Can Gay Adoption Be Reconciled With Christianity?

In the recent debate about whether Catholic and other religiously affiliated adoption agencies should be allowed an exemption from new UK social-equality legislation that would oblige them to consider applications to adopt children from gay and lesbian couples, it was taken as a given that imposing this obligation on those agencies would be tantamount to forcing them to act against their religious principles. This controversy formed the subject of three entries to this blog at the time (24 and 25 January), in which I discussed some of the delicate issues of conscience and discrimination involved.

The present blog entry is an exploration of the ethical arguments in favour of allowing same-sex adoption from a Christian, and more particularly Catholic, standpoint. I attempt to open up a number of perspectives on the issue that add up to a plea to look beyond the Church’s block repudiation of same-sex adoption (and of same-sex unions upon which it is based) to consider how we might in fact discern the action of the divine love and Spirit in the motivation of at least some of the gay couples involved, and in the cry of children in need of adoption, whether by conventional male-female or same-sex parents. As such, my hope is that this discussion may be of some use to Catholic adoption agencies in their deliberations about how to respond to the fact that no exemption from the legislation was accorded to them, and in their decisions about whether or not to comply and stay in business. This question once more became topical this week, when another vote on the new legal provisions was held in the House of Commons, and opposition to an exemption for Catholic adoption agencies again prevailed.

The question is essentially as follows: must adoption by same-sex couples always be seen as wrong, viewed from the standpoint of Christian principles? The official position of the Catholic Church is clear: same-sex adoption is a ‘grave sin’ – the kind of sin that excludes any good and is all black, without any shade of grey. Nonetheless, it is still legitimate to ask whether there are any possible benefits at all to be gained from adoption by same-sex couples – for the children, as opposed to the adopters. It is clear that there is a great shortage of adoptive parents, in the UK and throughout the world if one considers the issue of orphaned children in developing countries, recently highlighted by the pop star Madonna’s adoption of a Malawian boy. In this light, could the adoption by gay couples of children who desperately need parents not be seen as at least being of potential benefit to them? In other words, is it better, morally, for some children who are desperately in need of parents either to be adopted by loving, dedicated gay couples; or not to be adopted at all – given that there aren’t enough straight couples who are seeking to adopt?

Given this lack of suitable prospective male-female adoptive parents, it would seem to be a shame to dismiss out of hand the idea that gay couples could help to make up some of the shortfall, simply on the basis that any good they might be able to do for the children would be outweighed by the ‘evil’ of their sex lives. I suppose if one really believes that a sexually active gay lifestyle or relationship of whatever quality or duration constitutes grave or mortal sin, then it does follow logically that it would be better for children who might otherwise have been adopted by same-sex couples not to be adopted at all. But Catholics in particular need to be really sure that they genuinely hold that the moral balance is always, indeed on principle, tipped against same-sex adoption. One reason for this is that Catholic opposition to abortion leads the Church to argue in favour of an increased use of adoption as one of a number of alternatives to terminations. But if just a relatively modest proportion of the vast number of terminations that take place in the UK each year were replaced by adoptions, then adoption agencies would be faced by an even more acute crisis of insufficient numbers of persons seeking to adopt. If one doesn’t agree that gay couples with a long-term, loving commitment to one another are living in a perpetual state of grave sin because of their sexual activity, then it would be possible to emphasise a different aspect of the moral law in one’s consideration of this issue: the Christian call to love children. From this perspective, enabling vulnerable, potentially unwanted children to benefit from the love that gay people long to give them – even if, in part, this might be because there aren’t enough straight people to take those children on – could almost be seen as a Christian duty. Consider the alternatives for some children: a childhood spent in care or foster homes, subject to the risk of sexual abuse and deprived of the security of a loving family environment, resulting in a greater tendency to be exposed to the malign influences of crime, temptation and drugs as life unfolds.

But I hear the cry go out, ‘moral relativism’! In other words, I could be accused of trying to make out that same-sex adoption can serve an intrinsically good purpose, whereas what it really is, even in my own example, is the lesser of two evils (i.e. a lesser evil than children not finding any adoptive parents at all). But that’s making quite a judgement (arguably, an unchristian one) about the parental love and security gay people are able to give the children they adopt: that it’s morally flawed or a form of ‘tainted love’. Furthermore, we live in a world of moral relatives and compromises in which sometimes we just have to make a decision about what is the best course of action available to us in the circumstances – which is often not the same thing as the ideal option, in moral terms. Putting this another way, the best of two practical alternatives is often the way it is given to us to perform good, rather than this being merely the lesser of two evils.

