Free Republic

The largest Protestant adoption and foster agency in the country has decided to open up its services to LGBTQ parents nationwide, a win for same-sex couples as several religious agencies have declined them services in the past, the company announced to staff Monday. Chris Palusky, the president and chief executive of Bethany Christian Services, informed staff of the evangelical organization that the change would go into effect immediately, according to an email obtained by The New York Times. The adjustment comes as several cities and states have mandated that adoption agencies accept same-sex parents in order to receive government funding....

London, Mar 30, 2007 / 11:01 am (CNA).- In his first major response to the passage of a new “anti-discrimination” law in the United Kingdom, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said he feared the Labour Party has turned to "legislating for intolerance" in a speech on Wednesday. The Cardinal was referring to the recently approved Sexual Orientation Regulations during Thirtieth Thomas Corbishley Memorial Lecture, which he delivered on “The Kingdom of God and this World: the Church in Public Life” at Westminster Cathedral. The government is imposing the recently approved Sexual Orientation Regulations on all public agencies and businesses, including those run...

Struggling with Senator Barack Obama for black votes, Hillary Clinton acquitted herself well in Selma the other day. That Southern drawl she’s suddenly developed assures her a job with any future revival of “Hee Haw” if her presidential ambitions are quashed. Not so widely covered by the mainstream media was a speech Senator Clinton delivered two days earlier. She spoke before 400 members of the Human Rights Campaign, which boasts it’s the nation’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization. Hillary was gushing with enthusiasm for the HRC: “I love the fact it’s my initials, have you ever...

The San Francisco archdiocese is ending adoptions by homosexual couples through its Catholic Charities, a move that could jeopardize its public funding. The religious agency, which specializes in finding homes for hard-to-adopt children, has placed five children with same-sex couples since 2000, but Archbishop George Niederauer says there won't be any more, the San Francisco Chronicle said Tuesday. "These kinds of adoptions are not in sync with church teaching, and we've committed ourselves to being in sync with church teaching," a spokeswoman for the archbishop said. Last year, Catholic Charities received $800,000 from the state and $5 million from local...

Governor Mitt Romney yesterday filed a bill aimed at granting exemption to Catholic Charities from the statutory prohibitions of discrimination against gays in their adoption policies. The First Amendment rights of Catholic Charities to adhere to their religious principles came under attack last week when state officials announced that the organization had to comply with state guidelines in allowing children to be placed in same-sex households, despite recent pronouncements from the Vatican and Boston’s four bishops condemning the practice.

Vatican prohibits placement with same-sex couples. The Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Francisco could be forced to stop its adoption services because of an order from its former archbishop, Cardinal William Levada, who is now the second-in-command at the Vatican. The archdiocese received an e-mail this week from Levada stating, "Catholic agencies should not place children for adoption in homosexual households." In the past five years, under Levada's watch, five children out of 136 were adopted by same-sex couples through the San Francisco agency. "We are going to be looking at this, but I can't speculate what might...

MADRID, Spain (LifeSiteNews.com) – In light of a pending vote in the Spanish Senate on same-sex marriage HazteOir, together with the Spanish Forum for the Family and the Institute for Family Policy, has published and distributed an in-depth report on the effects that being raised by same-sex parents has on a child. The report, entitled “Report on Infantile Development in Same-Sex Couples” and available only in Spanish at this time, gathers and compares information from a vast number of studies carried out on the issue. HazteOir, concerned by the apparent unquestioning acceptance in Spain of homosexual adoption, hopes that the...

Conservative peers and bishops joined forces in the Lords last night to block Government plans to allow unmarried, homosexual and lesbian couples to adopt children. A Tory move to maintain the current legal position that only married couples and single people were permitted to adopt was approved by 196 votes to 162, a majority of 34 The defeat was a setback for ministers who wanted the change in the law on the statute book before this session of Parliament ends on Nov 7. Downing Street indicated that the Government would seek to overturn the vote when the Adoption and Children...

Last week, ABC News allowed entertainer Rosie O'Donnell to take over two hours of air time for a one-sided infomercial promoting gay adoptions. All of the elements required for breaking down what few social norms remain regarding the family structure were present on "Primetime Thursday" on March 14. First, the celebrity factor. In our postmodern, post Christian, post objective truth generation, celebrity equals credibility. Celebrities have replaced God. When they speak, some people think the rest of us should listen. In order to get O'Donnell to sit for the interview, during which she announced the "open secret" that she is...