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Why Can’t Same-Sex Couples Adopt If Divorced-and-Remarried Couples Can?

Question:

If it is immoral for same-sex couples to adopt, is it immoral for a divorced (not annulled) and remarried person to adopt?

Answer:

Ideally, children should be raised by the mother and father who procreated them within the context of a loving marriage.

When a child cannot be raised in the home of his natural mother and father, adoption provides a wonderful alternative, because children undeniably benefit from having the complementary role models of both a father and a mother in their upbringing.

And here we see a fundamental difference between divorced and remarried couples and same-sex couples as prospective adoptive parents. Persons with same-sex attraction can certainly make positive contributions as aunts or uncles or family friends to young people, particularly if they observe the moral law in word and deed. But they undermine those prospective positive contributions when they present themselves as a romantic “married couple” to children they have adopted or might adopt.

One need not invoke a religious argument to make this case. The absence of complementarity in a same-sex couple is self-evident, beginning with their futile attempts at conjugal communion. In short, with a same-sex couple, the two necessarily cannot become one and therefore don’t even have the hope of procreation; and that’s why they have to seek adoption or artificial means of conceiving a child.

Divine revelation affirms what we can discern by reason from the natural moral law. God made us in his image and likeness, male and female (Gen. 1:27-28). And those whom God calls to marriage become one flesh for life (Gen. 2:23-24), and God normally blesses them with children and draws them closer to each other in him, enabling those who can’t conceive to become good adoptive parents. Jesus reaffirms that marriage is between a man and a woman and that it is a lifetime commitment (Matt. 19:1-12). Note that Jesus relaxed the Jewish disciplines regarding unclean foods (Mark 7:14-19) yet never relaxed the Jewish teachings against same-sex relations, let alone redefined marriage. Those morally impermissible practices were simply never on the table.

To learn more about the problems children experience when raised by same-sex parents, please see this article by Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons.

Regarding adoptions by heterosexual Catholic couples who are divorced and remarried but have not received an annulment in the Catholic Church, I don’t think the Church would authorize such adoptions through Church agencies like diocesan Catholic Charities offices, including out of concern for causing scandal among the faithful (see CCC 2284-87), similar to how the Church does not authorize such divorced-and-remarried couples to receive Holy Communion, especially publicly (see Code of Canon Law, can. 915; St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 84).

On the other hand, one might argue that Church agencies could possibly approve adoptions for such divorced-and-remarried couples, because there could be a good chance that their unions, while not marriages in the eyes of the Church, could be true marriages if the couples went through the annulment process successfully and had their marriages convalidated, whereas the relationships of same-sex couples can necessarily never be marriages. Regarding such divorced-and-remarried Catholic couples, though, I would recommend a policy of non-adoption as an incentive to have these couples choose to go through the annulment process, and, if it is successful, have their marriages convalidated and an adoption through a Church agency subsequently authorized. Such couples may go elsewhere to get an adoption sooner, so it’s important for Church agencies to pastorally encourage them to connect with and stay close to their local parishes.

Because non-Catholic divorced-and-remarried couples are not bound by the law of the Church in terms of being subject to an ecclesiastical tribunal to assess the validity of their first marriages, the Church would be more inclined to authorize such adoptions, although certainly all couples will have to render an account to God one day regarding their choices and their related subjective culpability. And the Church should use such occasions to encourage these couples to consider becoming Catholic with all of the benefits, temporal and eternal, that would imply.

The Church undoubtedly strongly opposes divorce in general and no-fault divorce in particular. And yet one could also argue that arranging for adoptions by divorced and remarried couples—both non-Catholic and Catholic—should not be opposed if they’re arranged by secular state entities. Such couples could still provide a loving, complementary environment for their adopted children, precisely because they are a man and a woman in a committed relationship, albeit a flawed one, and that their adopted children would be better off in such a home environment than they would be in foster care, modern orphanages, etc.

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