There are too many examples to mention of these situations where we sometimes have to choose the least black of two grey areas. Possible examples range from momentous moral decisions (e.g. whether to go to war) to the trivial but nonetheless morally significant choices we make on a daily basis: ‘should I buy that DVD that the kids have been clamouring on about all week – which will give them a lot of happiness for a few hours – or should I give the money to that person collecting for Cancer Research, which could actually save a life?’; ‘should I exceed the 30-mph speed limit by 5 mph to make sure I arrive at the school in time to pick up the kids, at the risk of not being able to stop in time if a kid runs onto the road?’

The ethical questions about same-sex adoption are in reality a similar choice between two morally mixed alternatives: ‘is it right to let gay couples give their love to adopted children, or to deny them and the children this opportunity in order to protect the children from being conditioned into accepting (and even practising) an immoral lifestyle?’ Who can apportion the degree of good and evil, right or wrong, discernment or lack of it, on either side? We just have to be guided by love – as Christians and as human beings.

Let’s put the question in a way that’s closer to home: if you and your partner were killed in a car crash, and the only close relatives who were able and willing to take the children on were your gay brother and his partner, would you prefer them to be adopted by them or by complete strangers, albeit a straight couple? And which alternative would be morally right and the best option for the children? What parents would not in fact prefer their children to be adopted by a devoted gay or lesbian couple in such circumstances – even a couple they did not know – if the alternative was their children having to live in care or an orphanage of some sort?

From the preceding discussion, one can conclude that Christians are entitled to take the view – and it follows logically from first principles – that adoption by gay couples is always wrong and that they want to have nothing to do with it. But equally, Christians can take the view that gay adoption is compatible with Christian teaching – not out of liberalism and a soft attitude towards homosexuality, but out of charity and compassion towards children. Clearly, on an orthodox Catholic or legalistic view of Christian moral teaching, the rejection of gay adoption prevails. But on a view that places the calling to love one another uppermost – even if this involves making compromises with the letter of the law – then it’s possible to see how Christian adoption agencies could in conscience agree to consider gay couples as potential adoptive parents, irrespective of whether the civil law mandates them or not to do so on the basis of egalitarian principles.

In the recent debate in the UK over the new legal equality provisions, the Catholic Church – speaking on behalf of Catholic adoption agencies – rightly placed the emphasis on the centrality of the needs of the children. Those agencies do in fact have a very good record of finding parents for some of the children that are the most difficult to place, owing to the traumas they may have been through. The Church’s view is that it is indeed in the best interests of the children to be found adoptive parents who are of the opposite sex to one another and, ideally, are married to one another. The agencies clearly put in a great deal of painstaking work to ensure they can find suitable parents of this sort for the children they have responsibility for. All the same, the Church accepts that there might be some children for whom adoption by single people – even, in theory, gay persons – can be the best option, if, for instance, the children have been abused by a parent of one particular gender. There is not such a huge leap from this to the view that in other instances, for similar reasons, it might even be the best option (considerations of moral relativism apart) for some children to be adopted by two parents of the same gender, rather than just one.

The only thing that stands in the way of this view being taken is the moral condemnation of gay sex and relationships: of gay sex rather than homosexuality per se (if adoption by single gay persons is morally acceptable) or extra-marital straight sex (if adoption by unmarried straight couples is acceptable). So there is really a sort of prejudice against gay persons going on, as the Catholic teaching that any sexual acts other than unprotected genital sex within marriage are sinful is being applied inconsistently. In fact, the Church is practising its own form of moral relativism, for exactly the same reason as I was advocating a sort of relativist argument in favour of adoption by gay couples. In other words, the Church itself accepts that sometimes the adoptive parents will fall short of the ideal of a stable, married, Christian couple. This is firstly because, in the real world, that moral and social ideal isn’t always the best option for the child (cf. the example of single adoptive parents being occasionally preferred), and secondly because there just aren’t enough couples that conform to the ideal who want to adopt.

