Michael and Catherine Burke allege that the state’s Department of Children and Families discriminated against them for their Catholic viewpoints.
The state cannot start being allowed to make determinations about what religious groups may and may not adopt children. Thats fundamentally on so many levels not fucking ok.
the determination should be based on your ability to care for the child emotionally, physically and psychologically. if you can’t do all 3, then you’re unfit to be a parent.
We can and should as long as it’s based on relevant behavior not religious affiliation. If you don’t believe in using proscribed antibiotics you should not be caring for kids, for example. I don’t care if it’s because your god told you they were evil or because you think your healing crystals are better.
I agree no child should be placed in a home that would endanger them, but why is this even news? Couple needs to grow a pair and either change their views or just not adopt/foster. Go back to church or golf or whatever. Quit bothering the legal system. Perhaps they could volunteer for an LGBTQ organization and learn why “the T” doesn’t make anyone different or lesser.
There are even dozens of Christian adoption and fostering agencies that will completely ignore any and all criminal histories if you are godly enough. In fact, being as hypocritical as possible seems to be a selling point for these agencies. If you preach God’s love but have smashed a racists face into the concrete and lost your job over it and then shot your dog in the street while your wife defrauds the public and scams vulnerable people to the point of being sued by the state of Texas then you are exactly who they are looking to foster.
Edit: apologies, my fat fingers bungled it: if you are a racist who smashes black people’s faces into the concrete
What’s wrong with smashing a racist’s face into concrete?
You’re not supposed to hurt your friends.
Noice.
See, that’s why religious people are a cancer, look who they befriend.
Edited, I’m bad at typing. He was a racist who smashes a black man into the concrete
deleted by creator
“Gay people suck, unless I can use them as a stick to beat up Muslims”
Fuck off.
deleted by creator
removed by mod
removed by mod
BTW, I don’t hate Muslims, I am Muslim. I’m not a delusional western leftist who thinks us Muslims are a bunch of pro-lgbt pro-trans anti-christian etc… pseudo progressive communists like you think we are.
Tell me more about this “making assumptions” thing. I’m especially interested about everything you seem to know I “think”.
Projection much?
If you are planning on continuing this discussion, mind rule 1.
Yes. Every shitty group needs reform.
I think that until the church does a few strong demonstrations that they are not fiddling with children anymore - like, say, a public commitment to turn all allegations of child abuse over to secular authorities, like Biden just did with the military - that they should not be allowed access to children that they don’t produce themselves.
Cat: They shouldn’t even be allowed access to the children they do make themselves.
That’s a much more difficult one to defend, from a legal or ethical or moral stance.
My opinion is that teaching a child religion as the only truth is child abuse, without telling the child that there are also people who believe there are no supernatural phenomena in the universe and explaining their best arguments for their viewpoint. It’s no different than existing in a society of hunters and not teaching the kid to hunt. We win by knowing more, not by being stronger or tougher or purer in dog’s eyes or whatever.
But my opinion is no basis for passing laws and such. When you’re talking about who should take care of orphans, or of kids who have been subject to treatment that the law agrees is abuse, the mere having of bad viewpoints which are nonetheless legal is not sufficient grounds, if you ask me. Many religious people would consider my above opinion to be bad at best and hate speech at worst, for instance, but I think my wife and I would do alright taking care of a kid, if we had the time and resources to give.
But IF the people proposing to take a child into their care are regular attendees of the meetings of an organization that is known to protect pedophiles, that is definitely grounds to turn down that application on very solid legal footing, if you ask me.
Cat: If someone can’t be trusted to treat an adopted kid right, they can’t be trusted to treat any kid right. End of story.
Well, I’m already on the record as to my view of what constitutes child abuse; the fact of the matter is that we have to live with a lot of people doing a lot of things that we don’t like to children in a free society in 2023.
What is kinda good from my 50-odd year perspective is that people are not quite so entitled now as they were when I was a kid.
The article calls this a “complaint” rather than a “lawsuit” so I guess this is moot.
The couple seems to think people have the right to foster by default, and the regulation sets out conditions for when this right can be revoked.
I’m not sure of the actual law, but it seems to me that the right to foster should be granted on a case by case basis. Regulation should set the necessary requirements, but the department should have the final say on the sufficient requirements. And the department should be allowed to revoke an application for any reason or even no (stated) reason.
Like, you shouldn’t just have the right to foster by default.
good? why should children be indoctrinated into bigotry
Part of being a foster parent is agreeing to respect the child’s situation, religious views, sexual orientation, etc. If I tell the state that I’m not going to take a kid to church if they’re religious, I’m not getting approved. If I tell the state I’m going to teach potentially gay children that being gay is wrong, I’m not getting approved.
Becket previously represented Sharonell Fulton and Toni Simms-Busch in Fulton v. Philadelphia, a 2021 Supreme Court case that unanimously ruled in favor of a Catholic adoption agency’s right to refuse to place children with LGBTQ couples.
This highlights the hypocrisy that is endemic in the Catholic church these days. The couple feels they were discriminated against in the approval process due to their anti-Trans views, yet they are using a lawyer who was happy to take the opposite view when a Catholic adoption agency wanted to discriminate against LGBTQ couples.
