The dispute between the British government and both Catholic and Anglican churches over gay adoption raises two quite distinct but important issues of principle. On the one hand, whether it is desirable that church-run adoption organisations be exempted from the Equality Act which will make illegal discrimination against gay people in the provision of goods and services.
The archbishops of Canterbury and York, Rowan Williams and John Sentamu, backing their Catholic counterpart, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, have written to prime minister Tony Blair arguing that "The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well-meaning."
The cardinal has said that he will close Catholic agencies rather than comply. Yet the reality is that these agencies are licensed and funded by the state to function as an arm of state social services, and take children of all religions and none from public care to place them with adoptive parents. For the state to ask for compliance with basic standards is not unreasonable.
Then there is the substantive issue - whether adoption by same-sex couples is harmful to children and/or morally repugnant, and should therefore be prohibited. In Ireland that ban remains, although single gays may, and do, adopt children under a provision in the legislation which allows single people to adopt if the Adoption Board finds them to be fit and proper and capable of providing a loving home for children. This strange anomaly may yet be addressed in the long-overdue adoption Bill currently being drafted and expected to be published this spring. (Consultation on the Bill concluded in 2003!).
Modern adoption best practice is child-centred, all about finding a family for the child, rather than a child for the family. In the final analysis then the issue of discrimination against potential gay parents, although important, has to be seen as the secondary issue.
Scientific studies in the US appear to show consistently that children raised by gay couples do not do any worse socially, academically, or emotionally than their peers in more traditional households. A 2001 academic survey of the scientific data reports on 25 comparative studies of such children, finding that their authors have reported uniformly that there are no significant developmental differences between the two groups. The vast majority of children in the care of single-sex couples grow up to be heterosexual and there is even some evidence they tend to be more communicative with their parents.