster care and adoption services because they would not pair children with same-sex couples. The state began sending referrals to other foster care agencies. The Catholic charities challenged the state in court and lost at both the circuit and appellate levels. They ultimately had to drop the case due to a lack of funds to appeal it further up the chain. The lack of state cooperation and funding will virtually ascertain the closure of these adoption agencies, which have more than 90 years of experience in this area.
The lawyer who represented the Catholic charities, Peter Breen of the Thomas Moore Society, commented, “This stands as a stark lesson to the rest of the nation that legislators promising ‘religious protection’ in same sex marriage and civil union laws may not be able to deliver on those promises.” Indeed.
Thinking to Believe 
June 16, 2012 at 10:27 am
Yeah, you churches should have the right to judge and discriminate, since you are all taught to do that. I do agree, it is your right to act that way. And most of you are that intolerant. I just don’t understand how same sex marriage is taking away religious protections? No one is forcing the church to provide foster care for same sex couples. Even though same sex couples have just as good if not better rates of success with adopted children than straight couples. I would much rather be adopted into a loving family with two same gender people, than to be born into a family taught to hate, discriminate, judge, and look down upon, anyone who does not share their religious beliefs.
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June 16, 2012 at 10:32 am
Why should the state cooperate with the church when the church’s main goal in all of this is to keep children out of loving homes, and to prevent adoption? The state will always act in the best interest of the children, and the best interest is for them to be adopted. If they have to go elsewhere for that to happen, so be it. That is the churches decision to exercise their religious right to not help these kids get adopted.
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July 13, 2012 at 5:54 pm
Exercising moral judgement and discrimination is not only good, but unavoidable. You have exercised your moral judgment in determining that homosexuality is not immoral, and you discriminate against those who think otherwise (in the technical sense of the word, not the typical negative connotation we give to discriminate).
Would not children born into your family be taught to judge, discriminate, and look down on anyone who thinks that homosexuality is wrong? Surely! That doesn’t mean you teach them to hate, but you clearly teach them that the viewpoint is wrong. That’s the same thing we do. We simply have opposing judgments.
As for working with the church, you don’t have to stop working with church agencies simply because they won’t adopt to same-sex couples. You simply expand the organizations you work with to include other organizations who will do that. One thing you don’t do is stop working with those who know how to do something well just because they don’t do all that you want them to do.
And while I could be wrong, to my knowledge it’s not as if there is a shortage of people looking to adopt such that if same-sex couples are not allowed to adopt it will result in kids not being adopted. Instead, it’s a matter of giving a child to a same-sex couple, thereby depriving an opposite-sex couple of a child to adopt. As I understand it, there is a shortage of adoptable kids. Most are tied up in the system as the courts try to reunite them with their biological parent(s).
Jason
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August 27, 2013 at 11:10 am
[…] Another example of how the demand for legal recognition of same-sex relationships restrict religious… […]
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