SIGHTING: Eve

Today I saw an Alternatives to Marriage flyer postered on a streetlamp in my neighborhood.

That's a new one.
posted by Eve at 11:23 PM | Link |

MarriageDebate Turns Three

It's been three years since MarriageDebate.com launched. I just checked the numbers. Since January of this year, more than 70,000 unique visitors have visited us. Thanks to all of our readers. Maggie
posted by maggie at 2:34 PM | Link |

Beyond Babies?

Some interesting comments over at Family Scholars, where Brad Wilcox was kind enough to post a lengthy excerpt of my column, Beyond Babies?. R.S. Mitchell, noting a recent survey showing Americans are more likely than other developed countries to reject evolution, says (tongue in cheek?):

". . .A secularist e-mail correspondent of mine who scorns what he sees as American stupidity in most things sent his own reaction in a message with the subject field 'second dumbest country ever.' Perhaps, but if so, the dumbest one must be European. What population could be dumber than the one that firmly believes in survival of the fittest but forgets that the first test of fitness is showing up for the exam?

I hasten to point out that I myself consider the case for evolution reasonably robust. Nevertheless, it seems to be a curious fact that as a population's confidence in evolutionary theory increases, its ability to apply the theory declines. Could it be that belief in evolution is maladaptive? I'd like to see an R-squared for that one."

posted by maggie at 11:40 AM | Link |

Is Gay Marriage a Lost Cause?

I wouldn't say so, but a Washington Blade columnist does. (Is this the same Jeff Gannon who was "outed" as a journalist?)

". . .For all intents and purposes, gay marriage is dead. Activists proclaimed that the Goodrich decision in Massachusetts was the end of the beginning of the struggle for equality, but in retrospect it was the beginning of the end.

Let’s check the standings: 44 states have laws that restrict marriage to the union of one man and one woman. Nineteen states have constitutional amendments banning gay marriage — 16 of those enacted since 2003. Six more states have constitutional bans on the November ballot that are expected to pass.

The highest state courts in New York and Washington recently ruled against same-sex couples claiming a right to civil matrimony, and a federal appellate court upheld Nebraska’s gay marriage ban.

LEADERS OF THE gay rights movement bear significant responsibility for that failure. They overestimated the strength of their political position and influence, even though an inherent weakness has been evident for at least 14 years. . .

Gay leaders demonized opponents of same-sex marriage as hateful bigots and homophobes, completely ignoring the religious and social motivations behind the opposition. The reality is that marriage as the union of one man and one woman is our most basic social institution and deeply rooted in our culture.

Even though during the last few thousands of years marriage has had some variations that departed from strict monogamy, same-sex combinations have never been one of them. Gay marriage represents such a fundamental change that few can grasp it, let alone support it.

Instead of waging efforts to change hearts and minds, gay movement leaders have tried to bludgeon opponents and pursued a strategy where a very small minority would impose its will on a vast majority thought judicial fiat.

While activists relied on the courts for victory, supporters of traditional marriage took the debate to the ballot box and won every single time. A failed strategy appears to have put gay marriage out of reach for a long time to come."

posted by maggie at 11:22 AM | Link |

AZ Court OKs Vote on Marriage Amendment

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Thursday that propositions to ban same-sex marriage, preserve state land and strengthen private property rights could stay on the Nov. 7 general election ballot.

Court decision is here:
posted by maggie at 11:14 AM | Link |

Polygamy Persists Despite Opposition/AP

Polygamy Persists Despite Opposition
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 1, 2006
posted by maggie at 10:57 AM | Link |

Is Cybersex Cheating?

Wired magazine takes up The Question.
posted by maggie at 10:19 AM | Link |

AWWWWW...: Salon and Time on new study of boys' love lives

So, it turns out that adolescent boys are not unfeeling brutes only looking to satisfy every passing hormonal urge. Preliminary results from a study of adolescent heterosexual relationships suggest that on the whole boys are just as smitten with their sweethearts as are girls, and, typically, girls are the ones holding the relationship's reigns, TIME magazine reports.

