The Hazards of Belief

A Catholic diocese in northern Illinois said Thursday that it will end its state-funded adoption and foster-care program rather than comply with a new law that would require it to place children with gay or unmarried couples, and officials said other dioceses would decide quickly whether to follow suit.

Officials from the Rockford Diocese said they were forced to terminate state contracts worth $7.5 million after lawmakers failed to pass an amendment exempting religious groups from provisions of the state's new civil unions law, which will let gay and lesbian couples form civil unions, a rough equivalent to marriage. The law takes effect June 1.

Catholic Charities wanted to be allowed to refer unmarried or gay couples to other agencies, as it has for years.

Diocese officials said Thursday that allowing such adoptions or foster placements would violate teachings of the Catholic faith.

"The law of our land has always guaranteed its people freedom of religion," diocese spokeswoman Penny Wiegert said. "Denying this exemption to faith-based agencies leads one to believe that our lawmakers prefer laws that guarantee freedom from religion."

The Civil Rights Agenda, a gay rights advocacy group, issued a statement calling the diocese's decision "a sad display of bigotry" and said religious freedom "is granted only when the religious agency is not funded by taxpayer dollars."

"I am mindful that this is a sad day for the many foster families and parents involved and the children who are in the care of Catholic Charities," TCRA Executive Director Anthony Martinez said.

Illinois Department of Children and Family Services officials said there are enough private child welfare agencies to take over foster placement and adoptions for the roughly 300 children in the Rockford Diocese's foster-care program when it ends June 1.

"Catholic Charities in Rockford has served children and families with compassion for many years, and we thank them for their service," DCFS Director Erwin McEwen said in a written statement. "We will take every step necessary to ensure that the children are well cared for and the foster families are well supported during this transition."

Rockford and four other Catholic dioceses in Illinois are among 45 private agencies that provide state-funded adoption and foster-care services, DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe said. The dioceses provide services to about 2,300 of the 15,000 children in the foster-care system, while two other religious groups provide care to about 1,000 children, Marlowe said.

He said some of the 42 caseworkers in the Rockford Diocese could be hired by new agencies.

Catholic charity groups place children only with married couples or single people — not with couples living together. They consider couples in civil unions to be unmarried and therefore not eligible to adopt or provide foster care through their programs.

But refusing to place children with gay couples could open the charities to lawsuits or lead state government to cut off funding.

Leaders of the Catholic groups have said they aren't trying to keep gay couples from adopting or taking in foster children — just that it's a matter of having those couples work with other groups.

Catholic officials said they hope the Rockford Diocese's decision will persuade the General Assembly to reconsider such an exemption.

But if it doesn't, other dioceses could decide to withdraw from the state program, said Bob Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois.

"We're not bluffing. This is a serious issue," said Gilligan, who said other dioceses will decide on the fate of their programs within a week to 10 days after the new state law takes effect. "No diocese is going to willingly put a child in a same-sex household."

NYTimes.com

A Catholic doctor's association in Germany believes it can cure the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians with sugar pills -- though only at their request, the group says. But the homo-homeopathy has been harshly criticized by members of its target community.


The Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany (LSVD) is outraged. Following news reported this week by the online magazine Telepolis that the Union of Catholic Physicians (UCP) has been offering homeopathic "Therapy Options for Homosexuality" on their website, the advocacy organization called the suggestion an "insult," and an "impertinence" that showed "a lack of respect for homosexuals and bisexuals."

The religious association, which calls itself the "voice of the Catholic medical community," writes on its website that while "homosexuality is not an illness," a host of treatments are available to keep such "inclinations" at bay. Possibilities include "constitutional treatments with homeopathic tools … such as homeopathic dilutions like Platinum," "psychotherapy," and "religious counseling." Among homeopathy's controversial treatments are the prescription of "Globuli," tiny pills that consisting mostly of sugar.
"We know about a number of people with homosexual feelings who find themselves in a spiritual and psychological emergency and suffer greatly," UCP head Gero Winkelmann told SPIEGEL in a written statement. "If someone is unhappy, ill or feels they are in an emergency, they should be able to find options for help with us."

But the doctor, who runs a private practice with an emphasis on homeopathy in the Bavarian town of Unterhaching, also stressed that the UCP website had not been recently updated, "because the issue is not particularly topical at the moment."

As for the scientific basis of the treatments offered by the UCP, Winkelmann listed "medical-psychotherapeutic, philosophical and theological literature," the "minority views of psychotherapists," the "teachings of the Catholic church, the Holy Scripture," and the "homeopathy of Samuel Hahnemann," the German physician credited with creating the practice.

'Dangerous' and 'Laughable'

But touting ineffective medication for nonexistent suffering is unacceptable, the LSVD said. "The offerings are dangerous," said spokeswoman Renate Rampf. "They use the insecurities of homosexual or bisexual young people and their parents." Such "laughable" therapeutic ministrations are problematic because they can be "destabilizing," she said.

"All serious experts agree that sexual orientation is already evident in early childhood," she added.

But Winkelmann defended the treatments, saying his organization's intentions were not meant to "injure or pressure" anyone, but to express a "position and medical opinion" to interested parties.

The UCP website includes a testimonial from a southern German gay man who writes that he had been happy to find that the organization believed "that changing homosexual tendencies was possible" because finding a therapist to undertake such a task had been difficult. "Unfortunately the widespread opinion among psychotherapists is that homosexuality is inherent and unalterable," he writes.

While the UCP says it does not represent official Catholic policies, the Church continues to grapple with its approach to homosexuality. Just last month Cologne Archbishop Joachim Meisner withdrew the religious teaching privileges of prominent publicist and pedagogue David Berger after he revealed his homosexuality and criticized the Catholic stance on the issue. The church declared that the teacher could "no longer credibly give Catholic religion lessons on behalf of the Church."
Though Germany's Protestants tend to take a more liberal approach to homosexuality, conservative members of the church also continue to raise opposition to gay-friendly policies. In 2009 some 30 pastors from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia wrote an open letter to condemn statements made by the church's state president Alfred Buss. "The practice of homosexuality is not consistent with God's creation," said the letter to online news portal Der Westen. Those who discredit therapy for homosexuality deny people "who suffer from homosexual feelings the help to change," the letter continued.

Meanwhile the World Health Organization (WHO) removed homosexuality from its International Code of Diseases on January 1, 1993. The move brought the "19th century to an end for gays and lesbians 90 years too late," said the LSVD at the time. But perhaps they rejoiced too soon.