Might it even be the case that individuals or couples who decide they’d like to adopt are more likely themselves to be psychologically wounded and, by that token, are perhaps less likely than the average of the population to be successful in maintaining life-long marriages? I’m not sure if there are any statistics on the comparative divorce and separation rates of couples who adopt and couples who don’t. In any case, if the divorce rate were higher among adopters, you could interpret this as just showing that adoption itself was stressful, or that it was linked to some adopters not being able to have children, which is a well known cause of marital break-up. One intriguing related question, though, is whether the break-up rates of gay couples who adopt are higher than those of straight adopters. It is of course far too early to research this question, as gay adoption and civil partnerships are such recent innovations. However, it is quite conceivable that gay partnerships (and possibly, in the future, marriages) will provide more stable parental relationships and families for their adopted children than the straight equivalents. This is partly because gay people grow up without the expectation that having children will just come easily and automatically to them: they will always have thought that they might have to adopt rather than having children of their own. This means that their adopted children (more so if the adopters have had to fight to be allowed to adopt) may be wanted even more than they would be by straight couples, for whom those children may always be seen as a substitute for children of their own, without denying the love that parents still feel for their adopted charges.

Which brings me back round to the issue of putting the needs of the children first. If the needs of the children really are paramount, should the fact that two potential adoptive parents of the same sex share a bed and do physical things to one another that the Church regards as immoral (as ‘more immoral’ than the physical acts performed by a stable unmarried straight couple) automatically take precedence over the perception that those same persons might actually be the best parents for this specific child? The best parents, that is, out of all the prospective parents on an agency’s books – we’re talking about practical morality here, not an ideal world. Just as the Catholic agencies have an excellent record for placing difficult children, so it is the case that it is often gay couples that take on those children, also frequently with highly positive outcomes for the children concerned. And maybe that’s partly because, as gay people have often had to struggle to overcome adversities in their personal lives, they are well placed to identify with children who have had a difficult start in life.

But is it giving children the best start in life to offer them not a mother and father but, say, two mothers or two fathers? In adoption, parents become not just the children’s nominal mothers and fathers but their real ones in law: with the same legal and social rights as the biological parents (if still alive) had before the adoption went through. The fact that it is legally permissible for same-sex couples to adopt creates, I think, a totally unique situation whereby it is possible for children to have two real – official – mothers or fathers. This is not the same, for instance, as when a child adopted by a male-female couple is said to have two ‘real’ mothers: their adoptive mother, who is the official parent in the eyes of the law and also hopefully becomes their real parent in emotional terms, and their biological mother – the real genetic parent. Nor is it the same as when a child has, say, a real (biological) father who might have left the mother and a real (emotional) father in the shape of a stepdad, in which case it is the biological father who remains the real (official) father in the eyes of the law; unless the child is adopted by the stepfather, in which case the parental rights rebound on to him.

In cases of same-sex adoption, by contrast, a child acquires two real (official) mothers or fathers who, one hopes, also become their real parents in emotional terms. In practice, if the child’s biological parents are both known and still alive at the time of the adoption, then it is a child’s ‘normal’ parental pairing of mother and father who are replaced in loco parentis by two mothers or two fathers. The child could be said to be losing a father, for instance, at the same time as gaining an extra mother in his place. It could be argued that this is a violation of a child’s ‘right to a father’, or their right to a mother if the situation were reversed. In any case, even without taking into consideration this ‘replacement’ of a conventional mother-father parental pairing by a mother-mother or father-father pairing, same-sex adoption could still be viewed as a denial of a child’s right to have both a mother and a father.

These are very difficult questions, psychologically and ethically. But in reality, children in same-sex adoptions are not being denied either a father or mother but are being offered the love of two new parents – who just happen to be of the same sex – to make up for the love of the child’s biological mother and father that, for whatever reason, is no longer available to them. So it’s not a subtraction of relationship, connection and love but an addition; and the law still accords recognition to the biological parents, and allows a relationship between the child and their biological parents to be (re-)established (by mutual consent) once that child has reached the age of maturity. So it’s only really if one holds the view that there is some sort of ideological conspiracy to undermine the conventional (straight) family and traditional morality that one would see same-sex adoption (negatively) as depriving a child of their right to a mother and father, rather than (positively) as just a gift of love and care to that child.