In hopes of exploring the importance of romantic relationships in adolescents' lives, researchers interviewed 1,316 boys and girls. Their findings ran so contrary to popular belief that the study's director, Peggy Giordano, a sociology professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, found herself questioning whether they were missing something. But, time after time, Giordano found her male and female subjects expressing the same kind of gut-wrenching, Shakespearean declarations of love. One boy tried to explain his feelings for his girlfriend Jenny: "You think of it as this way: [Would] you give up your whole life, you know...to save Jenny's life?"

more
posted by Eve at 6:16 AM | Link |

David Link on Polygamy, Remarriage and Maggie

Dear Maggie:

Thanks for your response to my thoughts on polygamy, and the legal relationship of the wives in a polygamous marriage to one another. I think you’re right with respect to the “classical” model of polygamy (one husband and several wives). But that model indirectly raises what I think is a fundamental question. Those who argue that the slippery slope of same-sex marriage would inevitably land us all in a world of legalized polygamy must take into account that the polygamy we would have to adopt would not be at all “classical.”

There may be – apparently are – a small group of American women who would accept a form of polygamous marriage where the (or a) husband’s rights were different from those of his wives. But on the whole, the idea that women and men should have and are entitled to equal legal rights has firmly and overwhelmingly taken hold in our culture. In the classical model of polygamy, such an equality of legal rights would probably have been a curiosity at best, if it had been considered a possibility at all.

The modern world is radically different in its basic assumptions. I think that would mean, to the extent anyone argued for the legalization of polygamy, they would have to argue for a far more egalitarian form of polygamy – much more like plural marriage – than anything that has existed historically. Anything else involving unequal rights among the partners – based on the sex of the partners – would require an exhaustingly heavy burden on the proponent to justify why sexual inequality should be part of this new structure.

And, given the arithmetic of plural marriage, one of those two options would have to be adopted: either all of the partners would be entitled to legal equality with all of the other partners, or some of the partners would be entitled to different rights not enjoyed by everyone else. Historically, inequality seems to have been assumed based on sex. There is, I suppose, a theoretical possibility that inequality might be assigned based on something other than sex, but I’d be hard pressed to imagine what other factors would be applicable.

I tend to believe that plural marriage in the modern world would have to be premised on full legal equality among the marriage partners – I just don’t see how anything else would be met in a legal, political or policy discussion here with less than derision. And plural marriage with legal equality for all partners inherently contains complications that would be exponentially greater than any prior form of plural marriage has faced in earlier cultures.

I think it is important to keep these things in mind because the people who argue that legalized polygamy is virtually inevitable if same-sex marriage is adopted do not view this possibility as theoretical at all. They seem to really believe that we would have to accept legalized polygamy, and have to hold the line now in order to stop it. I strongly disagree. I think that if we actually take the time to think about what, exactly, we would be considering – rather than simply reacting emotionally to a fear of what might be – it becomes easier to see how very different polygamy is from same-sex marriage, and why it is not just possible, but probable, that if we were actually faced with the possibility of legalizing polygamy we would be able to say it is very, very different from same-sex marriage, and in modern America, creates far too many problems absent in same-sex marriage which would justify our current laws prohibiting it.

Sincerely,

David Link
posted by maggie at 10:43 PM | Link |

Islamic version of "marriage lite"? / Jon Rauch

Middle East Media Research Institute Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 291, August 31, 2006

'Pleasure Marriages' in Sunni and Shi'ite Islam
By Aluma Dankowitz

For over a decade, the phenomenon of marriage without commitment, called misyar marriage, has been spreading throughout the Sunni Muslim world, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries. In such marriages, the woman relinquishes some of the rights that Islam grants her, such as the right to a home and to financial support from her husband, and, if he has other wives, the right to an equal part of his time and attention....

Due to the substantial increase in the number of misyar marriages in recent years, and in light of the arguments over this issue among clerics as well as among the public, the Institute of Islamic Religious Law, which is a part of the Muslim World League in Mecca, decided to address the matter.

In a fatwa issued on April 10, 2006, the institute permitted marriages in which "the woman relinquishes a home, financial support, and her part [in joint life] with her husband, or part of it, and consents to the man's coming to her home whenever he wants, day or night."

