The [Roman Catholic] Archdiocese of Washington's decision to drop its foster care program is the first casualty of the District of Columbia's pending same-sex marriage law that will obligate all outside contractors dealing with the city to recognize gay couples.
-- From "Catholics end D.C. foster-care program" by Julia Duin, Washington Times 2/18/10
"We regret that our efforts to avoid this outcome were not successful," Catholic Charities Chief Executive Officer Ed Orzechowski said in a statement. "Foster care has been an important ministry for us for many decades. We worked very hard to be able to continue to provide these services in the District."
The transfer of services also means Catholic Charities will discontinue offering public adoption services. The agency processed 12 such adoptions throughout 2009 and including into this year.
"It was a very high-quality program, so this was really hard," archdiocesan spokeswoman Susan Gibbs said of the foster care/adoption service. "We said last fall that we could not continue this program if the bill was passed as written. Well, this has come to pass."
The Vatican has long opposed any church role in aiding homosexuals to adopt. In 2003, it said that placing children into same-sex households was "gravely immoral."
But with more states legalizing same-sex unions, the Washington Archdiocese is the third diocese in the country to leave the adoption/foster care business. The archdioceses of San Francisco and Boston, which had contracts with California and Massachusetts, respectively, ceased their programs in 2006 after each state legalized gay marriages and made it clear that the local Catholic Charities affiliate would have to work with homosexual couples. (California has since repealed its law allowing same-sex marriage.)
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From "D.C. Archdiocese Ends Foster Care Program Over Same-Sex Marriage Bill, Which Allows Homosexual Couples to Adopt Children" by Edwin Mora, CNSNews.com 2/19/10
The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. has ended its 80-year tenure as a public foster care provider because of a same-sex marriage bill in the nation’s capital that allows children to be adopted by homosexual couples.
On Feb. 17, Catholic Charities transferred its foster care and public adoption programs in D.C. to the National Center for Children Families (NCCF), a private, non-profit organization that has been serving the less fortunate for 95 years.
The move by Catholic Charities and Archbishop Donald Wuerl came in the wake of the D.C. Council approving a same-sex marriage bill on Dec. 16 by an 11-to-2 vote. The bill, among other things, would require foster care groups under contract with the District to allow and facilitate adoption of foster-care children by homosexual couples.
This policy violates the moral teaching of the Catholic Church, which says that only a man and a woman can be united in marriage and that together with their children they form a family. (See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2201-2203.)
If the same-sex initiative clears the 30-day congressional review period, which is expected given the Democrat majority in Congress, the legislation will become law in the next couple of weeks.
While the bill is expected to become law, congressional Republicans and some conservative Democrats have indicated they will try annul the legislation by getting Congress or a court to block it.
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