What ELSE is wrong with Philadelphia Catholic Charities?

Catholic Charities in Philadelphia refuses to licenses same-sex couples as foster and adoptive parents.  That stance cost them their contract with the city -- in other words public funding -- to serve as an agency that certifies foster and adoptive parents for children in foster care. Philadelphia has an ordinance that forbids contractors to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Since Catholic Charities does discriminate, it could not remain a city contractor.

Catholic Charities responded to the city's action by suing, claiming that it is the subject of discrimination...on the basis of its religious beliefs.  So far, it has lost. This conflict is one of many across the country, as organizations and individuals assert a constitutional right to discriminate or seek a legislative right to do so.  The Movement Advancement Project does a good job of tracking existing and pending  actions.

But as this article explains, Catholic Charities continues to serve as a community umbrella agency working with children in foster care and their families.  The city has not cancelled that contract.  Here is the map that shows how much of the city lies within Catholic Charities' purview.  In its function as a community umbrella agency, Catholic Charities provides case management services that determine whether a child, once removed from parents, is returned to their care.  Reunification services can be the most critical component of determining a child's fate.  If an agency determines that a parent should attend classes, mental health counseling, or job placement services, the parent's failure to do any of those things can lead to termination of parental rights.  If an agency sets up a parent's visitation with her child at a particular place on a particular day, the parent's failure to attend can lead to termination of parental rights.  That the services may be unnecessary; that the schedule might conflict with a parent's job, or care responsibilities for other children, or other appointments for housing assistance or some other necessity; those things may turn out to be irrelevant.  The power of the supervising agency to set the rules and then determine if they have been broken is, literally, awesome.

So what's the problem?  Aside from the unreasonable demands frequently placed on all parents of children in foster care, some of those parents are LGBT and have same-sex partners or ex-partners.  Catholic Charities admits it will not license same-sex couples as foster or adoptive parents.  We should assume that the agency thinks equally badly about the parents in same-sex couples trying to get their children back from foster care.  The power to supervise families with children in state care is the power to determine where those children end up.  If Catholic Charities wants those children in an adoptive home with a married mom and dad, or in a kinship home with a homophobic relative, that is where they will end up.  No case manager has to state up front that the child will not go home to a lesbian mother; there are just so many ways to achieve that result without being direct.

The case manager can also place the child in a foster home that denigrates LGBT individuals and same-sex couples.  Heck, the case manager can place an LGBTQ child in a foster home that denigrates LGBT individuals and same-sex couples.  THAT is a lot of power.

The subject of LGBT parents whose children are removed by the state has not made it to the top (or even the middle or the bottom) of the agenda of any LGBT advocacy organization.  This even though the one research study looking at the sexual orientation of parents who lost their children found that, among low-income Black mothers, those who identified as lesbian or bisexual were over four times more likely than those who identified as heterosexual to have lost their children to the state.  Well those parents are at the top of my agenda, and my article about them, Neglected Lesbian Mothers, will be out shortly in the Family Law Quarterly.

There's a lot that LGBT advocates could be doing. But with an organized effort underway to stop agencies from discriminating against LGBT foster and adoptive parents it should be a small, but hugely significant step, to add to the demands that no agency that refuses to license gay people as foster parents should be able to supervise families with children in foster care where either a parent or the child is LGBT.  I'm talking about YOU, Philadelphia Catholic Charities.

Adoption news: federal anti-discrimination bill reintroduced; Catholic Charities threatens Illinois; Evangelicals cut ethical corners and worse

California Rep. Pete Stark this week reintroduced the Every Child Deserves a Family Act. The bill prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, marital status, and gender identity by an entity that receives federal funding for adoption services or contracts with an entity that receives such federal funding. Meanwhile, with Illinois authorizing civil unions as of June 1, Catholic Charities there this week urged passage of legislation that would allow them to (continue to) discriminate against same-sex couples. Catholic Charities is sounding an alarm that it might have to stop providing adoption and foster care services in Illinois. Well, the Every Child Deserves a Family Act would override any such legislation (not that Illinois seems inclined to go in that direction). The federal statute would mean that no agency under contract to a state could discriminate on any of the named bases.

I'm proud of the state legislators (and those in my home town of the District of Columbia, which should be a state but isn't...that's another story) who stand up to Catholic Charities and let them know that others can provide the services they now provide if they wish to discriminate. Illinois Catholic Charities wants to get away with saying that they will refer same-sex couples to other agencies, as though that makes their own discrimination okay.

Meanwhile, thanks to Mombian blogger Dana Rudolph, who also writes for Keen News Service, for alerting me to an adoption story I missed last month. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a memo urging child welfare agencies to better serve the needs of LGBTQ youth. As Rudolph describes in this story, HHS administrator Bryan Samuels also said that “LGBT parents should be considered among the available options for States and jurisdictions to provide timely and safe placement of children in need of foster or adoptive homes.”

