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Higgins Responds to Anti-Christian Op/Ed in the Daily Herald

Responding to a letter-to-the-editor I sent in earlier this month in which I accuse the state of Illinois of being guilty of religious discrimination in shutting down Catholic Charities’ vital and laudable foster care and adoption work, the editors of The Daily Herald opined:

When we wrote in this space that it was time for Illinois to have civil unions, we quoted Gov. Pat Quinn, who said we “need to encourage tolerance in this state.” And that’s just what the legislature did when it passed the law allowing for civil unions and what Quinn did when he signed it. However, with that law (effective on June 1) came another issue. Again, we side with Quinn.

Catholic Charities in five Illinois dioceses, including those covering DuPage, Kane and McHenry counties in the Daily Herald circulation area, are suing the state so the agencies would not have to accept civil union and unmarried couples as foster parents. At issue is the state money used by Catholic Charities to run their programs for about 2,000 children. Illinois now requires that foster and adoptive care agencies treat same-sex couples in civil unions the same as married couples if they want to use state dollars.

“If an organization … decides they don’t want to voluntarily participate with the state, they have that choice and we honor that choice,” Quinn said last month, as quoted by the Capitol Fax Blog. “We have other entities that are involved in foster care that are willing to assume that duty.”

And therein lies the crux of the debate: Faith-based agencies like Catholic Charities are not forced to accept state money and therefore are not forced to change long-held beliefs. This is not a freedom of religion issue.

We believe, however, that there are many same-sex couples who would make excellent foster or adoptive parents if given the chance. Loving families and good parenting skills are not limited to straight couples or single people.

And yet that is exactly what opponents of the civil union law believe and espouse. David E. Smith, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute in Carol Stream, said as much in a letter to the editor on this page on Monday.

” … In upholding traditional religious teachings, and in the best interests of children, (Catholic Charities) will not place foster children in nonmarried or homosexual homes,” Smith wrote. A person’s sexual orientation on its own should not be a disqualifier. That’s a form of discrimination the state won’t and shouldn’t accept.

We hope the Illinois judicial system affirms the state’s point in this matter. All they need to do is look to Rockford to see that there are alternatives. About 300 foster-care cases once handled by the Rockford Diocese were transferred to the Youth Services Bureau of Illinois Valley when the diocese shut its program down. In 2007, when the Chicago Archdiocese halted its foster-care services because of insurance issues, the state also was able to transfer cases to other agencies.

“We will explore every option to prevent disruption to these children,” said Ken Marlowe, spokesman for the Department of Children and Family Services. “Discrimination has no place in child welfare.”

IFI’s Laurie Higgins submitted a response to their editorial, which the Daily Herald declined to publish.

Take ACTION: Help us expose the fallacious and destructive ideas promoted by the Daily Herald by forwarding this email to friends and by posting it to Facebook and Twitter.

Here is Laurie’s fantastic response:

The Daily Herald reveals a profound lack of understanding when it argues that homosexual couples should be allowed to adopt children because in the Daily Herald’s view “Loving families and good parenting skills are not limited to straight couples or single people.”

If those are the only criteria necessary for parental fitness, then the Daily Herald must support adoption by polyamorists or incestuous couples, for surely there are polyamorists and brother-sister couples who are capable of “loving and parenting” children.

Historically, however, criteria for adoptive fitness have included not merely the capacity of those adopting to love and parent children. Criteria for adoptive fitness included an evaluation of the moral nature of the relationship between adopting parents. Types of relationships considered inherently morally flawed would be excluded from adoptive consideration.

Of course, in a wiser, less relativistic culture, this criterion did not need to be explicitly articulated. It would go without saying that society would not place children in environments defined by inherently morally flawed relationships — like polygamous, incestuous, or homosexual relationships — regardless of the ability of the partners to love, parent, and provide for children.

Despite specious arguments to the contrary, subjective homosexual attraction and volitional homosexual acts do not constitute a condition analogous to race, and disapproval of homosexuality is not analogous to racism. Making judgments about the morality of homosexuality is no more unethically discriminatory than is making judgments about the morality of polyamory or adult consensual incest. Once society jettisons an evaluation of the inherent morality of the relationships between (or among) adopting parents, there is no rational reason to prohibit polyamorists or incestuous couples from adopting.

Religious — and non-religious — adoption agencies do have the right and should have the freedom to make distinctions about what types of relationships constitute moral relationships. The government is overstepping its bounds when it attempts to impose the subjective moral assumptions of homosexual activists and their ideological allies on all child welfare organizations.




Gambling Action Alert: Legislators working on Gambling Expansion

Rep. Lou Lang is drafting an amendment to a (shell) bill passed in the Senate, according to the Chicago Tribune. If the bill passes in the House, the bill would go back to the Senate for a vote, but no amendments will be added according to Rep. Lang.

The Chicago Sun-Times recently published an editorial supporting a casino in Chicago and slots at six racetracks. The new Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, has expressed interest in a city-owned casino, and Governor Quinn is “open to discussing proposals” that raise revenue, create jobs and lead to greater investment in schools, as noted in the editorial.

Gambling interests promise more than they can deliver. The 10th casino license is scheduled to open in July, and promised to bring in about $9 million in revenue each year for the city of Des Plaines. The Daily Herald reported that based on the latest projections by a bipartisan state commission and the city’s own independent research, the city will only receive $2 million to $4 million — the cost of one fire truck!

The legislative session is scheduled to end on May 31. Legislators still have many issues to address. Gambling is an unstable source of revenue. Ramming a massive gambling expansion bill through in the final days of the session will not solve the revenue problems for Chicago or the State, and the cost, harm, and impact on communities are not even being considered.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send your lawmakers an email or a fax to encourage them to oppose any bill to yet again expand gambling in the Land of Lincoln.

More Action:

1. Call your State Representative and Senator at             (217) 782-2000       and ask them to Vote NO on ALL gambling bills.

2. Call Governor Quinn at             (800) 642-3112       to ask him to OPPOSE a Chicago casino, slots at race tracks, and ALL gambling expansion.

3. Write a Letter to the Editor

4. Share this Alert with your faith community and PRAY.

5. Forward to 10 others.