The fatwa also permitted marriages known as "friend" marriages, in which "the girl remains at her family's home and she and the man meet any time they want, either at her home or anywhere else, as they have no [joint] home and livelihood." Such marriages are aimed primarily at meeting the needs of young Muslims in the West, who are influenced by male-female relations around them but who want their relationships to have religious legitimacy.

Advocates of misyar marriage argue that such marriages meet the needs primarily of women who have little chance of finding a husband for ordinary marriage. These include widows, divorcees, and especially single women who are beyond marriageable age [awanis]. Those opposed to misyar marriage – including the vast majority of women – claim that it exploits the difficult social situation of unmarried women in Arab society, and is designed primarily to sate men's lust, with no concern whatsoever for women's needs and the needs of children born of these marriages.

These non-binding marriages are to a great extent similar to the "pleasure marriages" (in Arabic, mut'a; in Persian, sigheh) that have been accepted in Shi'ite Islam since its beginnings. Unlike misyar marriage, mut'a marriage in Shi'ite Islam is contracted for a particular period of time, and divorce is not necessary to end it. For the most part, misyar marriages also do not last, and ending them by divorce is no problem. Over the years, mut'a marriage has been a major bone of contention between Shi'ite Islam and Sunni Islam – the latter seeing it as licentiousness in religious guise. The Sunni clerics reject the comparison between mut'a and misyar marriage, stressing misyar's formal aspects which meet religious requirements; however, at the same time, they disregard its essence as well as the fact that such a marriage is no basis for a family...

[article continues]
posted by Jon at 9:11 PM | Link |

New Study: Too Many Men?

A Chinese social scientist argues too many men will destabilize society here.
posted by maggie at 7:29 PM | Link |

Polygamy and Remarriage

A reader comments that in classical Hindhu polygamy, remarriage was not an option for a widow with children. Of course in Hindhu society classically even a monogamously married widow was not free to remarry so that is not a consequence of the polygamy but of the strong joint family ethic (for a mother to remarry would split her husband's family):

"You wrote: "There is a simple answer to this: classically, no. When the husband dies in polygamous marriage systems, his assets are divvyed up according to whatever the inheritance laws of that polygamous society suggest (wives children and parents are all potential competitors), and both women are free to marry again. If one wife dies, the other wife is not free to marry again."

One aspect of societies where polygamy has been practiced (and also where it is not) is the prominence of primogeniture. When the husband dies, son #1 gets either everything or the lion's share of everything, and he also has the responsibility of looking after his mother(s). His younger brothers don't share that responsibility.

What primogeniture also does is it consolidates wealth in the family, which also means that #1 son's younger brothers tend not to strike out on their own but also stay within close proximity to the family. Often that means that the first son takes on a role of the second-in-command from the father, and for the rest of his sibblings, in the absence of the father, he practically acts like the father, including seeing to their welfare.

Primogeniture seems to be important in building strong clan-type relationships.

At least In traditional Hindu society, women were free to marry again only if they did not bear a child. Otherwise, even if she were in a polygamous marriage she wouldn't have been permitted to remarry.

All the best,

Krishna-kirti"

posted by maggie at 12:31 PM | Link |

Beyond Babies? Maggie Column

My column, responding to Newsweek's cover story, Beyond Babies:

". . .So Newsweek tries to stuff perhaps the biggest story of our time -- the sudden collapse of childbearing to below-replacement levels in virtually every free, democratic and affluent nation on this Earth -- into a happy tale of a new generation's lifestyle liberation from that old ugly "social corset" of marriage and family.

In Japan, says Newsweek, 56 percent of 30-year-old women are still childless, up from just 24 percent as recently as 1985. About a quarter of German and Italian women appear headed for childlessness. It takes just under 2.1 children per woman to replace population. As European demographer Francesco Billari has explained, at the European average of 1.5 children per woman, the population will be cut in half every 65 years. At a birthrate of 1.3 children per woman, (think Austria, Italy, Spain, as well as Greece and Japan), the population will be cut in half every 32 years.

And no one knows how low birthrates will go. For as Newsweek points out, the anti-child bias of European societies can only be expected to grow, as children from small families appear to grow up to be adults who anticipate even fewer children themselves.

