Ignoring Children's Needs Is True Immorality
By Joyce Kauffman

CATHOLIC CHARITIES has announced it will longer provide adoption services. Why? The Catholic Church says that placing children, many of whom have been abused, neglected, or have special needs, with gay or lesbian couples is ''gravely immoral."

What I find gravely immoral is the abandonment of the needs of children to be in safe, loving, and nurturing homes. What I find immoral is the condemnation of gay and lesbian parents by the entire Catholic establishment. What I find immoral is Governor Romney inserting himself in this morass to advance his political aspirations by declaring he intends to file legislation to make it legal for religious organizations to discriminate against gay and lesbian couples. What is truly immoral is the audacity and hypocrisy of the Church to say what is best for children when the Church itself has participated in the destruction of the lives of thousands of children through sexual abuse.

In the early 1990s, shortly after it became possible for lesbian and gay couples to jointly adopt children in Massachusetts, I had a conversation with an adoption clerk at the courthouse. We discussed the mixed reaction to this change in the law. The clerk, a Catholic, working-class woman from Woburn, said, ''I don't see what all the fuss is about -- I have a file drawer full of cases of abused and neglected children here and not a one of them was abused by a lesbian or gay man." Indeed.

For longer than any of us can know, lesbians and gay men have been raising children, whether they are their biological children through previous relationships, adopted children, foster children, or more recently, children born into lesbian and gay relationships. Over the past 20 years, thousands of lesbians and gay men have brought children into their lives through biology, surrogacy, and adoption. Conservative estimates are that 6 to 10 million children are being raised by lesbians and gay men in the United States. Many of these children live in legally vulnerable situations because one of their parents cannot establish a legal relationship to them through adoption. Fortunately, that is not the case in Massachusetts. The Supreme Judicial Court decision in Adoption of Tammy in 1993 made it clear that same-sex couples can adopt their children together. The American Psychological Association, in a 2004 resolution, stated that ''Research has shown that the adjustment, development, and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation and that the children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish." In the interests of full disclosure, I am a lesbian mother. My daughter is 21 and, from what I can tell, she's a pretty normal 21-year-old. She's struggling to figure out who she is and where she's going; she has strong friendships, and a loving relationship with her parents; she loves music, theater, dance; she loves working with children; she has her ups and downs, like most twenty-somethings. When she was a young child, she had a friend whose mother objected to the friendship because she did not want her child exposed to lesbians. My 5-year-old daughter's reaction? ''What's wrong with her?" When I explained that this woman did not think two women should love each other, my daughter said, ''Well, that just doesn't make any sense." Indeed.

There are more than 10,000 children in the foster care system in Massachusetts. These children are in desperate need of security, love, and stability. There are lesbian and gay individuals and couples who have the love to give. Fortunately, DSS and many DSS-contracted agencies will continue to place children in these loving homes. But Catholic Charities, the private agency that previously served to place some of the most difficult-to-place children into loving homes, will not, and other agencies will have to scramble to fill the void. This will no doubt cause excruciating delays in placement for these most vulnerable children.

Catholic Charities is throwing the baby out with the bath water. It doesn't make sense.

Joyce Kauffman is chairwoman of the family law section of the Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association.