65-Year-Old Catholic Adoption Agency Closes in PA After Being Ordered to Perform Gay Adoptions

Pennsylvania’s Catholic dioceses are challenging a recent state policy that has essentially put them out of the adoption and foster care business.

The Diocese of Greensburg recently announced that its Catholic Charities agency was closing its adoption and foster care program after 65 years because the state’s nondiscrimination policy added sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories.

The Greensburg diocese, along with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and Catholic Charities Counseling and Adoption Services of the Diocese of Erie, sought a religious exemption from the policy in 2018. They were denied.

The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, which oversees the state’s adoption and foster care system, says it cannot countenance discrimination “in any form against any group of Pennsylvanians.” The dioceses say the policy is unnecessarily hostile to faith-based groups that hold to traditional beliefs about marriage.

“They were looking for a problem, and they shut us down,” said Eric Failing, executive director of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference.

Catholic adoption agencies, as a rule, do not place children with same-sex couples, based on the church’s teaching that marriage is a conjugal union between one man and one woman, Failing said.

“We cannot participate in a program that will not allow us to exercise our deeply held religious beliefs in our agency,” said Jerry Zufelt, spokesman for the Greensburg diocese.

Greensburg’s decision to close its adoption and foster care program affects not only the four counties in the diocese but also the six counties of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Greensburg had provided adoption services for the Pittsburgh diocese since December 2014.

Since 2015, Greensburg Catholic Charities facilitated 167 adoption and foster care placements for both dioceses through its state contract, Zufelt said. It also handled 158 adoption and foster care cases outside the state system, through a Harrisburg-based program known as Women in Need. Those, too, will cease.

[...] Catholic Social Services is now suing the city of Philadelphia. In court filings, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the archdiocese, noted that Catholic Social Services would have referred a same-sex couple to one of 29 other foster care agencies in Philadelphia.

There’s something grossly entitled about claiming you should have government-mandated access to a social media platform you didn’t create, maintained by people you oppose, and that you should have that access for free. Against government intervention: https://t.co/rmmkJPs8XU

— David French (@DavidAFrench) June 6, 2019

Drag Queen Story Hour is "one of the blessings of liberty," according to conservative National Review columnist David French. https://t.co/lp18pcX3Sz

— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) September 13, 2019

No wonder the Zoomers (generation Z kids) are rising up and denouncing Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA.

What kind of a Christian supports same sex couples adopting children? pic.twitter.com/PyqK8VFuC5

— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) November 6, 2019