What lies beyond babies? Death. Death of the individual, and of his or her family. Death of the nation, tribe or culture that adopts a set of beliefs, practices and institutional arrangements that fail to respect and support generativity.

Adoption is a wonderful thing. New reproductive technologies may or may not be. But they won't replace a culture capable of cultivating the attitudes, values, norms and practices that lead men and women to want to give themselves to each other, and to their children, the process which makes the future happen. Every single one of us is alive today because in an unbroken chain stretching back into the dawn of prehistory, in famines, war, and unimaginable poverty and hardship, some man and woman came together to make life happen. . .

posted by maggie at 11:42 AM | Link |

Maggie Belatedly Responds to David Link

David Link argues that polygamy raises vexing new questions that gay marriage does not e.g.:

"But what about the relationships of the wives to one another? Are they similarly “married” to all the other wives in the marriage? Specifically, as a matter of public policy, are they legally married to one another the way a husband and wife are under current marriage law?"

There is a simple answer to this: classically, no. When the husband dies in polygamous marriage systems, his assets are divvyed up according to whatever the inheritance laws of that polygamous society suggest (wives children and parents are all potential competitors), and both women are free to marry again. If one wife dies, the other wife is not free to marry again.

That is, even within polygamous marriage systems, marriage is recognized as the union of one man with one woman. Its just not an exclusive union on the man's part.

What David LInk is describing (a group of spouses all married to each other) would be classically described not as "polygamy" but as "group marriage." Polygamy is common anthropologically. I don't know that group marriage exists outside of sci fi novels and trendy polyamorists and defunct communes, and maybe one small tribe in India. (Someone please enlighten me if I am wrong).

David Link is correct that polygamy raises certain administrative difficulties that SSM does not. But this is not one of them.
posted by maggie at 6:44 PM | Link |

Beyond Babies/Newsweek Cover Story

A Newsweek cover story "Beyond Babies" on the growing collapse of childbearing in Europe says (I kid you not) it means "good things for restaurants and real estate." But wait! A dreaded "backlash has already begun":

In Greece, as in much of the world, having kids is no longer a given among a growing swath of the population. "Never before has childlessness been a legitimate option for women and men in so many societies," says Catherine Hakim, who studies the phenomenon at the London School of Economics.

posted by maggie at 2:33 PM | Link |

Redefining Dads

Just another lesbian couple redefines family, or in this case fathers:

"Maya said she has always known she wanted to give birth and they both wanted to be parents, so their search for a donor-dad began. "It was donor-dating," said Maya half-jokingly.

Eventually, they found Daniel Bao, who identifies himself as gay and lives in Alameda. They call him "duncle," a combination of "donor" and "uncle."

posted by maggie at 2:16 PM | Link |

South Korean Judges Reconsider No-Fault Divorce

A Reuters report on a move towards no fault divorce reform in South Korea:

"Too many angry couples come to court for a divorce after an argument erupted over the weekend," Judge Yoo Jae-bok of the Taejon Family Court told Reuters.
"They need counseling, not an on-the-spot divorce." . . .The fee is just a few thousand won (a few dollars), a paltry sum often waived by the courts, and the divorce can take effect immediately, the moment the papers are signed.

The number of divorces in South Korea has almost doubled since 1995. Social stigmas that used to make couples reluctant to break up have faded as the country has become more prosperous and less bound by tradition.

Compounding the problem is a divorce law that enables couples to end their marriages on a whim. Getting a divorce can take less time and is cheaper than a night at the movies.

But some judges want to put an end to a quick and easy divorce procedure they say has caused South Korea's divorce rate to become one of the highest in Asia.
"We judges can do something in our courts to reduce these types of divorces," Yoo said.

posted by maggie at 2:12 PM | Link |

How to avert culture wars / Jon Rauch

SAN FRANCISCO
Catholic agency finds way out of adoption ban

Alliance with other groups gets around same-sex parent issue

By Elizabeth Fernandez, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, August 27, 2006

In an adroit end-run against a Vatican ban on granting adoptions to same-sex couples, Catholic Charities of San Francisco will launch a new project in coming weeks that experts say will lead to the placement of hundreds of foster children around the state every year.