Unfortunately, a key difference is that it’s the State doing it in this case, and a private agency before. That may end up being the difference here. It still doesn’t change the fact that the Catholic Church seems much more Interested in politics and litigating than actually helping people.
Or America is really just fucked up
It’s not hypocrisy, it’s their self-interest. They have a political agenda and are spending their lives doing what they can to enforce it, and that means helping their faction gain a foothold into every aspect of public life, especially raising children which they have said emphatically non-stop is all about forcing younger people who don’t have the ability to reject them logically to adopt their beliefs. They only care about making more Christians and shutting out enemies of what they think constitutes Christianity, especially the LGBTQ+ community.
They’re being entirely consistent in that light.
Yes, it would only be considered hypocritical if they are making the assertion that everyone should be allowed to foster children regardless of their beliefs and whether or not they intend to impose them on the children. But that’s not what they are saying.
deleted by creator
Wait what?
Of course I should be able to discriminate people if they argue for intolerance. Popper, anyone?
Value in tradition? What traditions are these people valuing?
So:
- They expressed bigoted views
- The SW passed them through anyway, “with conditions” which likely include “just don’t give this couple any gay kids”
- They were ultimately denied for reasons not stated
- We actually have no other information about what they said apart from they don’t like gay or trans kids
I think point 2 kinda invalidates the lawsuit, and point 4 is going to become extremely relevant when we find out they were fine with hitting kids who misbehaved or something.
The nerve of people to cry they were discriminated against for their views as if their views weren’t the original discriminator… It’s just mind boggling.
TIL discrimination is a good thing
Discrimination against the discriminators is kosher.
removed by mod
deleted by creator
Only when it’s the right type of discrimination.
Yes? If you choose to be a homophobic racist sexist asshole, you should be discriminated against.
Sexual orientation, gender, sex, skin color are all things you don’t choose, you’re just born that way.
I don’t get why they think this is discriminatory when Massachusetts is mostly Catholic to begin with. Because they have a superiority complex, they are “true Catholics” I suppose? I mean even the papacy, USCCB and other large Catholic regulators have shifted their views on LGBTQ people. While a lot of dioceses still aren’t yet uniamious on marriage equality or performing same-sex marriages within church premises and with church tradition/clergy, I think most now say the queer community at least deserves love, respect, and tolerance. Being trans or nonbinary is tricky, yes, but if you foster a child who considers a transition it’s important to give them spaces to really evaluate the choice. Take them to therapy, support groups, and maybe some medical consultations to evaluate their options. With children especially but people in general shouldn’t transition completely on a lark. Make sure they are confident in their choice. Still, these people couldn’t even have a nuanced approach like that. What a shame.
Massachusetts is not “mostly Catholic”. Of all the states, it is next to last in religiousness.
I suppose I mean it is mostly Catholic as in the church has a large present in Massachusetts (where I live as well). Lots of people here grew up in the church, were baptised in Catholic tradition, did Catholic sacraments like confession, communion, or confirmation as children. Catholic charities play a large part of a lot of the social services here too. This survey is unusual because it doesn’t seem to check off the qualities of religiosity. What are they praying about, what kind of God do they believe in, and how do they behave when they attend services? I’m quite skeptical since the supposedly most religious states are Southern red states, which are often religious in hallow, discriminatory ways. In the northeast culture, people are uncomfortable being seen as highly religious because we also want to seem rational, but that doesn’t make us completely non-practicing. My point is, the judges, lawyers, and/or witnesses this couple will encounter likely also have a familiarity with Catholicism and can just as well find a doctrinal rebuttal to their bigotry in addition to legal ones.
It’s a plant. These people are probably intentionally doing this to get a case before the US Supreme Court who will (they hope) overturn it. I’ll bet they knew this would happen.
Kids can’t “identify” as “lgtv” or whatever other shit, they get indoctrinated into that
You mean like how religion indoctrinates people and hides actual pedophiles while pointing the finger elsewhere?
And the long history of abuse of children by nuns and priests in children’s homes and religious schools/ facilities?
Being LGBT isn’t something you just wake up and choose to ‘identify’ as. You don’t wake up and decide, hey I’m gonna be gay! It’s just part of who you are.
Religion is a choice and something that can and does indoctrinate people. Maybe look in the right direction and you’ll see who the actual bad guys are.
I’m sure you know this and you’re just a troll. But just as a reference to other readers, I’d like to remind everybody that biology supports LGBT kids, not bigots.
The only good thing to come out of comments like that is my block button gets used quickly.
Biologically speaking, gay people are born that way.
No one is born religious.
So tell me again about indoctrination.
deleted by creator
Could also just change whenever you wanted, if that were the case. But no, I deliberately endured nearly a decade of pain because I ‘chose’ to be bi, in their words, lol.
Not to discount your opposition to their point, which should be opposed, but you do know that sexuality is pretty fluid for a vast number of people along the Kinsey scale, right? For a lot of people, they ARE heterosexual because they are indoctrinated that way from an early age. Not everyone capable of being sexually fluid identifies that way.
They’re asking the court to get rid of that discriminatory denial so that they will not be barred from fostering or adopting children in the future, in Massachusetts or elsewhere.
Stop discriminating against our discrimination! Thanks for the good laugh, Michael and Catherine Burke.
I’ll allow it.
