Ok, a declaration of interest before I start - not really an issue of bias because I won't be siding with the Catholic Church on this matter, but I thought I should own up - I was brought up a Catholic and, although agnostic on the existence of God and normally in disagreement with the Church on the oft-debated 'personal morality' / 'lifestyle' issues, I still go to Mass fairly frequently. I'm planning to blog separately about this and the broader tension between religious and secular / progressive values, but for now I'll get back to the matter in hand.
I found Rowan Williams' assertion (speaking in support of the Catholic Church's position) that "rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation" particularly striking because I'd say it's fairly obvious that it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. If by "rights of conscience" we take him to mean "the right to act in accordance with one's own moral judgement", then it is plain that this cannot be absolutely protected from legislative interference. People's consciences tell them to do all sorts of things that are directly 'other-regarding' and which are therefore a proper province for legislation, even where the individual firmly and honestly believes their actions to be right. At the risk of seeming like a serial Obamaniac I'll quote a superb illustration of this point from a June 2006 speech by Barack Obama:
"We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded. Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God's test of devotion. But it's fair to say that if any of us leaving this church saw Abraham on a roof of a building raising his knife, we would, at the very least, call the police and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham. We would do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be."
(Thanks to Daniel Finkelstein for pointing this out.)
Perhaps the Church would maintain that this is a matter of personal religious observance and does not involve 'other-regarding' acts that the state is entitled to regulate, but I would argue that the actions of an organisation that is partly state-funded and is responsible for safeguarding the best interests of children cannot reasonably be considered 'self-regarding'.
There also has to be a question mark over whether an adoption agency can possibly be acting in the best interests of a child while refusing to deal with gay couples. I’m sure most people would agree with Cormac Murphy O’Connor’s view that "the best way of bringing up a child… is having a mother and a father", but this presents a false dichotomy. A child adopted by a gay couple would not necessarily otherwise have been placed with a heterosexual couple, particularly in the case of the one third of hard-to-place children said to be handled by Catholic adoption agencies. Is the Cardinal prepared to argue that a child is better off in care than adopted by a gay couple? Vincent Nichols' admission on Newsnight that the Church would place children with single gay people, but not couples, further highlighted the laughable incoherence of their position.
I also note that the Catholic Church wants to continue its policy of referring gay couples to other adoption agencies. It is strange, if the Church is convinced that it is against the best interests of a child (not to mention the will of God) for it be brought up by a gay couple, that they are willing to co-operate in such an arrangement. It smacks of a 'clean hands' approach to ethical dilemmas rather than a genuinely principled stance.
If the churches want to gain support for their position they’ll have to come up with better arguments.