While the agency will no longer directly place children in homes, it will provide staff and financial resources to connect needy children to adoptive parents, expanding from 25 placements a year to assisting in the adoptions of as many as 800 children annually, say those involved in the program.

The move averts a conflict between state anti-discrimination laws and church doctrine, which considers the placement of children with gay or lesbian couples to be "gravely immoral.''

"The Lord works in mysterious ways,'' quipped San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty, a gay Jew who was a consultant to Catholic Charities while the adoption strategy was being crafted.

"In the interests of the children and for prospective parents, this will be a great improvement,'' says Dufty, who is having a child in October with a lesbian friend. "Two years from now, we will look back and see what a big step this was in getting children placed.''

Next month, the collaboration formally begins between Catholic Charities CYO and California Kids Connection, a statewide adoption exchange run by the Oakland-based nonprofit Family Builders by Adoption. The two agencies will work in conjunction with the state Department of Social Services, which oversees about 82,000 foster children...[article continues]
posted by Jon at 10:47 PM | Link |

New Study: Sex Makes Babies

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy reported this May the results of a new study showing: one out of three teens who has had sexual intercourse has also gotten pregnant.

P.S. This is the proportion of sexually active 18 and 19 year olds girls who have already gotten pregnant. The total proportion who will get pregnant before they turn 20 is (necessarily) higher, although this research does not attempt an estimate.
posted by maggie at 8:49 PM | Link |

Larry Summers Call Steve Forbes' Office

I tried to call Mike Noer up for an interview on that "Don't Marry a Career Woman" piece. I wanted to know how he was surviving the storm. I got this reply, which well, sort of says it all, don't it?:

Maggie:

Thanks for your inquiry but we are not doing interviews about this piece. The following statement was released on Friday, August 25th.

NEW YORK, NY—AUGUST 25, 2006—Response statement from Steve Forbes, President and Editor-in-Chief, Forbes on Forbes.com piece “Don’t Marry Career Women”:

“Sensitive issues demand sensitive treatment. ‘Don’t Marry Career Women,’ a piece that appeared on Forbes.com this past week, clearly hit a very sensitive nerve. The piece was intended to be part academic and part humorous. Instead, it profoundly offended hard-working career women everywhere. We deeply regret having done so.”

Best, Debbie

Debbie Weathers / Director of Editorial Communications

posted by maggie at 8:35 PM | Link |

WHY CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM IS AILING: Samantha M. Shapiro

[Either tangentially related, or fundamental, depending on how you view the role of religious traditions' struggles with change and individualism in the current marriage debates. --Eve]

...Since 1886, the Jewish Theological Seminary has sought to negotiate a middle ground between Orthodox Judaism, which (to vastly oversimplify) teaches that the Torah and Rabbinic law were authored by God, and Reform Judaism, which sees obedience of Jewish law, or Halakha, as a choice, not a divine mandate. Conservative Judaism, which began as a congregational movement in 1913, attempts to bridge the gap--to affirm the divinity of ancient Jewish law but also to allow changes to accommodate modern circumstances. "Tradition and change" is a movement motto. ...

...The logical extension of Conservative Judaism's academic scholarship is that to obey Halakha just because "God says so" is intellectually dishonest. But if that's the case, then why not throw over religious law, like Reform Jews do? The middle-ground movement has come up with no satisfactory answer. It makes do with guilt and a sort of schmaltzy ode to tradition a la Fiddler on the Roof.

Take the issue of the ordination of gay rabbis. It's a no-brainer for Reform Jews, who allow it because they place precedence on personal choice above biblical mandates, and for the Orthodox, who bar it because they believe that the Torah strictly prohibits gay sex. But for Conservatives, it's a crisis, because the movement lacks a clear theology to navigate between the poles of tradition and change, even as the gap between them becomes ever wider. As a result, the decision to admit openly gay rabbinical students to JTS has been bitterly contested, tabled, avoided, and fought over for the last half-dozen or so years. Schorsch has said in previous interviews that advocates for the ordination of gay rabbis are bending and manipulating Halakha rather than looking at it honestly. His despair over this issue surely motivated some of the ferocity of his speech.