Same-sex couples and LGBT individuals who want to become adoptive parents have fewer opportunities of adopting from overseas than were available previously. That's not about being gay; it's about the overall decrease in international adoptions. Last year international adoptions were down 50% from the all-time high in 2004. Last year's total was the lowest since 1994. (Read some of the statistics here.) As this post points out, fewer is better if the larger numbers resulted from corruption and baby stealing. In March, Ethiopia, which had had a rising number of overseas adoptions, announced a massive slow down in the processing of international adoptions because of the problems there.

Finally, if you were not aware of the Christian evangelical international adoption crusade -- folks who do far worse than just cut corners to "rescue" children for God --, you won't want to miss Kathryn Joyce's chilling piece in last week's Nation magazine. These people are pushing for increases in international adoption, including advocating legislation that would give financial incentives to developing countries that cooperate in sending their children for adoption to the United States. Because of the drastic decrease in international adoptions, there is a danger that secular agencies will join with these Christian evangelicals. Joyce reports that the Christian adoption crusade has friends on Capitol Hill poised to introduced legislation that might look benign but is actually designed to foster practices that are unethical -- except in the minds of those who proclaim, as Joyce reports, that they are following God's law, not man's laws.

A common anti-gay trope is that our desire for children is adult-centered, not child-centered, and that we want to recruit. I have never read anything about adopting children that was less child-centered and more about recruiting than this terrifying piece of investigative journalism.

Catholic Charities chooses worst option for complying with DC law...and pretends it has no choice

The long wait is over. Catholic Charities of Washington, DC has settled upon its response to the District of Columbia's approval of marriage for same-sex couples. Effective tomorrow, its employees will no longer be able to add a spouse to employee health benefit coverage. Spouses who are currently covered will continue to be covered. Catholic Charities describes its response as "necessary to allow Catholic Charities to continue to provide essential services to the clients we serve in partnership with the District of Columbia while remaining consistent with the tenets of our religious faith."

So let's be clear. This response was not necessary. Catholic Charities had other options. As I noted previously, Catholic Charities could have taken advantage of a complex federal law that would have removed it from local anti-discrimination laws (that's what Catholic Charities of Portland, Maine did so that it would not have to comply with Portland's mandate to cover same-sex couples). Or it could have allowed employees to cover another adult in their household as Georgetown University has done. So the decision to disadvantage married heterosexuals was a choice. And it's a choice invidiously designed to breed resentment towards the agency's gay employees, perhaps disguising the real benefit to the agency -- lowering costs by providing fewer benefits to employees.

Seems to me it's time for a social service provider other than Catholic Charities to lure away the dedicated staff at that agency, apply for contracts with the city, and provide comprehensive health benefits to all staff. Any current employee planning to marry (or remarry) would have strong incentive to leave Catholic Charities, and anyone looking for a job as a new hire will prefer an employer who provides health benefits to spouses.

Meanwhile, I presume Catholic Charities still allows an employee to cover his or her children. Under DC law, a woman married to or in a domestic partnership with a woman who gives birth to a child is a parent of that child.

I predict we have not heard the last of this issue. Catholic Charities should be ashamed of itself. Apparently it is not. But no one should be dissuaded from pointing a finger at them and screaming "Shame!" by their bogus claim of necessity. It just isn't so.

Catholic Charities of DC President questioned on Kojo Nnamdi

The President and CEO of Catholic Charities of Washington DC, Ed Orzechowski, appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi Show last week. You want to listen to this show. I had the opportunity to call in, but even before taking my question and comments on the air, Kojo pressed his guest on his agency's policies, asking him repeatedly if his agency's policies were already in violation of DC non-discrimination law. Mr. Orzechowski said, among other things, that Catholic Charities places children with gay and lesbian individuals as foster and adoptive parents, but that couples must be married. When Kojo repeated the question as to whether that already puts the agency in violation of existing laws, the guest said that the District was aware of their policies. He did not say that the policy complied with the law.

Right. As I've written about, the District -- like the gay community -- has let the discrimination slide. But if the church is going to rub our nose in it, well, that's uping the ante. And by the way, if anyone reading this is, or knows of, a gay or lesbian individual who has sought approval as a foster or adoptive parent from Catholic Charities in DC, I would love to hear from that person. I'm skeptical. If such approval has ever happened, I wonder if a person living with a partner is excluded, even as an individual, from adopting or fostering a child. (Let's not even go to where it is so clearly better for a child to have two loving, cooperating parents than one...)

