Newt Gingrich claimed on Sunday’s “Meet The Press” that the religious rights of Catholics are being “outlawed” by gay rights in what he sees as a one-sided national debate. “But what I’m struck with is the one-sidedness of the desire for rights,†Gingrich curiously interjected into a conversation that was about the possibility of a Republican president supporting same-sex marriage. “There are no rights for Catholics to have adoption services in Massachusetts,” the twice-divorced, thrice-married, former Speaker of the House told NBC’s David Gregory. “They’re outlawed.
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Gingrich concluded that it is “impossible for the Catholic Church to have an adoption service in Massachusetts that follows Catholic doctrine.”
Newt Gingrich is lying.
What is “outlawed” is a private institution accepting public funds but not abiding by the state’s anti-discrimination law — which, for those falsely claiming same-sex marriage has anything to do with the adoption controversies, predated marriage equality by more than a decade.
What Catholic Charities did was choose — over “a unanimous vote by the agency’s 42-member board to continue facilitating adoptions by gay people” — was to close their publicly financially-supported adoption service rather than continue to let same-sex couples adopt.
Catholic Charities “voluntarily ceased doing adoptions after the state’s four Catholic Bishops got wind that gay parents had been adopting kids through Catholic Charities from an October 2005 Boston Globe story,” writes award-winnng journalist Laura Kiritsy at GLAD.
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“The Globe reported that over the course of about two decades, Catholic Charities placed 13 children with gay parents, out of about 720 adoptions they facilitated during those years,” Kiritsy, herself a “product” of Boston’s Catholic Charities, reports:
For the record, those 13 children were considered hard to place with adoptive parents because they were older or had physical or emotional difficulties, meaning had they not found loving parents who happened to be gay, they’d likely not have parents. Catholic Charities was accepting state funds to provide adoption services and was thus bound by the state’s gay-inclusive anti-discrimination law not to reject qualified adoptive parents based on sexual orientation.
On “Meet The Press,” Gingrich continued, asking if “being able to be gay in America” means “that you have to actually affirmatively eliminate any institution which does not automatically accept that, and therefore, you’re now going to have a secular state say to a wide range of religious groups — Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Jews, Mormons, and frankly, Muslims — ‘You cannot practice your religion the way you believe it, and we will outlaw your institutions?'”
Newt Gingrich and his friends are welcome to start and privately fund a religion-based adoption agency in Massachusetts or any other state, not accept any public funding, and make decisions on who can and cannot adopt children based on whatever religious principles they choose to observe.
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Note:Â The New Civil Rights Movement published the entire clip because we want our readers to see the excellent responses from Joy Ann Reid, editor of The Grio, and, in our opinion, the offensively misogynistic manner in which National Review editor Rich Lowry dismisses her and insists on interrupting her.
Hat tip: Towleroad
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Related:
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To Avoid Giving Benefits To Gays, Catholic Charities Cuts Benefits To All Employees
Gingrich: Discrimination Against Blacks May Be Wrong But Against Gays Is Right
Newt Gingrich: Gay Marriage Is A “Temporary Aberrationâ€
Gingrich: I See No Hypocrisy In My Affair While I Prosecuted Clinton
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