Nonetheless, the fact that a child adopted by a same-sex couple gains either two mothers or two fathers must have an impact in psychological terms. Given that this situation is quite unique and unprecedented, it is pre-judging things to assume that this impact must always or only be harmful, relative to a child’s having just one official father and mother. All the same, this issue should not be treated lightly or passed over as it has been, to some extent, in politically correct discussions on same-sex adoption. The truth is we don’t really know what the long-term impacts on children will be from having two legal mothers or fathers, rather than a mother and a father, or a single parent. There may be some negatives as well as positives. But despite the negatives, there is a need to remain focused on the – albeit relative – positive benefits one is seeking to achieve through same-sex adoption, which are basically identical to those from straight adoption: giving children love and the best start one can in the actual circumstances.

The fact that in same-sex adoption, a child has either two mothers or fathers raises an interesting dilemma in terms of how the Church can actually refer to such parents. The core of the Church’s moral issue with same-sex adoption is that it violates the created order whereby children naturally have – and are intended by God to have – one mother and one father. Hence, the objections to same-sex adoption are not just on practical and psychological grounds (in which case, the arguments I have been advancing might carry more weight) but on spiritual grounds. Ultimately, adoption is seen by the Church as having a redemptive purpose, which is the core reason why the Church sees it as part of its mission to be involved in adoption in the first place. That purpose could perhaps be defined as being to lead the life of a vulnerable child back into the divine order for the family, society and nature as expressed in the unity, love and mutual responsibilities that bind the trio of father, mother and child(ren). It is hoped that when an adopted child, who might otherwise have been alone in this world, is re-embraced within this natural unity of the family, the consequence is that that child will be more likely to encounter Christ (the very name and spirit of that unity and love) and reflect the pattern of his will and purpose in their subsequent life.

Outside of this, in some ways, commendably idealistic picture of the family, it is, however, rather difficult for the Church to know how it should actually ‘relate to’ same-sex adoptive parents, both conceptually / terminologically and pastorally. Is it the case that the Church (particularly, the Catholic Church) must necessarily regard same-sex adoption and parenthood – because it violates the order of creation – as not just morally wrong but invalid, in the same way that it considers same-sex marriages to be invalid? Legally, the Church is obliged to accept same-sex adoption as a fact if the civil law of a country permits it. But there are, for instance, many legal forms of marriage that the Church does not accept as really valid: in spirit as opposed to the letter of the law. In the same way, is the Church’s position effectively that same-sex adoptive parents are more like carers or guardians rather than real parents in spirit? In the terms of the above discussion, the Church might accept that same-sex parents were a child’s official parents but not necessarily the child’s real parents (who remain the child’s biological parents?). And does the Church make a distinction – whether in practice or in doctrine – between the ontological status of male-female adoptive parents and that of same-sex parents? In other words, does the Church view the former as becoming the child’s true parents (in spirit as well as in law, though not biologically), whereas it regards it as impossible for same-sex parents to be a child’s spiritual parents (the true parents, called by God to fulfil that role)?

I have to say that I don’t actually know the answer to these questions: the limited amount of web research I’ve been able to do hasn’t turned up any formal statement of Catholic teaching on the matter. Maybe the Church doesn’t actually have an established position on the ontological and spiritual status of adoptive parents, as opposed to the moral responsibilities of those parents and the Church’s own duties of pastoral care towards them, whether they be male-female or same-sex. The absence of any definitive statement in this area could then be seen as analogous to the Church’s unwillingness to declare whether a civil marriage involving two non-Catholics is a valid marriage: it’s something beyond the Church’s remit to make dogmatic, and therefore universally binding, pronouncements about – whereas the Church does of course believe itself to be qualified to issue dogmatic statements about the behaviour of its own members. Adoption is a civil matter and is therefore not something the Church has any direct control over, in terms either of its practice or its meaning.