To my point that federal law gives private employers the abililty to ignore local anti-discrimination laws when it comes to employee health and pension benefits, Mr. Orzechowski first said that they did not want to stop providing employee benefits altogether. When I pointed out that this was misleading because they can continue to provide heterosexual married couples with benefits, he said, "We want to abide by all the laws." He did not respond at all to my comment that Catholic Charities of Maine continues to provide benefits to heterosexual married couples but not to same-sex couples, in spite of local law, and that this is legal because of federal law. Frankly, the answer that they want to abide by all the laws is laughable. It is the law, federal ERISA law, that gives private employers to the right not to follow local laws. Lots of private employers around the country are allowed to discriminate because of this.

One more thing. When Council Member David Catania appeared on Kojo's Friday show (the Politics Hour), Kojo asked him about whether Catholic Charities was already in violation of DC anti-discrimination law with respect to adoption and foster care. CM Catania said this was unlitigated. That's true because, as I've said, gay men and lesbians are approved by the city and by other agencies and so there has never been a reason to pick a fight with them. Now it's Catholic Charities picking the fight.

By the way, with respect to employee benefits, CM Catania is now arguing what amounts to a page right out of my book...that Catholic Charities can cover on an employee's benefits one other adult household member, and then it is not about marriage at all. He points out, quite rightly, that Georgetown University, also a Catholic institution, does this through covering a person they call a "legally domiciled adult," someone with a "close personal relationship" with the employee. When I discuss this in my book I note a limitation with the Georgetown policy, that it does not extend coverage to the LDA's children. But since DC parentage law now makes the nonbiological mother a parent from the moment of birth, that is less of an issue here.

The Catholic Church's red herring #2

Yesterday I wrote that legislation allowing same-sex marriage will have no impact on the issue of the church's provision of foster care and adoption services, because providing those services is already subject to DC's antidiscrimination laws.

The church makes one other claim: that they will be forced to include same-sex spouses on their employee benefit plans. That, too, is a red herring. The employee benefit that matters the most and costs the most is health insurance, and here is the only fact about health insurance that matters -- no state (or in this case DC) can make any private employer cover anyone, married or not married, same-sex or different-sex. The federal government has complete control of the rules governing the most important employee benefits, including health insurance and pensions. For this reason, the benefits provided by private employers have been off limits to discrimination charges, even in states that allow same-sex couples to marry.

It is true that states and the District can regulate insurance products. Right now every insurance product offered in the District must treat all married couples identically, including DC same-sex couples married elsewhere. I explain this here. But my guess is that the Catholic Church, including Catholic Charities, self-insures. This means that it doesn't buy an insurance product. This is fairly common for large employers. My employer, American University, self-insures.

Bottom line: DC cannot make the Catholic Church provide health and pension benefits to same-sex spouses. Can't now. Won't be able to once those couples can marry in DC.

So when the church makes the threat that it will stop serving the poor in DC if it has to recognize same-sex married couples, it is a baseless bluff. The church is trying to make the City Council and the public think there is a choice between letting same-sex couples marry and keeping Catholic Charities at work in DC. But it's another red herring.

The Catholic Church's red herring

To hear the Catholic Church tell it, if same-sex couples can marry in DC they will have to stop providing social services here. At least that's their threat, as reported earlier this week in the Washington Post. I heard the same thing at the October 26 committee hearing. Their representative said the marriage equality bill would "hurt the people who count on Catholic Charities." (To view the whole hearing click here and select the October 26 meeting of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary). After their representative lamented about what would happen when they sought relicensing as a foster care agency, Committee Chair Phil Mendelson asked why foster care would be implicated and the answer was that the Catholic Charities would not place children with same-sex couples.

Well I have news for the church (except I suspect it's not news to them). For more than 30 years it has been unlawful to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and marital status in the provision of services in the District of Columbia. Catholic Charities operates in a discriminatory manner because no one has challenged them. Lesbians and gay men understandably go elsewhere to be licensed as foster or adoptive parents, and no one has asked the District of Columbia to stop funding Catholic Charities.

What the church seeks in the marriage equality bill has nothing to do with marriage. They have what they are entitled to in that respect -- the right not to conduct marriages of same-sex couples. That is a completely uncontroversial and constitutionally mandated provision. What Catholic Charities seeks is immunity from existing civil rights laws that predate marriage equality by decades and will continue to exist regardless of whether same-sex couples are allowed to marry in the District of Columbia.

Councilmembers show no inclination to exempt Catholic Charities from those laws. Good for them. Looking the other way is one thing; affirmatively approving discrimination is another. If this matter comes to a head in the city, it is entirely the responsibility of the church itself for thinking it could confuse lawmakers and the public by conflating marriage for same-sex couples and nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the provision of services. So far, we are not confused.