But Conservative Judaism has never adequately explained how its rabbis or congregants should decide which aspects of modern times are worth adjusting the law to, and which aren't. The decision in 1972 to ordain women rabbis at JTS wasn't advocated by the institutions' Talmudic scholars but by a committee of lay people. They made many strong moral and ethical arguments for ordaining women, but they couldn't ground their stance coherently in Jewish law.

Still earlier, in 1961, the Conservative movement issued a ruling permitting driving on Shabbat--but only to synagogue. Orthodox Jews, by contrast, observe the prohibition against driving and build their neighborhoods around their synagogues and each other's homes. There is something powerful about this decision: The foundation of the community is a countercultural value that requires some sacrifice in the name of a higher purpose. While it might be possible to read Jewish law to permit driving on Shabbat or ordaining a woman rabbi, both of those choices seem motivated by a reluctant acquiescence to the demands of the time rather than by a deep and reverent reading of the texts. Orthodox Jews also change the law—you won't find any of them following the Torah's injunction to forgive all loans every seven years, or to stone a rebellious child--but they do so in a way that has internal coherence. ...

Earlier in this century, the common wisdom was that Orthodox Judaism would die out in America, outmoded and irrelevant. Instead, it's the American Jewish center that's eroding. Conservative Judaism, once the most popular Jewish denomination in the United States, has recently taken second place to the more clearheaded Reform movement. About 33 percent of American Jews affiliate with Conservative Judaism, down from 38 percent 10 years ago. And interestingly, as the Reform movement swells, to a lesser degree, so do the numbers of Orthodox. And as sociologist Samuel Heilman shows in his recent book, Sliding to the Right, the form of Orthodoxy that's on the rise is the more extremist and isolationist sort--the congregations and movements that are deliberately at odds with American norms.

more
posted by Eve at 8:03 PM | Link |

SLATE PIECE ON THAT FORD AD

with the "divorce twist."
posted by Eve at 7:58 PM | Link |

Should You Marry a Career Woman? The Forbes Firestorm

A good summary of the Forbes firestorm in the Washington post, including Rush Limbaugh's comments and an excerpt from the Nock/Wilcox study to which Michael Noer refers.

A stray thought: Of course the essay offended. The counterpoint "don't marry a lazy guy" is also offensive. And the exchange highlights how, after thirty years of women discussing what they want and expect from men, how few articles about marriage address men's desires, needs, and interests.

I suspect, a legacy of chivalry? And/or that old traditional masculinity that stresses autonomy and reticence? I miss them both.
posted by maggie at 1:18 PM | Link |

Quebec Party Seeks to Block SSM Debate

The new party line:

"The Bloc Quebecois has opted to present a united front against the reopening of the same-sex marriage debate by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe put the matter to a vote at a party caucus meeting and asked members to respect the party line, Bloc MP Real Menard said in an interview Thursday. . ."

posted by maggie at 1:11 PM | Link |

New Study: Fatherhood Alters Monkey Brains

More evidence we are hard-wired to connect?:

Fatherhood May Alter the Brain: study showed neurological changes
Aug 24, 2006

". . . a study with tiny monkeys called marmosets suggests fatherhood may alter gray matter. Researchers say the structure of the brain is different in marmoset dads vs. non-dads. They also found that the brains of fathers were more receptive to a hormone linked to learning.

posted by maggie at 12:54 PM | Link |

SF Catholic Charities Update

A second Catholic agency has been driven out of the adoption business by state government. But SF Catholic Charities comes up with new strategy for helping kids in foster care without participating in adoption decisions:

"Catholic agency finds way out of adoption ban: Alliance with other groups gets around same-sex parent issue" San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 2006:

In an adroit end-run against a Vatican ban on granting adoptions to same-sex couples, Catholic Charities of San Francisco will launch a new project in coming weeks that experts say will lead to the placement of hundreds of foster children around the state every year.

While the agency will no longer directly place children in homes, it will provide staff and financial resources to connect needy children to adoptive parents, expanding from 25 placements a year to assisting in the adoptions of as many as 800 children annually, say those involved in the program.

The move averts a conflict between state anti-discrimination laws and church doctrine, which considers the placement of children with gay or lesbian couples to be "gravely immoral". . .