In reality, however, it is clear that the Church does treat Catholic male-female adoptive parents as if they were both the real (biological) parents, and the true (spiritual) parents, i.e. as called by God to exercise all the rights and duties of parents in relation to their adopted children. The same cannot be said about Catholic same-sex adoptive parents. In October 2006, for example, the Catholic Bishops of the USA voted on a resolution that referred to the baptism of children adopted by gay couples as a matter for “pastoral concern”. The resolution stated that this sacrament should be accorded to those children only if there was a reasonable hope that they would be brought up in the Catholic religion. This can mean only one thing: that the gay couples involved would be expected to be celibate, as that would be the only way in which their lives together would be in conformity with Catholic teaching and hence give rise to the hope that the children would receive a consistently applied example of the Catholic way of life as they grew up.

But then this really would amount to no more than adoption by, effectively, single gay persons – the only difference being that there are two of them, living and caring for the child(ren) together – rather than by couples. To me, this picture of the celibate same-sex adoptive family appears to embody less unity and mutual commitment than one in which the parents have a sexual relationship with one another. This is partly because the idea of the parents acting together as true parents – plural – seems remote if they are not also united with one another in an intimate physical and emotional way as the parental couple. In fact, a celibate arrangement like this would make the adopted child’s new family home resemble a sort of lay religious community: celibate Christian persons of the same gender caring for children separated from their biological parents as part of their Christian calling. Putting it from the child’s perspective, does it not create a much more loving, normal and healthy family environment if they can relate to their parents as bound together in a single unit, within which they in turn are embraced? Admittedly, with same-sex parents, this would not be ‘mum and dad’. But in order for an adopted child to see their parents as real mums or real dads, don’t they need to be a ‘conjugal’ unit, rather than separate individuals that would in practice merely be exercising the role of substitute mums or dads? Separating the same-sex parents in this way would have a similar effect on a child as if male-female parents were expected to act as separate individuals in their parental care towards a child: not really combined into a single loving parental unit, thereby giving the child the security that its parents’ love is really capable of binding and holding the family together through indissoluble ties.

So it’s hard to see how celibate same-sex adoptive parents could be true parents, emotionally and spiritually. And that is my point: the Church does not and will not see same-sex parents as true parents in any sense – in fact, at least, if not in formal doctrine. So one could say that, for the Church, the fact that celibacy would be more likely to result in same-sex adopters being less authentic and emotionally real as parents does not represent an impairment of their parenthood because they are not really parents in the first place.

In a sense, one could argue that this basically celibate + non-parental ideal for the relationship of same-sex adoptive parents to their children implicitly acknowledges the fact that sexually active same-sex parents would be more like real parents: more like the straight equivalent, that is. And indeed, there is a critical ambiguity in the language the Church uses to describe gay partnerships. These are referred to – if only in the negative – as ‘unions’. For example, a 2003 statement on the issue from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared: “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law”. This phrase can be interpreted as having two possible implications: 1) ‘gay “unions” are not only morally wrong but do not really exist, because only a true marriage between a man and a woman can constitute a sexual union as such’; 2) ‘there is such a thing as a gay union, e.g. a sexual relationship between two persons of the same sex; but this (or just the active sexual expression of the attraction?) is morally wrong’.

In the first sense above, gay sex cannot constitute a union because only in the marriage of a husband and wife can the physical act become the expression and manifestation of a true, spiritual union. In the second sense, a contrary meaning is implied: it is the sex that actually defines a ‘union’ between two gay persons. Despite what is explicitly stated, this concept of a gay union is in fact based on an analogy with Christian doctrine on marriage, whereby in order to be valid (and hence to be a union), a marriage has to be consummated. At the same time, there is a circularity here: the dual interpretation that is given to gay sex (both a union and not a union) allows the validity of, and any possibility of moral good within, gay unions defined purely in relation to sexual activity to be denied.

But if you don’t define a gay relationship simply in relation to sex, this enables one to come up with an alternative Christian concept of gay union. It is not the sex but the love between the sexual partners that makes that partnership a union, as it is this love and mutual commitment that elevates the relationship above the level of ‘mere sex’: sexual gratification without any reference to either love or the intention to have children. If the place of ‘union’ in gay partnerships is seen as the relationship of love, rather than the sex, then the sex itself can be seen as just one (albeit particularly intense and meaningful) expression of that love among others; but not as in itself essential to constituting and maintaining the relationship as a loving union – although in practice, love between members of a couple tends to need some sort of physical expression to be nourished.

One of the characteristics of this sort of loving union between sexual partners – married or unmarried, gay or straight – is the wish for children. This is not always present, of course; nor can one talk strictly of an intention (as opposed to a wish) to have children being inherent to the sexual act or instinct, in the gay context. But the wish to take on the responsibilities and duties of parents, on the part of gay couples, could be interpreted as something that helps to identify their relationship as a ‘true union’ analogous to the marital union; and as expressing the same fundamental human need for the sexual relationship to be fulfilled and expanded beyond itself to encompass the joys and trials of mutual parenthood. It is only if one is fixated on defining gay relationships purely in relation to forms of sex that cannot naturally result in parenthood that one can write off these feelings and wishes as contrary to nature and to God’s plan.

If, on the other hand, it is love that defines a union (as it is the love of God that consecrates the sacrament of marriage), then it is, so to speak, only natural that gay people, too, should wish to become parents together. In fact, one might say that this wish is a mark of the authentically spiritual character of the love that a gay couple shares. And not only that, but one could even talk of the desire and the fact of gay couples taking on the responsibility for children through adoption as having a redemptive purpose, just like that of having children naturally as part of a marriage: it elevates sexuality beyond itself to become part of a mission to give life and love to children.

Of course, gay adoptive parents do not give life to their children in the biological sense. But it is only if one has a biology-based concept of parenthood that one would say that this disqualifies gay couples from being parents (givers of live and love to children) in the true, spiritual sense. And that biology-centric concept of parenthood does seem to be at the root of Christian refusal of same-sex adoption and parenthood: that because gay sex can’t naturally (biologically) result in children, then it can’t be natural (part of the divine order for the human spirit and nature) for gay persons to wish to extend to children the love they feel for each other that is expressed, in part, through sex. But maybe this can legitimately be seen as part of God’s plan: bringing together gay couples that want to transcend a self-indulgent, irresponsible sexual lifestyle by giving love to children who might otherwise go through their whole childhood without the love and devotion of parents and a family.

As this last discussion shows, any support for arguments in favour of same-sex adoption – even if practised with extreme care to ensure that the parents concerned are as well matched as possible to specific children’s needs and circumstances – does involve a certain amount of dissent from official Catholic doctrine. But this dissent is not motivated by some sort of spirit of disobedience, although I guess the reasoning could be dismissed as being disordered in the same way as gay sex itself. My concern is that there may be kids out there whose desperate need for adoptive parents could be met – albeit imperfectly – by gay couples; indeed, maybe it is part of ‘God’s plan’ to bring the needs and wishes of the prospective adopters and of those children together.

It’s not enough for Catholic adoption agencies to effectively wash their hands of the issue and pass on applications for adoption from gay couples to other agencies, as has been the practice up to now. You could say that this was a case of moral ‘bad faith’: denying moral responsibility for something that is not directly the result of one’s actions but which is still facilitated by them. The denial could be stated as follows: ‘we’re not responsible for promoting adoption by same-sex couples, who we refer to other agencies’. And yet, by so doing, Catholic agencies are indirectly enabling same-sex adoption and, effectively, condoning it. Would it not be more honest for Catholic agencies to in fact seriously consider applications from same-sex couples? Then if, in all conscience, the agencies still came to the conclusion that there were no children on their books that would benefit by being adopted by those couples, then yes, no moral reproach (as opposed to legal complaint) could be made if the agencies declined the application and the couples were referred elsewhere. Then at least, the Catholic agencies would have given an active ‘no’ to the application rather than a passive ‘yes, maybe’. Perhaps only in this way can Catholic agencies be said to be truly exercising their duty of care to protect children who may be adopted by same-sex couples, rather than effectively passing on this responsibility to other agencies who may not have the same moral standards or values.

Clearly, it could be pointed out that this might be a rather redundant process: why go through the motions of processing applications that are automatically going to be rejected? There would obviously be no point in that, and that’s not what I’m advocating. I’m suggesting that agencies should take a long, sincere look at the gay individuals and couples that approach them (even supposing that any gay people do apply to them), and really examine their consciences and professional judgements as to whether there are any children under their care who would prosper if adopted by those applicants.

This would ultimately, perhaps, involve trying to listen to the voice of the Spirit and putting one’s trust in the truth that God’s love can work through situations where its presence is not usually suspected – even in the love of a gay couple for a child.