Next month, the collaboration formally begins between Catholic Charities CYO and California Kids Connection, a statewide adoption exchange run by the Oakland-based nonprofit Family Builders by Adoption. The two agencies will work in conjunction with the state Department of Social Services, which oversees about 82,000 foster children.

"Many, many more children will now find permanent homes,'' said Jill Jacobs, executive director of Family Builders. "When Catholic Charities first approached us, I was very hesitant. My organization has a long history of serving the gay, lesbian and transgender community. It was really ironic -- I had to make sure that our integrity and values were not compromised."

Catholic Charities, the social-service arm of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, was trapped in a similar moral quagmire.

Earlier this year, its counterpart with the Archdiocese of Boston halted all adoptions because it was required to adhere to the state's anti-discrimination laws in order to receive public funds.

In March, Cardinal William Levada, who served as archbishop of San Francisco for nearly 10 years prior to last year's appointment as the pope's top arbiter on questions of faith and morals -- one of the most powerful posts in the Catholic Church -- issued a statement that Catholic agencies "should not place children for adoption in homosexual households."

The Board of Supervisors promptly passed a nonbinding resolution challenging the local church to defy the Vatican.

Catholic Charities of San Francisco, which was started 99 years ago with a mission to help orphan children, had facilitated the adoption of 136 difficult-to-place children since 2000. Five of the children went to same-sex couples.

"We were undeniably told to stop doing direct placements to same-sex couples,: said Executive Director Brian Cahill. "But our new archbishop, George Niederauer, who had barely unpacked, gave us -- to his ever-lasting credit -- the opportunity to craft a solution that would be consistent with church teaching and also faithful to our mission. This place started with adoptions -- how could we ever consider not doing them?:

Over the next few months, Cahill put together a "working group: of board members, health care workers, and moral theologians to devise a way to continue to assist with adoptions while not contravening church teaching.

The ensuing solution commits $250,000 of the agency's resources annually -- a more than fourfold increase of its previous $60,000 annual commitment to adoption placements.

"There will be critics who say that kids will still be placed with same-sex couples,'' said Cahill, who is planning "an aggressive recruitment'' of potential adoptive parents among the archdiocese's parishes. "That is true -- the largest potential number of adoptive parents in the foster care system are gay and lesbian couples. But this is what we are supposed to be doing. This is the work of the church."

"We won't do home studies or matches or finalizations. But we will be the first responder. We will be a link, a connector, between adoptive parents and kids who are languishing in foster care. It's a far more significant contribution than doing 25 adoptions a year; we can now play a statewide role."

At the heart of the new collaboration is a Web site, www.cakidsconnection.org, which features a searchable database of children in California who are available for adoption. Fewer than 200 children's pictures are usually posted, but far more will be posted under the new collaboration, said Jill Jacobs of Family Builders.

"Counties have been hesitant to put kids on the site because they don't have the capacity to answer all the calls and questions they'll receive," she said. "Half the families that call in need basic information about the adoption process -- it is very labor-intensive. But having the resources of Catholic Charities will more than double our staff, and it will probably quadruple the number of children who are posted. And when the children's pictures are posted, they usually get adopted. "There will be some miracles that come out of this project."

posted by maggie at 12:44 PM | Link |

Sweden Considers Legislating Church Weddings

According to this story, less than half of Swedes in this poll support gay marriage.

"Homosexuals will be able to marry in church if the Swedish government follows the suggestion of a report due to be presented next year.

The report will suggest ditching the civil partnership law and allowing church weddings for gay people, according to Swedish public service broadcaster SVT.

One in ten priests in the Church of Sweden has signed a protest against allowing homosexuals to marry in church. Many others in the former state church have said they are in favour.

The report suggests each priest should be able to choose himself whether to he wants to marry a homosexual couple.

According to a survey to which the report refers, some 46 percent of Swedes are positive to gay marriage, while 31 percent are negative. About 23 percent are undecided.

A poll done by the report showed that 84 percent of Swedes felt a religious body should be able to decide for itself whether it wanted to perform such marriages. . ."

posted by maggie at 12:39 PM | Link |